nil desperandum...

In an old abandoned warehouse...And I said what kind of music do they play there...And they told me: Tekno...One night in Hackney

2010-03-18T16:36:00.006Z

The incident last night...

So I'm walking home from work. It's a beautiful night, still light outside and I thought it would be nice to start taking advantage of the coming spring and get some exercise. It's a pretty easy walk, about 20 mins, and it's a nice opportunity to wind down after the work day and lose myself in my thoughts while I listen to my iPod. It's usually a pretty uneventful walk, the odd road rage or parping incident but nothing notable. Until last night...

Hackney has a pretty bad rep, as does most of east London, but this little Borough seems to be the poster child for anti-social behaviour, in particular knife crime. Which is a surprise to me because of all the incidents of stabbings I hear about (granted not all of them are reported) the majority seem to take place in areas other than Hackney. I used to joke that all the Hackney kids were going off elsewhere to do their stabbing...you don't shit where you eat, after all. But it would appear that the frequency of incidents has increased to the point where unless it's a major gang war or a fine upstanding citizen gets it in the back then the mainstream press only cover it in passing.

So I get to the building and am heading through the security doors and I hear these kids yahooing behind me, boisterous raised voices and what not. I didn't pay much mind to it as there's always teenagers yelling and carrying on but one of the voices started to become a lot louder and more strident, breaking and straining, like cries of anger and pain. I was on the second floor so I looked out over the balcony and saw this kid, a teenager, on the ground in the car park with another teen in a hoodie standing over him and giving him a half-hearted boot to the face before running off, hooting and hollering, with two mates who joined him out on the street. At first I thought it was a bunch of mates messing around with each other but as the kid on the ground struggled to his feet, looking dazed and distressed, I figured they'd given him a bit of a kicking. The weird thing I noticed more than anything else was the clouds of white feathers which were billowing around him and all over the ground. For a moment I had this bizarre thought that it was a drive-by pillow fight gone wrong but as the kid limped painfully towards the security doors I realised there was more to it than that.

I went into the flat and AG arrived home soon after looking shocked and upset. She told me there were police cars all over the place and that some kid had been stabbed in the parking lot. It was then I realised what I'd seen...or not seen, more accurately, as I realised while describing the incident to her that I had not really paid that much attention to what I thought was a minor scuffle and in reality had seen very little of note. I didn't see the faces of the attackers as they had been running away from me and had paid very little attention to what they were wearing. She thought I should go down and talk to the cops but I felt like there wasn't really all that much of interest that I could contribute and growing up the kid of a cop I knew that before long the uniformed officers would knock on every one's door to see if anyone saw anything, so I could tell him my story then.

True to form, soon after a PC knocked on the door and took down my account of what I'd seen. Apparently of all the residents of our block I had seen by far the most and someone would be in touch with me to ask me some more questions. He also told us that the attackers had gone on to stab two other people at the building next door so the chances it was a random stabbing spree were minimal...it was strange how similar his intonation of "gang-related" echoed that of politicians and newsreaders saying "terrorist related" as though it were just another catch phrase for social decline among the yoof or another sub-breed of undesirable. When I arrived at work today I had a call from a female PC who came over at lunch time and sat with me for a couple of hours taking my statement. She advised that the guy who was attacked was released from hospital but had been "arrested" so he could tell them his side of the story, and that four males has been arrested in connection with the attack. The two other victims were both in critical condition in hospital.

AG was, understandably, pretty freaked out by the whole thing, but in all the time she's been here she's never been close to any form of real violence, so I'm not sure why she's worried about any kind of repeat or escalation. The police are pretty sure it's gang related so there may be some retaliation but who knows. I think more than anything else she was sure it was a random attack and if I had been but a few minutes slower then I might have been the victim, but I don't believe that. Even the policewoman who took my statement confirmed that it was a gang thing and most likely triggered by some petty grievance or perceived slight.

The worse part of the whole thing is the "what if" scenarios that go through your mind afterwards. I'd like to think that we live in a society where there are people who will step in to help another in times of distress but I'm now graphically aware that this is also a society where teenagers will stab each other for looking the wrong way at them on a bus and therefore would have little compunction in stabbing a laconic Aussie by-stander who decided to play hero. So in those situations you have to weigh up whether your sense of chivalry is more important to you than your life...and sadly for all of us, chivalry comes out the loser.

And now I’m back in home sweet Hackney...walking through the rubbish in the street...smile at the lunatics who rant and rave at me...

2009-11-09T12:59:00.002Z

This cohabitation thing's a lark, innit? Now that my stuff has arrived from Oz I feel like I've settled in to Salette's place, and feel more at home in East London than I have anywhere else. This really is one of the livliest and most interesting parts of the City and I can't see me wanting to live anywhere else but Hackney, nar'wha'i'meen?. Sure it has it's problems like rubbish and knife crime and appalling teenage hipster fashion, but you get that to varying degrees regardless of where you go and frankly it just adds to charm. Plus,the local street punks are at least civilised enough to hold true to the old adage of "you don't shit where you eat" and are considerate enough to travel to other boroughs to do their stabbing up. Typhoid and swans, Clarice...it all comes from the same place. Like a bruise accentuating hidden beauty...like an orchid growing out of a dog turd.

We've got everything we could want practically right on our doorstep. Columbia Road flower market is an olfactory explosion on Sundays and is right next to Brick Lane with all the curry and counter culture you can shake a stick at, plus a new bowling alley opened up last year with a kick arse 50's style American diner. It's an easy bike ride to the Castle climbing centre and I can walk to work in 20 minutes and from our office you can see a swanky high-rise apartment reputed to be owned by one of the Pet Shop Boys, presumably so they can escape from inner...inner city...inner...city...pressure.

On Saturdays we walk down the canal, past the lock and over the bridge to Broadway Market which throngs with people of all cultures and creeds, perusing the multitude of stalls selling everything from cupcakes to cast-off clothes, records to risotto, fresh fish to farty fromage, veggies to Vienna sausage. The video store has a leather tree for sitting on and hand-sewn tapestries of classic cheesy foreign moofies; there's a fresh fish shop just opened called Fin and Flounder, but you better get there early 'cos the queue is out the door; our local is a truly awesome Belgian pub called the Dove which is always heaving day or night; and our perennial favourite French deli, La Bouche, which, along with their kick arse les produits alimentaires, provides endless material for hilarious gags about their bags.

At the top of the street is the spot where Salette and I had our first pash on that magical rainy August night (siiigh), which by day is home to the numerous homeless dudes who sell stolen bike parts for beer money and fight. This leads into a lovely park called London Fields, one of many such green areas around us which on rare sunny days really make you appreciate the fleeting beauty of this part of London. A little to the east you've got Victoria Park, which is massive, and south there's Haggerston Park which borders on Hackney Road, the namesake of our neighbourhood.

A walk along Hackney Road is an abject lesson in the dichotomy that is East London. It's an eclectic blend of old and new, stylish and shabby, classy and skanky, that comes together in a glorious urbane pastiche. The old abandoned children's hospital is a magnificently run down and spooky as fuck on dark windy nights. Right next door is the Hackney City Farm who host wonderful fireside dinners using only produce and livestock raised on their land. Gambling is de rigeur amongst the working class locals so you find betting shops dotted all around the place, usually in the nicest and oldest buildings. There's a huge bingo hall called Mecca which, in the most delicious irony, is directly east of the mosque on Kingsland Road, so when the Muslims go to pray they truly are facing Mecca. Right next door is a cafe and recording studio called The Premises where Unkle recorded their last album, and two doors down from there is the HQ of the UK Hell's Angels, who recently had a huge gathering and closed off the whole street for miles in either direction. Sci-fi author and culture geek Cory Doctrow lives somewhere nearby, and pretty much everyone in Iron Maiden was born and raised around here.

The climbing is progressing well. I did my first lead climb the other week (where you clip the rope in to a series of anchor points up the wall, as opposed to top roping where the rope is already anchored at the single point at the very top) which was exhilarating...makes you realise how much faith you're putting in to this thin piece of twisted cord and brings back the old fears. But it's nothing compared to outdoor climbing on an actual sandstone rock face. Phewee! that was an adrenalin trip. A completely different experience and aesthetic to indoors...I needed a serious montage to get me through some of the trickier climbs. Once you're up there there's no colour-coded handholds to show you where to go next and the sandstone is like a cheese grater on any exposed skin. The only way is up (baby), there's no woosing out and coming back down the rope...if Rocky 5 has taught us anything it's that there's neither an easy way out nor a short cut home. The new-comer to our ragtag band of misfits, little aussie Mikey, is a total natural, almost freakishly good, thereby quickly earning our respect and scorn in equal measure.

Xmas will be in London this year, our first one together, so we're having a quiet one with egg nog and matching reindeer sweaters and the Masters of the Universe xmas special. I'm planning on cooking up a feast but it will be vegetarian on account of the hippy, so we're having a New Years dinner party at our place for all the hip young things which will give me a chance to unleash the cooking fury on some truly scrumptious Yule tide fare. Once the madness has passed, Salette's taking me to New York in January for a bit of a holiday. She's attending some arts festival and I'm gonna try and fit in some sight-seeing with her mom who's flying in from Rochester to meet me. I'm so excited! New York's always held such a mystique for me so it will be interesting to see if its reputation hold up to the the cold hard light of modern America. If nothing else I hope to get a sense of whether or not I'd be able to live there.

Following on from Azza's truly inspirational efforts last year, I've convinced the guys at work to run a team for Movember in support of men's health. Of course I'm leading the charge with my awesome trucker 'tashe, which you can see for yourself when we get the first progress photos posted. Check it out at http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/moustache-revival-takes-hold-of-foviance-men/ and follow the link to the Movember donation page and sponsor me £2 or something. It's for a good cause and if I get £50 in donations I go in to the draw for a trip to Finland to go reindeer sledding and baby seal clubbing and all that. Go on, do a brother a solid and chip in a little something. Every donation of £2 or over gets a free prostate exam for the lads, and a free moustache ride for the ladies...you know I'm good for it.

What remorseless emperor commands me? I no longer govern my soul, Completely immersed in darkness, As I turn my body away from the sun..

2009-09-21T14:20:00.004+01:00

I've been seeing a lot of art and culture and shit over the past few months: Romeo Castelluci's interpretation of Dante's Divine Comedy in three separate performances - Paradiso, Inferno and Purgatorio, The Reverend Billy (anti-shopping evangelist), PJ Harvey (sadly past her prime), Antony and the Johnsons (one of Salette's faves), a bunch of Shaolin monks choreographed by some European physical theatre/dance legend, and an advance screening of the Yes Men movie, 'The Yes men Fix the World', where we scored a copy of their fake NY times, which was a real coup.

But the highlight of it all has to be finally - FINALLY - getting to see Mastodon at Islington Academy.

Tickets sold out almost immediately and the fucking ticket touts were straight away selling them online for 3 times the face value, c*nts! There really need to be laws against reselling, these bastards hire mobs students to trawl the internet all day long and buy up tickets to shows so they can mark them up and cash in on genuine fans' willingness to pay whatever it costs to see the artists they love. I steadfastly refuse to buy tickets from resellers because no way am I going to perpetuate their mother fucking greed, but I was really torn because I fucking love Mastodon and I missed seeing them last time. Well low and behold, the Heavens opened up like a holy zipper and drenched my face with their divine money shot when Salette surprised me with a ticket the night before the gig as an early birthday present. Are you friggin' kidding me? Just when you thought the most awesome American Girlflen in the whole friggin' world couldn't get anymore awesomer, BAM! she whips out her Spice Weasel and cranks it up a notch. I'm still geeking out about that one.

One a side note, given the sorry state of the British summer, it seems somewhat obvious to spout the old idiom, "it never rains it pours", but around that time I won a free weekend pass (plus camping permit) to the massive Sonisphere metal festival...but I couldn't go. Gggrrr! Would have been good to see Mastodon again and maybe Alice In Chains (sans Lane Staley) but friggin' Metallica were headlining so fuck that.

But I digress...

The Mastodon show was fantastic. After suffering through a truly awful and instantly forgettable cock-rock guitar/drum duo, the second support hit the stage in a flurry of tight jeans, denim vests, scraggly beards and beer bellies. If you've never heard of Valient Thorr, then by Odin's beard you've got to check them out cos' they're absolutely fucking awesome. A 5- or 6-piece (hard to tell, there was so many dudes on stage) old school kick-arse middle-aged metal dudes from Canada who look like that bunch of stoners you knew in high school who were always in a band but were never quite good enough to make it, except these guys got good. Really fucking good. Initially, I dismissed their beer-drinking frat-boy image and light-weight opening number as either party metal or a joke band, but they pulled out better and better material with each song and delivered a really metal performance. They were busting out tasty riffs and crunching melodies and swirling solos from high up on the fret board, whilst all around swirled beardy-weirdy lyrics and solid thumping drums and they totally nailed me. So much so I bought their latest CD from a dude in the hallway for £7 which features a huge bearded cosmic guy with a scythe fighting a gigantic screeching cat/eel monster, dragging it back into the swirling galactic void from which it emerged. Loud, sweaty, hairy and totally metal. Oh yeah!

Mastodon hit the stage in their usual understated fashion: no pretence, no fancy gear or stupid clothes, no between-song banter, no encores, just get up there and play the fuck out of it, all scraggly hair and manky beards and a shit-load of hard-core arse-kicking metal. Seeing these guys live is hard to describe but awesome to behold. The energy and intensity they bring forth makes it seem like they're not so much playing the music as channelling it on behalf of some higher power...like they're conduits for something larger than all of us and it's only their consummate skills as musicians that contains the incredible forces they wield and prevents us all from being consumed in a white-hot conflagration of molten scorching metal. Always a cut above the rest of the pack, with their new album, Crack the Skye, they really have lifted it to the next level. Intricately crafted songs, complex arrangements, unbelievable melodies, solid thematic constructs...such is the power and scope of their music that you can't help but feel elevated and diminished at the same time, like staring into a distant dying sun. They played pretty much all the new album, which just gets better with ever listen, but then after a brief break came back on stage to play 3 or 4 songs from all of their previous albums. All in all they played for about 2 hours, I don't care who you are you won't find better value for your metal dollar than that!

My only regret is they didn't play 'Blood and Thunder', but you can't have everything. But the biggest downer of all is I'm clearly getting too old for this sort of thing as I've lost a noticeable degree of hearing in my right ear as a result of the sonic onslaught I endured. But to quote that guy Tom who got caught perving on Lady Godiva (the eponymous Peeping Tom) and had his eyes burned out by red-hot iron, it was totally fuckin' worth it!

Panic in the streets of London, panic in the streets of Birmingham...I wonder to myself, could I ever be sane again?

2009-08-27T11:37:00.007+01:00

Blimey! It's all go in Blighty! I've been out of action for a while, down in the trenches, face down in the muck. So heaps to catch up on.

We had the G20 and accompanying protest, which was big news. Salette and I went along to a demonstration called Climate Camp which, due to it's peaceful nature, received virtually no press coverage...that was reserved for the violent stuff. All those meddling punk-arse kids with their black hoodies and make-out parties and ping-pong machines! It was quite a bittersweet irony to see nouveau-hippies protesting the pollution of the earth while throwing their ciggie butts and rubbish all over the streets, and anti-war protesters throwing bottles at police. Mind you, people on all sides of the fracas behaved appallingly with bankers waving £100 notes out the window at protesters, and the cops beating some old guy to death who wasn't even part of the protest...he was just walking home from work.

There's been plenty of celebrity sightings recently: Viviene Westwood at Climate Camp; Hugo Weaving (again), this time in Bunhill Fields cemetery just near my work; met The Yes Men (well, one of them) at a special preview screening of their new moofie; met Reverend Billy in a park in west London after he attempted to exorcise the Westfield mall with his anti-shopping gospel choir and was forcefully evicted. But the creme de la creme (of the chess world) would have to be Nick Cave. Yes, I shit you not! Salette and I took the train to Brighton for the arts festival and we sat one seat over from him. He was clearly trying not to be noticed by hiding behind a book and pretending to read. The only problem was it was HIS OWN BOOK. There was a picture of him on the back cover, for fuck's sake! And that wasn't even the weirdest part. Hardly anyone on the train seemed to notice him, apart from Salette and me and a bunch of French goth girls who tried to surreptitiously take his picture, so he pretty much kept to himself even though the train was packed. I was next to the window so could see him reflected in the glass and Salette could see him through the gap in her seat, and at one point in the journey we both looked over to see him hunkered against his window and weeping. Not simply an errant bijoux tear sliding down the cheek, but full-blown shuddering, fist-in-the-mouth pantomime sob wrack job. Just as suddenly as it began it was over and he continued with his reading. I guess that must have been the weeping train...the train in which to weep. I passed him on my way out and asked, "Hey! Aren't you Iggy Pop?" and he started crying again, the big baby. We got to chatting and I was amazed to discover that during his troubled teenage years he refused to respond to anyone unless they called him 'Catherine Nolan'. Who'd've thought?

Brighton was a mixed bag. As a seaside town it's as quaint as it gets in the UK but sadly it's quite touristy and tacky and full of fat drunken yobbos fighting and spewing and pissing in the streets. So basically London with seagulls. I've actually been there before when cycling with Dr Phil but I had no idea it was Brighton. We were there to see Diamonda Galas (whom Salette loved but I didn't care for) but the best part was dinner at her favourite vegetarian restaurant in the world, Terre a Terre, which was amazing. The food was divine, so much so that it's been added to my top 5 best ever dining experiences.

It's old news now, but for those of you who missed it I flew back to Canberra in early June after receiving news that my Dad was diagnosed with lymphoma. It was a huge shock, to say the least. Even after all these years I still imagine him through the lens of a 6 year-old as invincible. We'd had a falling out prior to my leaving for the UK and hadn't spoken for nearly 3 years so I wasn't sure what the reception would be. Imagine all the hoary cliches about a frantic mercy dash from halfway across the world, the tearful reunion, all that. After some initial reluctance he agreed to see me and thankfully we were able to put the past aside and reconcile. I'd like to think that this is a load off his mind and might go some way to improving his peace of mind, if not his physical condition. If nothing else, it's one less thing to stress about and hopefully put him in a better frame of mind to deal with the treatment.

Thanks to all of you who sent me birthday wishes. And sucks to all of you who forgot (you know who you are!). Salette made me feel very special, taking me out to dinner, buying me some cool 50's bowling shirts and even baked me a cake (the first one in years and the best one ever!)..all of which was really nice. Sadly, I didn't hear anything from the kids (the only two people I really wanted to hear from). It's not the first time they've forgotten, but devastating all the same. I guess this is karma for all the times I forgot my parents' birthdays.

Things have been really hectic since I got back. I seem to be constantly working on three separate projects at once, many of which take me out of London to client sites in bum-fuck podunk hicksville semi-rural areas. It's nice to be busy, seeing as a lot of our competitors are cutting staff or closing down, so I'm not taking anything for granted, but that doesn't stop me from complaining. The Holiday Inn at Lancaster is like a cross between an old people's home and Purgatory...only smellier...and the food's worse.

I've been through something of a mental and spiritual readjustment since coming back from Oz. I was in an emotional funk for some time and really feeling a bit lost. I felt like I was able to resolve a lot of issues which have been weighing heavy on my mind since I left for the UK, which was painful and upsetting at times but something I needed to do, for my own peace of mind if nothing else. But now that I've closed off that chapter of my past I feel somehow adrift, cut off from all that defines who I am. I'm a creature of the present: I've closed the door on the past and am now looking for the door to the future.

The problem is, I don't have a clear view of what the future is yet. I know that whatever happens Salette and I will be together...she's the one constant in this complex equation...but it's really hard to make plans because of my financial situation. As it stands, it'll take me about 10 years to pay off the debts I inherited from the divorce and the sale of the house, and I won't be saving anything during that time. I feel like I'm treading water in a deep dark well and I won't be able to get out for a long time. As part of moving in together, I gave Salette the full picture of my financial situation and it's pretty gloomy. It's getting harder and harder to get by: London was already one of the most expensive cities to live in before the credit crunch, and things keep getting more expensive. Half my salary goes in loan repayments and child support each month, and the other half only just covers rent and food, both of which have sky rocketed. I've exhausted my savings, have no capacity to save, and no spare cash for dinners out or trips away or any of the things you're supposed to be able to do in a burgeoning romance. Understandably, she's nervous about the risks of being dragged down with such a huge debt, the limits it will place on our life together, and my ability to share the living expenses...as indeed am I. Jinkies, it sure sucks being a grown up, huh?

Predictably, all of the above manifested in a huge bout of self-doubt and hopelessness, and I imagined that Salette was going to run a million miles just like every one else has when they learned of my messy past. But she didn't run: she gave me a hug and told me she loved me and that we'd figure out a way to get through it together. Just when I think she couldn't get any more wonderful, she continues to amaze me.

One Saturday night about a month ago we were watching a moofie and she ran to the loo, kicking the skirting board and breaking two of her toes. Not the same one as the previous time but on the same foot: the little one was pointing out at a right angle, it was hideous! We went to the emergency room at 11:30pm and spent 6 hours waiting for them to x-ray and set her foot in a cast. What a nightmare: the place was crammed with paralytic teenage girls, stab victims and crazy old people...and that was a quiet night. She needed to stay in to see the orthopedic dude later that morning so I stayed with her until they got her in a bed and finally got home around 5am just as the sun was coming up. An orthopedic consultant finally came by around 12 the next day and without even looking at her chart or x-rays told her to come back in a month, which was Monday this week when the cast finally came off. Hooray!

This past weekend heralded a momentous occasion when we moved in together. That's right, it's a co-habitation, bitches! It's all very exciting but I'd be lying if I said a little bit of wee wasn't coming out, too. But it's mostly excited wee. It's been a long long time since I co-habited with someone (other than flatmates) and she's been living alone for about the same length of time, so even though we're both a little scared, it feels right. My furniture and stuff is currently on a slow boat from Oz and arrives in a couple of weeks, which I'm hoping will bring a sense of permanence to my life, both in London and with Salette. Enough of the feckless drifting, it's time to put down some roots (ooh err, Rodney!).

We celebrated our first official anniversary recently (we've unofficially and goofily counted each passing month as an anniversary) by returning to the underground bar where we had our very first date. I sent her an anonymous card in the mail saying simply: "Friday 14th August. 7pm. Shunt Bar. London Bridge. Come alone. Tell no one." Which is romantic as fuck, clearly, but in retrospect it was quite an assumption on my part that she would realise it was from me, or that she would receive it at all. Thankfully she was right there right on time on and in the exact same spot as we first laid eyes on each other. The whole shebang went down perfectly...it was freakin' magical!

With all the talk of moving in over the past few months, when positing about our life together the topic invariably drifts to the future and where we see ourselves "settling down" as it were. Neither of us feel London is the place for us...despite it's charms and opportunities it has little more to offer in the way of work or lifestyle improvements. The question then becomes: where? Europe is the logical (and most attractive) choice but as neither of us speak the language(s) it severely limits our options. Even if one of us were lucky enough to find a job where being monolingual was acceptable, there's Buckley's and None of finding two. Oz and NZ are both attractive options (burgeoning and respected art scenes, great lifestyle choices) but they're simply too far away, both culturally and geographically, from the rest of the world. For me it would feel too much like a backward step; I've only seen a glimpse of the world and I want to see more before I return (if I ever do). Which really only leaves one viable option: Ummurica. I can pretty much work anywhere so the hunt is on for Salette to find an exciting and challenging job in the US arts scene which capitalises on (and is worthy of) her skills and experience. Given the current state of the States, culturally at least, this is understandably a big ask as the arts are neither supported nor funded at anything near European levels. Add to that the terminal addiction to mainstream mass-marketed brain-dead entertainment tripe gushing from the corporate-sponsored teat, and the options become considerably more scant. Frankly, the only viable option is New York, but there's a whole swathe of hurdles to overcome before we get serious about a move, not least of all figuring out how to live in each other's pockets.

There's been some really nice weather lately, but not nearly enough. Talk of the return of the Great British Summer has been greatly exaggerated as the Meteorological Office revised their official forecast for a "BBQ summer" to "possibly the wettest summer on record." People were miffed, I can tell you. There was almost rioting in the streets and talk of burning weathermen in effigy only it was too wet to get a fire going. It's rare to see British people being passionate about something, and while complaining about stuff gets them close, complaining about the weather really pushes them over the edge. It's a beautiful thing to see...

Salette's off to the Venice Bienale next week, and then I'm meeting her after that in Bologna for a week of wine, food and hanky panky, Italian style. We've been learning Italian from a free CD we got in the Sunday paper and it's actually pretty good. I'm starting to get the hang of sentence structure and conjugation of verbs and such, and I realise just how shit English really is. Mi dispiace! Voglio comprarlo se non è troppo caro...

Ciao!

I'm on a Mexican Radio...I'm on a Mexican wo-oah radio...

2009-03-31T16:49:00.002+01:00

Hola, muchachos!

This week finds me back on the hamster wheel, wondering if I ever really went on holidays as the memory fades from my mind faster than the tan from my pasty limbs. To put it succinctly: Mexico was flippin' awesome! I'd love to show you pics but unfortunately my camera got nicked. I shan't bore you with the full police report but suffice it to say that cocktails and inattention were involved in equal measure and a fair share of the blame rests with muggins here.

Theft aside, the rest of the holiday was bloody marvelous. We stayed in an eco-lodge in beach-side cabanas right in the middle of a sea turtle habitat. Wooden everything, palapa roof, compost toilets, solar- and wind- generated electricity, the fecund verdant jungle out our back door and the crystal azure ocean out the front. The sand was the consistency of creamed butter and sugar, and there were crews of Mexican dudes out at dawn each morning raking the beach and clearing away all the rubbish that washes up during the night (there's a lot) but surprisingly no sea shells at all.

We spent most of our time reading in the glorious sunshine, swimming in the sea, drinking cocktails as the sun went down, lovin' the heck out of each other and falling asleep to the sound of the ocean right outside our door. A typical day would entail rising with the sun (no clocks or calendars so you quickly lose all track of time), a walk along the beach to breakfast, a swim and a read for a few hours, happy hour and lunch at Playa Azul or Zebra, a quick shower then happy hour at Om or Zulum, walk along the beach at sunset to dinner at Zamas or Margarita. Salette speaks Spanish muy bien and was teaching me bits and pieces. My challenge for the holiday was to order dinner all by myself and I did it on, like, the third day or something: "Mi gustaria la tacos de pescado, por favor" AND I managed to order drinks while she was in the dunny: "Dos mas margaritas pronto, mi amigo! Arriba!"

I found out that there are words in Spanish which sound very similar but mean completely different things which makes for hilarious misunderstandings. Like when the waiter asked if we both spoke Spanish, Salette meant to refer to me (mi hombre) but instead said "mi hambre" which means "my hungry". Or when we went to an Italian place (Italian is big in Mexico for some reason) and she asked if there was much garlic ("ajo") in the sauce but instead said "ojos" which means eyes. Aye chihuahua! Still, you have to love a language which has about a thousand ways to say hello and goodbye depending on the time of day: ola, buenos dias, buenos tardes, buenos noches, vemos luego, hasta la vista, hasta manana.

On the whole the food was disappointing, but when it was good it was REALLY flippin' good. The place we spent most of our time is called Zamas and is run by a couple of ex-San Franciscans who really know their stuff. Not that it's hard to shine given the tourist-friendly garbage most of the restaurants are spewing up, but we were amazed at how little is made of the fresh local produce and Mexican traditional cooking. Thankfully Zamas came to the rescue with their amazing fish tacos and kick-arse margaritas, and the complimentary guacamole was divine. The place we stayed had a quaint little restaurant called Casa Banana, which wins the award for best name, but sadly their food was not that great. Although I will admit that their home-made bread was one of the best things on the beach and a staple for breakfast everyday with melted butter and coffee.

I'm as far from my next holiday as it's possible to get, but every day that passes brings me close and closer to the end of August when I meet up with Salette in Venice for the tail end of the Biannale, from where we will head off to Bologna for a week of gastronomic gloriousness.

The pain of losing Sweaty Betty is still fresh and raw, like emotional sushi. Many's the night I have laid awake tortured by nightmares of her treatment at the hands of the vicious sweaty ne'er-do-wells who abducted her, her innocence and beauty violated and subjugated by their every sordid villainous whim. In a desperate attempt to assuage my suffering I've done what any rational-minded individual would do...I bought another bike. Hooray for materialism! Luckily for me, my new work is part of the cycle to work scheme so I can salary sacrifice exactly the same bike I had before, Specialized Rockhopper, but this one (which I have named Lucy Goosey) is an '09 model and is 100 squid cheaper than the '08. I pick her up later this week, all going well.

The G20 summit is due to kick off this week as are the accompanying protests by the legions of hippy commie pinko lefty leso homos (as my dad would say) that are allegedly flooding into the city to disrupt the daily affairs of the polite folk and basically cause affront to all that's good and decent with their patchouli stinking work-shy shenanigans. Pretty much everyone has been warned to avoid coming in to the city, but those who must have been told to not wear a suit so as to avoid being made a target by blood-thirsty treehuggers. The police are on high alert for a violent confrontation and army vehicles have started appearing in side streets and back alleys close to where the action is supposed to kick off.

For fuck's sake! Just think, if the same level of repression and determination that goes into suppressing these protests was applied to the fucktards in the banks and governments that caused this whole financial mess in the first place, there wouldn't be any protests 'cos there wouldn't be any fucking mess.

It's supposed to be getting warmer now that Spring has sprung although you wouldn't know it with the amount of rain we've been getting. Still, now that Lucy Goosey has entered my life I'm feeling the yearning to get back out amongst the glory of nature and shred the fuck out of it. Look for me where ever dudes in sexy bike gear are found...

Down St. Earl Street, Thursday night...In the city that sounds nice...Talking shit with my colleagues...Did we do the same degree?

2009-03-06T11:27:00.003Z

All right? How's about ya? What are you like?

Prior to Xmas last year a Westfield shopping mall opened up in west London and people here went absolutely nuts about it. Me and NOAG (Number One American Girlflen) went to check it out and were all like, "What's the big deal, like, I mean, really?" There aren't any actual mall-type malls over here, Certainly not in London, so seeing the expressions of drooling awe at this shrine to materialism on people's slack-jawed mugs was reminiscent of the day when Belco Mall first opened it's doors...back in 19-flippin-78! Come on, people, this is not a revolution in shopping technology. It's just a collection of the same flashy trashy stores selling the same over-priced crap as they were before, only instead of being arranged horizontally at street level they've stacked them in a box. It was difficult to get zoning permission for such a monstrosity so it's in a pretty remote location in the North West. In fact, regardless of where you live in London, in order to get to the mall you have to travel past multiple instances of the exact same stores the mall has. Understandably, non-mall business owners are worried because people like shiny new gimmicks and the parking is free. Frankly, anything which draws the slavering hordes away from the places I go and into a convenient location easily identified by fighter planes from the air is fine by me.

What do you think popped up over Edison's head when he got the idea for the light bulb? Salette thinks it was a candle but I think it was some weird-arse prototype light bulb and he was all like, "Forsooth! What the fuck is that?"

How crazy were the Victorian bushfires? I fired up news.com.au for the first time in ages to catch up on what's going on back home and BAM! How horrifying and tragic for all those people. Thankfully Phil and the Gang, who live right in the middle of the fire zone, had the sense to get out when the going was good and ride out the firestorm in Melbourne. We all know bushfire season is part and parcel with living in a hot dry climate but 200 people dead? Come on! And you know who's to blame, don't you? No, not Baby Jeebus...it's smokers. Smokers and teenagers, what with their arson and their lung cancer and their ping pong machines.

There's a bunch of awesome music festivals coming up later this year, and I was super stoked to learn that Mastodon, Lamb of God and Machine Head will all be playing on the same bill at Sonisphere in August. Still reeling from that bombshell, I then learned that Faith No More are reforming to play at the Download festival in June. Are you flippin' kidding me? And as if that wasn't mind-blowing enough, I THEN found out that The Jesus Lizard are reforming and playing their first gig at the Forum in London! As Robin used to say, "Holy fucking shit, Batman!"

I got to go back to Dublin for a couple of days for a project with a new client. Just before I left I got an email from one of my flatmates informing me my bike got nicked Bastards! We live in a secure complex and it was chained to a metal drainpipe in our back yard which can only be accessed from inside the house...how the feck did they get in? Surveying the scene with my ultra-violet CSI semen light, I deduced that someone from the neighbouring block of flats (who have a clear view of our yard from their upper floors) jumped the shared fence, ripped the drainpipe off the wall and scarped back over the fence with Sweaty Betty in their evil clutches. As pissed off as I am about the whole thing, you've got to admire that kind of tenacity. No doubt poor Betty has been stripped down to her parts and flogged at Brick Lane along with the multitude of other stolen bikes. Can we all please have a moment of silence for the recently departed...Ave, Betty!

