Sniffles!

I'm feeling just a little snotty and gross.

I blame the ever shifting UK weather.

Although, since getting the bar-bells I have really been observing the 'Workout One Day, rest one day' rule, and a sniffle might be the way my body is reminding me to allow adequate recovery time.

Whatever. I'll just throw vitamins down my throat and see what happens.

Other news: Instead of walking into the living room and turning on the TV, I'm trying to get into the habit of throwing on a CD instead.

The idea is that having music playing might inspire me to be more creative, while the Lobotomy-box does the opposite.

Although tonight I don't know whether I feel like busting out the laptop and making some music or going to the library and finding some interesting books.

There is a really go show on Channel 4 on Thursday Nights called House, a medical Black Comedy with Hugh Laurie, playing an American Doctor in the titular role.

Hugh Laurie actually looks scruffy and world weary in it, something I wouldn't have believed possible.

It is a really good show and I reckon my Dad would love it.

Then again, I thought that he would like Scrubs.

...

Tomorrow I make more calls to my agencies to get work.

And e-mail people.

And stuff.

I worry that if I don't get a great job before I use my return ticket, I won't be allowed to come back.

Worrying's not going to help.

Getting a job is.

J

And so forth and so on:

To continue yesterdays blog:

after doing washing, getting food, writing blogs and stuff, I have no idea what I did.

Apart from watch TV too late and stuff.

No, now I remember: I splashed out and bought some bar-bells from the surly bastard behind the counter at the Gymnasium on Leytonstone High Road (what is it about being huge that makes some people think it's okay to be a surly smart-arse?)

I carried them home (a task in itself) and did some reps.

I'm determined to get back into some kind of shape after the deterioration of my physique was driven home to me by having to carry stuff on Friday and Monday.

Did some skipping this morning as well.

Today:

Took the tube to town, listened to Cult of Luna on my iPod and alternated between reading The Motocycle Diaries and watching an older woman knitting a doilly. You see some unusual stuff on the tube sometimes.

The plan was to go to a Gap shop and check out some Boot Cut Jeans, since I get the feeling that my straight legged blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up mark me as Dated, or A Tourist, or both.

So I wandered down Oxford Street, looking at the jeans of all that I passed.

I wondered whether boot cut jeans will go with my haircut (really short right now, not in the least fashionable and ever thinning (sniff!)).

I stopped in at a Gap Shop and looked at the jeans, but I couldn't find any the right lenght for my waist and vice versa. Do Gap believe that all males should be six feet tall and weigh 70 kilos?

You don't seem to roll up boot cut jeans, so do you have to cut them? do they take them up instore? Does it matter if you buy a pair that is too long for you?

Questions questions questions.

I was feeling tired and badly in need of a wazz, and none of the staff felt like talking to me, so I decided to shove it onto the back burner and go buy some magazines instead.

In Borders I saw a man wearing some drainpipe jeans, and promptly asked him where he had bought them. He told me that his friend, a fashion designer, had made them for him.

Rats.

The train ride home didn't have any doilly knitting, but the music on my iPod did make the ride seem shorter.

And as soon as I logged on here it turned out that my BloodDuster review had been approved for the website.

Yay!

Over and out.

J

More Rollercoasters

I'm back again.

And back into the story:

Monday was sort of the same as Friday, only the weather was a little more bearable, and instead of three other blokes to work with it was just me and a South Londoner name Charlie working under the Gaffer (whom I later learned was basically the Administrator and Troubleshooter for the entire building).

Charlie looked like a hobbit, even more than Adamski, my much missed drumming friend, but he was a good bloke.

Anyways, before lunch it was all moving stuff from an abandoned office into a garage, which sounds simple but it actually involved the negotiation of various minor nightmares: taping stuff up so that it was stable enough to transport, getting it through the offices and tiny lifts to street level, getting in past a stupidly large Range-Rover that had been parked in the least convenient way possible (blocking off the top of the Garage) and then stacking the stuff in a way that it wasn't going to fall on some stunning sub-editor as she retrieved her Vespa at the end of the Day.

After Lunch: back to the top floor to count boxes, annotate the boxes counted, make new boxes to replace the ones that were falling apart, write the old descriptions on the new boxes and tape down the lids so that the evil secrets inside might never be disturbed (magazine expense accounts must be left to gather dust).

All the time shooting the shit with Charlie, who was doing a Foundation Course in Art focussing on photography, and engaging in some low level flirting with whatever pretty girl was walking past.

My landlady called to let me know that she didn't know when the new key would be delivered, and wanted to know if I would be working the next day. (At the end of the day I found out I wouldn't)

At the end of the day I spent more time flirting with the Receptionist, also an Temp and also an Australian. She was distractingly attractive and actually in possession of an MA in Information Systems. She was applying for jobs in that field, since she was sick of the crappy little reception jobs that she was getting.

I actually went home feeling kind of depressed...

I was once again leaving an environment with lots of social contract for the desolate wastes of Leytonstone once more, I would probably never get to talk to the pretty girls from that building again, since one of the functions of London is to keep the Moneyed and Attractive segregated from the ordinary and not-so-wealthy, and above all, I had no idea when the electricity problem would be fixed.

I did pull myself out of my self-pity long enough to buy tickets to the Mastodon show coming up and the Bleeding Through and Zao show on Friday. Back to the story:

So I stopped in at the net cafe to type my blog and check my mail etc. I was thinking of writing my review, but I procrastinated on it too long.

I got home to discover that the power was back on. After 4PM someone had come by to sort that out. Hooray!

I turned on the TV, sat dawn at the table and wrote a rough version of the review, which I have since Typed UP and sent to fasterlouder.com.au

I have no idea if they will like it, but it is done.

Today:

I woke up at seven thirty and went back to sleep. I've got to stop doing that. But I did have a nice dream while I was dozing. I got up just after three feeling happy, threw some towels in the wash.

======
Gotta go

Whee!

Life in London can be a Rollercoaster.

At least the past couple of days for me have been.

On Saturday, pissed off that my Japanese flatmate couldn't be bothered to check the meter when it was his turn to pay the Utilities (it was down to less than a pound) I took the matter in hand and decided to pay the electricity myself.

And promptly lost the Meter Key. Fuck. Fucking Fucking FUCK.

Then I spent a frustrating hour trying to find said meter key on the street, asking all the shops if anyone had handed one in, trying to find the number for London Electricity, getting it off Directory Assistance, being connected, being put on hold until my Mobile Credit Nearly Ran Out, Getting a call from Alison telling me she'll do her best to sort it all out, realizing I'm running totally late for the Blood Duster Set that I wanted to see, almost getting to the station and realizing that I left my Oyster Card in my jacket, having to run home then run back to the station. Tube to Bank the to Camden. Get into the Underworld to discover that:

Blood Duster are just about to play their last song.

Aw Crap. I was supposed to review this show.

The rest of the night is boring. Bad Black Metal Bands, a walk through Camden, a tube to Leicester Square. Seeing some guy going rank on his Girlfriend in the Tube Station. Seeing him shove her and considering saying to the guy 'Hey! If you raise your hand to her again, you'll wish you hadn't' (for the record, the guy was smaller than me), instead letting security step in, who bring in the police and decided at that point that there was nothing more I could add to the situation.

Two slices of pizza then the last train home.

Sunday: Get up at 12. Fifty pence on the meter. Throw jeans in the Washing Machine and start ironing shirts. Watch The OC. Talk to Landlady on the phone. Totally out of credit now. Have a shower and get dressed for Bleeding Through Show.

Go to net cafe, get interrupted constantly by dickheads on the Messenger thing. Go back to flat to get ticket. Walk to Station, tube to Camden, meet Brandan Schiepetti (sp) walking past the queue, who actually remembers me from the last time that Bleeding Through played London.

Later, I'm hanging with a couple of Australian HC kids and I get to talk to Marta, who is really nice and has really nice things to say about the Australian tour they just did.

Skip forward to ZAO, who were really fucking good.

But even better were Bleeing Through. Great band, insane pit. Stage divers and crowd surfers by the dozen, and somehow it didn't bother me. At least once or twice I caught girls who were falling through holes in the pit. If I was really cool I would have said, 'Catch you Later'. Or is that if I was really lame? Nevermind.

I had a great time. I'm going to see them again on Friday.

Go home, have a shower (I don't know if the water will work in the morning), go to sleep.

Today: I'll type in a minute. I'm going to try something first.

I'm Tired.

But for a good reason.

After sitting up late last night reading comics, I was awoken at the not too pleasant hour of Two Minute to Nine by Michelle from Julia Ross Ringing my phone.