My plans for a visit to Oz have, alas, come to naught. There were too many timing conflicts and the NZ leg with Salette proved more expensive than we originally anticipated due to our offer of "free" accommodation ending up being for just a couple of nights and not the entire time as we first thought. So with our leave approved and our hopes of finding some sun fading faster than the advance for John Howard's memoirs, we spent three frantic weeks working on a backup Plan. It's been a really long time since either of us had to plan a trip with another person so it got off to a comical start, as we politely tried to accommodate each other's wants and needs. The comedy quickly turned to frustration, though, as the deadline approached and we still couldn't decide where we wanted to go, whence ensued a brief period of selfishness where we went only for things we knew each other would hate. In the end a happy medium was reached and on Sunday morning we jet off to Mexico for two weeks in an off the grid eco-hotel on the Yucatan Peninsula. Arriba! Our cabana is sandwiched between secluded beach and virgin jungle and there's no electricity other than what they generate through solar and wind. There's a biosphere nearby as well as Mayan ruins but the whole point of it is that there's nothing to do but sleep, swim, read books in the sun and shag your arse off, all punctuated with bouts of delicious Mexican food and killer margaritas. How ever will I cope? Maybe an occasional application of sand to the genital will take the edge off the bliss...

Jimbo was kind enough to send me a bunch of pics from back in the band days. Man, talk about a trip down memory lane. The fashion, the hairstyles, the hats! Check it out on my Facebook profile and try and control your envy at just how rockin' I was back then: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67573&id=752123545. If you don't use Facebook then I'll post them on my Picasa site later.

I pack my suit in a bag, I'm all dressed up for Prague...I'm all dressed up with you, and dressed up for him too...

2009-02-03T15:50:00.002Z

Why isn't everything glow in the dark? That's some kick-arse technology right there and it's just going to waste. Imagine if you went back in time and showed some glow in the dark stuff to cavemen...they'd lose their primordial shit! I bet that's exactly how Jesus got his big break...

I daresay you've heard about the wild and crazy weather over here where we had the heaviest snow in almost 20 years on Sunday night. I looked out the window and the whole world was blanketed in a soft fluffy doona. I went outside and it was so still and quiet, and the sky was really bright...it was weird and spooky and magical. I made snowballs and threw them at the neighbours' windows until my hands fell off from frost bite and Salette made me come inside. It's so amazing! But as if that wasn't amazing enough, how awesome to wake up Monday morning and finding ourselves snowed in...the whole city got a Snow Day! They closed the schools, took all the buses off the road, trains weren't running and pretty much everyone was told to stay home and play in the snow. Officially it was a work from home day, but with most of my notes and materials back on my desk there was a limit to how much I could do. So after a few hurried hours beavering away (ooh err!) Salette and I downed tools, rugged up and headed out to play in the snow, as per orders. We had a snowball fight and made our first snowman together...more of a totem offering to the snow gods to just keep on doing what they're doing. Good job, man! There were quite a lot of people doing the same thing but still a large number who whinged and complained about the inconvenience of it all and casting about for someone to blame. I felt like a little kid surrounded by grumpy grown ups who actually resented being forced to stay home from work. Sometimes I can't believe this fucking place! For people who are accustomed to snow I guess this all sounds a bit childish and naive but screw you flinty-hearted jerkoffs! i love that all it takes is some frozen water to make me realise that the world is an amazing and beautiful place, and that things like snow and wonder and whimsy and love and all that crap exist if you're prepared to go out amongst it all and enjoy. Of course it all wore off pretty quickly the next day when the remaining snow (and there was a lot of it) froze up into hard-packed ice and the whole world looked like the back of your freezer when you haven't defrosted it for a few years.

When it comes to gifts, I'm not a materialistic person...for me it truly is the thought that counts. The gift you receive from a friend at Xmas time is a clear indicator of how well they know you and the esteem in which they hold you. Case in point: Clara bought me some super posh fancy schmancy cupcakes from Fortnum & Mason to enjoy as part of my solo Xmas lunch. Dr Phil bought me a pink jelly butt plug. Nice.

Speaking of Dr Phil, a few weekends ago Salette and I headed off to Prague for Dr Phil's 30th Birthday Extravaganza (he's just a baby!) We were booked to fly out on Friday night but delays on the stoopid Gatwick Express train meant we were 35 minutes late and 6 minutes late getting to the check-in desk so we missed out. We were booked on the first flight out next morning so headed back to my place for a few minutes sleep before getting a cab back to the airport at 4am. I don't know how many of you have been to Gatwick airport before but one of the trade offs of getting a £20 flight with a budget airline is that you're forced to employ every known mode of transport in order to get to your friggin plane. Cabs, robot trains, buses, hovercraft, skateboards, piggy backs from itinerant Polish migrant workers, I'm not kidding. Thankfully we got there alive and managed a day of sight-seeing before the party that night. Prague is just as lovely and whimsical as everyone makes out, particularly in winter when it's shrouded in mist, however I can't help but feel its glory days have passed. There's a fair bit of tarnish to the shine and decay to the grandeur these days, which some how seems fitting for a former communist stronghold, but the glory and pride of the old days has been plastered over with the tacky posters of tourism and materialism as the Praguians sell out every bit of their history and their heritage and flog it to western tourists with equal measures of vigour and disdain.

The party was a real eastern European knees up in a sweet little cafe, where the accolades flowed as freely as the Czech beer and the tears, although it was hard to tell if the latter was the result of the heart-felt accolades for the guest of honour or the choking miasma of cigarette smoke. The place was packed with Dr Phil's friends and family and although I've not known him nearly as long as most of the people there, I felt welcomed and wanted and part of something much larger than any of us and all of us put together (Phil has that effect on you, the creepy bastard). Plus I had a smoking hot American Girlflen on my arm upon whom everybody was perving. Check out the photos...

I read to my infinite dismay that some movie studio is planning a remake of Predator with Robert Rodriguez (of Mariachi and Grindhouse fame) to direct. Come on, Hollywood, seriously? What's with this remaking of classic movies all the time? Does Citizen Kane need to be remade to bring it up to speed with the cool kids? Maybe with some up and coming rap star in the lead role to get the kids into it...Citizen Kanye, anyone? Fuck no! What Predator needs is not a make over but a decent sequel. It's already perfect (and kick-ass) so leave it the fuck along, you bunch of slack-jawed faggots! Besides, where're you going to recruit a crop of bad ass 80's action legends of the calbre of Arnie, Carl Weathers and Jessie "the body" Ventura from the current crop of limp-wristed pansy boys that laughingly comprise the contemporary tough guy stable these days?

After returning from Sand Crab's Disco, I got a serious jones for Mexican food so I tracked down an authentic Mexican ingredients supplier at Borough Market and whipped up a feast for my Lady Love of guacamole, chipotle salsa, negros frijoles and fish tacos. I even bought a some proper corn flour and a tortilla press and hand made my own soft corn tortillas. Yummo, stick-it-up-your-bummo! It was abso-fuckin-lutely delish. Unfortunately the margaritas I made were a little tequila-heavy so things got a bit raucous (which is a combination of 'rawk' and 'nauseous').

There was a bit of excitement the other day when the cops smashed in Salette's front door. They'd caught some kid with a load of crack and he gave them her address as his own so a bunch of them went around with The Enforcer and gave it what for. It took them 15 minutes to get in as she had a super secure door, but they practically tore the entire frame out of the brickwork in the process. They realised pretty quickly they were in the wrong place and were super apologetic and will replace the door. Thankfully she was at work at the time but was understandably shaken up by it all and wished she was there to let them in when they knocked. Personally I'm glad she wasn't: they believed they were raiding a crack den and if they found her there they might have decided to do a repeat of the London Tube debacle and pumped seven rounds into her pretty little head.

Why is it we start to feel our most insecure when things are going really well? We try to be cool and calm but inside we're a roiling writhing tumult of fear and self-doubt. As much as we'd like to think we're Fonzie, there's a great big chunk of Potsie deep inside us (all you Anson Williams fetishists just creamed your jeans). As each day passes I find myself falling more and more in love with Salette, but I occasionally have these brief spurts of paranoia. She switches her phone off when she's at work and is so busy she hardly ever gets back to her desk during the day, so in the early days when I was sending her cute emails and texts and stuff she never responded, so I got all worried and started to imagine stuff (totally unlike me, I know). But then I found out what was going on and it was OK, and nowadays she responds almost straight away, which is nice. At the Mexican new year's Eve party this swarthy artist guy was hitting on her at the end of the night. He put his hand on her arse at precisely the same moment he looked over his shoulder to see me standing there, drunk on mescal and glaring at him like my eyesight would set him on fire. At the point he wisely chose to depart in a hurry, but Salette was so pissy pants she doesn't even remember the incident, the guy or the arse touching. All she remembers is me being all weird and upset for no reason.

I think the thing I struggle most with is feeling so plain and ordinary compared to the other guys she's dated. She's been with these amazing artists who are talented and smart and passionate and temperamental and renowned. And I'm just some jerk-off who can make a nice omlette and crack a silly joke now and then. I still don't know what she would see in me, I'm nothing like those guys. But maybe that's entirely the point: maybe I'm better than them. So then I start thinking that maybe because she's lived the wild and crazy and passionate life and is sick of it, she now wants something quiet and ordinary and dull. Is that me? Why do I feel so insecure? Why is it so hard for me to see the good things in me? Why does this sound like flippin' God-awful Goth poetry?

It's not all doom and gloom and glasses-half-empty, you'll be pleased to know. Our six-month anniversary is coming up in Feb, and I can scarcely believe it. The downside is it falls on Valentine's day, bleech! We're doing something special to celebrate but we're so NOT doing the Valentine's day thing. It's just an unfortunate co-inky-dink that it falls on that day. We're celebrating our lurve in spite of the brainless greeting card zombie drones and their minions, but we're doing it because we're in luh-huh-hurve, not because some ass-bag in a suit tells us we have to. We both planned something super awesome for the occasion and neither of us would backdown or tell the other their idea, so we had to employ the services of Dr Phil and Phillipa the Kiwi Chick to play independent mediator and choose which idea was the best. We had this big discussion about me being gracious in defeat prior to the decision coming in, but then I won, woo hoo! And of course a certain someone wasn't at all gracious in her defeat, heh heh.

Is Lou Rawls still alive? I bet I could get him to show up and sing "My Lady Love" for, like, a pork chop and a glass of bourbon...

Heavens above he's on a street called love...Old cop young cop feel alright...on a warm San Franciscan night

2009-01-13T17:22:00.008Z

Ok, so I think we've established that there's an inversely proportional ratio between my level of emotional happiness and the frequency of my written updates. In my defence, the tail end of last year was really friggin' hectic (how hectic, Rodney?), what with work and houses and holidays and girls and such, so throw me a frickin' bone!

Let's try and cover them in order, shall we?

Work was crazy insane in the last few weeks before Xmas. I had two huge projects to finish up and managed to pick up another one on my last 3 days in the office. It's been a thoroughly challenging experience as I work my lily-white arse off to impress everyone whilst on probation, which finishes later this month. There's been so much change in my life in a short period and, even though it's all been for the good, I was really feeling the pressure and craved some time off. It was so nice to get away from it all and have no responsibilities and drink Corona in the hot tub with a beautiful naked American girl and completely lose track of what day it was. Of course, my first day back this week I was signed up for four new projects all due to finish before February, so so much for the break. Still, in this uncertain financial environment when budgets are tightening and some of our competitors have already gone to the wall, it's encouraging to have plenty of billable work on hand.

Not surprisingly, the houseboat idea fell through. What is it about bloody South Africans and boats? Look up 'unreliable' in the dictionary and there's a picture of a South African flipping me off on a houseboat called 'BOHICA'. Not to be deterred by the continual treachery of my Antipodean nemeses, I quickly found a room (or berth) on another boat nearby and went to meet the tenants (crew) one cold and windy night after work. Good thing too, as it turns out...the place was fucking freezing! Even with the heating turned up full bore and all of us wearing our thickest parkas and scalding the skin from our hands with boiling hot tea our teeth were still chattering. Plus it smelled funny. Take a shower, you bloody sea hippies! As if that wasn't enough to put me off (and believe me it was) I then discovered that the driveway (gang plank) ices up like a mother fucker and people have slipped off only to be crushed betwixt the dock and the neighbouring boat. Screw the pirate's life...I'm staying on dry land where, in a pinch, you can pull pieces off your house and burn them without worrying about sinking into the gelid stinky Thames.

Bolstered by my new-found lub of land, I checked out two awesome flats in Hackney (which is fast becoming the new Belco...where else can you get an awesome latte AND stabbed in the guts?). They were both clean and funky, with cool and friendly tenants, and both offered me the room that same weekend. What a dilemma! It was a tough choice but ultimately I went for the newer place with the German guy and Italian girl. The move went swiftly as I have managed to limit my possessions to exactly one hire care full (or HCF on the old scale) and I got it all in the day before both my flatmates and Salette jetted off for their respective intercontinental Xmas festivities, leaving me the entire place to myself for the week. Which was kinda cool in that I got to unpack and settle in and rifle through everyones stuff in my own sweet time, but kind of a bummer in that I missed Salette terribly and was lonely and horny in cold miserable London over Xmas (there's only so much solace New Zealand pinot noir and YouPorn.com can provide). Still, it was nice to relax and be bored for a few days before jetting off on Boxing Day to hook up with my Lady Love in Sand Crab's Disco...

San Francisco is an amazing town! The weather was gorgeous - slightly chilly but great the sun shone bright and warm - and even the two days of rain were refreshing and enjoyable. The quality of life there is fantastic: people are laid-back and friendly, it's clean and safe, the City is going to great lengths to tidy up and beautify the streetscapes and buildings with trees and grass and plants and murals. Due to the strong indian and Mexican populations, there's beautiful street art adorning all manor of public edifice, like the whole town were draped in your funky grandma's quilted blankey. They're very tolerant and progressive culturally and politically, completely different to (and often at odds with) the rest of the US. The anti-Bush vibe is strong and palpable; you can sense people's excitement as Obama's ascension nears. There's a huge gay and hippy population, natch, which goes a long way to explaining why things are so laid-back and friendly (the whole town reeks of doob) and also why there are more registered dogs than children.

Speaking of Obama, did you hear who Bush has booked to stay in the Blair House keeping the Obamas out? John Friggin' Howard! That's right, not content with being the biggest douche bag in Australia, he's determined to take a shot at the world title. As if there weren't enough reasons to hate the guy, now he's going and creating more!

We got to stay will a bunch of Salette's friends all over town, which was cool. Downtown, as with any other city, is nothing to write home about but the outlying areas are where the real City can be found in all its varied and eclectic and fascinating glory: The Mission, The Haight, The Castro, Bernal Heights. She took me to all her favourite places (ooh err!) and showed me some amazing things. Dave Egger's Pirate Store is brilliant! He's a comedy writer and bought an old shop in order to set up a writing school for kids but the City refused because it was zoned for commercial purposes. So he filled it up with all sorts of weird and hilarious pirate stuff to sell and teaches writing classes out the back. We did a bit of touristy stuff like trudging up the hilly streets (yes, they're really REALLY hilly) to the base of Coit Tower, but regrettably we couldn't find the Falco Stairs (a staircase dedicated to Austrian pop singer Falco of 'Rock Me Amadeus' fame). I wanted to steal a car so we could stage a high-speed police chase ala The Streets of San Francisco but my NOAG (Number One American Girlflen) chickened out. Luckily, Tim (our hippy host and self-appointed tour guide) was a cab driver and he offered to "get it off the ground" for 20 bucks.

For those of you who dig 50's and 60's poetry, you'll know that SF is home to the Beats. One of my first ports of call was City Lights bookstore where I bought a copy of Alan Ginsberg's 'Howl', one of my all-time favourite poems. The store is a landmark in American literature, home of the San Fransisco Renaissance. I also went over to Six Gallery where Ginsberg did his first ever reading of 'Howl' as part of Six Poets (the poetry slam to end all poetry slams) in 1955, but unfortunately they were closed. That reading was a seminal moment in the Beat generation as it brought together the East and West Coast factions of the Beats in a way that Biggie and Tupac could only ever dream of (incidentally, Tupac was from SF).

If ever you were in doubt that SF is different to the rest of the US then simply eat something. The food was awesome! From the kick-arse Mexican at Tres Agaves (best margaritas EVER and it's owned by Sammy Hagar!) to the chocolate eclairs at ? to the 3-course New year's banquet at Foreign Cinema, every meal was a culinary orgy in my mouth. After NY's dinner we went to a party at the converted warehouse apartment of an edgy Mexican performance artist, which was wild. Everyone there was some form of artist or activist or creative folk, and we were asked to go as our Post-Bush persona. Salette was gorgeous as Gross national Happiness and I was debonair and witty as The Full Brazilian (ie. No Bush). Things got pretty wild as the night went on and the mescal and the dutchie got passed around (always on the left hand side), people were laughing and dancing, getting high, falling over, panties were coming off, and at one point a Shaman burned some sage and did the Four Directions ceremony, with the entire room facing all the directions in turn and shaking our hands and cheering and calling Bush a cunt.

And what about all the killer bands that have come out of there? The Melvins, Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Primus, MC Hammer, Green Day, Tom Waits, Dead Kennedys, just to name a few. Metallica is a debatable inclusion as they used to be awesome (like Journey) but now they suck arse (like Huey Lewis and the News).

I had such a great time there, I can't rave about the place nearly enough. For anyone who's lost faith in America, go to San Francisco...there's hope! I was so enamoured of it that even when Salette flew out the day before me (slight mix up with the scheduling) I still found it hard to leave. I didn't get the usual "had enough, ready to go home" blues that usually comes with two weeks away and the experience certainly provided a real contrast with dreary old London.

Salette is wonderful, not at all cold and remote like her mountaintop village namesake. Quite the contrary in fact: she's warm and very very close, both figuratively and literally as my new place is just a few minute's walk from hers. Before I knew where I would be moving we had the 'moving in together' talk but decided it's just a bit soon for that and there's no need to rush it. It's going to happen, not necessarily for any practical or financial reasons, but because we both want it to. I don't want anything to spoil what we've got going as with each passing day I learn more about her and become more and more entranced with her.

Bizarrely, the new place has free calls to Australia on weekends so long as they're less than an hour. So I got to talk to Calvin on his 11th birthday and again on Xmas day. As always, the distance between seems to become greater all the time, but they sound like they're doing well and growing up straight. I hope they're happy. It was a sad and painful revelation that the greatest contribution I can make to my childrens' development is my absence. Cats in the cradle and the silver spoon...

Hey! Harry Chapin! Fuck you!

Gay lady, Mayfair in the morning...Hear your footsteps echo in the empty street...Early rain, And the pavement's glistening...

2008-11-24T15:24:00.003Z

S'up, Ninjas?

There must be something in the air tonight, oh Lord. Once I get start a-movin' and a-groovin' and changing my life around, the snowball of change turns into an avalanche and before you know it I'm slowly suffocating under a sea of ice clawing and screaming for the big slobbery dog with the barrel of brandy around his neck to hurry the fuck up and dig me out. Not content with an awesome new job and a super hot new American Girlflen, I've decided to move out of the Aussie Embassy in Clapton and onto a houseboat.

As our regular viewers will recall, I was all lined up to move onto a houseboat with a South African bird a couple of moves back, but it all fell through at the last minute. For some reason I've been thinking about it again recently but it's just so hard to find a vacancy unless you're in the know with the sketchy riverboat folk. I did some half-hearted searching and lo and behold found an ad on Gumtree by a South African dude who was yearning for a life on the low seas but couldn't find anyone to do it with (ooh err). I gave him a call and we seemed to have a bit in common, so we met for a beer to sniff each other's bums and got along famously. Clearly it takes a very particular kind of person to want to commit to this type of enterprise so no surprises that we're of a similar temperament and outlook (he's a geeky sarcastic jerk off, too). He had an awesome boat lined up but was struggling to find someone who could handle the adventure so we went and had a look at it on Saturday and I brought along Salette's friend Naomi who just so happens to be a qualified sea captain...I shit you not! Don't back chat her, she knows boats. So while us lads were up top pretending to be pirates and snagging each other's groins with the gaff hook, she was crawling around below decks checking out the bilge and the poop deck and what not. The boat's not exactly in prime condition but it's more than livable for the short term (ie. until our short attention spans fixate on some other stupid hare-brained scheme). They're asking way too much for it given the condition, so we're gonna low ball them and see what happens. If this one doesn't pan out then we'll keep our eye patches peeled for another 'cos that's how pirates roll.

Work is really kicking along at the mome. In a bizarre fit of enthusiasm I volunteered to run two projects simultaneously which, although manageable, is proving to be an exercise in finely balanced chaos. If I was to represent it in interpretive dance I would be constantly oscillating between "Trees Swaying With the Wind" and "Bats in Your Hair". Still, I said I wanted a challenge and I'm back doing what I really love...

Speaking of things I really love doing, Salette is fab. Every minute I'm with her she more truly earns her crown as the most wonderful thing that's happened to me in a long long time...maybe ever. She broke her toe on Friday night, the end result of an unfortunate combination of cheap champagne, poor co-ordination and a casually placed kitchen stool. We spent 2 and a half hours in the A&E waiting to get it strapped up (more for the patient's frame of mind than any real medical benefit) but luckily we were out just in time to make it up to Islington to see Russian Circles play live. Those guys are awesome! They're a three piece instru-metal act from Chicago and they sounded incredible. Without a vocalist, you don't have to mix down any of the instruments so everything comes through at the same level, strong and crisp and clean. The drums were mixed right up and cut through the meandering waves of guitar and bass like percussive pugilism...the acoustic equivalent of a punch in the face. The fremitus slammed into us, making our clothes vibrate and our eyes blink involuntarily but it wasn't so loud that your ears hurt or that the higher frequencies got drowned out by the thrum of the lower. Their new album is called 'Station' and is by far their best work. Listening to it you could swear that each song is from the soundtrack of a movie, or should be. It's very emotive and affecting music, which I think can be said of most instrumental pieces. Without the subjectivity of the lyrics, your imagination can make up whatever narrative you like to accompany the music, which makes listening to it a very intimate and engaging experience.

Salette is very keen to give me a balanced view of the contemporary arts. To compensate for the abysmal cabaret show at Bistrotheque, she took me to see a guy called Justin Bond who is, like, the transvestite Jesus of cabaret. She used to know him back in San Francisco years ago when he was just a kid starting out but now he's a cabaret legend. He's a really talented performer who totally knows his craft- equal measures of wit and bitchiness, socially and politically aware but profane and kinky as hell - and a hell of a singer. She also took me to see a brilliant dance troupe called DV8 who did an amazing powerful piece on the persecution of gays and lesbians through religion, which more than cancelled out the awful lecture we went to by a leading German dance choreographer that turned into a naked bondage show...a brain-achingly boring naked bondage show (I know...I didn't think it was possible either. Surely combining two totally awesome concepts could only make something so super awesome whole that eclipses the sum of its parts? But then, Aliens vs Predator...'nuff said). Always a surprise with this girl!

We're off to see Dylan Moran tonight, which I've been hanging out for for ages. Once again the immediate future's looking bright on the live music scene and it promises to be a Very Metal Spring with Fantomas playing their 'Director's Cut' album in December, Lamb of God in January and Soulfly in Feb.

Belco!

Raining blood from a lacerated sky...Bleeding its horror, creating my structure...Now I shall reign in blood!

2008-11-04T12:36:00.010Z

Fuckin' Slayer!

It was a cold and rainy Halloween night as I traipsed across London to the Hammersmith Apollo for the Unholy Alliance III show. Getting anywhere in London these days is an exercise in frustration and delay, particularly as I received a text message from the promoter saying that the doors were now opening at 5.30 instead of 7.30 as originally planned. Luckily I'm allowed to leave work at 5 these days but I had to stop off at the Barbican to give Salette the stuff for my Halloween costume so she could take it to her place (she was waiting in line for stand-by tickets to see Antony and the Johnsons).

Metal gigs these days are a strange affair, not like when I was a lad. The metal chicks are all super hot and spend ages on their outfit, hair and makey. The dudes are all bald heads and stoopid beards and every one's trying to out obscure each other in the band t-shirt stakes. I'd anticipated this and had picked up a bitching metal t-shirt from threadless. It featured a naked barbarian chick riding a dragon which was spitting out a huge fiery skull which was about to eat a unicorn. It had nothing to do with any band at all...how obscure is that! It was hilarious watching everyone trying to manoeuvre to check my shirt out of the corner of their eye and failing to make out any kind of logo, subtly moving around behind me to see what was written on the back.

It was a night of highs and lows. The major disappointments were:

Missing Mastodon 'cos I was stuck in the cloak room line for 45 mins;
Trivium.

The major highlights were:

Hot skanky metal chicks;
Trivium leaving the stage;
All the Trivium fans leaving before Slayer came on;
'Raining Blood' and 'Disciple' live;
2 new Slayer songs;
Blowing people's minds with my obscure t-shirt;
Getting a kick arse new Mastodon t-shirt of a sasquatch eating a stag;
Trivium dying in a horrible bus crash on the way to another gig.

Sadly, I made that last one up.

I can not overstate just how shit Trivium were. I do believe they've invented a new musical genre: Hairdresser Metal. How the hell those bozos even got on the bill is beyond me, let alone how they got billed above Mastodon. Those guys aren't even metal enough to cater Mastodon's parties. At one point, the lead dude shook his gorgeous mane of primped and permed curly locks and declared, "We thought the mother fucking fans in mother fucking America knew how to bang their mother fucking heads...so are you mother fuckers gonna prove us wrong?" Are you flipping kidding me? Who even says that any more? Just because you wear tight black jeans and basketball boots doesn't make you thrash, you try hard guido cock suckers! The nadir of the whole sonic abortion was when they covered 'Iron Maiden' by Iron Maiden. Dude! We're in Hammersmith, yeah? This is the Maiden heartland! People here name their children after their favourite Maiden song. Even Iron Maiden are reluctant to play their stuff in Hammersmith 'cos the fans are so super critical. Half the crowd turned their back on the stage, which I thought was a nice protest. There were myriad other examples of suckiness which, in the interests of minimising the collective nausea, I've summarised in the following dot-point essay entitled, "Why Trivium Suck":

they just do...it's a universal constant...whenever scientists measure suckiness they do it in increments of triviums;
wireless guitar feeds and an array of steel ramps allowed them to caper and run about on stage like excitable new-born fawns on a spring day;
seven microphones so they could sing wherever they happened to be at;
five smoke machines;
saying things like, "Put your mother-fucking devil horns in the mother fucking air, mother fuckers";
everybody sings...badly;
matching guitars;
smashing their matching guitars;
they wear muscle shirts;
they wear muscle shirts with their own band logo on them;
they spend more time doing their pretty hair than writing songs.

Still, I guess such a monumental display of suckiness could only help to emphasise just how fucking metal Slayer are. It was ironic that Trivium chose to ape the look of mid-80's thrash (slightly less ironic than being run over by an ambulance, but slightly more ironic than fat people drinking diet coke), because it only helped emphasise how un-thrash they are. I thought back to '86 when the Big 4 of Thrash Metal reigned supreme: Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth. Individually, those bands were the pinnacle of speed and hardness and anger and evil. Collectively they were pioneers, they invented a genre and were so far out in front of everyone else it was like there was no other music. But where are they now? Megadeth and Anthrax both died long slow deaths, with frequent line-up changes and constantly re-interpreting themselves, but were never able to maintain the rage and calibre of their early years. Metallica, while arguably the most successful and well-known, are also the biggest sell-outs of the bunch and are now nothing more than the poster children for corporate whore pop bands everywhere. Slayer are the only one of the four who are still playing the way they always played, and with the original line-up to boot. The songs are still as fast and hard and angry and evil as they were back in '86. Reign in Blood is unarguably the quintessential metal album, and Raining Blood is arguably the most metal as fuck song ever written. They've been consistently slaying for over 20 years and in that time they never sold out and they never sucked. Let's put this into perspective: Tom Araya, bassist and lead singer, is 47. I used to listen to these guys when I was 15 and I'm still listening to them at 37 and they're still blowing my fucking head off.

The English seem to find some stoicism in living life as unpleasantly as possible. Ironically as if by deliberately and consciously experiencing the worst in life it somehow makes life better. Everything's an exercise in self-deception and self-delusion; constant references to "The Great British Something" as if by calling it great it must be so even when we all know it's complete crap. Much in the same way as Americans call hamburgers "sandwiches"...

Work is going super well. This place is the exact polar opposite to the Salt Mine: people genuinely give a shit about you, they work reasonable hours, the bosses practice what they preach and leave at 5 and are the first ones down the pub on a Friday. Speaking of Fridays, every week the company buys pizza for all the staff for lunch and they put on a tab at the bar across the street to force everyone to leave at 5...awesome! I did something this week I haven't done for almost 2 years: sat in the park and read my book while I ate my lunch. I've not done that since summer 2 years ago when I worked across the road from Glebe Park, it was wonderful. Bunhill Fields cemetery is just down the street from here and has loads of benches scattered about. William Blake and his wife Catherine are buried somewhere in there (the gravestone simply says their remains lie nearby) and people regularly leave flowers and coins as tributes (Blake died a near pauper in relative obscurity, his final act on his deathbed was to sketch his beloved Catherine). It was a little chilly but the sun was shining and I was all rugged up and despite all the other people there with the same idea it was lovely and peaceful. It's so nice to be working somewhere where I have the opportunity to take a lunch break, sit in the park and read, and go home at a reasonable hour...I'd forgotten what that was like. There's two teams of consultants, or clans, with their own clan names: the other team's is lame but we're called Wu-Tang because, as we all know, Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuttin ta fuck wid.

I went to a Halloween party on Saturday night and my costume was kick-arse. The theme of the party was Movies and the sub theme was Death, so I bought this huge styrofoam ball and made a Death Star helmet. I spray-painted it grey and drew on some detailing and then stuck all these little tiny Star Wars fighters all over the outside. I bought a couple of slightly larger models of Darth Vader's tie-fighter and Luke's X-wing which I suspended on wires just to give it some movement and false perspective. I was both the coolest and the nerdiest guy at the party, which was evidenced by the fact that I won two, count 'em TWO gold medals for Best Costume and Most Awesome Costume. But awards don't mean anything when you get to go home with the most beautiful girl at the party...Salette went as Pris from Blade Runner and she looked so incredible it made my mouth water, gggrrr!

I had some sad news last week as my step-dad passed away after a long battle with cancer. I was really disappointed I couldn't make it back for the funeral but I wrote some words and my little sister read them out for me, bless her little cotton socks:

Remembering Mal…

There’s a disclaimer at the start of most TV shows which warns of “Adult Themes”, which I never quite understood. What, exactly, IS an adult theme? Taxation? Mortgages? Hair loss? Life never stops teaching us lessons and sadly I’ve learned that the most adult of themes is the death of a parent; that’s when you know you’ve really become a grown up.

As a child growing up, you have this idea that your parents’ lives reach a plateau and stay the same, never changing: they’ve learned all they’ll ever learn, seen all they’ll ever see, done all they’ll ever do. But once I became a parent myself I realised that as time goes by, my parents’ lives have changed far more dramatically than even my own because they have to endure the highs and lows, the joy and the pain, of not only their own experience but that of their children as well. Like riding two roller coasters at once. How exciting and terrifying it is to see your kids making the same discoveries and mistakes you did, learning life’s hardest and most wonderful lessons, but as each day passes realising your ability to influence and protect them lessens.

I remember the first time I met Mal: I was 7 or 8 and my mum took me and my sisters to the West Belconnen Football Club for dinner where he was the Secretary Manager. There was this promotional event going on called “Bowling for Chooks”, which was an indoor bowls green with frozen chooks for prizes and not, as I excitedly imagined, a ten-pin bowling alley where they let you madly fling frozen chickens at the pins. Just one in a long series of childhood disappointments. Poor Mal already had his work cut out for him even before we met: not only did he have to overcome the stigma of not being good enough for my mum (I was the only one in that particular category), but he also had a moustache. Even at the tender age of 8 I had developed a healthy suspicion of dudes with mo’s.

But he seemed like a nice enough guy, and he let us gorge ourselves on free Coke and chips all night (there’s perks when your mother is sleeping with the boss). So before any of us knew what was happening, he and Mum were getting married. I still remember the day they packed Mal’s 4 boys, my sisters and me in the registry office in Civic for the ceremony. I also remember the look of embarrassment and rage on Mum’s face as she continually turned around to Ssshhh! us as we giggled uncontrollably through the whole thing, which, of course, only served to set us off even more. Mal was cool, though…he got the joke, and he laughed along with us.

Soon after our lives were turned even more upside down when we packed up and moved to the pub in Woodstock, pretty much the middle of nowhere. I never understood why Mum and Mal would choose such an awful place to start our new lives as a family, and I was very angry and resentful, which I now know was unfair. Grown up decisions are never as black and white as children would believe them to be, and I know only too well that often we are forced to choose between two unpalatable options, knowing that whatever we decide someone will be hurt, but hoping that one day those we love will understand that we can only do what we think is best at the time and that everyone deserves to be forgiven for their mistakes.

I regret that Mal and I were never close. Time and circumstance conspired to create an emotional gap between us that neither was able to bridge, due mainly to my reluctance to accept anyone as a replacement for my dad and my slow but inevitable withdrawal from my family into an introspective surly teenager. Life wasn’t always easy or pleasant for any of us living in the pub, and it was hardly a conducive environment for a new family to bond and grow. But for better or worse, I know that Mal always wanted the best for us and that he truly loved my mum and did everything he could to make her happy. And for that alone I will always admire, respect and love him.