My phone was in my jacket and my jacket was on the end of my bed. And when I wake up I am in no state to carry one an intelligent conversation anyway. (Some would argue this is the case all the time). So I returned the call once I had it together.

Turned out that there was a adays work going at a publishing house off Marble Arch. 7 pounds an hour. The Catch? I had to get there ASAP. I tell Michelle that i can make it by 1015 at the latest.

So I jump in the shower, aiming to leave the flat at 20 past.

I leave at half past. I think of calling michelle to ask what I should wear, but I figure my usual corporate uniform ion the first day will do just fine. Remember that point.

[this is hard to type: I'm tired, I'm in the Soho Easy-everything, the keyboard is crap and my hands are sticky from the sub I just ate).

Back to the story:

I run down the street. I notice that there are people milling around outside Leytonstone Station. Sheesh. This can't be good.

I get into the station: turns out that the Central line is in a state similar to my colon after too much greasy kebab meat: bloated and immobile. I've got to stop eating kebabs.

No trains going west on the Central line. No-one knows how long for.

I overhear the Underground girl tell somebody to catch the W14 to Leyton becuase the trains will be running there. So I do that.

Suddenly I find myself in Wanstead, a leafy green suburb even further North East than Letonstone. Nice work, knucklehead. Right bus, wrong direction.

I try to call my contact. Wrong number. So I call Michelle at Julia Ross. She tells me that she has already called ahead about the fucked up Central Line situation, and just to get there as soon as I can.

So I climb up to Wanstead Station and catch a Central Line train.

Several stops sitting nowhere near a station later, plus the usual sixteen odd stations between Wanstead and Marble Arch later, I arrive. It's Quarter to 11.

Run up the street. Find the street. Find the building. (details have been removed to prevent any possible Doocing). Present at desk. get buzzed up to third floor. IE Reception for a company that publishes a bunch of fashion magazines, as well as B and Maxim (pick the odd one out).

stunningly beautiful girls are walking around.

I get sent to floor six. Where I find out that my job will involve lots of loading stuff onto trolleys, taking down to the street and piling it into a garage next to a skip. And variations therein.

I'm dressed for desk work, or light mail room kind of stuff. Maroon dress shirt, jacket, black slacks and the new shoes that Mum and Dad bought when they were in London last.

Oops. I told you that would be an important point. And it would be something that I would be reminded of all day, everytime I scuffed my new shoes or brushed dust off my black slacks.

I'm mixing up tenses, but sue me. I'm tired.

James, this musician in the group of four other temps, lent me a t-shirt. Other temps were James Best, an Aussie from Sydney and Olly, a mixed race kid with an afro tied back in anarchic plaits.

The downside of the day: hard work, being stuck out in the sun, lots of up and down stairs and at least an hour spent in the subterranean corridors of the basement of #64 North Row.

The upside: I got to see the workings of at least one magazine, even if it was a tacky fashion mag, and basically move back and forth among stunning women all day. The down side of this was that I looked neither tough nor stylish while I was doing this. And by the end I was actually pretty damn sweaty and more than a little dirty.

But all the guys were.

The gaffer was an expatriate australian who was pretty cool.

He bought cokes for the crew at least twice during the day and joke with us, as well as doing as much lifting and lugging when it came down to the necessity. I think that he was was the Mailroom chap.

At the end of the day the temps exchanged phone numbers and we were given the option of coming back on Monday. Me and Olly took this offer. English James had two job interviews on Monday, one for the BBC, one for EMI. So he passed. So did Aussie James.

We hunted for a pub, and unable to find one that wasn't full to the gills, we called it a day and separated.

I braved the rain (enjoying the change from the brutal heat of this week) and wandered down oxford street. Stopping in at a Borders and buying a Terrorizer magazine.

The further down Oxford street to get a sub. Then here.

I'll probably add something more tomorrow.

Addendum

It seems that someone had their wires crossed about the Grates playing tonight.

I got to the Buffalo Bar (home of Artrocker) and discovered this.

So instead I decided to wander down the street, seeing what I could find. And I wound up finding so many cafes and restaurants it was ridiculous.

I think that in February, when Caroline the Redhead I was working with said that she wanted to be wined and dined, this strip of Islington and Angel might have been one of the locations she had in mind.

Definitely a place for some more investigation.

I'm currently in an internet cafe at the Angel end in a side street where they serve fresh fruit and are playing dubby jazz.

I dig this place. I'm checking out rents in the area.

Chill.

Whoo.

The heatwave is still in effect (two or three days of max temperatures of 30 degrees qualifying as a heatwave in England... in Brisbane it's called halfway through Autumn).

Still, since there aren't actually that many Mosquitoes in London I can leave my windows wide open and let night-time breezes in. I'm playing the numbers in assuming that none of the neighbourhood hooligans are mountaineers or circus-performers, of course.

The funny thing about this weather is that men are walking around with no shirts and women are wearing Bikini tops in the street. More like the Gold Coast than London, it seems.

My big thing for today is... I got my hair cut. It was getting pretty long and scruffy, and since I'm going to be introducing and re-introducing myself to agencies, I figured I needed to up the presentability.

Basically I decided on no Emo-Fringe Options this time (last time I got Claus to cut my hair and showed him a recent promo pic of Trent Reznor for a reference), opting instead for a short back and sides with the crown combed straight back.

It looks okay, even if my forehead does seem to be alarmingly tall, and getting taller.

Still, it will look the bomb if I ever go dancing at Lady Luck again. And I can probably spike it a bit if I feel like punking it up.

A friend just called me, telling me that he had a ticket to Blood-Duster this weekend, only he was going to some festival in France, and he wanted to know if I wanted it. Sounds good to me. I'll swing by after half five to his pub to get it off him.

Another thing I might do tonight: see the Grates, because word is that they are playing at the Artrocker Bar in Islington.

Rewind: yesterday, after fininshing writing stuff here I decided to go to Islington to see if there were any tix left for the Beecher show at the Garage. It turned out that the Beecher show is this time next month (June? July? who can read these crazy months anyway), but I figured I would have a wander around Islington anyway.

And I really liked it. Lots of cafes, lots of cool looking people and lots of really nice buildings. And a park on Highbury Place where people were chilling out. Lots of cool buildings, all very nice.

It reminded me of Brisbane... The part of Brisbane where all the buildings are over 200 years old and look cool and all the people are good looking and rich.

Okay, it didn't really remind me of Brisbane at all, apart from a vibe there that made me feel really comfortable. The kind of comfortable that most people would associate with chilling in one of the funkier parts of Brisbane.

Eventually I ran into this bloke Matt from a band called Susan Acid, whom I had considered joining on Keys before I decided that it wasn't the kind of band I wanted to join, I watched Susan Acid play a set and on the way back to the tube station I passed a bar called the Artrocker.

At the Artrocker Brian Jonestown Massacre were playing, I didn't read the supports because I figured I had missed them, so why bother.

I carried on to the Station, and while I was waiting for the Victoria Line train to arrive I got talking to a couple of Australians who had just been at the Artrocker, and they had just seen the Grates play.

The Grates? No way! I knew that they had played SXSW, but I didn't know that they were going as far as London. Damn, wish I'd seen them.

One of the Australians (a Sydneysider named Bob) told me that they were playing the next night too, so I could catch them then.

Then we had a cool discussion about life in London for expatriate Australian music-loving ne'er-do-wells who should have finished their degrees etc.

He was heading to Bow, I was heading to Leytonstone, so I switched at Mile End. Central Line took me home and I opened all my windows and fell asleep.

Jeez this is turning into a long post.

Anyways, I'm going to head up to Stratford right after this post to return/renew some library books.

I'm finished with the Graphic Design Books I borrowed out (which incidently were really good: the something or other Dictionary of Graphic Design and Graphic Designers I would recommend to anyone).

But I'm still reading Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima. It is actually pretty good. Mishima has a really poetic way of writing, and he does seem to be pretty aware that the protagonist of the novel, Kiyoaki, is a total indecisive Emo Wuss and really should grow some goolies.

Still, I'm only about a third of the way through, since it is a little too easy to watch bad English TV rather than read an obscure Japanese novel.

Since English TV is especially bad of late (must be Summer TV or something) Spring Snow is gaining traction. But I will still probably need ever day of the next three weeks to finish it.

Since I'm sure that I've probably made some serious typing errors (I've caught a couple, but there are always some that you miss), I'm going to sign off here.

But tune in tomorrow for more shenanigans and silliness.

Rock and Roll.

J

Just a quick one...