Goodbye, Mal...

It was the time when Brussels dreamed...It was the time of silent film...It was the time when Brussels sang...

2008-10-21T15:54:00.002+01:00

Back to the real world, siiiiigh...

I had such a great time in Paris and Brussels. The weather was amazing, particularly given it's Autumn; the sun shone every day, I got some colour in my pasty pommie skin and I got to model all my new tshirts. Plus I got to spend an entire week with Salette, sleeping in every day, staying up late drinking cocktails, and getting tangled up and lost in each other. Paradoxically, we lost all track of time but the week just seemed to fly by. I was surprised (and delighted) how well we got along given we were never out of each other's company the whole time AND she got the flu towards the end. Coming back to gloomy old London was something of a let down, compounded by the separation anxiety I felt when I had to go home on Sunday night, and then I got sick on my first day of work.

Paris was Paris, only this time I got to see another side of it than the through the purely tourist lens. I didn't realise quite how many tourists there were until I started seeing other parts of the city, although there suddenly seems to be a law in France requiring everyone to smoke all the time and stare at my girlfriend. What the fuck, Frenchy? We stayed in a lovely hotel in the Marais with lots of windy little streets and cute cafes nearby. I got to meet Salette's brother who was on a detour from a work trip and I got the whole "what are your intentions with my sister" routine (luckily I had anticipated this and was prepared with a suitably laconic response). We ate loads of fabulous French food and got a hot tip from one of Salette's artist buddies on the best Italian place in Paris. We saw an amazing artists-in-residence centre that used to be the city funerial depot in the 1600's, so it was already a magnificent building, but they ripped the guts out of it leaving two massive open areas with modern workspaces and living quarters scattered throughout. It seemed like the whole of Paris turned out to see it on the open day and the bulk of the funding came from government which really gives you an idea of how importantly the Europeans view the arts. Contrast that with England where there's nothing even remotely like that kind of centre, let alone that level of funding for art, contemporary or experimental or otherwise; here it's all musical theatre and pantomime.

The highlight of the trip for me would have to be Brussels. It's a really wonderful city, quaint and clean and beautiful. The architecture is gorgeous and the streets are cobbled and plus there's hardly any tourists so you can walk around pretty much everywhere without being buffeted by the rampaging hordes or molested by armies of African dudes selling trinkets. We stayed in this lovely B&B with exposed beams and a mezzanine bedroom which was right across the road from the main prostitute pick up zone, although surprisingly it wasn't the least bit tacky or sleazy. We saw a brilliant live performance piece by a New York theatre company called 'Rambo Solo', where this guy described the book "First Blood" in it's entirety while behind him three video screens showed him doing exactly the same performance in his apartment at three different time periods. Seafood is big in Brussels, much to my delight, and the food was perhaps even better here than in Paris. We drank a staggering array of beers brewed by insane monks in ridiculously elaborate glasses and only barely made a dent in the available options. Salette did her annual clothes shopping pilgrimage to her favourite fashion designer and even let me pick out a couple of things for her to try on (she didn't end up buying any of my choices, though).

Can you believe it, Xmas is fast approaching and it looks like I'll be stuck in merry old England this year. It's stupidly expensive to fly back to Oz at that time of year and I'll only have accumulated 3 or 4 days of leave in the new job, so even if I could I couldn't. Salette is heading home to do family stuff in a cabin in the woods of Minnesota so it looks like I'll be hanging on like a solo...it's been a long time since I spent Xmas on my own so I'm not sure what to do with myself. They've just cut the price of an Xbox to £100 over here so perhaps a week of nerdy gaming locked away in my festering dungeon of manly funk would be a fitting xmas pressie to myself. I'm meeting Salette in San Francisco on Boxing Day so she can show me around her old stomping ground and show me off to her friends. We'll be there over New Year's as well so that will be cool. Have to start doing my research on all things San Fran...if anyone knows of anything worth seeing, help a brother out.

I started my new job this week and so far it's going swimmingly. Everyone's so nice! They've really welcomed me and gone out of their way to help me settle in. Granted, it's only day 2 so no doubt by this time next week they'll pull off their people masks and reveal themselves as the hideous alien fiends they are and attempt to lay eggs in my stomach. As you might have guessed, I'm still struggling to shrug off the robes of cynicism and suspicion of people who are being nice to me at work. It's been so long since I encountered genuine niceness and people pay attention to me because they're interested rather than acting out hidden agendas or using me to further their own ends. There's already a project lined up for me to start on, plus I've volunteered to write a pitch for some research work in the Czech Republic (which I've tentatively titled "Czech it out!"). I've got two weeks to settle in and get up to speed before diving in head first, which is exactly the way I like it.

Things couldn't be going better at the moment and the surest sign of that is I'm not in the least bit suspicious or expecting the other shoe to drop. I'm just making the most of the these good feelings and enjoying the change in fortune while it lasts...

Went down to the Chelsea drugstore to get your prescription filled...Was standing in line with Mr Jimmy And man, did he look ill...

2008-10-06T17:08:00.004+01:00

Only four more days in the Salt Mine...

There's a big few months of live music coming up over here. Last week I took Salette to see Gotye at Bush Hall in Shepherd's Bush on the end of his European tour. The venue was awesome, small and classy, but he was a bit unwell and the place was full of drunken Aussies who'd rather chit-chat at the top of their voices than listen to some kooky kick-arse music. I've not seen him before and only knew two of his songs ('Heart's a Mess' and 'Learnalilgivinanlovin') both of which I kinda like. I'm geeking out over seeing Unholy Alliance on Halloween night - Slayer, Mastodon, Trivium - then there's Russian Circles in November, and Fantomas and Isis in December.

This week got off to an interesting start as Angry Man slipped the chain at the local post office when they lost not one but two of his packages. Then I got along to the local sexual health walk-in clinic for my first ever check up. Now that Salette and I are starting to get serious (I slipped a "Will you go with me?" tick box note into her purse, and administered The Frigid Test with spectacular results) I figured it was about time I found out just how skanky and diseased my boy junk really is. She got tested only recently (all clear, woo hoo!) so you might say there was a modicum of onus upon moi to do likewise (if I ever want to get laid again, that is). I can't decide if it's a sad indictment or a refreshing burst of enlightenment that the ultimate sign of commitment in these crazy modern times is a mutual sexual health screen. "I'm free of disease" is the new "I love you", and "I'll never hurt you" has been replaced by "I won't kill you with my dick." Who said romance is dead? And all I had to do was endure the ignomy of having a swab the size of a baguette shoved up my pee hole. A small price to pay to once more ride bareback on the saucy sexy gelding of sauce along the sexy beach of saucy sexiness.

I was intimidated by Salette at first...truth be told I probably still am a bit, but it's slowly turning into awe and admiration and amazement. It's not just how I feel about her, it's how she makes me feel about me. I'm a better person when I'm with her and I'm starting to see what she sees in me...I always suspected I was awesome. I know that I'm in love with her but I haven't told her yet; I've wanted to so many times but she calls me Swifty because she thinks I rush into things. It's not the first time I've been accused of falling in love too hard and too fast (wait, or was that sex?) Plus, what if I tell her and she doesn't say it back and it breaks the spell and I realise I've been hallucinating this all along? I had a nightmare that I showed you all the picture of us from Dr Phil's party and you all said, "There's no one in the picture but you." But I wouldn't say it because I want her to say it back...just because I want her to know that's how I feel and hope that it made her happy. Still, a little reciprocation is always nice...reciprocate my brains out, baby!

I've missed being in love: the fragility of it, the power of it, the indescribable joy and the unbearable pain of it. Love is the only contradiction Nature will tolerate. I feel consumed by her, like I can't expand fast enough to contain this feeling inside me. I have no recollection of my life before her and am terrified by the thought of a future without her. Do you think I've finally atoned for all the people I hurt and Baby Jeebus is allowing me to be happy again? Is she is my reward for enduring the wrath of the Harpies? Or did I go insane from loneliness and grief and simply imagine my perfect woman?

And anyway, I SO do not rush into things! Ok, maybe I do but only when I know in my heart they're real and they're right and they're worth taking a chance on. Otherwise I'm all defensive and Pat Benetar...ask anyone. I sense that she feels the same and I know she's been hurt before too; she's unsure and cautious and she wants to know that I'm not gonna run at the first sign of affection. Hardly! I'm like a starving puppy tied to the clothesline of neglect in the backyard of indifference who's getting his first proper meal of chunky Pal affection at the RSPCA shelter of love.

Little by little I sense her slowly opening the blast doors of the furnace of her feelings for me, and I'm basking in the heat. It's truly wonderful to discover someone who likes you just as much as you like them and to see them dropping their guard to let you into their fortress. I'm taking advantage of our trip to Paris to maximise the romance factor and tell her I love her in some super romantic location. Should I do it pre-shag or post-shag, do you think? Which would have the most impact? I kinda feel that mid-shag might lose some authenticity, or be drowned out by the moaning.

I hear from the kids less and less these days. I write every week but I maybe get a reply once a month or so, and even then it's only a couple of lines. It's hard not to take it personally but I guess this is the price I pay for leaving them. The price of my happiness was to lose the only two things that made me truly happy, the only two things I did right in this life, the two things I'm proud of and love the most, who'll always be the best of me. I only hope the trade off from them forgetting about me is that I start to fade from existence and become invisible so I can spend all my time in the girl's change room at the gym and become known as the Crying Pervy Ghost Guy.

Feel inclined to blow my mind, Get hung up feed the ducks with a bun, They all come out to groove about, Be nice have fun in the sun...

2008-09-29T15:31:00.005+01:00

I've decided I'm not a big fan of symmetry. Symmetry is a purely human conceit; it doesn't exist in nature. I'm of the mind that if aliens were to start abducting us and replacing us with eeevil cloned copies, then they'd cut the typical manufacturing corners and just make one half of a human mold and flip it, filing down the seam where the two halves joined. It must be way expensive to make eeevil human clone drones so natch they're gonna try and save some alien bucks. But this is why we need to be extra vigilant of our loved ones and colleagues. Look closely at everyone around you and make special efforts to be as asymmetrical as possible. Join the movement, brothers and sisters! Celebrate your inconsistencies and free us from this intergalactic space scourge from beyond the stars and beyond!

I had the most wonderful weekend with the lovely Salette. The weather was ridiculously (suspiciously) good; more sun in two days than in the whole of the summer just gone, or so it feels. On Friday we went to see John Pilger present his 2003 film on the war in Afghanistan, which replenished my reserves of righteous indignation against all old rich white guys in US politics...gggrrr! On Saturday we slept in and went to Broadway Market in the afternoon. That night we went to a wicked Decadence party at Dr Phil's Lurve Surgery to celebrate his 10th anniversary in London and the official granting of his 'Dr' title. It was a costume party, the twin themes being Decadence (for the clever people), and Doctors and Nurses (for the conceptually retarded). I wore my brand new Paul Smith pajamas and leather slippers (cos there's nothing more decadent than wearing your jammies ALL day) and Salette wore a pretty party dress (phwoar!) and made this necklace out of playing cards with pictures of famous dancers on them (a deck-o-dance...get it? HAH! Smart and beautiful...siiiiigh). She looked incredible! It was the first time anyone had met her and she totally dazzled the room. All the guys were coming up and high-fiving me and going "Doode!" and all the girls were like, "Oh my god, she's GORgeous! What's she doing with you?" But I didn't even notice any of them, it was like there was no one else at the party, all I saw was her. Someone took a really lovely photo of us so if you're a Facebook junkie check out the two tagged photos of me to prove that she's not imaginary...

We're spending every weekend together now, and meeting up twice a week and phoning every other night. It's getting harder and harder to be apart from her, but when we're together it just keeps getting better and better. She's like Cupid's defibrillator, shocking my sere heart back to life and now it's swelling and racing and soaring and if I'm not careful it'll burst and cover everyone in gooey love-sick heart jizz. CLEAR! I can't even remember what I used to do when I didn't know her...I can't even remember my own name half the time.

The Paris/Brussels trip is all booked and I'm SO excited. Ordinarily the prospect of spending an entire week with someone would give me ulcers, but for some strange reason I'm looking forward to it. A whole week, eeeppp! We're going on the train and because of my last-minute inclusion I wasn't able to book seats next to Salette. But fear not, this gives me an opportunity to take our relationship to the next level by wearing a trenchcoat and dark glasses and following her every move from behind a strategically-placed newspaper. Pretty much like I've been doing since we met. Either that or I could just swap with whomever is actually sitting next to her. But that just seems like the easy way out...

In the interests of cross-cultural exchange (no, it's not a euphemism for sex, you sad pervies), I'm taking her to see Aussie singer-songwriter-kookster Gotye this week at Bush Hall. I finally managed to snag tickets to Dylan Moran in November, which promises to be brilliant, although I suspect they're crap seats.

I feel very lucky to be at this point in my life, having what I have, feeling what I feel. At the risk of sounding maudlin, it seems like I've emerged from a wilderness of sorts in which I was lost for a number of years. But don't worry about a slide into complacency...I'll always remember what I went through to get here. King Solomon once had a jeweller make him a ring with an inscription that would make him happy when he was sad, and sad when he was happy. It said: "This too shall pass." I find that a bit of a downer so I prefer this kick-arse one from Dr Seuss: "I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind...Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat, I'm all ready you see...Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"

I know you've deceived me, now here's a surprise...I know that you have 'cause there's magic in my eyes...

2008-09-17T11:16:00.001+01:00

I need a favour from one of youse. I'm trying to track down a copy of a CD from 1998, a tribute album by a bunch of Aussie artists called "To Hal and Bacharach". It's almost impossible to find these days, specially over here, but if any of you can track down a new or second hand copy I'd be muchas grateful. Help a brother out...

I've got a new job! Woop, woop (dat's da sound of da Police). It's at a specialist usability firm, smallish but with good growth throughout their short lifespan, and a really good vibe. I'd seen some of their work previously and was heaps impressed and they completely won me over with their friendliness, honesty and genuine give-a-crap-about-people-ness. I went for a couple of interviews and my affection for and confidence in them just grew and grew. They offered me the job and I took a couple of days to think about it but my mind was pretty much already made up. But then the CEO rang me to tell me how taken with me they were and how great everyone thought I was and they were really excited by the idea of me maybe coming to work for them, and that just sealed the deal. It really put things into perspective and provided the perfect contrast between a company which genuinely cares about its people and its work and its clients, and a company which measures your worth in terms of how much money they can wring out of you before you cark it. How many CEOs take the time to call you personally and kiss your arse? I feel happy and hopeful and excited about the move, which is a good sign particularly in this atmosphere of Credit Crunch doom and gloom, where 5,000 people can lose their jobs in a single morning. I feel good about the decision I've made for better or worse, and feel this could be the change I needed. My last day with the Company is 10 October and I have a week off before I start the new gig. I might even manage to squeeze in a lightning visit to Oz in between. Stay posted.

Then again, the change in mood (thanks, Kids in the Kitchen!) could be attributed to another unexpected source...

Salette and I spent the most wonderful weekend together...literally the entire weekend. We met for brekkie on Saturday and didn't part company until I went home at midnight Sunday. Normally I start to get a bit antsy if I spend 7 or 8 hours with other people and need some quiet time in my isolation tank. But when I'm with her, time ceases to have any meaning and suddenly two days have passed and I feel like it's gone way too fast.

After breakfast she took me to an incredible audio performance piece at the Royal Opera House. It was set up downstairs in a darkened performance hall. It consisted of dozens of tripods of varying heights upon which were mounted aluminium bars with speakers lashed to the ends connected to a simple circuit board. The speakers were of many different sizes and had a red LED mounted on the top. The artists were two guys in dark wool suits who entered the space and activated one of the towers so that it emitted a single continuous electronic tone. They adjusted the tone with a small screwdriver until it reached a certain pitch, which, while harmonious, became quite discordant and unpleasant after a while. They then went about activating all of the other towers one by one, adjusting the pitch of each to correspond to the height of the tripod: shorter ones had deep pitch, average ones mid-range, and tall ones high pitch. As more and more tones were activated, the sound slowly started to build into a complex cacophony, not quite noise but not quite music, and something quite remarkable happened: even though they were all effectively emitting the same continuous tone, the combination of different pitches and your physical location to the towers meant that the sound seemed to be changing, lilting upward and downward through the register, oscillating and flowing, like it was comprised of many different voices all singing the same song but frozen in a moment of time.

The towers were hooked up to a control boxes in groups of three and, once all were activated, the boxes were turned on which made the arms rotate at different speeds which took the experience to a whole new level. The middle of the floor was roped off so you could get close to the piece and move around it which meant it sounded completely different depending on where you were standing. It's hard to describe what it was like - I thought it was like an alien mating call, Salette thought it was the muzak they play in Heaven's waiting room - but there was a real physical presence to the sound. It had depth and shape and texture and you had the sensation of being enveloped by it as the lower tones set off a pleasing fremitus in your chest and the higher tones danced about your ears. Then suddenly the lights went out and we were submerged in an ocean of darkness and sound and all you could see were dozens of red LEDs spinning and dancing among this incredible sound...like twin souls chasing each other through an infinity of frozen music.

After 40 minutes or so they started shutting down, first the rotation, and then the sound, one tower at a time. To my surprise, I felt a tinge of sadness as each one went silent; it was as if having created something beautiful, they were now destroying it...like killing a panda. As they inexorably made their way through each tower there remained only one, the first one, and I found myself dreading the return to silence. In my head I was begging them to leave it on just a little longer. But finally it too went silent and we stood for a few minutes in this dim dark space which, although full of people and equipment, suddenly felt stark and empty. It was truly an amazing experience and my description can't do it justice, but it is something I will never forget.

That night we went bowling at All Star Lanes, just to bring some white trash balance to the day's high-brow arty-farty activities. I won by 3 points (129 to 126) but as Salette used to be in a bowling league many years ago I can't help feeling a certain amount of graciousness was in play. On Sunday the weather was absolutely gorgeous and sunny and Salette chose to forgo her ticket to a 9-hour long Robert LaPage play (which she'd been dying to see for ages) to spend the day with me. Aaawww! We had brunch at Smiths of Smithfield and made fun of the French waiter cos he didn't know shit about waffles even though he pretended to (as if the French know ANYTHING about cooking...oy!) Then we headed over to Hampstead Heath to walk off the delicious brunchy goodness. The weather was suspiciously good for Autumn, and it was so lovely to just wander about and get lost amongst the hills and the trees and the ponds, talking and holding hands and making out and goofing off. Suffice it to say, I'm falling for this girl in a big way. I never thought I could feel this way about anyone ever again...partly because I didn't think I'd ever find anyone so amazing, partly because I never believed someone so amazing would be interested in me, but mainly because I thought I was incapable of feeling anything any more. I'm like a teenager with a crush...it's cheesy and pathetic and brilliant! Each time we're together she just gets more and more amazing, and I'm so caught up in how good she makes me feel that I forget to wait for the other shoe to drop. When I'm with her, time and the world simply disappear and there's just her and how she makes me feel and the way she looks at me that makes my stomach go all funny.

I'm in trouble, here...

Gin in teacups, And leaves on the lawn...Violence at bus stops, And the pale thin girl with eyes forlorn...

2008-09-08T11:07:00.004+01:00

Ok, it seems my banana analogy was a little too thinly-veiled for some of you slack-jawed double-Y chromies to interpret. The thing I was talking about losing and then getting back again was love. The delicious banana I found is called Salette and she's not really a banana...she's a pretty bloody super girly. Got it? Do I need to draw you a picture?

Our Lady of Salette is originally from San Francisco (yes, another American...but I've kinda got a taste for them now) who's been living over here for 10 years. She's amazing: cute, pretty, smart, tall, blonde, quirky, captivating, and a bitching pasher. She's got a bit of that Elaine Benice thing going on which totally melts my butter. Also, she's older than me but don't make the mistake of calling her a Cougar...it's not a compliment, apparently. She works for an arts council who fund art projects and promote and support all forms of contemporary art. She's wikkid passionate about her work and knows heaps of cutting edge arty farties. The other night we did a tour of some East End (which is the new West End) galleries on Vyner Street which all held an open night so it was quite a mixed bag. The ratio between the cost of the booze and the calibre of the art is inversely proportionate: the richest galleries gave it away free but the art was garbage (in some cases literally). Most of it was pretty lame post-modern stuff but at one gallery there was this kiwi dude who painted awesome character portraits on old fridge doors and car bonnets and oil cans. I really loved his stuff, it typified that lowbrow asthetic that totally rocks my boat. Pity the cheapest piece was £1800; I don't know art, but I know what I can't afford. All these galleries are right on my doorstep, scattered throughout the lanes and alleys off Mare Street in between these amazing grotty bars and cafes and performance spaces, and I had no idea they were there. A whole new world is opening up to me and I'm really loving the East End, all thanks to this willowy blonde amazon who came out of nowhere and spiked my heart's drink with her Rohypnol of lurve. Get this: last Friday night she took me to see Batman at the IMAX...can you spell 'Dream Girl'?

On the weekend we met at the Hackney flower market which I've never been to (my deflowering, as it were) and is only open on Sundays. It's kind of like going to the fruit markets except there's twice as many spruikers and they're all screaming at you to "check out me gladies...best gladies in London...ON-ly a fi-VER!" (for some reason everything costs a fiver). Thankfully it was overcast so there weren't as many people as there normally would be. We wandered about there for a while, soaking up the atmos and making fun of the locals, before succumbing to our growling stomachs and venturing over to this cafe/bar called Bistrotheque for brunch (the same place we went to for the hideous cabaret night on our third date...brunch was date number eight). The place comes pretty highly recommended and I have to admit it more than lived up to the hype. They blitzed the eggs benedict litmus test (eggs runny in the middle, ham lightly grilled, home-made hollandaise, sprinkling of chives) and may even have toppled The Yellow House for the brunch crown. They have a grand piano which this hip young dude plays lovely classical arrangements of contemporary songs, adding a really classy edge to the gustation. Half of the fun is trying to guess what you're hearing first, and then recoiling in shame when you realise it's "If Ya Think I'm Sexy" by Rod Stewart. Salette mentioned she really likes "Love Will Tear Us Apart" so when she went to the loo I asked the guy if he would play it when she came out, and he totally did...the timing was perfect! But then she wouldn't believe me when I told her I requested it. Jerk! Who said romance wasn't dead?

We spent the rest of the day wandering around Brick Lane (which is fast-becoming my favourite part of London) and Victoria Park walking off our breakfast, talking, holding hands, letting the time get away from us and watching the world slip by. Before I knew it, it was 6pm and I had less than an hour to get to Victoria for Dr Phil's surprise PhD dinner. Even though he'd finished his thesis, he's not officially a doctor until the examiner signs off on it. So today was the sign off day and on Sunday night Clara arranged for a bunch of us to meet at a Thai restaurant and surprise him. I only just made it as I had spent 20 minutes walking around the block trying to find the place only to realise that I'd been standing right in front of it about 4 times. But everything worked out fine in the end. I had a cocktail called Lava Under the Sea and ordered the red bbq duck curry and it came served in half a pineapple which was even more awesome than it sounds.

I've got a huge couple of months coming up culture wise: The Unholy Alliance (Slayer, Trivium and Mastodon), Regurgitator, Motorhead, Russian Circles, Dylan Moran. I'm really torn about seeing Slipknot cos they're kinda gay but Machine Head is supporting so METAL DILEMMA! And now I have a pretty bloody super girly to take along...although I'm not sure she's a Slayer kind of gal. Might have to be hanging on like a solo for that one.

I had a job interview with a specialist usability firm the other day, which went well. They've asked me back for a follow up on Tuesday. I'm not sure they can afford me but it feels good to be disloyal to the Company. Bunch of heartless soulless feckers. It's not ALL about the money, you know.

You might laugh you might frown...Walkin' round London town...Sun is in the sky oh why oh why would I wanna be anywhere else?

2008-09-03T10:22:00.012+01:00

B'jour, mon amis!

I've decided that "b'jour" is French for "g'day" so feel free to start using it, but make sure to cite your source correctly.

Much to my delight, this past weekend saw the opening of the Cans Festival Part 2. Staged in the same disused railway tunnel as the previous festival, this time around instead of stencil artists the focus was on more traditional graffiti art. And as per last time, the calibre of the art was astounding. There's some supremely talented people running around out there, and when they're not smoking blunts and stabbing up yoofs they're creating some truly impressive art.

Got my performance review which was disappointing but hardly surprising. The culture of this place is such that you're only measured on your most recent project and then ranked against your peers on a bell curve type dealio like in school. Therefore, as in school, the highest performers are pulled down and the lowest performers are pulled up and everyone else is averaged out into a vast smear of mediocrity. So despite working my arse off to try and impress everyone and set myself up for promotion next year, I'm ranked right in the middle of the grey wasteland known as "consistent with", which means that even if I pull off an absolute blinder of a year (highly unlikely given my level of motivation) it's still almost impossible to make the grade for promotion. It's typical of the dog-eat-cat nature of this business and this organisation and one of the main reasons why I've decided to get out. I sent some feelers out last week and I've got an interview with a specialist usability consultancy later today, so fingers crossed. The woman I'm speaking to graduated from Canberra Uni and worked in the public service...two degrees of separation strikes again! I'm hoping that by getting back into a small team environment and focusing solely on the work that I love doing my soul and my faith in mankind will be replenished.

Add another double entendre town name to the list, as Dr Phil and I went biking this past weekend in Titley. I got my first puncture coming down a wicked steep downhill run over chalk stones and log steps, which was a kind of right of passage I suppose. All I know is I haven't had to fix a tyre since I was about 12 and doing it in the middle of the forest is a lot more frustrating than you think. I was a bit disappointed with the layout of the ride as there was far too much road riding to start with and it ended on a huge mutha fuka of a hill climb. Plus, Dr Phil has been hitting the donuts a bit too heavily lately so his fitness was way down and we were forced to stop off at a pub halfway through so he could visit the ladies toilets to change his tampon and have a cry. We were there so long that the guy who follows behind and takes down the route markers caught up to us and it was a Hansel and Gretel-esque race for the finish from that point on. Instead of energy bars they gave us these free sachets of tropical flavoured protein gel which I've not tried before but I hear are pretty good for a quick energy boost. Unfortunately, they had the precise texture and sensation of swallowing a gobful of some Hawaiian guy's cum...or so I imagine. Ladies, back me up! So after we'd snowballed that stuff back and forth for a while we continued on our way and eventually overtook a whole gaggle of stragglers, which I'm sure did wonders for Dr Phil's flagging sweaty gasping sense of self-esteem.

Ok, it's time for a grandpa moment: young people take a lot for granted, they think everything's infinite and that life can only ever improve. But as you get older you realise that time is precious because nothing lasts forever and anything you have can be lost. Take bananas, for example. Bananas are finite. I've eaten a lot of bananas in my time but I'm pushing 40 and, as a conservative estimate, I reckon I've only got a good 9000 or so bananas left in me. That kind of puts things in perspective, and makes it all the more annoying when I get a bad banana. Young people, they get a bad banana they just throw it away and reach for another one. But I don't have that luxury. I have to make every banana count, savour it, make it last, wring every last molecule of potassium-drenched goodness out of that sucker. And if there's the occasional brown mushy bit, well that's all part of the banana experience so I'm just gonna enjoy that as well. It's a cliche, I know, that you can't fully appreciate something until you've lost it, but I would go further and say that you can't fully appreciate something until you've lost it and then got it back again...

I've found a lovely delicious banana...her name is Salette.

Haiku du jour...No. 3...

2008-08-28T23:44:00.004+01:00

Autumn in Paris
Golden skies set hearts aflame
Wishing you were here

Hold me close and hold me fast…This magic spell you cast…This is la vie en Rose...

2008-08-26T17:27:00.005+01:00

Jour trois:

Today I headed over to that other great Paris icon, Notre Dame. As the old Broadway song goes, “There ain’t Notre like a Dame! Notre…in the…world.” After a false start in a completely different church I eventually found the place. I was super bummed not to get to go up in the towers and see the gargoyles but there was a minimum wait of an hour and a half in the rain so I thought “nique cette merde” and figured I should leave something for the next visit. Gives me time to work on my Hunchback impression…Sanctuary! Besides, there’s plenty enough to see on the ground floor. This place is amazing! Say what you will about the modern day church, they sure know how to spend shitloads of cash on expensive pretty decorations.

I was a bit sick of churches at that point and headed up north to Montmatre, the famed art district. Of course, after wandering the rain-soaked cobbled streets, where did I end up? Sacre-Courte, the church on the hill. Sure it's nice and all, but really it's just another church, you know? The highlight, though, was this Spanish lady who was trying to touch a statue of Jeebus and set her umbrella on fire on the votive candles. As I was chuckling away to myself this massive chandelier came plummeting down and just missed me. Clearly there are limits to God’s patience for my blasphemy, and even I am not oblivious to his way of saying, “C'est ma maison, chienne!”

My French pronunciation was getting a lot better, at least according to the cute French shop girl who served me that afternoon. Either that or she was asking if I was from the Traybien Islands. Regardless of which, it still sounded hot! French is a beautiful language, all smooth and syrupy like molten honey. All the rough edges have been rubbed off the consonants and there’s a constant throaty “gggrrr” like you’ve just swallowed some chocolate mousse which makes everything you say sound like flirting. It’s all very seductive and your mouth feels good saying the most mundane things. It’s like aural sex! I’m sure most people thought I was a crazy homeless guy as I wandered the streets repeating everything I overheard or read under my breath just to see how it sounded. I got a little more confident by the end of the trip and branched out from the odd timid and hesitant “bonjour” or “merci”, but whether or not people here understand much English (which many of them seem to do) you can still get by pretty easily.

I saw heaps while I was here and enjoyed it much more than I expected. I didn’t get a chance to see the catacombs or the gargoyles but I’m pleased with the amount of ground I managed to cover in trois jours and was surprised how much I liked the city. I’d like to come back some day but I reckon it would be a much better experience if you came with someone special. There’s definitely a sense of romance or fantasy about Paris - the idea of it, the myth, the fantasy - that threatens to build your expectations up to a point where they can’t possibly be met. But somehow Paris manages to carry it off. There’s an arrogance here that is very different to what I was expecting, and surprisingly attractive. The French are very self-assured, they know Paris is a wonderful city and if you don’t get it then there’s no point them trying to explain it to you. Part of it is the history and the character and the soul of the place. It’s easy to think of Paris as all style and no substance but, unlike London, Paris has more than enough of both to put paid to the hype. But I think to get the most out of this city you definitely need to bring along a sense of romance. Romance is everywhere, from couples holding hands or staring wistfully at each other or making out in churches, to the hard-core porn on free-to-air tv. Which makes it all the more difficult to be here on your own because you feel left out of it. It’s definitely no place for a ménage a un. You just end up standing on bridges in the rain and sighing a lot...

Admittedly some of the romance is lost when you’re surrounded by squaking gaping tourist hordes every hour of the day. If it’s not pasty Brits arguing and complaining it’s out of breath Americans rushing about madly checking things off their sight-seeing checklist or Aussies butchering the language with their cries of, “B’jour, mon sewer. Donny mwar lee toilet, sieve ooh play?”

And so we bid a fond adieu to Paris...Jusqu'à la prochaine nous nous réunissons.

Although it happened in the dark of the night…I was strolling through the streets of Paris, it was cold it was starting to rain...

2008-08-26T17:25:00.007+01:00

Jour deux:

I started the day in typical Parisienne fashion with breakfast in a cafe. You can't quite comprehend how much time the French spend in cafes...it borders on unnatural. Granted, the coffee and pastries are really good but still. All the chairs face the street so it's like you’re the audience in some grande théâtre de la vie. I was expecting the waiters to be super rude, not least of all because I could barely speak two words of French. But I think what some people interpret as arrogance is simply efficiency: these guys really know their job and are so good at handling people that language doesn't even factor in to it. They just know what it is you want and get it to you with a minimum of fuss or palaver. I can honestly say that the omelette I had that morning was the single most delicious thing I have ever eaten during daylight hours. I would go further and say that the previous holder of the most delicious crown could have been eaten, digested and crapped onto a plate by comparison. It was like a barely substantial cloud of butter and egg bursting with ham and Gruyere cheese. My mouth had a deliciogasm. Mind you, the three cups of cafe allonge that I had could have influenced my judgement but it was fucking good nonetheless.

As the sun was shining I went for a wander over to the Louvre to take in a bit of culture and shit. France has produced some wonderful artists and some breath-taking art, no question, but I can’t help but feel the Italians just ownzrd the Renaissance. They were able to capture the passion and the fire of the period in a way that makes the French seem mundane and pedestrian by comparison. Although I have to admit I’d never seen so many smiles as upon the French sculpture so they clearly had a sense of humour long before Jerry Lewis came along. And the religious dudes did an awesome job with the demons. The Mona Lisa was somewhat underwhelming; it’s a lot smaller than you imagine it will be and there’s simply hordes of tourists swarming in front of the thing plus the security barriers so you can’t really get very close to it, I gather due to the numerous attempts to vandalise it over the years. Geez, it's hardly Piss Christ, now is it?