Just a quick note, because I am running short of time (one of the downsides to limiting internet time to 1 hour for 50p a day... the upside being that I actually do other stuff besides sitting in front of a screen for hours sinking deeper into cyberspace).

I finally paid my rent. My landlady responded by sending an SMS that she was going to get someone to come around and measure the front door of the flat for a new door sometime next week. Mostly good. There is a chance that I might have a new job by then, but if that happens one of the other chaps in the flat might be able to field it.

The local urchins are back at school, which is good.

I walked past the rear courtyard about a week ago and two local kids were wrestling violently while other kids hit them with belts and lanyards. I'm gambling that the local kids think that I'm scary enough not to mess with. Someone did say a couple of weeks ago that when I'm not dressed up for work I do look rough. Maybe I just look like a different kind of rough to the locals. That can be enough of a deterrant.

Still Leytonstone seems to be a safe enough area. I haven't actually seen that much trouble since I've been here, and none of it has affected me negatively.

In any case, so nearly out of time.

Over and out.

It is still hot.

It is still hot and muggy and it is affecting my ability to sleep, eat and function as a human being.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it, in any case.

Maybe one day I'll be rich and crazy enough to back and forth between the hemispheres, chasing winter around the world.

Of course, if I had the kind of money and resources to do that, I'd probably have responsibilities which would prevent me from doing so. But a boy can dream.

In other news: My Mother gave me a call from Australia yesterday (something which, as lame as it sounds, always makes my day) and I let slip that I had a blog up. I guess I better not make any Life as a Crackhead jokes from here on in.

Something else: the other night Masao got to meet Adam Clayton from U2. He came into the Japanese Restaurant that Masao works in. That's pretty cool. Of course, if he had met Bono, I'd be jealous beyond expression.

Speaking of me being a sycophant: I saw Ian Watkins at the Fantomas gig. £200 haircut and all.

I was tempted to talk to him, but in a rare occurance for me, I decided not to be a shameless starfucker and talk to my Australian friends instead. That and I didn't really have anything to say to him. Nowt besides 'Nice Work breaking America' or something.

It reminds me, on reflection, of a couple of months back when I saw Kelly Osbourne after the Bleeding Through show and I decided not to talk to her. But that was partially because I was afraid that I would forget myself and say 'Hey! You're even fatter in real life!' or 'Wow, I can't believe it, you're really short!'.

And then Sharon Osbourne would have me killed.

I can't believe it. I used to be the King of Intelligent things to say to random celebs. Ignoring the incindent in 1994 when I met Dimebag Darrell from Pantera and all I could do was get him to sign my book for Big Pete (I wonder if Big Pete still has that Autograph?).

Speaking of said person, If you are reading this Mum, take a look at this link here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/programmes/panorama/default.stm

It makes for disturbing reading, doesn't it.

Anyways, it is about time for me to go back to the flat and pull some towels out of the washing machine.

Yay.

Stay Frosty.

J

Damn it is hot!

I don't believe it.

I'm in London, it is Half Six in the Evening and it is feeling pretty damn hot.

Okay, pretty damn hot for london can mean that for the first time in six months you can't see you breath in the street.

But this is actually approaching tropical.

No wonder everyone is freaked out about climate change here.

I didn't blog last night because I didn't have time between going to see Fantomas (brilliant) watching Dr Who (pretty damn good, though it did mean that I all but missed the supports for Fantomas) and sleeping like a log after going out to see the Red Chord.

Although me getting back late Friday Night Saturday morning might have to do with me wandering up to Leicester Square and catching a late late session of Batman Begins.

Which wasn't bad. Christian Bale seems to do a neat line in playing Handsome Rich American men with occaisional Violent Tendencies. And Liam Neeson is always good.

Rewinding to the Red Chord: I missed the first support, caught the second (Rainy Day Fuck Parade - noisy screamo-noisecore which distinguished itself with groovy tribal drumming) and the third (twin guitar new-school metalcore with gold chains, essentially and English NCHC band).

But the Headliners were the real killers. The Red Chord kicked ass from the get go with their haphazard grind and muscular drums (ironicly provided by a skinny looking drummer).

Of course, the London Chapter of the International Brotherhood of Hardcore Gig Kung Fu Fuckwits were present and active. They started during the third band, shoving people off the dancefloor and doing their off balance wheelkicks and the like.

The space they had hollowed out was still there for the headliners. Which seems ridiculous to me. I mean, who the hell does Kung Fu Pitslaying to Grindcore? Still, due entirely to the intelligent design of the Borderline's stage (the stage was in the shape of half a hexagon) I managed to avoid getting beat up too badly and still eyeball the band.

Maybe that is the final stage of the Great Maoist Revolution that is Punk and Hardcore:

Punk Rock was the point where the division where the Band and the Audience was all but destroyed. For the first time in the history of music, the performers and the Audience were on an equal cultural footing, neither more important than the other. Or that was the theory.

In practise, it just meant that the Band Vs Audience thing was more pronounced, and that the crowd expected more connection and confrontation. The Band was no longer better than them, no longer worthy of blind worship, so they had to fight harder for the crowds respect, and vice versa.

Now it seems to have moved into the next level: it is no londer the Audience versus the Band. It is the Audience Versus Each Other. All fighting for the space on the dancefloor. And the Band often has to try to engage the people who came to see them play from fifteen feet away.

Which is irritating for me, because I still go to see bands for the bands.

Nevermind. The Kung Fu knobheads are either going to grow out of their bullshit, or they'll wipe each other out and decide that selfish self expression isn't worth broken bones. (Oh to be the one who breaks them... no, forget I said that).

I don't believe that violent dancing should be a matter for legislation and regulation, I do believe it needs to be dealt with at community level.

But the community is being retarded in dealing with it.

I've had enough ranting.

Over and out.

Here we go again...

You might remember (or you might have just read) that I was going to see The Red Chord from Boston this time last night.

Here's the skinny on what happened:

I shamble out of here. Stop at a cash machine and swear at it when it won't give me any cash from one of my Australian Accounts. Lousy Commonwealth Bank.

Jump on the tube trying to work out which stops I need to take to get ot Leicester Square, since I think to to get to the Borderline (in orange Park) I need to get off at Leicester Square, walk up Charing Cross and take a left a Mannette.

I get confused at Leicester Square because there seems to be an out way for Covent Garden. But it is Leicester Square station... I spend five minutes confirming this. Not good, I'm already running late.

I get up to street level and decide to go whichever way feels like North. I as a Russian Tourist if I can borrow her map to check I'm on the right path. Which I am.

I get to the Borderline (which is actually around the corner from the infamous Crobar in Soho, and therefore closer to Tottenham Court Road... lousy A to Z page divisions) and discover...

That the Red Chord has been postponed until the next night!

I get a flyer for a rock and metal club that is happening after the replacement indie bands play, but I feel sick and prefer the idea of an early night.

So I spend two hours looking around the bookshops on Charing Cross Road (which are many), finding a pile of books that I would love to own.

I wind up buying the latest Metal Hammer and a copy of Juxtapoz (I haven't bought any issues of Juxtapoz since I left Brisbane, but I had a hankering).

Two slices of pizza at Leicester Square and I'm back on the Tube, heading home.

Funny thing about one of the bookshops I was in:

At Street level it was your standard Boho Bookshop, with books about Art and Design, compilations of Essays by radical writers, biographies of rockstars and the like. Downstairs, in the basement they sold... reams and reams of Hardcore Pornography. Dirty DVDs and Filthy magazines.

It reminded me of a bookshop just off Victoria Station: in the front room it was all 20th and 21st Century classics. Anything you wanted. Highbrow stuff. In the next room, away from the eyes of the passers-by, there were racks and racks of girlie magazines of ever descending levels of depravity.

I think that these two examples actually work as illustrations of London in Microcosm. On when level Arty and Intellectual, on the next level pure smut.

Or to put it another way, even though, on the streets of London, you will always see the heights of Chic and Style you can be sure that there is something questionable happening somewhere nearby.

And with that, I sign out.

Oh har de har!

It seems that either I can't read or the wonderful code that runs Blogger, or Blogspot or whatever is ever so slightly glitchy.

Probably both.

Not much news, except that I was up late last night checking the free loop samples I got with a Computer Music Magazine, and I smelt something burning.

I figured that it was just some crazy Japanese cooking that my flatmate Masao was up to.

A bit of background: If Masao is at home and he isn't asleep, chances are he is cooking. He only seems to watch TV to kill time while something is on the simmer. He is even working at a Japanese restaurant somewhere off Bond Street now. Paradoxically, Masao came to London to learn how to be a better gardener.