Tiring of the indoors I jumped back on the Metro and headed to the Cimetiere du Pare, final resting place of such giants as Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf. Museums and cemeteries seem to be an unintentional constant of my travels, much like squirrels and geese (although you'll be happy to know there was none of the former on this trip, much to my dismay). The cemetery was lovely and peaceful, very gothic with it's winding cobblestone avenues lined with leafy trees and decrepit sepulchres. Predictably there were more people around Morrison's grave than were at the Mona Lisa. He's in quite an out of the way location tucked behind some larger tombs in a very unassuming grave with a modest stone marker. Apparently the headstone has been replaced a number of times due to souvenir hunters and his family pay a large annual sum to remove graffiti from the surrounding graves, but there's still a few gems if you look hard enough.

I finished the day as I'd started it, in a cafe. But not just any cafe...this was Les Deux Magots. Those of you with even a shred of indy street cred will know that this is the cafe where the giants of the artistic and intellectual world would congregate: Hemingway, Morrison, de Beauvoir, Sartre, Camus, Picasso. Admittedly it's lost some of it's edge over the years, but even still sitting there as the sun went down and the crowds wandered past and the jazz buskers played across the street, it was hard not to feel inspired. I ordered my double espresso and my Heineken and my cognac and whiled away the hours scribbling haiku on the back of postcards, feeling if not quite a part of the gang then privileged to sit on their coattails, and it was tempting to think that some psychic residue of their collective cool cachet rubbed off on me. And as the alcohol mixed playfully with the caffeine in my bloodstream it became easier to imagine that as the gawking tourists drifting by looked my way perhaps they saw more than just a sweaty tipsy jerk off with sore feet and a broken heart...

À être poursuivi...

The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay… I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café...

2008-08-26T17:22:00.009+01:00

Jour un:

Bonjour, le bitches!

It’s kind of apt, I feel, to arrive in Paris by train. There’s something romantic and old fashioned about train travel. Sure modern trains are fast but there are much faster modes of transport…trains require patience and force you to reflect on the world as it passes you by. That's very French. As French as infrequent bathing and surrendering at a drop of the hat.

Trudi hooked me up with a quaint little hotel in the Ville de Puteaux which is west of the city centre; it’s small and a bit out of the way but it’s clean and the staff are friendly. Plus there’s no bed bugs which I understand is good for at least half a star in the official rating schema. The bathroom was très faible...you had to stand in the shower to go to the toilet (not that I was peeing in the shower, it was just really close to les toilettes). It was a pretty easy commute to the city proper on the Metro which rivals London’s underground in efficiency and ease of moving about but doesn’t seem to have any of the delays or breakdowns. I would have liked to take buses in order to see more of the city but that’s a project for next time. The entrance to some of the Metro stations have these awesome art deco sci-fi signs which look like alien street lights out of a Jules Verne novel. It’s the little touches of whimsy like that which really add to the magic of Paris. It’s no surprise the Bauhaus art movement never took off here; they don’t mind if something’s unnecessary or impractical so long as it looks good.

The French may not be able to fight, rock or make a decent mojito, but they sure know a thing or two about architecture. Like most European cities, Paris is spread out over a vast area but still manages to have a quaint crammed in feel. There are almost no skyscrapers, or indeed any buildings which reach over 2 or three stories. But the facades of some of the buildings are just breath-takingly elaborate. The exteriors verge on works of art...so much so it almost pains you to go inside. But when the weather is as crappy as it was on my first day, sometimes it's a pain you can live with. But still, even in the rain, Paris is a beautiful city. I wandered past the Palais Royal and the Palais Petit and across the Pont du Alexandre III towards the Hotel de Invalides (which is neither a hotel nor full of invalids, unless you count the hordes of elderly tourists getting in the way of my photos). Because the skyline is so low, you can pretty much see all of the major Paris landmarks from anywhere on the river, so getting your bearings isn't too difficult.

It was around this point that some gypsy street kid tried to scam me. They do this thing where they target the obvious tourist and bend down in front of you, pretending to pick up a ring or piece of jewellery which is hidden in their palm. They offer it to you as though you had dropped it. When you tell them it’s not yours they make a big display of showing how it’s too big to fit on their fingers and offer it to you “for good luck”. If you’re silly enough to accept it they then ask you for some money in exchange. Thankfully I was hip to this game before I got here so I pocketed the ring and kneed the little prick right in the pommes de terre.

I wandered over to the Eiffel Tower which is another one of those classic architectural icons which doesn’t quite seem real, even when you’re standing on it looking out over all of Paris. Paradoxically, it seems both smaller and larger than it should be but is so ingrained in your imagination that you struggle a little to believe that you're actually standing in front of it, let alone atop of it. And it's brown...eeewww! Taking the elevator to the top seemed like the chumps way of ascending so I took the stairs which made it feel like something more of an accomplishment. Regrettably, all of the chumps were waiting for me at the top so any chance to be alone with one's thoughts as I gazed out over the expanse of Paris while the sun broke through the clouds at dusk was completely lost as a seemingly endless procession of fat tourists of all nations and creeds jostled to pose with their over-priced tumblers of champagne around the observation deck. Then I had to take the stairs all the way back down. Hard to believe that even in Paris one's sense of romance can be trampled underfoot.

Tiring of the hordes and the incessant drizzle, I wandered back to the Metro via the Arc de Triomphe, which was something of a disappointment as you have to pay money to see it up close. You can get a decent view from the edges of the roundabout surrounding it but if you want to get right up in it's grill you take these subway tunnels underneath the street and fork over a ludicrous amount just to stand beneath. Instead I braved the insane traffic hurtling through the roundabout for your standard postcard shot.

After seven hours of wandering my poor feet were killing me, for the most part due to my brand new Chuck Taylors which I'd bought specially for the trip. So it was back to Puteux for a scrumptious dinner of cheeses and meats and pastries and a little too much wine before hitting le sack in preparation for some serious sight-seeing the following day...

À être poursuivi...

Restaurant in a West End town, Call the police, there's a madman around...Running down underground to a dive bar, In a West End town...

2008-08-14T09:46:00.004+01:00

I learned a couple of important lessons this past week: 1) trust what you feel (or don't feel, as the case may be). We don't have to justify what we feel in our hearts, we don't have to conform to an ideal, what's in our hearts belongs to us. And 2) having Olympic fever in this country really sucks cos England are only any good at the posh sports so every time you switch on the tele all you see is badminton and sailing and equestrian. Although I did manage to catch a few rotations of the women's gymnastics (pwoawesome!) which, as a 16 year old dude, was an erotic wonderland. As a 37 year old dude watching 16 year old nymphettes caper about just makes me feel tired.

I went to a Tiki bar in Kennington with Dr Phil and Yosemite Laurie and the rest of the gang last Friday night which was a real hoot. Plenty of fab cocktails and swinging lounge music from the 50's and 60's, and GASP! even dancing, albeit in a parodic and self-effacing way...plus I was drunk. There's even photos on Facebook, eekk! Saturday was spent in hangover recovery mode and Sunday I rode up to Epping Forest again to explore some more of the trails that the local mountain bike club maintain. There's some some super curvy downhill runs and the rain the previous day made things nice and slippery and icky.

I went to the moofies on Sunday night to see Elite Squad about the police special forces unit, BOPE in Rio. It was surprisingly good, very gritty and tense and a real eye-opener in to the rampant crime and corruption in Brazil as a result of the drug trade, and the ever-present violence it begets. It was interesting to compare it to the Hollywood abortion Wanted as both were hyper-violent but whereas the Americans glamorise violence, Elite Squad focuses on the consequences of violence and the pain that filters through to affect so many lives. Suffice it to say, I've no plans to holiday in Rio any time soon. I'm not suggesting it's a violent place but let's just say there's a good reason the cops all have their blood type sewn into their name tags.

I'm often accused of being immature, to which my standard response is, "Your FACE is immature!". Why does the word 'immature' have to have negative connotations? The inference being that you're acting like a child. I think it's an admirable quality, quite frankly, and would most likely consider it a compliment if I didn't know the patronising pusillanimous prick making the accusation was trying to insult me. Maturity is subjective: it can only be measured on someone else's scale, and if you don't like/care about that person then why care what they think of you? Whom of us is in any position to judge another? There's a huge difference between being immature and being irresponsible...saying, "I don't care what you think" is very different from "I don't give a fuck." Not that I necessarily care what anyone else thinks, but I freely admit to being immature...I like being immature. If more people stopped worrying about conforming to norms of behaviour they don't understand and just gave in to impulsiveness occasionally the world would be a much more relaxed and fun place in which to live.

Maturity isn't what differentiates children from grown-ups; what differentiates them is regret. Grown-ups, responsible grown-ups, play both sides of the responsibility see-saw - cause and effect, action and reaction, you reap what you sow, and all that. Accepting responsibility for your actions means accepting responsibility for the consequences those actions might cause. We can't always make the right decision...I don't even think there is such as thing as THE right decision...we just do the best we can with what we've got at the time, and always atone for your mistakes. Pride can be a seductive whisper in the ear of your Ego. Despite what people say, sometimes it can be too late to say "I'm sorry", but some of us just have to live with that.

I've stumbled upon something big...something so big it will change everything you thought you ever knew about men and women. Us men today have not been around very long; we are not the men who evolved from our cro magnon ancestors, we're like men v2.0. Many years ago women discovered that they didn't need men to reproduce so they killed all the men and only kept stores of jizz for making more girls. Things went pretty good for a while, everyone was nice to each other, the place was clean, everyone was making out with everyone else, it was hot! But then, women being women, they started turning on each other and getting bitchy cos they no longer had any men to whinge and nag at and they started killing each other off. This meant potential doom for womankind so they were forced to clone men but they made sure to modify us genetically just enough so that we would forever be under their control without even realising it. They control us with their mindgames and their perfumes and their vaginas, dudes! How's THAT for a conspiracy theory? Explains a lot, though. I reckon somewhere in the world, deep in a bunker, in the command centre of some secret chick cabal, on the desk of the top chick, a red warning light is going off...

I've got two weeks holiday starting later this week and was initially looking forward to some serious bludging and growing a sweet Porno Joe moe. But even I can't justify wasting that much time with idle slacking and self-abuse, so I'm making travel plans. First up I'm off to Dublin for a few days to catch up with some friends and replenish my Guinness levels. After that it's a weekend in Paris; I bought non-refundable train tickets for American Girlflen and I but obviously she's not going to want to come along now and it would be too much of a betrayal to take anyone else (Dr Phil had already booked a trip to Brussels, the selfish prick). So I figure I'll go le petits hobo and check it out by myself. I'm not sure Paris is the best place in the world to get over a breakup, but if nothing else I'll get to do my Edith Piaf impersonation in the one place in the world where someone might appreciate it. Plus I can hang out in the cafe where Hemingway and Jim Morrison used to get pissed and write their stuff.

In the new year I'm proposing a road trip of epic proportions. Brace yourself...Vegas. That's right, the city that, just like your mommas, is always open. Plus, Vegas is an anagram of 'vages'. Los Vages in Las Vegas '09. Who's with me, men?

And look at me your mum...squatting pissed in a tube-hole at Tottenham Court Road...

2008-08-04T23:29:00.003+01:00

Over the weekend I watched the whole first series of Underbelly. Phew, that's some good tele! Dare I say it, the best gangland cop dramatisation since Blue Murder...or Cop Shop. That chick who played Roberta Williams was awesome, although she reminded me a lot of Fiona. You've gotta love the Aussie spirit of television production which lets every single actor in the country have a role...kind of like the thespian equivalent of the lucky dip at the school fete. Who'd have thought Channel 9 would have the cohones to make something like that, let alone air it. And let me say how glad I am to see a bit of boosie back on the small screen. I understand people in Victoria still aren't allowed to watch it cos it's on past their bed time or something...

Bit of a quiet time on the work front as the leave year draws to a close and everyone desperately tries to use up their holidays or lose them in the changeover. There's a few people leaving the team so we had a work do at this Brazilian BBQ place (that's right, Brazilian...no one had any pubes). You grab yourself a plate of token salad and then spend the rest of the night fending off these dudes who bring over great hunks of roasted meat on swords and slice it off right there at your table. It was awesome! And SO tasty...it was a cavalcade of carnivorous goodness. There was a fair amount of groaning and straining to dislodge the morning after meat plug, but it was worth it.

Afterwards we went bowling, which is always tops fun, but even more enjoyable after your fifth dark and stormy when you decree that everyone has to do a little dance after each spare or strike. Fortunately, we were all on fire and the strikes were coming thick and fast, like a Japanese bukkake moofie. Unfortunately, most of us are white guys so we very quickly ran out of dances and had to suffice with poorly-timed high fives and lewd thrusting motions of our groinal areas.

On a sad note, Staci (that's not my name!) and I broke up. Truth be told, it was me who did all the breaking, and I feel like a real jerk. Admittedly, we're very different people and at first I thought that would work because if you're both the same it's like dating yourself, right? But it didn't seem natural, like I was trying too hard to overcome the differences, I just didn't feel it. Which is fucked up because she's an awesome lady: smart and pretty and funny and cute and sensible and honest and generous and sensitive. So why didn't I feel it? What are you, Sigmund Freud? How the feck do I know. I can't change the way I feel and for better or worse I have to trust my feelings...even if my insides are broken and stupid. Jerk!

The good news for her is that, if Fate is true to form, the next person she meets will be the love of her life...

On Sunday I needed to clear my head so I braved the rain and went for a ride to Harlow, about 20 miles north of Clapton. I'd bought Sweaty Betty some new shoes (ie. pedals...it's not easy to athropomorphise a bicycle, you know), pretty gold numbers that scream 'slut' but whisper 'with money'. Of course it pissed down the whole way there and, even though there's some lovely towns and countryside to ride through, you're still on the motorway so it's pretty dismal ride. Luckily, I was surrounded on both sides by Epping Forest so on the way back I went off road and hit the single trails and was able to make it almost all the way home without having to touch the tarmac. The rain eased up and there wasn't a great deal of mud so it turned into a really nice ride; the forest is deep and lush and quiet, the smell of the wet earth, enough hills to make you feel like you worked for it and enough lengthy downhill runs so you could let rip and feel like a ten year old on your first bike. I'm paying for it today, though, mainly in the calfal and goochal regions.

The bright sunny days are becoming fewer and the rain is falling all the more frequently these days. This is both a literal and a figurative observation...a change is coming, I fear.

Blink and You'll Miss it...

2008-07-31T10:57:00.006+01:00

Here's a blast from the past for you...any of you old school HTML 1.0 code monkeys remember the blink tag? Check it out, in all its blinky irksome grand mal inducing glory.

I'm bringing back the blink, baby. Back from the brink, baby. I'm Colonel Clink, baby. Hooogaaan!

It's navy blue, it's crimson lake...It takes the cake and no mistake...For goodness' sake take a look at those Blakes...

2008-07-28T16:50:00.002+01:00

Are people who hate Xmas Santa-claustrophobic? Jeebus, can you believe we've rounded the Yuletide horn already? How time flies...

The Season of the Mooch kicked off to a great start this week with me winning tickets on the Perfect Commute Home. It was a promotional thingy for some Czech beer company who rented out a ferry and took us on a leisurely 3 hour cruise along the Thames from Canary Wharf to Putney Bridge and put on free booze and bbq. Below decks there was putting and Wii and massage action but who cares about that when you're up on the open deck sitting in the late afternoon sun drinking free Czech beer and eating bbq prawns and fillet stake by the trough-full. It was one of those magical activities that combines three of my favourite things: sloth, beer and mooching. And anything you do is immediately made more sophisticated and classy when you do it on a boat, even shouting drunken slurs and flashing your turgid dude at tourists as you sail under London's many bridges. Heh heh...turgid...

London can be a very proper and stuffy and "up itself" kind of town, but if you keep your eyes peeled every now and then you get treated to some fleetingly wonderful flashes of whimsy. I've taken to riding on the top deck of buses, mainly so I can sit in the front seat and pretend I'm driving (no one ever sits next to the dude who's going "brrmm! rawwwrrrr! beep beep! eeerrrrrkkk!") but also because it affords you a view of the city that you don't get at ground level. There's a rather creative (and seemingly demented) individual in my neck of the woods who fashions these bizarre creations out of potatoes studded with toothpicks and cotton buds and painted in nauseating kaleidascopic swirls of flouroscent paint, which they then throw on top of bus shelters to slowly rot and decay. I have no idea what sort of statement they're trying to make or who the intended audience is (the psychadelic mutant hedgehog apreciation society?) but I love them anyway. And you have to admire the tenacity and persistence of the artist as these things (sometimes two or three) are on top of EVERY bus shelter in my neighbourhood, perhaps 50 or more, and are replenished on a monthly basis. Perhaps not as quirky as the Tuberculosis festival but, then, unlikely to give you a horrible respitory disease. All it takes is a little bit of randomness and mystery to brighten one's day...

On Saturday American Girlflen and I went along to the British Motor Show. There was all manner of vehicular priaprism on display but that shit doesn't impress me...I'm only in it for the concept cars. It's remarkable to see what car manufacturers are abe to come up with when their imaginations are unfettered, particularly when you compare it to the inane carbage they produce for the consumer market. Hyundai and Kia are prime examples: I wouldn't vomit on any of their cars, let alone buy one, but the concept vehicles they had on display were kick arse. Mind you, there were still plenty of nicey pricey cars to see: Ferraris and Lambos and Zondas, oh my! They supposedly had a Bugatti Veyron there but I never saw it. What I did see was the brand new Ford Focus RS, the latest version of my beloved XR5, and hoo doggies is that car hot. I believe the appropriate automotive adjective is "PHWOAR!" They picked a particularly cacky shade of green for the paint job and the spoked alloys are way lamer than the previous snowflake design, but it's still an awesome car. Check out the numerous photos (and pass the dutchy) on the left-hand side...

On Sunday we went to see The Dark Knight, which I was cautiously excited about, but thank the baby Jeebus, it was awesome! It's all about Our Heath, of course, and he does a brilliant job, all creepy and psychotic, everything that Jack Nicholson could have been but wasn't. My only criticism is that the timing of the ending seemed all wrong with the Two-Face bit tacked on...after all the frenetic crazy Joker action it kind of wheezed to an end like an asthmatic with an armload of heavy shopping. And the scary Batman voice is a little bit cheesy...like he's chiding his Batpuppy for peeing on the Batrug. I was impressed with Heathy, what a way to go out. He did a super job...I was gonna say "a killer job" but I think it's still too soon for puns, don't you?

I had a day off the other week and was out riding in Hackney. I've taken to checking out more of the local area as Sweaty Betty allows me to venture further afield than I normally would on foot. The traffic was horrendous, worse than usual, and backed up for almost 5 or 10 miles. As I got closer to the thick of it, it appeared the police had taped off a major intersection which forced me to get off and walk along the footpath (and don't the pedestrians just love that!). But as I cleared the intersection and prepared to remount, I saw they'd taped off another four or five intersections...almost the entire length of the street. Normally they only do that when there's been a serious car crash but I couldn't see any wrecks or debris or anything. If they'd cleared the cars away then why keep the street blocked off? Cops were posted at each subsequent intersection, and every now and then there were cardboard boxes and plastic skylight domes placed at various intervals on the road. Had there been some sort of storm damage, I thought? Hardly warrants closing down a huge stretch of road, just clean it up already. Clearly there was no threat from structural damage as pedestrians were free to move about along the pavement on either side of the road. As I got to Hackney hospital I saw an orange and yellow two-man tent pitched next to a bus shelter and suddenly it became horribly clear. I'd seen a similar tent on the tele only the night before on the news: police forensics set them up at crime scenes to protect sensitive evidence or to cover a body. It appeared that some local lad had been stabbed further up the street and the boxes and domes were covering up splatters of his blood as he ran along the street. He made it all the way to the steps of Hackney Hospital before he collapsed, judging by the vast amount of blood that neither the tent nor the numerous cardboard boxes strewn about were able to completely conceal. It covered an area of perhaps 3 or 4 metres in diameter and was traced through with swirls and smears as though one or a number of people had writhed or slid about, like some demented abstractionist finger painting. It's disconcerting to see someone else's blood, particularly in large quantities, because it never looks quite real...it seems too dark and syrupy...but somehow you know exactly what it is. All I could think as I stared at the place where this kid's life literaly flowed away was that this was no place to die. Put aside the irony of dying on the steps of a hospital, but to die here of all places in the dirt and the glass and the rubbish and the dog shit and the fossilised chewing gum and the empty Stella cans. Who was this kid? Did he live? Surely no one can lose that much blood and survive. Did he die alone? Was he afraid? Was someone holding his hand and telling him it was gonna be ok? Or did the taunts of his attackers usher him into the Great Whatever? There are few constants in life, other than it is short and random and cruel...all of which can be succinctly semaphored by a congealed bloodstain on the footpath. We can choose where we live but we can't choose where we die.

Speaking of knife crime, how's the chick getting stabbed down at Charny shops? Go Charny!

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London...I'll show you something to make you change your mind...

2008-07-21T10:38:00.006+01:00

London: Year One...

Yesterday, Sunday 20th July 2008, was my one year anniversary. I've been over here for a whole year already, can you believe it? I can't, and I'm living la vida limey, baby.

So much has happened in the past year and yet the time seems to have flown by so quickly. I've been thinking a lot about the last 12 months, all the way back to the day I arrived and how excited and scared I was. It was the first time I'd ever been truly on my own and I'd never felt as grown up. Paradoxically, I'd never felt so much like a child wishing an adult would come and tell me what to do.

Yesterday was a day for reflection. I thought about the flight over here, my longest international flight ever, and the ingrown hair on my arse which was painful enough to begin with but after sitting on it for 25 hours I was ready to cut my buttocks off with a plastic butter knife. I thought about the dreary drizzly miserable weather and how it hasn't really let up the whole time. I thought about all the places I've lived and all the flatmates I've had (3 and 14, respectively). I compared the Me who arrived here, my whole life stuffed into a ridiculous over-sized novelty suitcase, not knowing anyone, no safety net, and all sorts of expectations; with the Me who sits here writing this: am I any different? Have I changed? Have I grown? Have I achieved the things I set out to achieve? I had no idea what life would be like over here. All I hoped was that it would be interesting and challenging and I would have loads of new experiences and have my horizons expanded...and it's certainly been all of that. It seems like every week something new happens and I get to do things I would never have expected (or been inclined) to do back home.

But more than anything else I thought about what I left behind and what I'm missing out on. I don't get to see my kids grow up and share in those special moments, big and small: I don't get to see them performing with their school bands, or sit on the couch and watch cartoons, or go bowling on the weekend, or ride our bikes to the library, or sneak in at night before I go to bed and kiss them goodnight while they're asleep. I don't regret my time here, but as we all know it's easier to lament the things we don't have rather than appreciate the things we do. I've learned a lot about myself and what I'm capable of and what my limitations are and what's important to me, so for that alone it's been worth it. I've met some amazing people and had my horizons expanded and learned more about the world in this past year than I could have dreamed in the previous 36. I still can't say whether London is the town for me...it has it's moments but I still feel like we're not truly compatible; I can live here but I can't thrive here. When your life's in turmoil and you're being buffeted along by the raging current, it's tempting to reach out and grab hold of something to anchor yourself, to get some permanence. When you've not had a routine for a long time you start to miss it and suddenly predictability becomes appealing. But routine can very easily slip into rut and you find yourself making compromises to avoid having to make tough decisions. But that's how we evolve, right? No payoff without gamble, no reward without risk, no gain without pain. I sacrificed too much to get here and I made a promise to myself that I would never compromise myself again just to make someone else happy. It sounds selfish but when the shizz comes down the only person who is going to take care of me is Me. I know I say that a lot and, while I still believe it, sometimes I wonder if I'm trying to convince myself that it's true.

So what does the future hold? Buggered if I know! I've officially resigned from The Guv so the last remnant of safety net is gone. While I'll stay in London for at least another year beyond that I'm not sure what will happen. I'm not ready to come back to Oz but I haven't thought about where I might go from here. While it's nice to have options I can't help but think that maybe the Littlest Hobo in me is starting to stir again; just when things start going OK I start thinking about moving on. What's up with that?

Yes its the battle of epping forest, right outside your door...No, you aint seen nothing like it, not since the civil war...

2008-07-16T17:45:00.003+01:00

I went paint balling with Dr Phil Chuck Slavakia Well'Ard and Justin the French Guy a few weeks back (my first time) which was super ace fun. It really hurt to get hit by the balls (eeewww!) up close but from far away it wasn't so bad. We got to run around on this farm in camouflage overalls and face masks and shoot people we didn't know, which is always cool. There was a series of areas like a field with hay bales and a forest with a stream running through it and a field with all these old tanks and jeeps and things set up so you could hide behind them. You played two games of Capture the Flag in each field, had a quick wee break and then moved onto the next. It was almost an entire day of rootin' tootin' shootin' fun (actually, it was just shootin'...sadly, there was a distinct paucity of both rootin' and tootin'). The gender balance was way off and the few girls who played tended to hang at the back sewing or vacuuming or doing the dishes or whatever, hoping they could avoid being shot. But it backfired on them (pun intended) because our blue team were better players (or had a higher percentage of psychos and divorcees with pent up rage aplenty) and tended to overpower them, so once all of their dudes got shot we would storm their base and shoot our collective load all over the screaming cowering ladies (which sounds hot but, frankly, anything can get boring when you do it often enough). When it was all over I still had some ammo left so while Dr Phil was painting a smiley face on the wall, I snuck up and shot him a bunch of times in the ass. I laughed and laughed but then he shot me in the shoulder blade while I was running away and it REALLY fucking hurt. I've still got a bruise and I can't lie on my back. I hate him, he's such a cheater...

American Girlflen has moved into her new place in Fulham. It's a tidy little 2-bedroom, upstairs/downstairs, row house affair on a quiet little street with a quaint (ie. small) backyard in the non-sketchy part of South West London. It's a bit of an extra hike on my treadly but is within walking distance of the Fulham stadium (come on you Whites!) and some nice restaurants and cafes. There may even be an opportunity for Handy Man to come out of forced retirement and don the overalls once again, although this would need to be prefaced by a power tools shopping spree of epic proportions. Stay tuned for more exciting news...

So the trip to Bologna has been postponed for now. Instead, me American Girlflen and I are taking the Eurostar (that's a train, ignorami) to Paris for a long weekend in August. "Ooh la la!" I hear you say in your best creepy Maurice Chevalier accent, to which I reply "Ja! Schnell! Nach!" and you roll over and surrender like the cheese-eating surrender monkey that you are. I'm not looking forward to the snobby attitude and the infrequent bathing, but I am looking forward to the rich food and the chance to make "wee" jokes at every opportunity. I bet you there's not nearly as much accordion music or berets as I'm hoping there will be.

I bought the kids a buttload of disgusting American candy while I was in Boston at this place called Sugar Heaven. Now, I'm not a candy connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, in fact I loathe the stuff (much to my daughter's chagrin) but even I can tell that there's just something not right about American candy. And no, it's not because they call it 'candy' instead of 'lollies', it just seems like in almost every case they managed to create something awesome but they ruined it by adding something extra and unnecessary and weird, like dried prunes or vegemite or dead bees. I crammed in as much as my suitcase would allow and I can't help but smile as I imagine them fleeing from hordes of candy zombies clamouring for their delicious guts. I'm the Candy Man...I got the sweet, sweet candeh...

Reports of the death of printed newspapers are highly exaggerated if the number of free newspapers handed out on London street corners is any gauge. There's London Lite, City AM, City PM, Metro, City News...and those are just the more reputable ones. And they each have their own distributors standing on practically every street corner in the city when you're on your way to or from work, you run a Gutenbergian gauntlet of cheap paper and finger-staining ink as each of them enthusiastically forces their respective rag in your face, pleading with their hungry eyes for you to at least take one even if you don't want to read it cos simply throwing it away is enough to justify their ridiculous 'units shifted' advertising model. Dude, I know where you are, ie. every single street corner, so if I want a friggin' paper I'll come to you...don't be shoving it all up in my grill. So of course the city ends up plastered with thousands of discarded newspapers, piling up in trains and buses and blowing about the windy streets like poorly researched tumbleweeds. I don't read them because a) it's yesterday's news harvested from the internet, b) it's insanely wasteful of natural resources, and c) all they ever report about is knife crime and Amy Fucking Winehouse. I look forward to the day when the two dominant UK journalistic paradigms come together in some serendipitous synchronicity and some chav stabs Amy Winehouse to death...

I'm a sailor peg, and I've lost my leg...I'm shipping up to Boston whoa to find my wooden leg...

2008-07-08T11:05:00.005+01:00

I'm back from my Boston trip and I have the worst cold ever. I think I got it cos the weather was quite hot and I was going in and out of air conditioned rooms all the time. If I was a nana I'd say I caught a chill...but I'm not so screw you, imaginary grandma!

Boston's a great city, mainly because everyone talks like Peter Griffin and the food is surprisingly good. As the locals would say, "It's a wicked pissah." There's some lovely old buildings throughout the city centre and when new buildings go up they generally preserve the old facade. There used to be huge stacks of freeway overpasses snaking through the middle of the city but they were all pulled down and green parks put in their place. It really helps to open up the city and make you feel like there's so much more space. Our hotel was right on the harbour and overlooked the spot where the Boston Tea Party took place in 1773 when American colonists protested against the feckin' Brits taxing the shit out of everyone by chucking all their tea into the harbour.

I was surprised to learn how many kick-arse bands are from Boston: Dropkick Murphys, the Pixies, Dinosaur Jnr, Morphine, Lemonheads, Dresden Dolls, Throwing Muses, Mission of Burma. But also a lot of suck-arse ones, too, like J Geils Band, Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Aerosmith. Buffallo Tom are from Boston, whom we all remember from when Scruff Lovely supported them on the Canberra leg of their tour back in '92 or '93 or something.

On the first day we met up with Staci's friend Jill Kumbayar (my Lord) for drinks in an old jail which has been converted into a hotel. It's an amazing building and they've kept a lot of the original features like barred gates and shackles and in the restaurant instead of cutlery you use old shanks and shivs. Then we had mexican at Annie's Tacqueria...I had a Super Burrito and it was the best mexican food I've ever had! Because Boston is a fishing town, you can eat lobster for every meal, which of course I did on my birthday the next day 'cos I was being a princess. For lunch we went to this seafood place called Woodmans where I had a lobster roll (a local delicacy). It's a long bread roll (really sweet, made with too much sugar like most american food), full of lobster chunks and covered in melted butter. Afterwards we had ice cream from the Cherry Road Creamery and, in true American style, my single scoop chocolate peanut butter cone was about the size of the Statue of Liberty's torch. Yummo! Then for dinner we went to a legendary Boston seafood restaurant called Legal Sea Food and I had a whole lobster all to myself. It was SOOO good! I ate too much, though, and felt sick so you know that's a good birthday. Staci was an awesome birthday festival organiser and made me feel really special all day...even when I was unpacking all her stuff from the storage unit and missing out on breakfast.

The next day was my own so I wandered about, as is my want, to check things out. I saw a cool old burial ground with wicked flying skull headstones and the Old North Church where Paul Revere lit the lantern to alert the townsfolk to the approach of the feckin' Limey Redcoats. I got lost in South Boston for a bit but eventually found my way up to Havard Square. The campus is huge and well-tended, and dotted with tons of massive old buildings which are either impressive or oppressive depending on your perspective. The weather turned a bit foul and I got caught in a huge thunderstorm which, thankfully, was brief but things got quite humid when the sun came back out. There didn't seem to be too many students around so presumably they were all off in Fort Lauderdale on Srping Break or something.

The next day we met Staci's friends Carrie and Jim and their son and had breakfast at Big Mike's City Diner which is an old school American diner. I had a huge omlette with turkey and bacon, which was delish, but it also came with grits which is kind of like porridge, which wasn't so nice even when it's smothered in butter and maple syrup. Then we went to Fenway Park which is where the Redsocks play. Go Socks! Then we went to the moofies and saw the new Pixar moofie Wall-e, which was excellent, as all Pixar moofies are, and very tender and funny.

Period Pain...

2008-07-08T11:04:00.001+01:00

There’s been a lot of talk lately about tampons. Frankly, it’s about time. I can’t hear enough about feminine hygiene products, and I don't think I'm the Lone Ranger in that regard. People don’t talk nearly enough about tampons and if they did, maybe the world wouldn’t be in the state it’s in.

You can bet that if men had periods, you’d never hear the end of it. Tampons would be free, you’d get the week off, all your mates would buy you drinks, and there’d be competitions to see who had the heaviest flow.

You may think it glib of me, as a man, to make light of something all women take very seriously. Maybe I’ll never know what it’s like to be a woman (at least not until I can afford the airfare to Thailand) but I’m not made of styrofoam. I can empathise, damn it! I get moody. I feel worthless and unloved (usually once a month when my ex-wife spent a week yelling at me and calling me names). Alice Cooper once said: “Only women bleed”. Well, I say until you’ve been repeatedly punched in the nose by a crazed menstrual termagant revved-up on PMS, don’t talk to me about bleeding, buddy.

It’s one of the great regrets of my life as a parent that I’ll never share the physical bond with my children that my ex-wife did. To make space inside your body to hold them, to move your very organs around to accommodate them, even grow new ones to sustain them, is a miracle that, sadly, I’ll never fully appreciate. And I’m more aware than anyone that I’ll never know the pain, nay, the agony of childbirth. (Secretly I think that men actually do know how painful childbirth is but you chicks will never let on for fear of losing your power over us). Well, never fear, my fine feminine friends! As long as you have vaginas you’ll always have power over us because you’ll always have something we want. The inherent nature of Man is to destroy, whereas the inherent nature of Woman is to create. You have the power of creation right there inside you, damn it, and that pisses men off. We’ve convinced ourselves we’re the dominant gender and we’ve conquered and beaten down anyone who says otherwise. It riles us no end that every woman is born with something that we want but can never have; something we can take but never own; something we can replicate but never appreciate.

Men don’t understand vaginas, and because of that we fear them. It wasn’t until my ex-wife became pregnant with our first child that I finally realised what vaginas were really for. But over time I came to see the beauty and the power of the “hairy chequebook”, and it will forever have my respect.

So there you have it. The answer to world peace? Let’s all sit down and talk about our periods.

Pass me the chocolate…(sob) I’m so fat!

I guess I'm neck deep in it, I'm starting to drown...Along with all the wannabes in swinging London Town...

2008-06-23T10:10:00.003+01:00

There are certain constants in life - birth, death, taxes, Harpies - but I'd like to add one more to the list: university bars. The way they look and smell (dark and dingy, respectively), the almost uniform the dress code, the casual hang at the back attitude, the over-priced beer in plastic cups. Stepping through the doors of the University of London Union was exactly the same as stepping through the door of the ANU. It's like the uni bar is a singularity at the centre of a vast inter-dimensional network where any door you step through brings you to exactly the same place regardless of where you are. So here's another one you can add to your list: if you go to a Melt Banana show you're gonna get your brain scrambled, your eardrums destroyed and your friggin head blown off. Holy fuken shit! Those guys absolutely go off in the noisyest, rockin'est and insanest way imaginable.

The support act, DJ Scotch Egg, is this crazy Fu Manchu lookin' dude with numerous Game Boys hooked up to a sampler and drum machine and cheap-arse keyboard. He looks like a cross between Sandy the water god from Monkey and an alcoholic Shoalin warrior who escaped from rehab. But his music...jeepers creepers! Imagine what it would sound like if Mike Patton was a Pokemon on meth being sexually abused by a bear who is also on meth. It's all trippy distorted riffs of plunky-dooby 8-bit video game music punctuated by aural assaults of brain shaking drum machines and ear-splitting screams, with this mad sweaty human pinball clambering all over his gear and capering madly through the crowd. It's Pacman meets the Exorcist, and didn't the kids just love it!

Quite a fitting intro, then, to Melt Banana, who are unlike anything I've ever seen or heard. They're this amazing mix of harcore power and syrupy Jap-pop sweetness...like a controlled explosion in a candy factory or a sledgehammer coated in sugar. It's as if Japanese scientists built Ramonebots but gifted them with 10 extra chords, doubled the volume and quadrupled the speed, and stuck this slender cutesy vixen upfront with enough power in her squeaky screechy vocals to shatter glass and drive the shards into your brain. There's something deeply unsettling about a guitarist with a surgical mask and a steel slide but holy frijoles could that guy strangle some weird-arse noise out of that thing. For a young band they're unbelievably tight - they did 7 songs in 45 seconds with barely a pause between to say "Sank you. Next one is called...", before launching in to the next one. And the noise! These guys put the noise back in noisecore and when they hit their groove your whole body trembles with fremitus. Some dood took pics and put them on his flikr site: http://flickr.com/photos/fuse/sets/72157605661958863/

I'm off to Boston on Wednesday and am really excited. This'll be my first time off since Xmas and my first holiday with American Girflen. She's going to be working during the day which gives me time to explore the joint but we'll have the nights, as the Bible says, "Because the night/Belongs to luverrrs" and next weekend to goof off and screw around (ooh err, missus!). In doing my research on Boston I figured out that both Walter Burley Griffin and Hemmingway were both from Chicago, which tells me I really need to focus more on what I'm doing...

Dr Phil threw a tubular 80's party 2 weekends back, which was super radical. It was fancy dress and I was both proud and ashamed of the fact that all I had to do to find my costume was look in my wardrobe. Staci lifted her dressing-up sanctions for one magical night and looked absolutely smoking in her Madonna-esque black lacy frilly A-line skirt, fluro green socks, pearls, and white singlet with a white business shirt knotted in the front. Phwoar! As one of only a handful of people who were born prior to 1985, I felt compelled to downloaded a shizzload of tunes to show the youngen's what music was really all about back then. As well as the standard bog roll of predictable hits (Wham, Howard Jones, Bananarama et al) I totally blew their minds with some Killing Joke, Smiths and Falco. Some of those songs I hadn't heard for almost 20 years and I fully got goosebumps. Plus I taught Staci how to pash dance to "Died in Your Arms (Tonight)" by Cutting Crew, so she's practically naturalised as a grouse Aussie shiela now. I think I might have pashed danced with Dr Phil at some point as well but things got a little hazy after our elaborate choreographed backing dancer routine to Spandau Ballet's "Gold".

Staci's left for Boston last Friday which left me at a loose end on the weekend. Luckily Dr Phil was there with another bike ride, this time in the South Downs. The weather was looking extremely dreary as we made our way to Victoria station and we were very close to packing it in to play Xbox all afternoon, mainly because we were both tired and hungover. But good on us for sticking it out as by early afternoon things improved and the sun even came out. We deviated slightly from our route and ended up at the coast at Seven Sisters where I got to see my first English beach. I use the term "beach" but for any of you who've been to the English seaside you'll know that what I actually mean by that is "quarry". They don't have sand...they have rocks. That's right, a tiny strip of big black ugly rocks butting up against chalk cliffs. You've got to admire the soicism of the Brits, though, there were people putting out deck chairs and having picnics right there next to the flat lifeless grey-green ocean, braving the wind and the drizzle, only venturing up the stairs to purchase a flaccid cornetto from the near comoatose staff running the alarmingly over-priced kiosk at the top. Not nearly as much mud as the last ride but loads more hill climbs. Not a lot of fun in those but the pay off was plenty of 50mph sphincter-clenching downhill runs and long meandering pedals through really lovely countryside and awesome views. Check out the pics on my blog and keep your eyes peeled for The Shocker...heh heh.

When Good Laws Go Bad...

2008-06-16T12:03:00.002+01:00

There are many laws in our society – some good, some not so. There are laws that protect and punish; laws that deter and encourage in equal measure; there are those that stand as stalwart pillars of civilisation, and there are those that beckon seductively to be broken.

And then there are laws that are just plain fucking stupid.

In Arkansas, it is illegal to carry an ice cream cone on your pocket at any time. In England, topless women may not work in a retail store unless it sells tropical fish.

Whatever the motivation was for these laws to be added to the statutes of their respective nations, I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that despite what you may think, an ice cream cone if wielded proficiently can be, if not a deadly, then certainly a very painful weapon. And purchasing a chain of discount tropical fish superstores is a very elaborate and expensive way to get a look at some boobies. Both these lessons I learned the hard way.

But it doesn’t always have to be that way. There are people who have successfully taken advantage of wacky laws for their own benefit or amusement. One such example is of an Australian university student who discovered that an archaic and overlooked by-law of his particular alma mater stipulated that the university union was obliged to feed and water a student’s horse at the union’s expense. Our plucky young trouble-maker proceeded to obtain a horse which he then studiously (meaning everyday) rode on to the campus and the union was obliged to feed and water the beast while the student attended classes. No doubt this proved to be a frustrating and embarrassing and costly exercise for the school, and a source of great amusement and bon homie amongst the student population.

But the last laugh was yet to be had. No one is more familiar with university by-laws than the university itself, so imagine the dismay and chagrin our plucky hero must have felt when, having completed his degree, he was informed that he had failed the entire course for failing to wear a dress sword to the final exam.

Who yer gonna meet, Bill...Have yer bought the street, Bill?...Laugh! I thought I should've died...Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road...

2008-06-09T16:38:00.007+01:00

Ok, let's clear something up right here right now once and for all. It's not called 'Monkey Magic' it's just called 'Monkey', ok? The chorus of the theme song goes "Monkey magic...etc" but the show is just...called...Monkey. Got it? Now we can move on...

I've been thinking about TV a lot recently, mostly how shit it is. As a child, TV was a surrogate parent for me and it nurtured me and suckled me on it's cathode ray teat with a cornucopia of entertainment and stimulation. My fave shows were:

Lost in Space (I can still hum BOTH theme songs...yes, there were two)
Land of the Giants (kind of a LiS ripoff but still awesome thanks to the hilarious enormous props and that damned fat sweaty Fitzhugh trying to ruin everything...damn you, Fitzhugh!)
Project Bluebook (kind of a protozoic X-Files with these two airforce doodz running around investigating UFO sightings)
Battlestar Gallactica (the original and best with the cylons who talk like the dood at the start of Boney M's 'Nightflight to Venus' album and the wicked "pew, pew, pew" laser sounds)
Buck Rodgers (forget Tweeky with his retarded "dee-be dee-be dee-bee" talk, Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering who, along with Linda Carter from Wonder Woman, fuelled the vast bulk of my adolescent masturbatory fantasies...PHWOAR!)
Chips (two words: Frank Poncharello)
The Fall Guy (I can still sing the theme song: "Well I'm not the kind to kiss and tell/But I've been seen with Farrar..."
The Six Million Dollar Man (and to a lesser degree the Bionic Woman, espesh the episode where Lee Majors guest starred when Jamie's bionics went bad and they totally made out at the end...ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch)
Doctor Who (two words: Tom Baker).

Despairing of the paucity of passable programs these days, I decided to write my own, which I plan to pitch to the first TV exec who survives the audition process (ie. chloroformed and bundled into the boot of my car). Being a child of the 70's and 80's I've come up with two ideas for sitcoms based in each of those awesome TV eras: first up is the 70's with 'My Favourite Honky' starring me, of course, as a lovable fish out of water poor white guy trying to grow up with a rich black family in Detroit. It's kind of a reverse 'Diff'rent Strokes' and features gratuitous use of my catch phrase - "you jive turkey!" - and the word "honky" (or the "H word"), which I'm trying to de-stigmatize and take back for all my bros. Then we head to the 80's with Raisin' Hell, a light-hearted take on the trials and tribulations of a suburban family trying to raise their young son, Pinhead, the quintessential L'il Hellraiser. Here's a sample of the cracking dialog you can expect every week:

Raisin’ Hell - Pilot episode
by Chris Holmes

Scenario: Set in the home of the Hellraisers, chronicling the day to day lives of an ordinary family bringing up a very extra-ordinary son…Pinhead.

Characters:
Mr Hellraiser (Dad), works in an office, wears a cardigan, smokes a pipe, likes to read the newspaper;
Mrs Hellraiser (Mum), housewife, wears an apron, bakes a lot;
Pinhead Hellraiser (Son), Cenobyte, precocious young tyke always getting into mischief with his Cenobyte buddies, destined to one day be a Hierophant, a Theologian of the Order of the Gash, a Keeper of the Order of Hell, Dark Prince of Pain, Angel of Suffering, Leviathan's Lord of the Damned, The Black Pope.

1. Int. Hellraiser House. Sunday Afternoon.
Mum: Pinhead Hellraiser! You get in here and clean up your room right now!
Pinhead: Aww, mom! Do I have to?
Mum: Yes you do, young man.
Pinhead: But why?
Mum: Because if you don’t…I’LL TEAR YOUR SOUL APART!
(Cue laughter)

Foxy Amy came over from Chicago with her boyfriend recently for a visit. After her return, she wrote to me asking about the mysterious grey boogers they both suffered whilst here but which cleared up when they left. I was all like, "Did you ride the Tube?" and she was all like, "Heck yes! We rode the heck out of that thing!". As a result, she was afflicted with a gross condition that most Londoner's take for granted: the dreaded "Tube Nose!" Duhn-duhn DUHNNNNN! What happens is, there's all this black dust in the underground tunnels which gets flung up by the trains and you're constantly breathing it in so it encourages the growth of boogers and colours them grey. It's really disgusting and quite alarming the first time it happens but it's remarkable how quickly you become resigned to that kind of thing in this big old 'glass half-empty' city.

I cooked my first batch of recipes for the food mag readers' panel last week, which was a lot of fun. I had four and the recipes themselves were pretty easy but the end results were a mixed bag. The super healthy salmon salad was steamed fish with a couscous salady thing which was Bland City. The roasted squash with spicy chilli was delicious with great contrasting flavours, but the top of the pile was definitely the roasted chicken breast wrapped with spicy chorizo slices and chilli sweet potato wedges. Yummo, stick it up your bummo! In hindsight it wasn't wise to make all three in one go but the original email request from the coordinator got bounced so I only had one day left to meet the deadline. I made the plum kulfis on Sunday night and they were pretty good but not something I'd whip out to impress anyone. It's weird having to be completely objective about what you're cooking. Normally when you prepare food for others you pick something you hope they'll like and desperately want it to be special for them, so even if stuff doesn't turn out or is a bit so-so you're more inclined to big it up a little in your post-meal assessment (kind if a reverse Tetalenche syndrome). But when you're merely reviewing it, taking it for a test run as it were, you tend to be more critical and down-play. I imagine I'll be singing a different tune when I get to cook lobster with truffles but for now I'm happy to play the critic whilst paying my cooking dues.

I went for my first real ride on Sweaty Betty on Saturday, a proper outdoors cross-country affair. I hooked up with Dr Phil "Chuck Slavakia" Well'Ard and his bike, Scarlett, at Euston Station and we took a train to Bletchley, about 45 minutes North West near Milton Keynes. It was awesome fun, a truly great ride. All up we covered close to 40 miles in about 4 hours with a good mix of hills and flats, trails and road, sand and puddles and plenty of mud, even got to ride along a stream at one point and saw the biggest ugliest turkey I've ever seen (no, not Phil...an actual turkey), plenty of stacks which landed me in on my arse in the mud, thoroughly sullying the clean cool lines of my fancy Gore Bikewear which they were letting us try out for free, I looked (and felt) like a Star Trek officer and the padded crotch went someways to protecting my gooch but was no match for the corduroy-like furrowing left by tractor wheels in the dried mud (a section of trail otherwise known as The Gooch Smasher). Sweaty Betty performed brilliantly and was an absolute dream to ride. For the trainspotters, she's a Specialized Rockhopper Pro '08 hardtail (cos that's how I like it: hard and in the tail) with disc brakes and 30 gears of freaky monkey sex bike action. It's a weird feeling to drop down into first gear when ascending a near vertical slope and still be making headway with little or no effort...almost defying gravity. Of course, the gear ratio that low down is, like, 1:1 so it's like riding a unicycle. Every newton of force from your legs is transferred directly to the back wheel thus making the front wheel lift up unless you put all your weight forward, which means zero traction on anything other than tarmac. My only criticism was that because she's so light things get a bit hairy when pelting down a hill at 40 mph on loose shale, suddenly she feels remarkably insubstantial. Then when you hit the huge mud puddle at the bottom the lack of weight sends your tyres in two separate and opposing directions and you end up on your arse in the stinging nettles. I was absolutely dead by the end of it and could barely muster the strength to breathe let alone ride the 5 miles from Euston to Staci's house. I still haven't fully recovered from it as my calves are still aching and no matter how much I eat I'm still constantly hungry. And as for my gooch, let me just say that Dr Phil and I have decided release to release our own line of designer padded crotch bike wear under the label 'Goochi'. I've put some photos up (not of my gooch...eeewww!) and a Google Earth image of the route we took so, as Dr Phil would say, "Czech it out!"

On Sunday Staci and I went to see Aussie composer Michael Nyman play at Cadogen Hall which was really something special. When Staci and I first met I mentioned in passing that I'd love to go see him so she got us awesome tickets four rows from the front right in the centre. Isn't she a gem? The hall was lovely, very classy and tasteful and subdued. The stage was quite small and as it was just the N-Man and his grand piano under a single spot light it felt like we were the only ones in the room with him. I've never been to a piano recital before so I wasn't sure of the protocol on clapping. Apparently you keep schtum for four of five songs until the pianist (tee hee!) stands and takes a bow. Ok, fine, but no one bothered to tell me the signal for when to shout out " Wooo! Prestissimo! Yeah!", let alone for Staci to flash her boobs (which was just as well cos we forgot to bring a texta so how was he going to sign them?). He played loads of songs from his various films and other projects and it was all very moving and lovely and made one feel rather sophisticated as fuck! But for me the highlight was when he played 'The Heart Asks Pleasure First', the theme from 'The Piano' and one of my favourite pieces of music ever. Live music is always a hit and miss affair for me; I find my enjoyment of music is maximised when it's a private and solitary thing. It's hard to feel isolated from the world and alone with your thoughts at the best of times, but particularly so if you're packed in to a room full of sweaty shouting drunk people. But sitting there in the dark with no other sound, enveloped by the music and so close to the person who wrote one of your favourite songs - a song which summons up so many powerful emotions and memories with only a few notes, which squeezes your heart and makes you cry every time you hear it - is a truly sublime experience and one I shall never forget.

Contrast that with next Monday night when I go to see piercing screamy Japanese pop-punk gonzo kooksters Melt Banana at the Uni of London. Hey Paul! Jealous much? Yeah, you are...you totally are!

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, That I love London so...Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, That I think of her wherever I go...

2008-06-03T15:48:00.003+01:00

Who's got the rockin-est girlfriend in town? ME, that's who! Staci bought a Wii on the wiikend (heh heh, console joke), and what was the first game she bought? Only Guitar Hero 3! Oh that's right...we rocked...extensively. And not only that, but when Rock Band comes out on Wii in the next couple of months it'll have extra songs including 'Little Sister' by Queens of the Stoneage. So I'll be thinking of Grant and Jimbo while I'm rocking out...but not when I'm doing it with my groupie (then I'll be thinking about their mommas!)

On the weekend we went to a BBQ at the home of one of the senior doodz at Staci's work. I made my super sexy summer salad which never fails to impress, and I even kicked it up a notch by combining the figs with a triumverate of tomatoes (red, orange and yellow) which totally blew everyone's minds. Which is just as well given the calibre of the digs. I've never in my life seen a house as fancy-schmancy as this place was, let alone been inside it with the owners' permission. I'm not saying it was big but let me just say that it had 13 bathrooms. That's right, 13 BATHrooms...not bedrooms or toilets...bathrooms. I don't know how many bedrooms there were because, frankly, I was a bit drunk and lost count when it got into double digits, and nearly fell into the indoor pool. But each bedroom had its own bathroom plus a whole bunch of other bathrooms scattered about the place for good measure just in case all those foie grois smoothies mess with your impulse control and you really couldn't be arsed leaving the room to poop. The place was frickin' enormous! It was part of a gated community in St George's Hill near Surrey comprising 400 other equally massive mansions, most of which are owned by rich Russians. Suppposedly Putin's daughter lives there, Elton John once lived there as did Ringo Starr and George Harrison. You can almost smell the money...mainly because there's blue-collar eastern European dudes raking it up into huge piles on the lawns to be burnt. You know you're rich when you have a fusball table that no one is allowed to use...especially not the drunken Australian dude whose name no one remembers and is constantly mistaken for the maid's husband.

I went for my first proper ride on Sweaty Betty through the marshlands up north of Clapton. Don't be fooled by the name, there was nothing particularly marshy about the lands and most of the paths were paved and well-trod. But that was cool as the sun was shining and I made it all the way to Cheshunt (about 12 miles) before the bruising to my gooch reached the point where I could no longer sit down. Unfortunately by that point my legs were so tired that I couldn't stand up either so I crouched down whilst drinking coffee and reading my book in the sun. My second ride was through the streets of London to Staci's place, which was both exhilarating and terrifying. It's remarkably easy to get around London on a bike if you've got nothing to live for. I learned an important lesson which is that you have to be a complete psycho-list to ride a bike on London streets, particularly along Oxford Street and Knightsbridge. Taxis and buses have little enough regard for pedestrian life as it is, let alone pedestrians on bikes. I think the manslaughter law only applies if you run over someone whose feet are touching the ground at the point of impact. But she's a sweet ride and despite the fact my gooch has been tenderised into veal I'm looking forward to taking her over some sweet jumps out in the wilderness. I'm heading out to Milton Keynes with Dr Phil 'Chuck Slavakia' Well'Ard on Saturday for a 25 mile ride through the mud which will be slightly more radical than rad but slightly less radical than super rad. Plus, if the weather is as crap as it promises to be, it will be another chance to indulge in some Holmes' Pun Wisdom. Oh, I do say!

Did you know there's no naturally-occurring blue food? (I know what you're thinking and neither blueberries nor blue smarties count...I looked it up). As a result of this, human vision evolved to see red and green much better than blue. In the eye there are 3 types of cones which perceive each of the 3 primary colours: red, green and blue. 32% of the cones detect red, 64% detect green but only 2% detect blue. Apparently, as seeing the colour blue didn't help cavemen find food (and smarties hadn't yet been invented) evolution focussed more on red and green. Imagine the damage you could wreak if you went back in time and gave cavemen blue smarties...they'd lose their friggin minds! You'd be all like, "Hey, Flintstone! Check this shit out!" And he'd be all like, "What? I can't see nuttin." Then you'd laugh derisively and have sex with his hot cartoon wife while he wept in the corner like the fat working-class cuckold he is.

Add another chapter to The Book of Things That Are Sightly Different Over Here, and title it Father's Day. For some bizarre reason they have it in June, which means I now miss out on Father's Day twice each year. Maybe they'll let me have two birthdays as well so I can UH! Double-Up UH! UH! the disappointment. Siiiigh...

On Sunday Staci and I got up before noon (I know!) and took a guided walk through Central London to listen to some med school drop out prattle on about London's medical history. It wasn't as nearly as gruesome as I'd hoped but interesting nonetheless. The closest we got to true nausea was the of Samuel Pepys drunk on brandy and tied to his dining room table, having his bladder stone removed with blacksmith's tongs via his perforated gooch. Oooh, thinks that make you go WINCE!

Smack Addict...

2008-05-27T11:38:00.002+01:00

Whenever you peel an orange in one piece, it’s tempting to do hilarious impersonations with the rind. There are two types of people in this world and two types of impersonations you can do with a one-piece orange peel – the impersonation you do indicates the kind of person you are. Some might argue (stupidly) there is actually another type of person – one who does both. This is untrue. People like that are simply one of the other two types trying to cover their indecisive arses.

For those of you lacking sufficient digital dexterity to peel an orange in one piece, pay attention. Peel a strip around the middle, leaving a little bit before the end, then lift the two dome-shaped halves off. The peel should end up looking like an elephant’s face or a man’s genitals. Granted, neither of these looks particularly convincing given that both are orange, the elephant is too small, and the genitals are too big.

Only two types? “What a generalisation,” you say in your annoying whiney voice. To which I reply, “Duh,” and smack you. I love to generalise, I do it all the time. I also love to smack annoying whiney people.

But I don’t smack my kids. I used to, but then a couple of things happened: I realised it wasn’t very effective, and I saw a documentary from Sweden where it’s now illegal to smack kids. I thought about the messages smacking sends to kids – violence is acceptable if your motives are justifiable; reason and logic are inferior to muscle and aggression, it’s easier to hit someone than relate to them – and it frightened me that I was buying in to all of that. And why? Because that’s how I was raised. My parents did it, so it must be a valid parenting technique, right?

But more than anything else, I struggled to reconcile my fiercely protective love of my kids with my conditioning to physically assault them for doing something “bad”. This was supposed to teach them how to be “good”, when all it did was make them angry and afraid of me.

Just as there are two types of orange-peel-impersonator-people, there are two types of smacking people: anti- and pro-. I’m not attempting to advocate smacking or non-smacking as a parenting tool, just voicing an opinion. Raising children is enough of a mine field without nosy busy-bodies trying to herd you on to their side of the barbed wire. Some people swear by smacking as a disciplinary measure, others as a last resort. Others will tell you there are more effective ways of disciplining children. It’s all about choice, and the non-smacking option was mine. I’m not inviting opinions or taking a poll – this is my hobby horse and I don’t want passengers.

For me, it’s a question of positive vs. negative reinforcement, and I’m happy with the choice I’ve made. In the end it won’t mean squat anyway. Regardless of my efforts they’ll still grow up to be surly teenagers who dress badly and hate my guts....

PS. I’m a genitals type of person.

Once you get down Lambeth way...Every evening, every day...You'll find yourself...Doin' the Lambeth walk...

2008-05-23T11:30:00.008+01:00

Seeing as I'm now an official card-carrying comrade of the Castle climber cogniscenti so I decided to eschew the bowling-alley funk of the rental climbing shoes and acquire some footwear befitting my new-found status. Catch me on Monday nights getting my vertical freak on in a hotrod red pair of Hot Chillis which not only look super sexy and profesh but also have velcro straps. Velcro! Nothing takes me back to '85 like velcro straps...back when I was writin' ryhmes with Lee on my legs and Adidas on my feet and nary a shoelace was in sight. In addition I also picked up a rather sexy climbing harness which is basically a waist strap connected to two leg loops with some clips for hanging your carabiners (or 'biners as they're known in the bizz) off of. I picked up a 'biner and a Thingy (technical term for a belay device, the thing that you feed the rope into which acts as a brake for the descending climber and a veritable goldmine of purile puns like "belatio"). So now I look like either a) a complete professional or 2) a complete wanker, depending on your perspective. But regardless of which I still cut a sexy figure in all my sore-toed gonad-hugging glory.

Speaking of gonads, I picked up my new mountain bike this week, woo hoo! So there's plenty of testicle thrashing action on the cards as I get used to being on a bike again after all these years. I'd feel sorry for my poor balls if not for the fact they're purely ornamental. I love my new bike! I call her Sweaty Betty and she's soooo sexay and she'll treat me right, not like all those real girls. "It's ok, baby," Sweaty Betty purrs. "I'll treat you right...forget about those other girls, they don't love you like I love you. You can ride me anytime you want for as long as you want. You want to ride me for 5 minutes then have a nap? That's ok with me cos I luuurve you, baby." I luuurve you too, Sweaty Betty. "Shutup, baby...I know it."

I finally got to sample some more decent Thai food. It's impossible to get into my favouite Thai place in Soho as there's always a line, but because it's London Restaurant week (which goes for a month...derr!) there's plenty of restaurants which offer super deals, so I managed to find another Thai place in Soho which I was initially dubious about as it was down a back street and was the size of a bread box but surprisingly the food was awesome. They had me at "complimentary appetiser" but we got three courses for £30 plus a bottle of house white (not a carafe, a bottle...I know!) and it was just a continual up up up and away on the culinary roller coaster with no sign of a downward plummet. Plus, there were two roudy tables then when we arrived but they left after about 10 mins so we had the place to ourselves. Talk about atmos...sprechen ze sexy! It's one of very few places in London where I'd can enthusiastically say I'd go back.

Speaking of food, my flatmate Sarah works for this food magazine, right? Well they have this readers panel where they get people to test drive recipes and write about it for their magazine and they're after more blokes to be part of it. She nominated me and they've accepted! They'll send me recipes every now and then and pay for the ingredients and I just have to cook it and write about the process and the end result. How awesome is that?

Last Sunday Staci took me back to the Stadium to watch her beloved Fulham play Portsmouth on the big screen. CUHM OHN YUUUU WOITES! There was a suprising number of people there in an unsurprising state of drunkeness. I thought last week was a do or die affair but because this was the last match of the year and the closeness of the three teams at the bottom of the table and the other two teams having won their matches, Fulham absolutely had to win or they would drop down into the next division. After feeling somewhat like a tourist the previous week, I was determined to learn at least one song. The one I liked most was to the tune of 'Volare' and is sung each time the owner of the team (Mohamed Al-Fayed...yes, Dodi's old man) is shown on the screen. It goes like this:

Al-fayed...woah-oah!
Al-fayed...woah-oah!
He wants to be a Brit (clap, clap)
And QPR is shit (clap, clap)
Al-fayed...woah-oah!

So after a sloppy yet nail-biting nil all affair for most of the game, Fulham bagged one in the 76th minute off the head of Danny Murphy (Oooooh Danny Boy! He plays he plays for Fuh-hul-am!) and the whole place erupted. Cheering, screaming, drinks thrown to the floor, drinks thrown into the air, people hugging and jumping around. It was unbelievable. You've never seen so many people get so excited about their team finishing fourth last. Grown men were weeping! The mighty Cottagers managed to hold on to win the match, at which point everyone repeated the going off dance accompanied by an ear-splitting chorus of "WE-ARE-STAYIN'-UP...WEARESTAYINUP!" I found out that there's a New Zealander in the team (Simon Elliott) and an Aussie (Adrian Leijer), so there's a spiritual connection for me now. I have also gained further respect for Billy the Badger when I learned that he was sent off during a game against Aston Villa for breakdancing in the corner of the pitch after the referee had commenced the game. He blamed his badger hearing and eyesight for the incident, and apologised to referee but personally I think he should have just bitten the dude on the torso. Stoopid ref...

I headed down to Portobello Road to the Craze Gallery to check out Paper Wars which was a bunch of life-size weapons made entirely out of paper. Seriously, they had a full size paper howitzer just sitting there surrounded by AK-47's and Uzi 9mm's and grenades and everything. It was SO cool! You could even buy the kits and make them yourself but I didn't cos, like, 20 quid? I'll just take pictures, thanks.

Much to my delight, The Cans Festival which I missed out on a couple of weeks back was still there in all its glory. It was curated by Banksy inside a disused railway tunnel in Lambeth with pieces by stencil artists from all over the world. There was even a section where you could bring your own stencil along and they'd give you paint to put your own piece up. Awesome! Almost every square centimetre of tile and stone was covered with spray paint and everywhere you looked elicited gasps of amazement and delight and "fuken cool!" whispered under the breath as some new visual gem or clever pun was discovered. No doubt it will slowly succumb to the ravages of the elements and the tagging of adolescent bmx hoodie gangs but somehow that seems a fitting denoumont for a semi-permanent art form; an apt testament to the temporary nature of the ouvre. The calibre of the work was astounding and, in some cases, breath-taking. Stencil artists are some of the most imaginative artists and trenchant social commentators in these post-modern times so it's remarkable to see what they can accomplish when they're given time to focus on their work instead of looking over their shoulder for the Filth. And apart from anything else, it's nice to finally see some imagination and humour from the English (although admitely a lot of them were Europeans). I took plenty of photos so just follow the link on the left-hand side. That one there. No, not there...THERE! Down a bit...too far! That's the one!

Back in '77...When everything was so tall ...I used to watch that tv show...That I now can't recall...

2008-05-12T14:51:00.007+01:00

I miss the days before Google where you actually had to use your brain to remember stuff. For some reason I can never remember the name of the cat in the Banana Splits, and it bugs the shit out of me cos I know I could Google it but that somehow seems like cheating. Try as I might to remember it I just can't. Not even singing the song helps: "Fleagle, Something, Drooper and Snork...La la-lah la-la-la-lah, la la-la, la-la-la-laaaaaaah!" Gggrrr! I loved the Banana Splits show when I was a kid. Danger Island was always my favourite: "Uh oh, Chaaangooo!" All those cheesy fight scenes, skimpy boat shorts and scary pirates…awesome! Plus, who doesn't love a scrappy retarded protagonist with a speech impediment? You just don't see that kind of depth in TV characters anymore. I bought a Banana Splits compliation DVD a few years ago but, like most cherished childhood memories, it didn't hold up well over time.

Oh, and I can also never remember the name of the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse for that matter: Famine, Death, Pestilence...and Annoying? Pustulent? Barry? Yes, I could easily put myself out of my misery and Google it, which I know most of you are doing right now so you can email me and be all like, "Eeewww look at me I can rely on the brain power of others to remember trivial crap and concentrate on destroying the unused parts of my own brain with sweet sweet liquour." But I refuse to take the easy way out. If you don't use your brain then eventually evolution will step in and take it off you. Look what happened to the appendix, people!

Memory is fascinating. They say that once something gets into your brain it's there forever so theoretically you should be able to remember everything you ever learned or thought or experienced. But the brain can be a stubborn and mysterious bastard so it's not always easy to recall stuff from your dim dark past, particularly when you haven't thought about it in a really long time and have been a regular binge drinker since you were weaned off the sippy cup. There's a school of thought (awesome pun not intended) that suggests if you can't remember something, the more you think about it the harder it will be to remember, so you should forget all about and it will eventually come to you. The problem is, when you're desperately trying to remember something the hardest thing to do is not think about it. But I invented a clever technique which helps me do precisely that called The Memory Guy: The Memory Guy is a little old dude in a stripey blue and white apron, half-moon glasses on a little chain around his neck, a bushy grey moe and a green-tinted visor. He works in a dusty little office down by the docks and sits in a creaky old leather chair behind a big desk with a bell like they used to have at hotel receptions. I imagine myself going up to the front desk and write what I want to remember on a slip of paper and hand it to the Memory Guy. He then takes it out the back through a door into an unbelievably fucking ginormous warehouse piled to the rafters with teetering stacks of paper upon which are written all my thoughts and experiences. He closes the door and starts searching through everything to find what I asked for. I can then forget about what I was trying to remember and go on about my business safe in the knowledge that my top man is on the case. I simply wait for the sound of the bell to signal he's returned with the info and go back to the office to sign for the package. Sometimes he comes back really quickly (What's the second verse of the Love Boat theme? "Looooove...life's sweetest reward...let it flow...it flows back to youuuuu!" Thanks, Memory Guy!), and sometimes he takes ages and ages and ages (still waiting to hear back about the name of my pre-school teacher with the hairy armpits who went away to Africa to "help the starving black people"...her words, not mine). More often than not Memory Guy shows up at, like, 3am which is a little inconvenient, but I can't complain because he always comes up with the goods and doesn't charge much, so swings and roundabouts, yeah?