Anyways, at some point I figured that the smell of burning was just too much to be explained by my Western perspective, so I sauntered downstairs to the kitchen... to find smoke wafting up from a stack of pots on a low flame on the stove. I switched off the gas, turned on the Extractor Fan and opened all the windows too small for someone to crawl through.

Then I checked the living room. And found Masao asleep on the couch.

Still... He is a great cook.

I should probably be on my way to The Borderline right now to see The Red Chord, but it's Thursday, and I am hopelessly addicted to Popbitch.

That and I'm trying to write something in this every day.

So that is enough for now.

Deep thoughts tomorrow.

Maybe.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I tried to post yesterday, but there was a glitch with the publishing process and I didn't have time to retype.

Nor did I remember to select-copy the text I'd written incase something like that happened.

D'oh.

Nevermind.

It was basically just me saying that I sent out a mass E-mail to friends and family saying that I had a blog now.

I got five replies: four positive ones and one link to this website:

http://ruthlessreviews.com/rants/jonny/words.html

Nevermind. He's a good friend and it's a funny link, so I won't take it to heart.

I'm feeling proud of myself today because I managed to marshall my dysfunctional arse out of the flat and down the street to

a) put £10 each on the Electricity and Gas
b) get the new Kerrang magazine, where I learned that the Kerrang Journalist I met at Scala a week and a half ago was Emma Johnston and
c) get a Seven Day 3 Zone ticket put on my Oyster Card, just in time for me to run errands tomorrow (I have to pay rent - mucho sucko) and go see The Red Chord at the Borderline.

I also made it to the Boots Chemist, where I picked up a Lint Roller (kind of necessary when almost all your clothes are black) and a can of FCUK Deodorant.

I have resisted the whole deodorant thing most of my adult life because a) I shower regularly, so I don't think I have time to build up a horrible stink b) it just seems so effete and prissy to spray stuff on to smell good, and let's face it, I can be prissy enough on my own and c) I always figured sweat was a manly smell anyway.

But when I checked my E-mail yesterday I was sat next to a stinking motherfucker, and at that moment I decided that if I have ever smelt half as bad as that, I need to atone for it right now.

And you know the crazy thing? There he is again! Smelling like rotting cheese and coughing and sneezing. Luckily he is too absorbed in his own thing to look over here and read what I'm writing (I Hope!).

But enough about him.

Besides seeing The Red Chord tomorrow I'm also going to see Fantomas on Saturday at the Kentish Town Forum (a converted music hall just north or Camden, once the Town and Country Club). Should be good.

And Batman Begins opens this week as well. Which should be good. At the very least, it will be fun asking people in the foyer if they've seen American Psycho.

That's enough for now.

Mood - moody
Listening To - the sound of other people typing.

Har!

Okay, I've been at this crazy blogging thing for three days now.

And I can't figure out how to change my Links in the right hand sidebar.

Which is annoying. In an inconsequential kind of way.

I sent a note that I had set up a blog to friends and family back in Brisneyland, and I got three or four positive replies, and one link to this:

http://ruthlessreviews.com/rants/jonny/words.html

Still, it is such a funny link that I won't hold it against him.

No deep critiques of popular movies to share today.

Try this time next week when I have been to see Batman Begins.

Boy the kid next to me smells bad.

Blah Blah Blah

Damnit!

Overslept again today.

But I did wake up long enough in the morning to call my agencies. And find out that while I have been working and stuff two of the people I used to call, who I had an okay rapport with, have since left the organisations.

Yay.

Nevermind, I'm planning to sign on to some new agencies anyhow.

Though the one that I will miss talking to will be Gina, the Brisbane girl with the tattoo on her back.

Why is it that if I meet an attractive girl in London, four out of five times she doesn't actually come from London? Either Australia, America, Canada, Italy, Estonia, Poland or anywhere else besides London.

Unrelated stuff:

The other night I was watching the first Dr Doolittle movie that Eddie Murphy did. I thought it was -pretty good, but I couldn't help noting that in this version the good doctor was born with the ability to communicate with animals.

In the original version, written sometime in the 19th Century, Dr Doolittle has to learn the language of every different animal the hard way, by being taught by his pet parrot who translates for him until he can speak the animal languages himself.

I guess they were trying for a different kind of message with the Eddie Murphy version. IE it is okay to talk to animals if you were born with the ability to do it, to deny that you can talk to animals is to deny a piece of yourself. Or something. Thanks Eddie.