There's another school of thought that says memory is finite, and when you reach the limit the only way you can learn something new is to forget something you already know. This places quite a premium on the acquisition of new memories so how do you know whether the new memory is better than the old one? And there's no way to pick what you're going to forget. What if, instead of forgetting about the time I had a "See How Long You Can Go Without Peeing" competition with my friend Lachlan (technically I won cos he cheated and went during the confusing period between end of lunch and start of class but I still ended up peeing my pants in maths class), what if I instead forget the name of the first girl I ever kissed? (Susan Neal, Susan Neal, Susan Neal, I asked her to go with me to the Year 4 social and when she said Yes I kissed her on the cheek and ran away in a delicious turgid fugue of arousal and embarrassment. Thanks, Memory Guy!) So I invented another useful technique to assess the relative worth of new knowledge before I acquire it. It's called the Caveman Test and basically what you do is you imagine yourself as a caveman and ask whether this new piece of information will assist you in gathering food, procreating, or escaping from predators (not the "If it bleeds, we can kill it" kind of predator, the "eat you for breakfast and crap out your bones" kind). If it satifies one or more of those criteria then you can go ahead and commit it to memory. If not, then you have to make a decision about whether being the go-to guy for pub quizzes is sufficient compensation for living out your life waiting to end up the meat cart in a sabre-tooth tiger buffet.

If you're looking for a cheap sort...Set in false anticipation...I'll be waiting in the photo booth...At the underground station...

2008-05-06T17:58:00.005+01:00

So it looks like I'm going Boston for my Birthday (which totally sounds like something you'd say to a prostitute, as Paul and I discovered. "Hey, baby...wha'choo want?" "Err...umm...I'd like to go to Boston...for my birthday?" Just don't ask her to show you her Boston Browns). Staci's brother is having an engagement party and she has to go back for the week for work so I figured I'd treat myself and hold my Amazing Birthday Festival in her home town. It'll only be for, like, 4 days or something but after my Chicagoan Culinary Calamity I'm guessing 4 days of American food is about all anyone can handle.

The weather this long weekend was amazing. I don't think there's been 3 consecutive nice days since I've been here, and these were spectacular. Needless to say, we made the most of it and slept in until about 12pm every day. Friday night we went to the Lobster Festival at The Big Easy B-B-Q House and Crabshack (yes, a B-B-Q house AND a crabshack...I didn't think it was possible either!) Sadly, the festival doesn't run on Fridays but we were lucky enough to get a table thanks to someone else not showing up. I flagrantly flaunted the festival bylaws and had myself a big-arse lobster anyway, cos screw you, fictitious festival organisers! I don't need your rules, you're not the boss of me!

On Saturday we slept in till midday and had brunch in Fulham and went to see the mighty Fulham Cottagers (yay!) play Birmingham City (boo!). They're called The Cottagers because there's a cottage in the stadium and their mascot is, of course, a badger called Billy. It was a particularly tense game because Fulham are fighting relegation and this was a must-win confrontation. Needless to say the tension was as thick as the BO in a comic shop and the atmosphere as electric as that avenue in Brixton that Eddie Grant entreated us all to rock down to before suggesting we elevate it to the next level. We had awesome seats right next to the pitch which lent an intimate feel to the whole affair and, because the action roamed over the entire field and involved frequent corners, you got to see the players right up close. Which, of course, made it even more effective when slagging off the opposition and cracking wise about their mammas. It was difficult to believe you could fit so many people into such a seemingly small arena and the crowd acted and reacted almost like a single organism: the sighs, the groans, the cheers, the jeers. It was quite formidable and I'm buggered how they all knew the songs as, even though the tunes were easily recognisable, it was nigh impossible to make out what anyone was saying. I'm notorious for my indifference to sporting fixtures but I have to say there's a real atmosphere at a live event that you just don't get watching it on tv at home or even in a bar. It's always thrilling to see talented people doing something they're good at and even die-hard dissenters like myself can't help but get caught up in the mass hysteria. Of course it helps to have a excitable Bostonian dynamo sitting next to you clutching your arm and leaping in the air every 5 seconds screaming "Come on, Jimmy!" and "Get in the game, Tall Guy!" Happily for everyone, (except Birmingham...heh heh) Fulham managed to pull off a belting 2-nil victory, thereby saving themselves from dropping down into the lower division and ensuring that a certain flinty-hearted jerk-off got some sweet sweet victory lovin' that night...

Sunday, despite the glorious weather, was one disappointment after another. After a lack-lustre brunch at the Troubador in South Ken, I had hoped to get along to The Can Festival, an outdoor graffitti exhibition curated by Banksy in an old Eurostar tunnel in Lambeth but, predictably, two-thirds of London had the same idea and by the time we got there the place was choked with the drooling proletariat masses. We then decided to take the ferry to Greenwich Markets but, of course, the last ferry left at 4pm and was absolutely chockers, so we took the Tube up to Greenwich where we managed to arrive at the markets about 10 mins before they closed. The only bright point in the day was catching up with Staci's friend Stewie, a laconic Irish rogue, for dinner at a quaint little pub where he introduced us to his very exotic friend Nadia who has a lot of passports and was almost recruited to be a spy for MI6.

Monday started in predictable fashion with a sleep in until 12:15pm and then a leisurely brunch at Smiths of Smithfield. Having repeatedly lamented over the woeful state of London cuisine this place was a breath of fresh air. Housed in an old warehouse in the former meatpacking district, it spreads over three levels of increasingly casual dining, culminating with soft leather couches on the ground floor and a separate menu comprisingly solely of hangover cures. I'm not a fan of the Full English but, having endured a billious eggs benedict the previous day, I was inclined for something a little more substantial. Whilst I would dearly love to give a hearty and glowing recommendation, the best I can say is I've had worse but in London I've not had better. And for this town that's pretty fulsome praise.

So, fortified with bellies full of protein, caffeine and carbs, we trekked to Highgate Cemetery in search of obscure dead historical figures. Karl Marx is buried here as are George Eliot and Emanuel Kant. Less notable are the dood who invented Chubb locks (Mr C. Chubb), the founder of the Krufts dog show (Mr C.Krufts), and the dood who introduced motorised cabs to London (Mr. D. Motorisedcabs). There's two cemeteries - East and West - but you can only get into the West one if you pay for the tour. We took the mooch option and paid £3 for the East side (bloods) which is where all the cool dead people are, anyway. Karl Marx was pretty easy to find given that there's this huge bust of his head looming right on top of it. I felt a bit sorry for the dude who was in the grave next to his (literally in his shadow, grammar fans) because no one bothers to pay him any respects and the grave is so neglected you can't even see who it is. So I took a photo in rememberance of all the anonymous dead doodz overlooked and overshadowed by philisophical communist giants.

It's quite a lovely cemetery, actually, nothing like any other cemetery I've ever been in. It's lush and overgrown and rambling and chaotic and everything you'd expect a celebration of life and death to be. It's not sterile and ordered and tidy like other cemeteries; trees and ivy and brambles and flowers grow wild and rampant, snaking around, over and even through the graves and gravestones. There's graves from the Victorian era right up until today all in various states of decrepitude and disrepair. But far from being a sad place, it's a wonderful testament to entropy and ageing and the temporary nature of human existence. What better way to celebrate your life than to return to the soil from whence you sprang, your nutritous essence fuelling and lubricating the fecund gears of that wonderous machine of new life, your soul becoming one with that of the very earth itself. It'd be totally awesome to have a shag there!

There's a lot of posh houses on all sides of the cemetery so the mind boggles as to how many little kiddies have been dared to sneak in after dark as an initiation into some secret neighbourhood club or other. I imagine the place takes on a much more spooky air after dark. Right before closing time a dood comes around with a bell to warn you to get out lest you become the latest hapless footsoldier in the zombie apocalypse for, let's face it, when the shizz comes down this place is Zombie Ground Zero.

I should get my bike in a couple of weeks so there's plenty of crazy, wacky (dare I say zany?) cross-country and downhill biking action planned with Dr Phil "Chuck Slavakia" Well'ard, who's champing at the bit to purchase ever more elaborate and expensive and ridiculous pieces of outdoor adventure gear. Not that I'm questioning his sexuality or anything but let's just say there's a peculiar preponderance of padded crotches. I'm just saying...Plus, now that I'm a card-carrying climber at the Castle, it's a mere 20 minute ride from my house and I can get my vertical freak on any time I like. Well, except Xmas and New Years when they're closed but any other time.

The night we met, there was magic abroad in the air...There were angels dining at the Ritz, and a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square...

2008-04-28T13:46:00.009+01:00

T'was a typically balanced weekend weather-wise: Saturday was absolutely gorgeous - 30 degrees, cool breeze, itchy knees, what are these! Sunday was overcast and grey and drizzly. Always one extreme to the other in this town...it's the meterological equivalent of a William Blake poem. Saturday was all like:

I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.
Oh, what sweet company!

And Sunday was all like:

But to go to school in a summer morn,
Oh! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

I made a deal with the Australian embassy and in lieu of my passport renewal fee, they said I could just do something really Aussie instead. I'm forbidden by law to do the Dance of the Flaming Arseholes and was in too good a mood to racially villify minorities so instead I made some ANZAC biscuits on Saturday arvo. I placed them on a plate surrounding some Turkish Delight bars and made little Aussie and Turkish flags as a tribute to our fallen bretheren from both sides of the ideological divide. I had to spend some time explaining ANZAC day and the ANZAC legacy to my English workmates but by the end of it I made sure they felt really ignorant and guilt ridden. Which, perversely enough, I think they actually enjoy...

My new Ikea wardrobe arrived (late!) on Saturday arvo so I spent the afternoon putting it together which made me feel like a man...in between all the baking, of course. But now I feel like I'm living in a cupboard as there's barely any space left to move around. I'm thinking of attaching heaps of those plastic handhold thingies from the climbing centre and turning the place into a climbing wall. Won't the landlords be pleased!

Staci's place is turning out to be a Mecca for celebrity sightings. We were heading out for dinner on Friday night when BOOM! there's Hugo Weaving walking along with his family and a big old 18th century moustache with connecty sideburns all over his face. He's in town filming the remake of The Wolf Man, and I was all like, "Hey, Hugo! Hue-Go, girlfriend!" And he was all like, "Ruddslide!" Then we went to high five but we totally missed because his bodyguard tased me, bro. As they walked off I thought I heard him ask his son, "Is that the guy who's been hanging around outside your school?" but I'm sure I misheard. How awesome would it be to have Hugo as a dad? Agent Smith, V, Megatron...they more than make up for all that Priscilla fruitiness.

Staci's off in Boston this week, which is a bit weird. Because of our work hours it's hard to see each other during the week so it's not like I'll get to see her any less than I normally would, but her being out of the country makes it somehow different. I miss her, which is a strange feeling after all this time, but it's nice all the same, particularly as there's the ever-building anticipation of her return.

This weekend is a long weekend (Bank Holiday) and there's all sorts of fun activites planned. Staci is taking me to see her beloved Fulham football club play a match at their home stadium on Saturday, which should be a lot of fun. She's quite passionate about it so I'm anticipating being caught up in a wild post-match brawl and relying solely on her ninja skillz to get me through unscathed. Then we're off to Greenwich on Sunday to check out the markets and the Observatory again (she's Timetia, the time virgin, and I, Chronos, am going to deflower her in a timely fashion). It better be a nice day, London...I'm just saying. Then on Monday we're checking out some famous cemetaries to see what famous dead doodz are buried there. Highgate is suposed to be THE place to go but I feel it's a party cemetary. For me the money cemetary is Bunhill Fields where my main man William Blake is buried. Once I see that I can head over to Islington to see Joseph Grimaldi's grave, then all I have to do is go to Ketchum Idaho for Ernest Hemingway, Newark New Jersey for Alan Ginsberg, Rancho Paols Verdes in California for Charles Bukowski, and Leakesville Mississippi for Bill Hicks and I'll have visited the graves of all my heroes. Hey kids, collect the whole set!

Often as I wander the streets of London I'm often confronted by the scruffy but proud Big Issue doodz with their poor hygiene and wacky homeless guy ways who insist on shoving their wares in my face (ooh err!). So I'm all like, "Hey! My friend F'Yona INVENTED the Big Issue, ok? So she's, like, the boss of you, or whatever, and if I ask her to she'd have you sacked. That's right: suh-ah-kuh-eh-duh, sacked!" Then I cock punch them and run away.

So I hear the new Canberra prison (or is it a correction centre, Mr Grady? It is indeed, Mr Torrance) is coming along in leaps and bounds. Fuckin' prison, man...THAT'S what Canberra needs to improve it's image as an authoriarian apathetic suckhole. That'll have the tourists just flocking in: "Honey? The comedy festival in Melbourne or the prison in Canberra? You choose!" "Oh, the prison! We can pick up some legal scat porn while we're there. When's Floriade on?"

Rockband gets released on the XBox 360 next month and I'm SO excited. All those years of pent up rockin' are about to explode all over someone's loungeroom in a bukkake-esque frenzy of musical spooge. It comes with a guitar controller, a mic and a drum kit but, unlike wussy Guitar Hero where you don't need to be able to play the guitar to play the game, the drum kit is an actual drum kit (albeit small and beige and made of plastic) so you know who's going to be on the top of the list for every Rockstar party from here to Rocksville? THIS guy! I might even start auditioning dudes who want me to play in their bands and make all sorts of outrageous demands in my rider...just like the old days. But predictably, I won't get any of the stuff I ask for and I won't get invited to any parties...just like the old days.

Windin' your way down on Baker Street...Light in your head and dead on your feet...

2008-04-22T13:24:00.006+01:00

I was chatting recently to an old comrade back home in Oz about the difference between travelling and going on holidays. To me, holidays are best when you go with a companion, but I think if you're going to "travel" in the truest sense of the word then you can only really do it by yourself. There's some experiences that, if shared, would somehow be lessened. We all hope for some life-changing revelation during our travels, but it seems most people are so obsessed with looking for it they don't notice that it's happening to them each and every day. Simply adapting to a new environment is a change in itself, it's evolution (baby!), and even the trip to work can be an adventure. For instance, the other day I was walking from Staci's place to the Tube station and I saw a horse running down Kensington High Street. No rider, no bridle, no manners...just capering through traffic in a gallopy rolling-eyed frenzy. How cool is that? Random, yes...surreal, yes...dangerous, heck yes! But cool nonetheless. But the thing that shits me most about the English is when something amazing like that happens, everyone except me pretends they didn't see it, or that it was a perfectly normal occurrence.

Speaking of Staci's place and random sightings, she and I were heading out on Sunday and who should we see crossing the street in front of her place but Bob Geldof and his family. She was completely oblivious (dufus!) but I was in full celebrity spotter mode and wasn't at all thrown off by his garish stripey suit. I was all like, "Hey, Bob! Mondays, eh? Tell me why!" And he was all like, "Get the fuck away from my kids." And I was all like, "That's cool," cos I was kinda close to them and I was carrying that sack that said 'Celebrity Kid Snatcher' on the side. Why the hell did I even buy that thing? It's been nothing but trouble.

The work do at Bar Kick was a cool, if sedate, affair but it did provide me with yet another definition for "wanker". In this instance, it was doodz who bring their own foosball knobs to a foosball bar to play foosball. I'm not kidding; these guys unscrewed the standard black knobs that came with the table and attached their own personal multi-coloured knobs which, presumably, were the state of the art in knob technology.

On Friday night I had dinner with Staci and her parents who were visiting from Boston. Not in a "It's Time You Met My Parents" kind of way with capitalisation and everything, more in a "my parents are over here visiting and we're going out for dinner and if you want to come along and join us that'd be great but no pressure" kind of way. But dude...it's STILL her parents, right? So a good first impression was my prime (and only) directive. Good thing, then, that while telling a hilarious story, I decided to make sound effects and I spat on her mom. That's right, you read it correctly: I SPAT...on her MOM. Right in the face, too. If I'd been talking to an English person then they would no doubt pretend that nothing had happened, but these are Americans so, of course, there was disgust and grimacing and screaming and hands flailing and scrubbing of faces with napkins and I never did get to finish my hilarious story, dammit. Perhaps I could have endeared myself to them more by cock punching her dad. But gobbing aside, it was a really nice evening and Staci's folks are lovely. Not sure what they make of me but at the very least they've got half their wedding speech already written.

Monday night was the second indoor rock climbing lesson and this week we eschewed all that safety baloney and got straight in to the climbing. We were on slightly more difficult walls this time and none of us were nearly as cocky as last time. Even though the climbing is relatively easy from a technical perspective, physically it's very demanding, particularly when you're out of shape. When you're perched 20 odd metres above the ground with all your weight balanced on your big toe which is precariously placed on a piece of plastic no bigger than an egg and the next handhold is just slightly out of your reach and your belayer is chatting up some bird, it's remarkable how quickly you regret making all those puerile jokes in the training room. You feel like you're playing some enormous demented game of vertical twister where the laws of physics and anatomy have conspired against you and the one place you need to put your foot is the one place you can't reach. Then we tried some bouldering, which is climbing sideways on and around walls, which was cool, and then some free climbing on walls with less coloured holds and more "natural" features like bumps and crevices. By the end of two hours my hands had constricted into hideously deformed claws and I couldn't do up my buttons or tie my shoe laces. And this morning I ache in places I didn't even know I had places.

So next week is our last lesson and I'm thinking I might sign up for a proper membership. It's pretty close to where I live and I'm getting my bitchin' new mountain bike in a couple of weeks so on weekends I can ride over, do some climbing, then hit the pub and the kebab shop and ponder why the feck I thought leading a healthy lifestyle would be a good idea.

My new Ikea wardrobe arrives sometime this weekend so I can throw out my floordrobe...can't say I'll miss it. Admitedly it's convenient to have every single piece of clothing you own in a huge pile in the corner but unless you're a hobo or a child you really have no excuse. Slob Chic will neither get you laid nor win you any awards as a fashion innnovator.

Degrassi's Always Greener...

2008-04-22T10:07:00.003+01:00

What's happened to TV these days? Remember Degrassi Junior High? That awesome Canadian kids show where the issues were raw, the characters real and the accents hilarious? And remeber how the modern incarnation, Degrassi High, was nothing like its predecessor? The issues were dull, the characters boring and the accents…well, they were still hilarious but that's not enough I'm afraid. It was so crap it even managed to, Highlander 2-style, sully the reputation of the original. They even got Snake back as a teacher…Snake!

On the subject of TV, the most blatant oxymoron would have to be "reality television" shows. I've watched them - or attempted to - and there's nothing "real" about them. I have to admit, when I saw the ads for Survivor, I got excited: a group of strangers on an island, forced to depend on their wits, picking each other off one by one. But if you've seen it you'll know that the title - Survivor - is a misnomer, nothing but false advertising. I had Lord of the Flies-type fantasies of sunburned, emaciated Americans setting palm tree traps, beating each other to death and parading severed heads around on pointy sticks, but oh no, that would be too much like real life, wouldn't it? Mob mentality, petty bitchiness and stoning the fat kid to death! In Survivor, no one gets killed, or even hurt (not badly) and where's the reality in that? It's not even entertaining (unless you add wacky sound effects when someone falls over, that's always funny).

None of the plethora of so-called "reality" shows is much like real life at all, certainly not my life. Although they contain elements of real life, there always seems to be a crucial piece missing: they've got sex but not violence; they've got violence but not nudity; they've got nudity but not wacky sound effects.

Fear not, gentle viewers, for the solution is at hand! TV execs take note, I thought of this first: simply follow the well-beaten path of countless idea-stricken TV execs before you and put them all together. My ideal reality show would be to add a little of the current batch of crap reality shows to a whole lot of William Golding's 1954 classic and combine them to create the uber reality show - Kill the Pig. Picture it: a group of plump whiney Americans stranded on an island with only their wits and some dodgy prophylactics from Thailand to get them through. One by one they screw each other (literally, then figuratively) and as the porking turns to stalking, the plumpest, whiniest and least popular members are "voted out".

But, our voting process goes that one step further, pushing reality TV to a level those other pretenders can only dream of reaching. Not only do we vote the unlucky candidate out, we kill them. Then we have sex with them. Then we eat them. Then we run around with their heads on pointy sticks. Now that's survival! That's reality, boys and girls: if someone's not bitching about you or stabbing you in the back, they're trying to screw you or eat you for breakfast.

And don't you dare try and tell me you wouldn't watch it…

Open up the window and stare up Primrose Hill...Sitting here it's dark outside and everything is still...

2008-04-17T10:34:00.009+01:00

I'm not sure if it's old age or an excess of alcohol, by my memory of the surprise birthday party is returning in blibs and blobs. I remember meeting a dude who lives with the drummer from the Stereo MCs (and yes, he was gonna get himself connected), and Dan the French Guy proved that not only can the French not rock but they also can't make Mohitos.

Uncle Kev's been rocking our world over here, popping up all ninja-like at the Hyde Park Corner war memorial and freaking out some Aussie tourists. Plus he's totally kicking some monarchist arse and sticking it to the Chinese. Go Kev! Do you think if I wrote to him he'd adopt me? I reckon at the very least he'd send me back some stickers or a bag of smurfs or the Kiss Gold album...unlike that giggly tight-arse fuckstick Simon Townsend. That's right, I haven't forgotten about you, Mr Wonderworld!

Had a work do early this week at Bloomsbury Lanes which is this awesome little bowling alley bar. It was a bit dingey and kitchy and 50's and you could drink booze while you bowled so I kind of felt like a cross between Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski and Fred Flintstone. Plus I totally kicked everyone's arse...take THAT, colleagues! I couldn't stay for dinner in the American-style diner as I had to rush off to another engagement but it was choice craic so we've committed to going back. Had another do later in the week at Bar Kick, the foosball place, with half of the doodz in my capability group. This was actually my 'Welcome to the UK' event which has been consistently postponed for the past 9 months so it felt good to finally cut that albatross from about my neck.

Next on the list of "Activities in Which Chris has no Prior Interest but Nonetheless Turned out to be Totally Friggin' Awesome" (or AWCPINTOTFA) is indoor rock climbing. Dr Phil 'Chuck Slavakia' Well'Ard called me out of desperation (way to make a guy feel loved!) last Saturday arvo looking to make up the numbers on a beginners course at The Castle on Monday night. So I swallowed the burning chili-acid of my chagrin and said "Heck yes!" It's up North near Finsbury Park (my old 'Hood) and is not really in a castle but an old gothic power station so it kind of looks a bit castley. The building is huge and the whole interior has been fitted out floor to ceiling with climbing walls. Remember when you were a kid and you used to play "The Floor is Lava" and climb all over the house, which made your mum go batshit? Well imagine that but in a ginormous castle with loud rock music playing and dozens of fit sweaty people tied together and clambering about with their shirts off and you'll kinda get the idea, but without anyone's mum getting mad about Dunlop KT-26 footprints on the ceiling. We get to wear these very crotch-hugging harnesses which both lift and separate, and extremely uncomfortable climbing shoes from the hire shop (I'm thinking of getting my own pair and rather fancy the ones called "Women Splitters" which, coincidentally, was my nickname at Uni). It's super fun, a lot more so than I'd expected, and if nothing else I've learnt how to tie two new knots (taking my total knowledge of knots to two). I can now secure myself...umm, err...securely to any object with a double figure-8 and a stopper hitch, which makes it a lot easier to stay upright on the bus but takes so long to untie that I usually have to backtrack a few stops. But it's a small price to pay for that degree of safety, I think. Plus I'm learning a lot of new climbing terminology which is delightfully ripe with pubescent purile pun potential. For example, over here they pronounce 'route' as 'root'. So you can imagine my glee when the instructor was explaining to me the importance of a good knot and she said: "You'll appreciate the extra tightness when you're on a nice hard [root]." I'm not making this stuff up!

The atmosphere here at The Company is quite disturbing at the moment; if I were to plot it on a the Disturbo Scale I'd say it's slightly more disturbing than a warm public toilet seat but slightly less disturbing than blood in someone's eyeball. It's truly like no other place I've ever worked. It might help explain it with a retro pop culture TV reference: remember in Lost In Space when they went to that planet which was like a parallel dimension but eeevil? And all the characters had doppelgangers who were identical in every way except they were eeevil? Except Dr Smith, of course...his doppelganger was an awesome dood who thwarted the evil guyes plan and saved the day. It's kinda like that. To put it another way by drawing an obtuse analogy, I'd say it's like a maximum security prison for used car salesmen. Just in case I'm getting a bit too Foghorn Leghorn for y'all (ah'm pitchin' but you aint catchin') I'll put it to you metaphorically and say that it's like swimming in a tank full of hungry sharks and the only way to get fed is to eat other sharks, so you end up circling each other with one eye looking for signs of weakness and the other watching your back. Ok, let's just say it's disturbing, shall we? Apart from the inordinate number of people looking for projects, the financial crisis is starting to put the wind up people all over London. There's estimates that something like 20,000 jobs will be lost over the next two years, mostly from the banking sector. If I were an enterprising young crime scene investigator I'd be showing some initiative and getting out there right now and sketching the chalk body outlines at the base of tall buildings...

It really sucks being a grown up sometimes. One night in a previous life when I was tucking my son into bed, he asked me, "If you had one wish, what would you wish for?" Good question...tough question. I knew the answer straight away ("I'd wish to be happy") but how do you explain something like that to a small boy without confusing or upsetting him with all the complexities and ambiguities and bullshit of adult life? So I threw it back at him, "I dunno," I said. "What would you wish for?" His forehead wrinkled and he bit the corner of his lip as he thought really hard about it. Finally he answered with all the conviction he could muster, "I wish I could use the Force," which made me laugh. Not in a patronising way, mind you, but because it was such an awesome wish and because I was so blown away by his wisdom. His answer summed up for me the quintessential difference between children and adults: children boil everything down to it's essence, what's the most important thing, make a choice - black or white. Adults confuse things, we make everything way more complicated than it needs to be and worry what everyone else will think and get lost in a maze of shades of grey until we find it impossible to make up our minds about anything. And then we try and justify our indecision and fear by saying, "Oh it's not as simple as that." Yes it is! You just don't have the guts to a) make a decision, and 2) accept the consequences of your choice. That's what being a grown-up is all about: if you want the responsibility then you have to accept the consequences. No use sitting on the dunny crying and whingeing and expecting someone to come along and wipe your arse for you. No use blaming everyone else in the world cos there's no bog roll. Your choice is simple: shit or get off the pot.

It's hard to believe but I've been here for almost nine months now. That means my first anniversary is rapidly approaching so it will be time to start doing some thinking about my future plans. I've had a lot of adventures in London and learned a lot about myself and the world and, in the words of Charlene, I've seen some things that a woman ain't s'posed to see. But I don't feel that I've yet been to Paradise, let alone been to Me, and I still don't know whether London is the city for me. Admitedly things didn't get off to a great start work-wise, and being a tiny anonymous cog in an enormous corporate machine isn't helping me feel like I belong. But things can change so quickly and work is only one part of the equation. I've made some great friends and met a really awesome girly and, strangely enough, I'm starting to like getting back into a routine again. My life feels normal and nice, which is so far removed from the tumult I'm used to. I've learned to trust my feelings and even though some things don't feel right, maybe I need to give it some time and see if all I need is a little change rather than another huge change. I've got options, and sometimes I forget that, so I could: a) Stay in London and change jobs, 2) Leave London and change jobs, or iii) Go back to Oz. This last one is by far the most tempting but in the long-run, I think, the least feasible. I still don't feel like I've achieved everything I wanted to when I decided to leave and my biggest fear is returning home to my safety zone and regretting not seeing it through to the end. I didn't come here searching for anything in particular so I'm not sure how I'll know if or when I've found it but I just have to trust my instincts that I'll know. I won't be doing anyone any favours if I go back to exactly where I left off, least of all myself. Number Two (hee hee! Number twos!) is the next most appealing option. The idea of working in Seattle was very exciting, and even though it fell through it doesn't mean it's off the menu. I'm still a little reluctant to uproot my life again, but definitely want to one day live and work in the US. I'm not beholden to my salary so I don't have to take a more senior position to justify it, and the thought of working for a small, specialist usability firm in New York or Washington or Boston is really appealing. So it's looking like Number One could be the go. Mind you, that could all change if I get on to a more stimulating project with a significantly reduced arsehole co-efficient. But I've got plenty of time so no need to do anything rash. At the very least I'm not doing anything until after the 3-day Wacken metal festival in Germany in July. Olaf! Metal!

My love for you is ticking clock BESERKER!

Smells like Pine Spirit...

2008-04-14T13:44:00.002+01:00

I'm of the mind that the development of artificial pine scent has gone as far as is scientifically possible. This is as good as it gets, there's no where else to go. It's never going to smell any more like a real pine tree than it does now, so stop wasting good money and leave well-enough alone.

Not that I have anything against real pine. On the furniture evolutionary scale I'm well and truly entrenched in the Pine Age. It's just that I don't feel that your average pine tree is keeping up with the pace of modern life. Sure they're wonders of nature and all that, but aren't they just a little inflexible? I mean, with a few small refinements here and there, the pine tree could enter a whole new phase in its career.

I think the real focus of scientific endeavour should be to make a real pine tree smell more like Pine-O-Cleen. It's time we really served up a worthwhile challenge to those CSIRO boffins over at the Black Mountain labs. Years from now, when I walk into a neo-pine plantation I want to be able to take a great big snort and know I'm in a hospital-grade forest.

And while they're at it, how about doing something about those bloody pine needles and pine cones dropping all over the place. That stuff should be permanently attached and preferably made of some sort of shiny plastic so it's easy to rinse off with a hose when it gets a bit dusty.

And lose the roots, too, come to think of it. Nothing honks me off more than taking out the wheelie bins on a cold frosty morning in naught but my bathrobe, tripping over a bloody great pine root crack in the drive way and baring my lily-white arse for all to see. Fuck the roots. Pine trees should come with a portable fold-away plastic tripod which makes it easier to move them about the place when you feel like a bit of a change.

And would it hurt to make them a bit smaller? Many's the time I feel the need to surround myself with nature's beauty but couldn't be bothered shifting my arse from the couch. At times like these I want nature to come to me. I want a ready supply of lounge-room-sized neo-pine trees on hand to deploy about the place, but that can be packed away at a moment's notice. Versatility, that's all I'm asking for, Science! Man-sized, snack-sized, bite-sized…the Salada of the tree world. Is that too much to ask?

No, I don't think it is...

See the dazzling nightlife grow...Beyond the dawn and burning...In the heart of Soho...

2008-04-07T10:08:00.010+01:00

Upper Clapton is quite a lovely area to walk around in when the weather's nice. There's lots of parkland and waterways and open green spaces where the birdsong is louder than the carsong and the people are few and far between so you can be alone with your thoughts. Charmingly, there was a festival a couple of weeks back at the Hackney Town Hall to raise awareness of TB. Yes, you heard right, a tuberculosis awareness festival. Of all the life-threatening respiratory diseases TB is defintiely my favourite. But even cooler than TB (hard to imagine, I know) was I managed to scout out a couple of original Bansky pieces on my travels, which was super exciting, so I've put new pics up in the Clapton Pond photo folder.

There was a particularly bizarre fashion trend in the mid-18th Century centred around this area, called the Maccaroni. It was a bunch of poncy foppish young dudes who wore outlandishly garish clothing and ridiculously massive wigs upon which was perched a tiny little hat that could only be removed with the tip of a sword. It wasn't just a look, either, it was a lifestyle. They partied like t'was 1899 and ate and drank and gambled and "wenched" with complete abandon and zero respect for societal norms. Understandably they were mocked and derided which, of course, was the whole reason they did it in the first place, one imagines. The song "Yankee Doodle Dandy" was a joke by the Americans at their expense: "...stuck a feather in his cap and called it maccaroni". And all these years you thought it was about pasta, didn't you?

Having not ridden on public transport for some time, I'm constantly astounded at the staggering inanity of the conversations people have on their mobile phones. I think the reason the English were so determined to spread out and conquer the globe back in the days of the Empire was because they couldn't stand the brain-wrenching banality of each other's endless prattling.

I know I slag off the English a bit, most times deservedly so, but I have to confess that I failed to appreciate the effect the Tube bombings had on people here. As well as the deaths and horrible injuries suffered by the victims, they inflicted a great deal of fear and pain and shock on everyone else, so it's not so surprising that a lot of English people started to question the open door immigration policy and wonder just exactly what sort of people were living in this country. I think they felt they'd lost a sense of identity and what it meant to be English so their reaction was to band together and be somewhat mistrustful and wary of strangers and foreigners, and though I don't necessarily agree with them, I can't really blame them either. Unlike America, British foreign policy in recent years was never particularly invasive or destructive so you can perhaps forgive the average Brit when they ask in dismay, "What did we ever do to you?"

Another jamais vous moment on the weekend that reminded me of the little differences: icy poles and ice creams are not called icy poles and ice creams...they're called ice lollies and choco softies (otherwise known as Joe Ceddias...HAH!).

Had a couple of interesting work do's recently. The ghost walk around London's most haunted streets was pretty cool, if a little amateur vaudeville, but got to learn a bit of history about some of the lesser-known landmarks. Perhaps the spookiest moment was standing on an open landing with the icy London wind picking at our coats with invisible gelid fingers, staring at the dark grimy facade of an old haunted church and being chilled to the bone by the ghostly moanings of the homeless guy around the corner yelling at us to "Fuck orf!" Afterwards we had an awesome curry at this place called Tiffinbites which serves your food in little metal tins just like the tiffin boys in India, who collect food from housewives and grandmothers and cart it around the city to office workers for lunch. Apparently there's a big controversy in London at the moment because people claim that the Indian food served here is not actually all that authentic. It's been anglocised much like chinese food was in Oz in the 70's and 80's, but it's still pretty kick-arse. I've not sampled anything from Brick Lane yet, but apparently that's the Mecca for Indian food, and they even have their own curry awards.

There was an experienced hire night at the Tate to view Duchamp/Man Ray/Picabia exhibition, which unfortunately I'd already seen, but which meant that fortunately I could concentrate on drinking more free booze and networking. Swings and roundabouts! On the whole it was a good night but the low point was when I was unlucky enough to get stuck with yet another example of that perculiar and increasingly common creature called the London Aussie. I don't know if something happens to most Australians when they arrive in London or whether their type is naturally drawn here, but the vast majority of them, I'm ashamed to say, are the most insufferable wankers imaginable. Oh wow, aren't you, like, just SO amazing! You mean to tell me that you got on a plane and flew all the way from Australia to London to work for The Company? That's incredible! You must be, like, Mozart or something! You're SO exotic, just like the other 2 million of us that did the same fucking thing. Get over yourself, you pretentious egotistical twat!

I went to an awesome party at Dr Phil "Chuck Slavakia" Well'Ard's place on Saturday night. It was a surprise birthday party for his friend Clara and I was the only person she didn't know...SURPRISE! I had this elaborate mind-fuck routine worked out where I would pretend we'd known each other for years and totally embarrass her when she couldn't remember, but then it turns out I had met her and I'd forgotten so she fully turned the tables on me. Well played, Birthday Girl...you win THIS round.

When you're single all you seem to hear is hoary old platitudes from people in relationships about how "there's someone special out there just waiting for you" and "it'll happen for you one day" and "it'll come when you least expect it" and blah blah blah vomit. Well the one thing more annoying than having those platitudes spewed into your ear is when they turn out to be right. Just when I'd decided once and for all that girls were smelly and poisonous and horrible, out of nowhere comes Staci from Boston and goes off in my face like Fate's unexploded fireracker. Her story is very similar to mine: she moved over here in June last year, is divorced, works in financial services, and likes raging, windsurfing and having a good time (not really...but that sentence seemed like it was heading into 'Perfect Match' territory). She's got a degree in biology, which she never uses, but you can bet your arse she knows her way around an uvula. We've dated a few times and spent the day on Sunday walking in Hyde Park with her friend's dog, Guinness, talking and making fun of tourists and slagging of English people and basically just goofing off, which was awesome. Things seem to be going surprisingly well so, given my previous stance on girls and all things girly, this may well be one instance where I am quite happy to be proved wrong. And if I play my cards right I may just finally get to seranade someone with 90's Phillipino songster Danial Fantasy's haunting classic: "You...are...my...AMEHICAN GIRLFLEN! AMEHICAN GIRLFLEN!"

My life has changed so much in the last year and I've realised how much time I used to spend looking ahead and planning for the future and working towards something. Because of that, I wasn't paying attention to what was going on in front of me and probably missed out on a lot. Nowadays I'm not thinking about the future much at all and am completely focussed on the present, on the day-to-day, on life. John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making plans" or some baloney, but I think I know what he was getting at. We're so obsessed with what we don't have, and making plans for how to get it, that we totally ignore what we do have, the things that are right in front of us. I took a lot of things for granted before, especially my kids and my friends, and I really regret that. But I realise how lucky I am to have been given the opportunity to do what I'm doing right now, and I don't take that for granted. This degree of freedom is exceptionally rare for anyone, let alone for a parent, but, like anything valuable, it comes at a cost. Like they say, freedom isn't free; there's a hefty fuckin' fee. I've sacrificed a lot to be here so it's important to me that I make the most of it and get some return on my investment. And if that return means a brighter and happier and more secure future for me and Lily and Calvin then it will have been worth it…but only just. I don't feel I can I be a better dad until I can be a better person, and I have to believe that all I learn and discover and experience over here will help me achieve that. I just hope that when the day finally comes the kids will understand why I had to leave and will forgive me for going away and will still want me to be their dad.

Shrewdness of Apes...

2008-04-07T10:07:00.001+01:00

I love words. Words get me hot. If I was in prison with words I'd let them make me their bitch. But there's more to words than just crazy monkey prison sex in the shower block. Words have power, and some of the most powerful words are collective nouns.

Collective nouns describe groups of objects or animals or people, and range from the poetic to the downright stupid. Common ones are: a flock of birds, a clutch of eggs, a murder of crows. Some of my favourites are: a bloat of hippopotami, a buffoonary of orangutangs, a business of ferrets, a cackle of hyenas, a neverthriving of jugglers, an impatience of wives and an ugly of walruses.

As interesting as collective nouns are, I've discovered two major flaws: firstly, they don't really work as an adequate measure of quantity. I mean, just how many nuns are in a superfluity? Or turtledoves in a pitying? Or rhinoceroses in a crash? If only there were some fallback, some ubiquitous uber noun that everyone immediately understood which could be substituted for any of the vague and meaningless ones. The second major flaw is there are hardly any collective nouns to describe the majority of day-to-day objects. The most obvious of these is the very subject of this article: what is the collective noun for collective nouns? A quotilla? An array? An arsenal? A thingy? Often I am confronted with the need to describe a group of everyday items and am completely at a loss.

In these situations, I tend to make something up. My personal favourite de jour is "an anus of politicians". But some are not so easy. For instance, I defy you to think of a suitable collective noun for spatulas (a flip? a lift?) Or dildos (a fuck? a wank?) Or breasts (a jiggle? a suckle?) Or holes (an arse? a cake?) What about a group of gay men? (a stick?) Think about that one, it's really quite clever...

But don't think I'd lead you into the wonderful world of collective nouns and not provide a way out, indeed multiple ways out, a veritable vacation of exits. Now that you've discovered their power it will be tempting to use collective nouns every chance you get. But there will come a time when you'll not be able to think of one and you'll look like a goose, indeed a whole gaggle of geese.

If only there were a default, some ubiquitous uber noun which could be substituted for any of the vague and meaningless ones in a comprehension crisis. Well hold on to your dipthongs, people, because I am about to reveal to you exactly that…

Whenever you get stuck, just fall back to the one collective noun that everyone understands: shitload. A shitload of elephants, a shitload of pies, a shitload of dildos. Everyone immediately knows how many dildoes you're talking about and no one will ever question your intelligence again.

A Man, a Sausage, a Dick Joke...

2008-04-03T18:14:00.004+01:00

I'm a man (baby) and as such I'm obsessed with my dick. Sorry, but I don't have a choice. It's the law and if I break it…well…maybe nothing will happen, but I'm not prepared to take the chance. You don't mess with your dick, the saying goes, or it will turn on you. There's an old joke about men giving their penises names because they don't like trusting 90% of their decisions to a stranger. This is an important organ, folks, I can't overemphasise that. Men are obsessed with it because it's both our friend and our enemy. We can play with it, wave it about, write things with it, do hilarious impressions. But then, like all friends seem to do at some point, it betrays us and makes us do something silly or look foolish (sometimes both). The penis is often held (so to speak) to be the embodiment of all that is male, and, to me, the metaphor holds up: unpredictable, unreliable, messy, unglamorous, self-absorbed, insecure - these are all male traits and they are all focussed in our dicks like some pink fleshy portrait of Dorian Gray.

There's a lot of talk about men feeling confused and insecure nowadays. And all this New Age baloney about men needing to hug each other is completely off track. Men don't need to hold each other. That just makes us uncomfortable because what if we get a stiffy and he feels it? The solution to improving men's self esteem is for blokes to simply remind each other on a daily (possibly hourly) basis that they have big dicks. I've tried it and it works. "You, my friend," I say, gripping your shoulder in a manly but compassionate way, "you have a large penis. Correction…an enormous penis. Hell, you're more horse than man!" A few days of this and even the meekest of men will be so empowered he'll want to invade Poland. Try it…I dare you.

Who cares whether it's true or not? Since when did the truth ever play a part in making people feel better? If it did, advertising wouldn't work. In actual fact, truth is anathema to self esteem. If you don't believe me, next time a woman asks, "Do I look fat in this?" say, "Frankly? Yes, you do. Your arse looks like two planets colliding in a pair of pants." Then see what having your dick cut off and shoved up your bum does for your self esteem.

I've often heard men say that "We are not our penises", and perhaps we're not, but that suggests that we're something more when, in reality, we're probably something less. Are we, in fact, "merely our penises", or are we just a bunch of dicks?

Give me a London girl every time...I've got to find one,I've made up my mind...Give me a London girl every time, I want a London girl...

2008-03-31T09:50:00.006+01:00

I'd like to address recent claims in the media about the origins of the term "Satan's Chicken". Unamed sources in the Seventh Day Adventist Church have spuriously claimed ownership of this term when, in fact, I myself am the inventor and have several witnesses who will attest to such, including one from within the Church itself. If a representative of the Church would like to step forward and dispute my ownership then by all means let them do so. Until such time, I shall continue to mock their inability to eat anything with webbed feet and if anyone has a problem with it then, in the words of The Bard: "Got an issue? Get a tissue."

For the record I also invented the terms:

Bi-polar bear
2615, bitch
Aftermirth
Arse burgers
Anarchy in the Ukulele

...so if you catch anyone using them they're violating my copyright. Not the first time I've been violated, mind you, but how about buying me a drink first, huh?

People often ask me "who is Blind Phineas?" and I sigh dramatically and roll my eyes in exaggerated exasperation before telling them that according to Greek mythology, Phineas was a seer who lived in the city of Salmydessus on the Black Sea. He had the gift of prophecy (or foresight) and Zeus, king of the Gods, was pee-o'd that Phineas kept blabbing to everyone about the plans of the gods so he blinded him and banished him to an island with a buffet of food. Not so bad, you might think...but oh how pathetically naive you are, you feckin' great eejit. Phineas couldn't eat the food because each time he tried the Harpies (vicious winged women with razor-sharp talons, pendulous tah-tahs and questionable personal hygiene) would swoop down and nick it. Eventually he was divorced, err I mean, released from this torment by Jason and the Arse-kicking Argonauts. There's an analogy in there to my track record with the ladies but I'll leave it to youse all to draw it out for youseselves...

Admitedly, not all women are vicious, evil monsters with claws and wings, horrid screeching voices, BO and unrealistic expectations. I hear there are actually a couple of nice ones out there somewhere in a convent or something, flicking themselves off to Jeebus. Did you know the collective noun for nuns is 'a superfluity'? No you didn't, you pretentious lying feck!

Why is it that we always want what we can't have? My problem is I fall in love too easily, but it's always unrequited or with the wrong woman. How can they ALL be wrong? Just the other day I fell in love with the recorded voice of the woman who announces the stops on my bus. The soft lilting tones of "254...to...Holloway...Nag's Head" causes my heart to race and burns into my brain a mental picture of her perfect mouth, her soft lips, her barely-there overbite, the way her lips purse ever so slightly on the T's, and the tiny smile she gets at the corners when she says "Nag's Head". I picture us lazing in bed on a rainy morning under a duvet of Sunday papers, she inflames my passions by calling the stops and I sending her into fits of giggling by talking filthy in my best Stephen Hawking voice. But, inevitably, it doesn't work out for us becasue I'm afflicted with Cyrano de Bergerac syndrome, which means the reality of me can never hope to live up to the fantasy of me, so her affection and interest wane and I'm back to where I was: sad and lonely and riding the buses and having pathetic mental romances with recorded voice-overs...siiiiiiiigh.

It's gotten so I can't even go into the perfume section of a department store any more because one whif of perfume triggers an overwhelmingly intense scent-trip and suddenly all the painful little memories come home to roost like emotional homing pigeons to crap all over the cold hard statue of my heart. I reel from the clamour of past aches and barbs and torments and hurtful words clanging in my ears. Then I'm reminded of how long it's been since someone let me get close enough to smell them without calling the cops, and how nice it is to smell a girl's perfume on your clothes that you haven't sprayed there yourself. All of which culminates in an thudding aching fremitus of longing and despair in my chest and I have to run to the nearest KFC for some comfort fries except they don't have chicken salt over here so I'm left feeling sad and nauseous and unsatisfied. Kind of like sex, really...but less tears.

Why is it so easy to let our self-worth be determined by the rejection of strangers rather than the love of our closest friends? Why does 'wishful thinking' have to be a bad thing? I can't think of anything more lovely than wishful thinking. It means you still have hope, and that's the most precious thing of all.

For suddenly, I saw you there...And through foggy london town...The sun was shining everywhere...

2008-03-25T11:34:00.002Z

Apparently we're supposed to be heading in to Spring, but this weekend not only did we have rain, hail and freezing cold wind, but it actually snowed! You'd think this would quite quaint and romantic but it wasn't. It was horrible, face-stinging, eye-blurring frozen rain. Ave, London!

On Thursday night I went out on the town with the lads. We went to Café Kick which is a foosball bar in Fo'Sho'Ditch and looks like some dude's basement, which just added to the allure. Then it was off to a Czech bar for shots of some weird cloves-based liquour which was actually quite nice in a medicinal kind of way. I kid you not, the bottle had a warning label which read: "Chiggedy-Czech yourself before you riggedy-wreck yourself." We talked long in to the night about all those things that sensitive educated men talk about, and arrived at the consensus that Paris is not, despite popular opinion, all about art and culture and romance and cusine and wine...Paris is, in fact, all about the arse-fucking. All in all a top night out, so hugs and smooches to Dr Phil Well'Ard for organising it. And if nothing else it gave me a chance to try out my new "Ernest Hemmingway meets the Fonz" look of jeans, black turtle neck and leather coat. Stylin'! Everybody thought so…

I went out to the moofies on Saturday night to see 'The Orphanage', a Spanish horror flick which was pretty good but very reminiscent of a number of similar recent movies: spooky location with a troubled past, strange events, creepy kids, crazy mum, exasperated dad, sceptical cops. So it was enjoyable in the sense that it delivered all the requisite chills and thrills but disappointing in the sense that you came away feeling like you'd been manipulated and had seen it all before. Mind you, even the worst of eurpoean cinema is still arse-loads better than the best Hollywood can offer up most days so worth the money at the very least.

When I got home I stashed some easter eggs in the kitchen for my flatmate Sarah and left her a note from the Easter Bilby under her Easter Tree, which is a German tradition or so I understand. She spray-painted some twigs silver the other night (which meant that all through the house we were chroming by proxy) and decorated them with some traditional easter trinkets and placed easter eggs underneath. I think I may have stolen her thunder somewhat as she was planning on stashing easter eggs as well, but she got me a Toblerone easter egg and made a wicked Sunday lunch of 7-hour slow-roasted lamb which we devoured with much gusto and red wine throughout the afternoon. Happy Birthday, Baby Jeebus!

Monday started off bright and early (which means not at all bright and way too early) at Marylebone train station where I met Dr Phil and the lovely Julie to go hiking in the English countryside. We took a train out to Buckinghamshire where we set off on a 10 mile walk through hills and fields in fairly attrocious weather with high hopes of using the word 'quaint' with annoying frequency. Of course the first thing you must do when setting out on such a venture as this is to pretend you're in an elite army unit and come up with nicknames for each other. I was Skippy, master of espionage and infiltration with a plentiful supply of Toblerone; Julie was Snowy with her amazing transforming mitten technology, who was either communications or demolitions expert, we could never remember which; and Phil was Chuck Slavakia our megalomaniacal leader with a 'Nam complex and a scary black thermos called 'The Sodomiser'. It was very muddy and the going was quite rugged in places, but that just made us feel more outdoorsy and legit as we were required to actually hike, unlike many of our fellow townies or 'bitch-hikers' who stuck to the flat ground and well-marked trails. The weather was quite erratic – sometimes snowing, sometimes raining, sometimes windy – which only served to enhance the mood of collective suffering and bon homie, and increased the calibre of the puns no end. It was a veritable pun-fest as we plumbed the depths of stile jokes which peaked with the creation of the imaginary head of the Stile Maintenance Department, a stern fastidious German man called Herr Stile. All in all we traipsed and trekked and traversed for about 5 hours before we managed to find a pub, and we only had to ask for directions twice. At one point we were walking through this quaint little village and were drawn to a public notice board outside a church. There was a notice pinned to it entitled "Spate of Burglaries!" and went on to detail about 5 incidents (does that qualify as a spate?) committed in recent weeks by "thieving scum" which mainly involved the theft of box mowers, candlesticks and lightning conductors whilst the owners were upstairs watching Deal or No Deal and the plucky intruders cut a hole in the side of the house: "The residents heard a noise but thought it was the wind." We checked out the notice board in the next town but there wasn't nearly anything as exciting: just an ad from the local general store about a sale on box mowers, candlesticks and lightning conductors.

It was a really awesome day, a little bit random and not at all what I was expecting, made all the more enjoyable for the company of my truly excellent companions. It's nice to do something you normally wouldn't and discover you like it, particularly when you're thoroughly shagged afterwards and feel like you've accomplished something other than eating easter eggs and watching dvds. I'm looking forward to our next outing which, at my insistence, is going to cut out the middle man and be a walking tour of country pubs.

Toot Toot Toot Toot...Silver Rain Was Falling Down...Upon The Dirty Ground Of London Town...

2008-03-18T11:49:00.002Z

Good news, everyone! London is now officially the World's Grubbiest City. Hoorah and huzzah! Good job, Limeys; not content with making a mess of the rest of the world, now you've gone and rubbished your own back yard...literally!

So I've been exploring the new area which is officially known as Clapton Pond. It's in the East End at the top of Clapton Road, just east of Hackney, which is the most culturally (a polite way of saying "ethnically") diverse area of London. Clapton Road is nicknamed The Murder Mile because of the high crime rate (go figure!), but all the action is centred down the lower end, not Upper Clapton where all us cool kids live free in harmony and majesty with authority.

There's an awesome church just north of me called the Church of the Good Shepherd, but it used to be the Church of the Ark of the Covenant. The very first parish priest was one Father Indiana Jones...I shit you not! It was built in 1892 by the Agapemonite cult which had some weirdo ideas about women and the true station of womankind and had mad orgies all day all night, Maryanne. From what I gather, the Agapemonites considered women as nothing more than vassals and vessels...put on earth to serve mankind (emphasis on the Man part, ooh err!) and cook the tea and tidy up the place and have babies to keep the cult going. Henry Prince was the original leader who, although claimed he was immortal, died in 1899. A sleazebag named John Hugh Smyth-Pigott took over, declaring himself to be the messiah until a bunch of pissed-off parishoners challenged him to prove it by walking across Clapton Pond. Predictably, he pussied out and buggered off to live in the country and have non-stop orgies with his numerous spiritual brides. Go on, my son! Mind you, I wouldn't fancy a walk across Clapton Pond either. It's not the most picturesque of water features and you can't even get that close to it without running the gauntlet of drunks pooing in fried chicken boxes and pidgeons having knife fights over scraps of stale bread. Despite also claiming to be immortal, Smyth-Pigott carked it in 1927 and the cult lost a bit of steam. All that sex with- and oppression of the ladies must really take it out of you...

The church is in an area that has a large Haredi jewish community. They're those far-out funky dudes with the nu-metal beards and the ringlet sideburns and the tights and the dresses and the shawls and the furry toilet brush hats, oi vey! There was a whole gang of them out on the weekend with their old-before-their-time jewish kids and their brown-house-coat-and-head-scarves plain jewish wives, why not. I felt a little bit funny about taking pictures of them just so I could mock their appearance to youse all, so I waited until they were looking the other way, already.

Also in my area is the Whitechapel Bell Foundry which is the oldest commercial business in London and has been churning out top-notch ding-dongs since 1570. These guys cast the Liberty Bell and the bells for Big Ben and the bell for the new Freedom Tower in New York. They're all about the bells over here...they're bell CRAZAY, I tell you! I went down there and who should I bump into but LL Cool J (you know he's hard as hell, he'll battle anybody I don't care who you tell). It's been a while since I'd heard from him so I was all like, "I've been waitin' and debatin' for oh so long...just starvin' like Marvin for a Cool J song." And he was all like, "If you cried and thought I died, you definitely was wrong...it took a thought, plus I brought Cut Creator along." Then Cut Creator (he'll cut the record in a second, make your d.j. look blind) whom I hadn't noticed up until that point, scratched the record with his fingernail and we totally Rocked the Bells....rrrraaaahhhh!

Last week's work do was at an ultra-swanky conference centre where we had a bit of dinner, not enough dessert and way too many drinks. All of which is OK because it's free, but it's getting a little predictable. This week's work do promises to be a whole lot more interesting. After a boring team meeting we're going on a moonlit ghost walk through some of the more seedy areas of the City and then off for a curry. Kick arse! It's the Easter long weekend so there's plenty of opportunities for drunken hedonism in the East End (which kind of sounds like a saucy euphemism, does it not?).

So Lily's in her last year as a pre-teen, which is totally surreal as she's rapidly approaching the point where she'll be more mature and sensible than me. I managed to wake her up on her birthday, though, heh heh. Sucked in, Chook! Calvin's started at a new school this year and he's got in to the school band playing trumpet, yay! Now I not only have two people I can call 'trumpet bum', but I also have two potential cash cows to look after me when they become famous musicians and I become a pathetic old mooch. And it's a perfect excuse to hang out in seedy jazz clubs when I'm a dirty old guy trawling for chicks. "I hate the music, honey child, I'm just here to support my kids...now give us a quick shuftie of your bristols."

Who said romance was dead?

The (Sesa)Mean Streets...

2008-03-17T10:31:00.004Z

Oh Big Bird, you crazy yellow bastard, with your imaginary friends and effeminate ways, always annoying the crap out of old Mr Hooper. "Mr Looper, Mr Looper," you would go. And Mr Hooper would reply in his whiny gasping old guy voice, "HOO-per, HOO-per!" and we would laugh because he was old and soon to die.

But then he did die and we weren't laughing then, no sir. We were passed out drunk in the back yard. And when we regained consciousness, vowing never again to mix Crème de Menthe and Southern Comfort, Mr Hooper was gone, replaced behind the counter at Hooper's Store by David, who up to that point had always seemed friendly and helpful and nice. But suddenly with Mr Hooper gone and David in control of the Hooper Empire, Mr Hooper's demise seemed slightly sinister and somehow... convenient.
Then David disappeared for a while, possibly keeping his head down until the heat was off. But when he came back fat and smug and thinking he'd got away with it, Maria had hooked up with Luis from the Fix-it Shop. Perhaps losing Maria to the suave and swarthy Latino finally pushed Ol' Davie-boy over the edge. It has been rumoured that the actor playing David, Northern Calloway, died in a mental hospital in 1989, and we were told that David had moved away to live on his Grandmother's farm, presumably so that he could run around in her panties and masturbate into his own faeces.

When Mr Hooper died, the Sesame Street producers were very brave to deal with such a tv-taboo subject in such blunt and straight forward manner given the age of their core audience. They didn't sugar-coat it like they would today, and the grief of the other characters was open, genuine and palpable.

The decision to talk to kids about difficult subjects is not an easy one. Young children rationalise everything into terms of black and white. They don't like ambiguity and try to reduce everything into it's simplest terms. So how do you explain to your children things like pain and death, separation and divorce, intolerance and hypocrisy in a way that they can accept and understand without feeling patronised or frightened? In my experience, most times you can't. All you can do is be honest and don't try to deflect their questions. How you respond will determine how strong their coping mechanism will be when they have to deal with this stuff as they grow up, and shielding them from it now only makes it more painful later on. Kids are surprisingly resilient, and can adapt more readily than most adults, and people don't give them nearly enough credit.

There needs to be more death in contemporary childrens' television. In fact I can think of a bunch of childrens' tv personalities whom I would personally bump off. Murray from The Wiggles, I'm looking in your direction!

Where's the Cheese?

2008-03-14T12:02:00.005Z

Of the many casualties in the war for corporate fast-food supremacy, there are few so heroic as Mayor McCheese. The Mayor arrived on the political scene in the early 70's and for 20 years presided over McDonaldland with a firm yet high-cholesterol hand. But sometime in the early 90's, this be-monocled big-headed burger-meister disappeared from public life. No scandal, no trumped-up charges, no press release, no hoo-haa, nothing. Harold-Holt style, he simply sank beneath the cold relentless waves of the Zeitgeist ocean.

How could such an illustrious political dynamo vanish without a trace? Ever vigilant in my search for truth, I approached McDonalds for word on the Mayor's whereabouts. The response I received was predictably glib and smacked of a cover-up. I was not satisfied: I'd cruised up to the drive-through window of truth and ordered a piping hot value meal of answers, but all i received was a soggy grease-soaked bag of questions.

The US has a proud history of plotting to overthrow foreign governments: Guatemala '53, Cuba '61, Brazil '63, Chile '73. In each instance, the military attempted to overthrow the government with covert US support at the behest of some shadowy unknown figure. Thanks to my uncanny powers of assumption, I can declare the identity of the shadowy unknown who took down the valiant Mayor McCheese is none other than...Ronald McDonald! That's right, people, jealous of the Mayor's huge popularity rating in McDonaldland, Ronald marshalled his evil forces and led a ketchupy coup targetting the authoritative triumverate of police force (Officer Big Mac), judiciary (Captain Crook), and government (Mayor McCheese), and replaced them with his own people. He even gave the head of his secret police, Hamburglar, a makeover, turning him from a slippery deformed maniac into a cutesy smiling maniac. Those McArseholes!

The final step was an Orwellian rewrite of the history books to make it seem like things had always been this way and remove all trace of the Mayor's existence. The McDonald's internet site lists a bunch of trademarks owned by McDonalds and guess what? Mayor McCheese is not among them. Some interesting ones to note, however: Bolshoi Mac, Cajita Feliz, Changing the Face of the World, Cuarto De Libra. Is it just me, or does this smack of a bourgeois totalitarian authority with a sinister penchant for sticking it to the socialist anti-capitalist little guy? (incidentally, McDonalds has copyright on all of these phrases so don't even think about using them yourself).

Jokes aside, the McTruth is that McDonalds and the advertising agency responsible for creating Mayor McCheese and the entire McDonaldland campaign were sued in the 70's by Sid and Marty Krofft, creators of the bizarre and surreal kids show, HR Puffinstuff. Apparently, a court found that the agency ripped off the venerable HR by wrongfully appropriating the "total concept and feel" of the show and even went so far as to hire ex-Puffinstuff employees to design the costumes and sets. Ultimately, the Kroffts were awarded a large settlement and, presumably as a result of the court action, McDonalds were forced to stop using the misappropriated characters. Unfortunately, this left the world deprived of one of its most endearing burger-headed statesmen. Oh, the McHumanity!

For more of the McTruth, visit www.mcspotlight.org

Haiku du jour...No. 2...

2008-03-13T12:38:00.005Z

It’s hard to have hope
Drowning in a glass half-full
I need mouth-to-mouth

London ice cracks on a seamless line...He's hanging on for dear life...So we hold each other tightly...And hold on for tomorrow...

2008-03-10T10:37:00.008Z

Awright, geezahs?

I've moved into my new place and things are off to an awesome start. One of my new flatmates, Kerry, is on holidays in Oz for a few weeks so it's just me and Sarah for a while. I moved in on the Saturday and that night Sarah had a dinner party with a bunch of her mates to welcome me. And WHAT a dinner! For starters we had celeriac remoulade and parma ham on sourdough, followed by oven roasted duck legs on a bed of braised lentil and bacon with carrots, then flourless orange chocolate cake and a blue cheese board washed down with copious amounts of red wine. Oh my god! How sated was I? Bloody, is the answer to that question. I had the best night's sleep I've had in 7 months because there was no noise: no traffic, no drunks shouting, no teenagers fighting...brilliant! My room only comes with a bed so I've got to get some cheap furniture this weekend so out comes the magical Argos catalogue which weighs about a ton and contains every single product ever created in the history of human endeavour at low low prices. They don't even have a proper store, just a series of warehouses with a ticket machine out front and a dude who disappears for half an hour and gets your stuff. Picture the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark but with mountains of cheap crap instead of secret Nazi artifacts and you'll get the idea.

The East End is an interesting place. Got the whole jamais vue thing happening again as everything seems the same but is just slightly different. For instance, instead of the 47 bus heading north, I now get the 48 bus heading south. Instead of sitting next to a fat woman having phone sex with her boyfriend, I sat next to an angry teen fighting with his girlfriend and threating to "post up outside your school and stab you up, innit! Fuckin stab you up, tho! Fuksake." Ah, young love is so passionate...

The weather this weekend was positively fiendish. A severe icy wind blew in (they reckon up to 80mph) which just served to make the rain more stingy as it blew straight in your face. I managed to finally make it to the Natural History Museum to see the wildlife photographer of the year exhibition, which was really cool. Although I'm not sure what criteria the judges use in selecting a winner because in pretty much every case I thought the runner up was better. Maybe I'm just naturally contrary...or maybe not. They've got an awesome section on dinosaurs with massive skeletons of a brontosaurus and a tyrannosaurus setup all over the place but, being free, the place was swarming with families. Oh the stench! I'll have to go back at a time when they're not there, like just after the nuclear apocalypse.

Got a few work do's coming up. This week there's a big swanky conference dinner/drinkies thingy for my whole UK-based project team on Thursday, followed on Friday by a night of Lebowski-esque bowling at the All-Star Lanes. Then next week there's a team-building social gathering with my immediate project team and a public holiday on Friday and Monday, woot! The week after that there's an experienced hire gathering, so no doubt another night of too much wine and not enough canapes, surrounded by a fresh bunch of lost souls sniffing each others' bums and wondering what the hell they've gotten themselves into. Or maybe that's just me...

It's The Prodigal Child's birthday this week so everyone wish her a vicarious happy friggin' birthday for me. I'm super bummed that I can't make it over to be with her on the day. She's growing up so fast and it's times like these that I realise how much I'm missing out on by being over here. But what sort of deadbeat dad would I be if I was there for her whenever she needed me, huh? She'd grow up thinking she could rely on me and trust me and would never become the cynical self-reliant adult I always intended her to be. And we can't have that. Happy birthday, Chook! Daddy loves you...

Standing on the dark canal, by the gasworks...Celebrate the ghost gone by, when the love hurts...

2008-02-27T10:01:00.004Z

You'll all be pleased to know I've recovered from my girl-induced funk and am ready to face the world again. The kind words and friendly jibes and pro-bono counselling from the folks back home certainly did wonders for my self-esteem. But I'll tell you, nothing makes you realise your own self worth like a drunken snog with a married woman at 3am in a seedy bar in Shoreditch (which from now on will be known as Fo'Sho'Ditch).

It was a bumper week for moochers last week. I won a free double pass to a private viewing of the Ducamp, Man Ray and Picabia exhibition at the Tate Museum on Tuesday. They were a bunch of artist friends who hung out in Paris a lot in the early 1900's and inspired each others' art with in-jokes and the desire to subvert existing art forms by combining and defiling them, like using garish colours in a cubist painting...blasphemy! They were interested in ideas and were jaded with the existing forms of art so together they created the Dadaist movement, which is basically an absurdist art form and allows you to do pretty much whatever you want. Barry Humphries was a Dadaist in his early life and you could argue that Dame Edna Everidge is the most enduring creative symbol of that genre. Man Ray was principaly a photographer and he invented solarisation and rayograms, and he was also part of the Paris writers group who created surrealism. The art itself was interesting but I have a love-hate thing going with most abstract expressionism and most of the time I just don't get it. I've seen some of Man Ray's sculptures in other surrealism exhibitions, but Duchamp's "layer" paintings were probably the highlight.

I also blagged a free pass to a screening of 'Edge of Heaven', a film about Turkish people living in Germany. I went there straight after work so I was wearing my square bear clothes which, combined with the loud crunching from my enormous packet of Sainsbury's cheese and onion crisps, earned me scornful glances from my cinema-going comrades. What, I can't like arthouse AND crisps? Just because your arms were too full of berets and Fellini posters and espresso machines and ironic cardigans that you couldn't get it together to bring some snacks don't be staring at me, Artschool! I'll come at'cha! Like a shark with knees! And let's not forget that we're ALL here because we got free tickets, you tight-arse artschool fuckstick moochers...

It's interesting the effect that non-mainstream cinema can have on you. We're conditioned to crave the predictable Pavlovian emotional payoff that Western cimena provides, so when you see a film that eschews it you're left in some bizarre Quantum state of unfulfillment and fulfillment: you want the payoff but you're pleased to have been taken somewhere you didn't expect. Sometimes when you're exposed to a culture you've never seen before, you realise how similar we all are in our reactions when things go wrong. Sometimes when you're forced to witness someone else's pain and the stoicism with which they endure it, you realise you don't really have that much to complain about and a broken heart is a conceit. Sometimes when you think you know everything there is to know about yourself, you realise you're more of a stranger to yourself than are the dozens of people sitting around you. And sometimes you realise that the reason they give away free tickets to arthouse cinema is because it's a great steaming pile of tedious meandering horse shit.

I've decided to look for somewhere else to live. I can no longer do without an internet connection at home and after repeated denials from the landlord to put a phone line in I'm voting with my feet. Plus I've been in the south east for 5 months now so I feel it's time to explore other areas of London and see what they have to offer. Plus, even though the house is great, the rent is pretty steep for what we're getting. I'll miss the cast of High School Musical but it's not like I'm moving to the other side of the world or anything.

Fast-breaking news! I got the good news last night that I've got a new place to live. It's with a couple of lovely aussie girls up north near Clapton Pond. The house is pretty nice in a quiet tree-lined street and I get a balcony overlooking the backyard. It'll be nice to have a few less personalities to deal with and a whole new area to explore. It's in the East End right next to Fo'Sho'Ditch which used to be a bit of a dodgy area, so I'm told. But there's a lot of "urban renewal" going on so there's plenty of trendy bars and cafes and such filled with pretentious cool kids for me to mock and complain about. Have to get my skates on as I want to move this weekend. So exciting!

Anyhoo, that's all for now. Hope you're all thriving in Kevvie Land. Ruddslide!

When the world falls apart, some things stay in place...Levi Stubbs' tears run down his face...

2008-02-20T16:59:00.005Z

I've been breaking the theme a little bit over the past few days as I struggle to deal with why girls are so horrible and smelly. When you're pondering your reflection at the bottom of a deep dark well, sometimes you lean over a little too far and fall in. It took me a while to climb back out but when I got to the top, my old friend Mr Cheapwine was waiting for me with his gleaming self-pity mobile and we took a short fast trip back to the Land of Cold and Dead Inside. Funny, the trip didn't take nearly as long as it did last time...

Gradually I've worked my way through the five phases of grief: junk food, cheap wine, chocolate, crying, and wiping your snotty nose on your flatmate's dressing gown, and am almost back to my former cynical and astringent self.

It's times like these when you realise who your true friends are and why they're your friends in the first place. Special thanks to my flatmates Chloe and Luisa for providing the dressing gown and chocolate, respectively. Super special thanks to Libby and Sarah for being my inspirational desktop calendars and giving my self-esteem a swift kick up the arse. And extra super special thanks to Pauly for igniting a flame war in the blogosphere in defence of my balls. Not only is he a true mate but a paragon of all that is Belco Metal.

I started a new role recently on an internal project. I'm the functional architect for a reporting and metrics application, which is a whole new and interesting world. Having the typical feelings of self-doubt and being out of my depth that you get when taking on something new. Fans of the Far Side strip will remember the giant cockroach lying in an alley talking to a bum saying: "I had it all: great job, great car, money, success, beautiful wife. Then one day someone shouted, 'Hey! He's just a big cockroach!'". One sympathises...

The good thing is I get to go to India in a couple of weeks to meet our off-shore development team and try and convince them to respect me and let me wreck their beloved application that they've been building for the past 2 years. The Seagull strikes again! I've heard some horror stories about what life is like over there so be prepared for some exciting tales upon my return...or perhaps 'should' I return.

Hope to have some good news to report soon...

The cruellest thing that I've ever known...Time and circumstance taking their toll...As the storm beat and roll...

2008-02-19T12:10:00.006Z

The cruellest thing that someone can do is not to call you names. It’s not to laugh at you. It’s not to hit you and make you bleed. It’s not to hate you and it’s not even to pity you. The cruellest thing that someone can do is give you hope.

Hope is the rarest and most precious of emotions, even more so than love. Love can be bought, love can be sold. Love can be made and love can be faked.

But hope can’t be manufactured and it can’t exist in a void. You can’t give yourself hope, someone else has to give it to you. But then you’ve fallen in to the trap because you live the rest of your life in fear that they’ll take it away.

Because, like any other curse, only the person that gave it to you can take it away...

Haiku du jour...No. 1...

2008-02-18T11:13:00.003Z

No calculator
And I ran out of fingers
Counting broken hearts

I never thought it would happen, with me and the girl from Clapham...Out on a windy common, that night I aint forgotten...

2008-02-12T12:20:00.005Z

People often ask me about my tattoo and what it means but, unless you're Paul or Azza, "Belco metal" just doesn't paint a very vivid picture. So for those of you unlucky enough not to be 'Live from the One-Five', perhaps this will help you:

First off, the tattoo itself is representative of two things: Belconnen (Belco) and metal (heavy metal music). These two things together describe my roots, where I came from, where I grew up, and the sort of crowd I hung with and the music we listened to. My tatt consists of two sets of numbers - 2615 and 666 - arranged in a cross with a kick-arse demon skull looming over them. Why? Because nothing says Belco more than '2615' and nothing says metal more than '666'. The kick-arse demon skull speakes for itself and was supposed to win me the title of best Belco metal tatt as per the drunken pact Paul, Azza and I made in the Basement bar just prior to me coming to the UK. But, predictably, the other two piked out cos they're homos and not nearly as metal as they make themselves out to be. Which is just as well for them cos there's no way they could have topped me and they know it.

So what does it mean to be Belco metal? Well, unfortunately, unless you're One-Five by birth you just won't get it. But here's a few examples:

Getting a Belco metal tatt;

Getting pissed at the Basement bar listening to Rake Sodomy;

Doing a piss off the red bridge at Belco Mall at 3am after listening to Rake Sodomy at the Basement;

Wearing band t-shirts that young dudes have never heard of like Iron Maiden, Helmet, Carcass, and Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine;

Having the same name as the lead guitarist of WASP.

Coincidentally, these are all of the things that Paul, Azza and myself did the last time we went to the Basement bar at Xmas time. That just goes to show how friggin' Belco metal we are...albeit some of us more than others.

Strangely enough, there's a sheet metal fabrication company called Belco Metal so I guess if you work for them you can qualify but only on a technicality.

Looks like Spring may have arrived. The weather on the weekend was absolutely gorgeous, which lent even the most mundane of activities a pleasant edge...

On Saturday I blagged free tickets to a screening of a documentary about photographer Annie Leibovitz at the Institute of Contemparary Arts. It was really interesting, if a little shallow, but it was shot by her sister who I gather is not a professional doco maker so you can excuse it for being more complimentary than in-depth. More that anything else it let her work speak for itself. Which was a good thing because she's a remarkable artist and I had no idea how iconic her images are. I've seen dozens of them over the years and had no idea they were hers. I find her covers a little contrived and stage managed, to be honest, but her real work is incredible. In a world where so many people take endless photographs of shit that's simply around them, it's so amazing to see a talented artist using her tools to show you the beauty in what she sees.

On Sunday there were Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar and Leicester Squares. I missed the parade down the Strand at 11am (cos I was tucked up in bed eating Vegemite toast and drinking coffee straight from my new one cup Bodum) which turned out to be a good thing because by the time I got there the rest of London had already arrived. I know I tend to go on and on about the teeming hordes of people in this city but everything I said up until now has been an understatement. You would not believe the number of people who showed up, crowding and jostling and fighting for a spot miles away from the stage where robot children in garish costumes traipsed and capered about for our amusement. I was sadly disappointed with the calibre of the event as it felt very bland and commercial. Even in Chinatown there was no sense of the real China in any of it, simply something they'd turned on to please the tourists. It was filtered down and tatty and soulless, like something designed by a committee: London's concept of China's idea of London's version of the Chinese New Year in London. All in all a disappointment, mainly due to the selfish and insensitive attitude of locals and the mob mentality of the tourist crowd. For two hours I fought my way through a gauntlet of elbows and howling brats; pretty eurotrash with their tight jeans, big sunglasses and ridiculous hairdos; overweight Americans with their logo-festooned spray jackets and inability to read a map; loud drunken neo-Aussies with their 'I live in LONDON now so I don't have to acknowledge you cos I'm rool fuken classy' attitude; haughty Londoners with their endless tisking and 'we don't DO that in this country' bigotry. So pretty much your typical weekend in central London, really. But the firecrackers were awesome!

Monday night saw me treking over to the Hammersmith Apollo to see Queens of the Stoneage. I bought the tickets months ago so I've been hanging out for this show for such a long time. And the best part was I didn't have to go in Nigel No-Friends mode thanks to Sarah "The Manski" Safranski who put me in touch with her good buddy DJ Lou Reeves who, despite her appalling lack of knowledge about kick-arse rawk music, proved to be a most adventurous and entertaining companion. Regretably, the show itself was something of a disappointment, but exactly why I can't quite put my finger on. The song choice was a not entirely what I would have liked to hear and technically the guys were all in top form (although Josh totally borked the solo in "Little Sister"). Perhaps they're suffering a little from George Lucas Syndrome in that when you're at the top of your game you don't have anything left to prove so some of the fire goes out of it. Overall it just came off as a bit like they were going through the motions rather than truly rockin'. The major highlight of the night for me, though, was the drummer. Two words: Dave Friggin' Grohl! The guy is a monster. If anyone wondered what happened to Animal after the Muppet Show wrapped up and The Electric Teeth went their separate ways, well I can tell you that he went on a 3 week booze and barbituate bender culminating in a hideous gargling death drowning in his own vomit whereupon his spirit rose up and possessed the body of Dave Grohl. The guys arms are like massive industrial cables and he's got new tatts all over his shoulders and pecs and he plays the drums like he's trying to kill them.

Fortunately, I was able to conduct a little surreptitious reseach while I was there to further my thesis about Maynard's Constant which posits that no matter what type of music you like, everyone likes Tool.

I've just been offered a new role, which I've accepted, with an internal project. Not sure what the work will entail but there's a possibility of some travel to India which is exciting. Good, then, that on my second day I was 2 hours late cos our boiler broke down on one of the coldest mornings this Winter and after the repair men finally did their thing I managed to get on the wrong bus and only noticed when the driver kicked me off at Catford Bus Garage cos I was too busy reading my book. Siiiiigh...

Anyhoo, there's new photos to peruse which you can access via the links on my blog. I hate that term: blog. Why can't it just be a diary or a journal? Blog sounds like something you excrete after a night on the curry and lager. Hope you're all well...

Towers of London...when they had built you...did you watch over the men who fell?

2008-02-05T12:03:00.001Z

I've been trying to find a website which would allow me to have all these diary entries and all the accompanying photos in the one place. So far I haven't found anything which works quite the way I want it to and I couldn't be arsed coding something in html. So for those of you who've missed any of my previous missives (or are just dying to read them again) and have links to the latest piccies, I've created a blog where you can see the lot. Check it out at http://blindphineas.blogspot.com/. Can you dig it? I knew that you could. Of course, if you're reading this then you already knew it was here...how existensh!

On Saturday night my flatmate Chloe had birthday drinks at this place called Verve in Covent Gardens. There was a bunch of her gal pals and some work friends and her 3 cool flatmates. It was nice to see her having a good time but I felt so out of place, as one tends to do when one finds one's self in a nightclub at 36 surrounded by hordes of bright young things drawing in attention like they had their own graviational pull. Whereas I'm more like dark matter: there's a theory I exist but no one can actually see me.

On Sunday I went to the 62nd annual Clown Mass at Holy Trinity Church. Every year a bunch of clowns get together to commemorate the memory of Joseph Grimaldi, the father of modern clowning. It was held in this little church in East London near Highbury and Islington and was pretty much your standard church service with prayers and hymns and blessings and all that palaver, but the place was full of clowns doing skits and frightening children, and paparazzi clogging the aisles and clambering all over each other and frightening everybody. All in all it was quite a surreal affair. I sat at the back next to this lovely lady called Elizabeth who is a painter and was hoping to get some inspirational shots for her next series of works. We talked about how evil clowns are and giggled and joked through the whole thing and she even forced me to stand and sing the hymns. Me! The poster child for cynical secular aethist jerk-offs everywhere. Is there no end to the blasphemey? Most of the clowns were horrid old white guys but there was this awesome hot chick clown who caused my bow tie to spin around, let me tell you. But it would never have worked between us as I'd be too scared to go down on her cos her vajootz is most likely full of confetti or an endless string of hankies or something.

For those of you who don't know who Joseph Grimaldi is, check out the previous post to this one called "Send in the Clowns" where I've reposted an article I wrote about him for argus, that awesome lefty Canberra street mag, years and years and years ago.

I saw this contortionist street performer the other day, which got me thinking. When I see a guy contorting and bent over double and all that with his feet locked behind his head, I don't see a breath-taking marvel of athletisism and flexibility. All I see is a bloke who's sucked his own cock. We've all tried it, fellas...but this guy's living the dream! Right about now you girls are all looking at your men folk and going, "Have YOU tried it?" and the blokes are all staring wistfully off into the distance going, "Oh...no, no, no...no. Siiiiigh." Yes, ladies, we've ALL tried. Tried and failed. That's what we're ashamed of: the failure...not the perviness.

I'm starting to feel somewhat at home these days, I guess. Now that there's something of a routine and familiarity in my surroundings. But it's the litte differences that catch you out, the things that should be familiar but are just a bit off. The sensation is called jamais vu, which is the opposite of deja vu, and it's when familiar things seem strange or foreign. For instance, when you go to buy a packet of potato chips all the colours are wrong. Plain is red, salt and vinegar is blue, bacon is pink, cheese and onion is green. It's a world gone topsy-turvy!

I've worked very hard not to pick up the London-Aussie accent cos it just sounds so pretentious and lame, but whenever I think to myself or have a moment's inner reflection, the voice in my head has a really trashy low-rent english accent, cor blimey, you big fat limey, that's a bit risky, have a drink of whiskey.

Next Monday night Queens of the Stoneage are playing the Hammersmith Apollo, which is gonna rawk! I just missed seeing them before I left to come over here so I feel like I'm getting some closure on that one.

Anyhoo, hope you're all well and over the shock of realising it's 2008. Feel free to write back to me sometime, anytime. It's like Civic on a Sunday out there. Check out the blog and the links to all the new piccies...

Send in the Clowns...

2008-02-05T11:06:00.000Z

"What are you afraid of?"

Ask someone that question and I bet spiders or clowns make the top three (in reality for us men it's vaginas and being caught masturbating, but we'll never admit to either of them). For me, hands down, it's clowns. They freak me out. About the only thing scarier than a clown would be a giant spider in a clown suit, and even then it's a toss up.

The official term for my phobia is coulrophobia. Luckily, I didn't get one of the weird ones like arachibutyrophobia (peanut butter), kolpophobia (genitals), or lutraphobia (otters).

Why are clowns so creepy? It's ironic and sad that a profession epitomising selflessness, devoted to making people laugh at its own expense, could inspire such dread in its audience. Once, when I was five, I went to the circus with my family. A clown was capering aroundthe ring like a bumbling grease-paint dervish and happened to fall down right in front of me. Of course, being a small boy, I pointed and laughed at his misfortune. The clown leapt up, grabbed my legs and started dragging me over the barricade. I was terrified! I dropped my popcorn, spilled my coke, and pissed my pants. I screamed at my parents to help me, but they just laughed. The whole tent was staring, gawking, laughing at me. My pants ripped, my legs bled and I honestly thought I was being dragged to my death. But then, as suddenly as it had started, the nightmare was over. The clown let go and bumbled off to torment some other fragile eggshell mind.

I was hysterical. I cried and demanded we leave, earning me the scorn of my entire family for years.

What goes on in the mind of a man who wears make up? Apologies to the sisterhood, but in my bigoted ignorance (bignorance?) I've never encountered a female clown. In fairness, not all my childhood clownish encounters were bad, but that one horrible incident was enough to sour the whole thing from that point on. One bad egg, perhaps?

Before the days of photography , clowns would paint their face makeup onto eggs as a form of copyright. One such egg bears the face of Joseph Grimaldi, the so-called "Father of Modern Clowning", held to be the progenitor of circus clowns. As with many early clowns, Grimaldi's life was full of misery, in stark contrast to his merry public persona. Clowns are obliged to make us laugh, even when fettered with the misery accompanying any human life. Grimaldi's sadistic eccentric father died when Grimaldi was ten. His son died at thirty from a mental breakdown and alcoholism, and his second wife from a long illness. Grimaldi himself was rendered crippled from poor health and the exertions of his craft and conducted the last of his performances from a chair. Could the tragic life of this "Michaelangelo of buffoonery" have laid some taint upon the lives of his successors? Is his the one bad egg that spoiled the whole bunch? Did the pathos of Grimaldi's life trigger some karmic bozo backlash that has soured the image of clowns ever since?

Here's a joke for you: "My girlfriend wanted me to f*ck her silly. So I wore a clown suit." Now, I'm a funny guy (ask any of my sycophantic friends) but I just don't find that funny. And anyone who does is either a clown or a sicko. Either way I don't want to know you.

* Originally published in argus, Issue 10, www.argusonline.com.au

The greatest Irish joke in the history of the world...

2008-02-01T17:00:00.001Z

I thought of this when I was in Ireland and all my Irish friends claim it's not funny but they're just jealous because not only did an Australian come up with the greatest Irish joke in the history of the world, but I also managed to learn a word in their screwy language...

"So I was down at Dublin Castle there the other day and I bumped into your man Bertie Ahearn. I was carrying a bottle of water and I spilled it down the front of his shirt. "Ah jays howrya, Bernie," I quipped. "I guess now we can have a wet Taoiseach competition."

Ba-da boom tish! It's even funnier if you do it in an Irish accent...

Took a tube to Camden Town...walked down Parkway, and settled down...in the shade of a willow tree...someone hovering over me...

2008-01-28T10:49:00.002Z

London's a funny old town. It's go so much going for it and so much rich history but you still get this impression that Londoners are teetering on the brink of an inferiority complex. There seems to be the barest whisper of a hint of an echo of a sense of imperialist shame over losing control of the world, but it's masked with bluff and blunder and the stiff upper lip. Like the Americans, there's a touch of arrogance when they talk of England being the greatest country on earth, but unlike the Americans (who genuinely believe their own bullshit) the Brits are trying very hard to believe, but they don't seem too sure; it's like they're trying to convince themselves more so than everybody else. There's a lot of hype and hubris and misplaced priorities, and overlaying it all this annoying veneer of politeness and dignity and 'being proper'. Take the weather for example: when I first arrived everyone tried to frighten me with all this doom and gloom about the English winter and how I'd better get a woolly coat because I was in for a shock. Well, we've passed through the depths of winter and here I am still waiting for the shock. 3 degrees? You call that cold? I'm from Canberra, buddy, don't talk to me about cold...my arse gets colder than that before a prostate exam!

One thing I've noticed about London is you don't get a lot of street performers. Occasionally you see the odd circus troupe or barbershop quartet or bazookie player but they're usually part of some bourgeois marketing promotion rather than simply plying their trade for a few bob to get a bit of tuck. The Underground (by that I mean the subway systen, not the plucky band of revolutionary freedom fighters plotting to overthrow the Guv) have a programme where they let musicians set up in the tunnels between platforms but they choose the blandest, most commercial performers they can find and the acoustics in there are just attrocious so it just turns into a clamourous cringe fest. Any money they make is less a reflection of their talent and more a plea to shut the feck up. It seems the humble busker went the way of the trade unionist back in the days of Thatch, more's the pity. Art shouldn't be planned or sponsored otherwise it becomes yet another commodity; it should be impromptu and egalitarian.

Something I did see on the street which amused me greatly was a protest outside one of the major supermarkets. Now which of the many deserving causes afflicting the world today did the good people of London brave the bitter biting cold to raise awareness among the hoi paloi, you ask? War? Famine? Discrimination? Drugs? Oil? Nope. This particular protest was about foie grois. That's right, goose liver pate. They had some dude dressed up like a goose (literally), parading up an down and proclaiming the "horrors" of the "barbaric" practice of forcing geese to drink brandy or whatever it is they do. You call that barbaric? I wish the biggest problem I had was that someone was making me drink brandy when I didn't really want to:

"Another snifter, Mr Goose?"
"No, no, I really couldn't...hawnk!"
"Oh go on, you've earned it."
"Really, I've had far too much already...hawnk!"
"Come now, there's no such thing as too much brandy."
"Oh alright, if you insist. But I'm going to regret this in the morning...hawnk!"

Yeah, there's an issue sorely in need of redress. Bloody hippies. It was enough to make me gag on my foie grois smoothie.

I don't mean to sound superficial, but I'm going to anyway. Here at The Company they don't employ very many fat ugly people, but the ones they do are REALLY fat and REALLY ugly. I'm talking Guinness Book of Records fat and Ripley's Believe it or Not ugly. Now before you go getting all filled up with self-righteous indignation, I'm not claiming to be any sort of hot piece of crumpet myself. I fully cognisant of my status as a resident of that vast beige-coloured middle ground between neither particularly attractive nor particularly unattractive. But I know I'm not ugly because I called my mum and I asked her, "Mum? Am I good looking?" and after a few minutes silence she replied, "Well...you're not ugly." Then we made out. Oh wait, that was Paul's mum!

On the weekend the weather was sunny so I took a stroll along the river over to the Greenwich markets, which are pretty cool. Lots of hand-made jewellery and t-shirts and art and crap you want but don't need and the whole place reeks of pungent rainforest food and curries. Then I walked up Shooters Hill which stretches for miles and overlooks the village of Blackheath. As you would expect, as soon as the sun comes out any open space in London immediately fills with people. But it wasn't so bad as there was lots of space and people were flying kites, so even a flinty-hearted jerkoff like me could get lost in the whimsy. There were also some dudes with those bitchin' big sail kites attached to go-karts hooning around the place knocking over old ladies and making the kiddies drop their ice creams in fright. Well, in my mind they were...

The London Dungeon, potentially London's lamest tourist attraction, is advertising a couple of new attractions in February. One is the London Bridge Experience which goes through the spooky history of the bridge, woooooh!, and the other is the London Tombs which is billed as "probably europe's scariest attraction". In a land where even the most mediocre experience is hailed as a masterpiece before it's even released, you've got to be a little dubious when the best they can come up with is "probably". Needless to say, I'll be going along to both in order to scoff and complain and basically blend in with all the English people.

How's that about Heath Ledger? I hate to sound callous, but do you reckon it was maybe a publicity stunt for the new Batman movie? Like he was trying to prove to Jack Nicholson that his joker was way more insane? Probly not...

I managed to take some more photographs but somehow got my data transfer cables mixed up and while attempting to ram a large plug into a small socket (not the first time that's happened, eh, ooh err!) I managed to completely bork the data port. So until I can get it fixed you'll all just have to make do with mental pictures of me capering about the english countryside quaffing snifters of cognac with Mr Goose.

Be good y'all...

They’re hanging tough in a soho bar...Playing guitars in the underground...Gone down to london tryin’ to chase that sound...

2008-01-16T11:06:00.002Z

So here I am back in Old Blighty and wondering where the time went. Hard to believe I was away in Oz for a whole month and even harder to believe that the weather back here could have gotten any worse than when I left.

My time away was awesome and I had such a relaxing and fun holiday. Special thanks to Pauly and the McGraths for putting me up (and putting up with me). It was so great to just hang out and not have to worry about doing anything or being anywhere and it really made me realise how much I miss all of youse...absence makes the heart Jane Fonda, and all that.

There've been quite a few interesting developments since I've been away...

They've closed the Tube station just near my house to make the East London line part of the Overground network and it won't reopen until 2010! That means I have to walk and extra 10 minutes in the rain each day to get to Canada Water station. The only saving grace (and it's a small one) is that Canada Water station, along with 3 or 4 others, has been remodelled as part of an urban art project along the lines of the subterranian world of the Morlocks from Jules Verne's 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth'. It's very industrial with lots of grey metal and bare concrete and exposed pipes and beams and chains and gratings and steel floor plates and big spotlights stuff. It's all rather cool and adventurous and makes a real change from the usual banality and blandness of corporate or community art that gets excreted about the place.

There's all sorts of juicy brewings at home. The two girls who were chummy and were making life awful for the rest of us have had a HUGE falling out. It started out with just not talking and the odd bitchy remark but last night it exploded into an almighty catfight on the stairs. There was shouting and yelling and swearing and fast-talking and everything. It was awesome! Apparently the catalyst was one of the girls ate some of the other girls food and didn't replace it or offer to pay for it. They started having this low-level barney about that but it developed into a massive slag off where they were bringing up stuff from 5 years ago and threatening to tell each other's families all the secrets they'd been keeping from them. I'm not sure what's going to happen but I think it's going to be pretty frosty from now on until one, or both, of them moves out. They've both recently lost their jobs so I can't imagine it'll be too long before they can't pay rent. Who needs TV!

Typically balanced weekend weather-wise: sunny and cold one day, rainy and freezing the next. On Saturday I headed back to Greenwich and walked through the Greenwich tunnel. It's foot tunnel which goes under the Thames from the Cutty Sark to the Isle of Dogs, right in the heart of the zombie exclusion zone. Frankly I was a little underwhelmed. I had visions of an ardurous trek through a dank lightless cavern, stumbling over rubble and the bodies of fat american tourists curled in the fetal position gibbering and waiting to die. I mercy kill a few of them but there's just so damn many and I'm a lazy lazy man. But in reality it was a 5-minute walk through a well-lit, white-tiled passage way and the only trace of ardure was the spiral staircase at each end and the hordes of screaming kids running up and down. Admitedly, the place is in a state of disrepair with large sections of tiling fallen away from the roof exposing the rusted support beams; a trenchant reminder of the incredibly massive weight of water sitting just metres over my head, and I imagined I could hear a slight creaking and groaning as the corroded metal strained against the inevitable clamity to come. I looked at the smiling faces of the children and laughed quietly to myself as I imagined them crushed and drowned beneath the torrents of filthy Thames that were soon to cascade upon us. But, predictably, that didn't happen so I went and got some hot chips instead.

Work-wise it's been hard getting back into the swing of things. The D-Net project winds up soon and I've got a couple of options for my next one, but the one I'm most excited about is with Microsoft in Seattle. I'm not confident of my chances as us UK folk are more expensive than our US counterparts, but they're having trouble getting people so you never know. It would be a great chance to test the waters, as it were, and give me a chance to work in the States without having to move there permanently.

I went off to the moofies on Monday night after blagging free tickets to the opening night of the Coen Brother's new film, No Country for Old men. It's about the consequences that follow on from a dude who stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and steals $2 million bucks and is then pursued by a horribly creepy assassin with a bad haircut who is in turn pursued by a tired but wise old sherrif. As you would imagine it's a very intelligent and poetic movie, with scenes of almost aching subtlety and calm punctuated by moments of intense and hideous violence. There's themes of fate and chance and some excellent performances, particularly by the spanish guy who plays the assassin. The critics have hailed it as supposedly their best work, and don't get me wrong it was a great film, but I still think Lebowski and Fargo are still their best films. But hey, it was free, right, and it was my first time in the cinema just down the road at the local Surrey Quays shopping centre, or "Suckeys" as I like to call it. My ticket was a two-fer so I tried to convince the fat homeless guy who hangs out the front of Tescos and makes farty noises with his humungous lips to join me but he had a better offer.

Anyhoo, happy new year to y'all. Check out the new photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/blind.phineas, and here's to many more adventures for all of us in '08.

Taxi light shines so bright, But I don't need no friends...As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset, I am in paradise...

2007-12-03T11:12:00.001Z

Went to a work 'do' the other night, which was actually pretty cool. I've found since I started complaining that us experienced hires are left to fend for ourselves and aren't being assimilated into the Borg collective, they invite me to more and more swanky functions in a blatant attempt to buy my loyalty and my silence with free booze and canapes. Well it MIGHT work, I tell ya! We went to the Tate Britain museum (not the Tate Modern, which I went to first and yelled at a security guard who was giving me 'tude) and had a private viewing of the Turner Art Prize retrospective. It had all the winners of the Turner prize over the past 25 years including Gilbert and George (those mad scatalogical gay pervert dudes) and Damian Hurst's 'Mother and Child' which is a cow and a calf cut in half and preserved in tanks of, err, preservative. You can walk right in between the bodies and see all the internal organs. It's an immensely disturbing and powerful piece...like it or hate it, you can't help but be affected by it. Sadly, the rest of the stuff wasn't nearly as impressive. I grossed out one of my vegetarian collegues by suggesting they sell little miniature versions of the Hurst piece in the gift shop to put on your coffee table at home. So then it was down to the serious business of consuming lots of free booze and eating lots of delicious canapes. The waiting staff were very professional and worked out quite quickly to maintain a tight circle around me and never stray too far.

It was a cold and rainy night on Friday when I treked my way up North to Wembley to see Bill Bailey. But it was totally worth it! Bill was awesome, as per usual. Bouncing around like a comedic pinball between staggering intellectual soliloquay and bizarre surrealist rantings, punctuated by awesome musical interludes. The two highlighs of the show would have to be when he jammed with the Bollywood Bandits to "Duelling Sitars" ala Deliverance; and his encore of the "Mr Duck Lies Shredded on a Pancake, Drowning in the Hoi Sin of Your Lies" song from his previous show Part Troll. That's such an awesome song. I had really crap seats right up the back but there were huge screens behind the stage so you got to see everything. The man's a genius!

Our work Xmas party is on Friday night and I fly out to Kevie Land on the Sunday. I can't wait! I'm super pumped, it's gonna be wicked sweet, it's gonna be awesome! So this is probably the last you'll hear from me electronically. Next time you ingest my mighty words of wisdom I'll be standing right there...close enough to touch...do you wanna touch me? Yeah, you do. Go on...touch me...it's ok, it's ok to like it...

Peace out, ya'all!

I’m lonely in London...London is lovely so...I cross the streets without fear...Everybody keeps the way clear...

2007-11-26T11:14:00.001Z

Oh how sweet it is! Not just a defeat for Howard but a HUMILIATING defeat for Howard. You reap what you sow, mutha fuckah! I never thought it would give me some much pleasure to see so much contrition on the faces of so many smug pricks: Costello, Abbot, Downer, Nelson, Turnball, Brough. Boo hoo, too bad so sad...in your FACE, you private school lick-spittles! IN YOUR FACE!

So it's a little under two weeks before I arrive for my whirlwind tour. Everybody getting excited? I know a few of you are...yeah, that's right...I'm talking to you! I can't wait to finally feel the warm kiss of the antipodean sun on my pasty white skin. Seriously, I'm so white I look like dog poo from the 70's. I fly in to Sydney in the early hours of Monday 10th December. I'm getting the bus because SOMEONE reneged on their offer of coming to get me from the airport (didn't they, Lubey?) so I'll be arriving in Canberra about 12. Just in time for a snitty
and a Stella at the Arrie, eh lads? Eh? EH? Maybe Azza will let me touch his mo...

I'll be in town for about a month. I'm spending the first two weeks hanging out with the kids and then two weeks hanging out wit'chall. So put your orders in now cos I'm expecting lots of dinner invites in exchange for stories about my glamourous life abroad. Don't wait for me to come at you with a proposed time, just throw your dates at me (ooh err!) and I'll put 'em in the tour diary.

Quiet weekend, nothing to report. I cleaned the bathroom. Weather was cold and chilly which made walking about tres unpleasantique. I stumbled in from the cold Sunday night to find my flatmates (the nice ones) cooking up a roast chicken dinner and they'd even made some for me. Awwww! How cool is that? I'm cooking lasagne for them all next weekend and will even go all out and make garlic bread from scratch (yes, I know how). I'm adding leeks to the lasagne so that Luisa (the welsh-italian girl) will feel right at home.

I can't believe that as of yesterday, I've been away for 4 months. It feels like so much has changed in that time, I'm coming back to a different place than I left. Kind of like that guy in that film who went into space and the thing happened and he came back to earth and everything was all, ya know...you know the one...Ghostbusters.
Speaking of Ghostbusters, we've got our work Xmas do on Friday week and there's a fancy dress theme to it. One of the developers is trying to convince the rest of us to go as Ghostbusters because he's had this life-long dream of dressing up as Slimer. I'm all for going as Reservoir Dogs cos you just have to wear a black suit and if you spill anything on your shirt you can just say you're Mr Orange. It's a high-class swanky do at a fancy pants hotel and The Company pays for the lot, so needless to say I'm predicting a good chance of things getting "wey hey!" Thankfully I've got a full day to recover before I have to fly out for Oz.

Anyhoo, enough for now. Hope you're all well and getting excited about the impending arrival of you-know-who (no, not Santa or Voldemort...ME!).