When we left our hero...

Hey All,

If I remember correctly, I had just arrived at STJ and was dancing in an exuberant manner on a near empty dancefloor.

Just for fun I was wearing my two-tone brogues, which I haven't worn out in quite a while, partially because I wasn't sure that I would be able to wear them in Leytonstone without getting chased down the street by blood-thirsty chavs.

In any case, I wasn't used to dancing without serious ankle support, and at some point I near twisted my ankle and went down. The ankle was actually fine (rather than sprain it again my muscle memory made the executive decision that falling on my arse in front of everone was better than another six weeks of hobbling about), but as I landed the palm of my hand was cut by a stud on the cuff of my denim jacket.

And before you all ask, the reason I was wearing a denim jacket in an industrial club was that the club was cold, since there weren't enough people there to warm up the space.

The hand was a little bruised, it didn't bleed too much, I washed it under the sink and got a gauze pad to put on it from the bar (they were out of bandaids, I blame the Kung-Fu Dancing Hardcore kids). I sat out of couple of songs to let the bleeding stop, the rejoined the dancefloor, even if I did engage in what Brad Pitt calls Pocket Acting (ie keeping your injured hand in your jacket pocket and pulling focus with the other one - watch Se7en to see if you can spot it).

Slowly the club filled out to about half full, an almost repectable number. And I kept dancing.

Later on my friend Sean would comment 'You were really going for it early on.' Which made me smile, since I'm the kind of person that sometimes lets perfectionism discourage me (if that makes sense), whereas sometimes you get respect for just going for it.

Other highlights included a mashup of Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani and Headhunter by Front 242 (which bizarrely worked really well), and a entertaining conversation with Alex B's girlfriend Na'ama.

After the club I wasn't formally invited back to the Slab, but I figured that if I looked hard enough a way back would present itself. That way back came in the form of a South Afrikan girl named Louise, who was the sister of Lorenz, one of those that live at the Slab. Louise had been left behind by her brother because she hadn't retrieved her coat fast enough and was freaking out. First because she didn't know where to go, then she couldn't find her phone. My friend Sean was sweet-talking a German Girl nearby and was slighly flabbergasted that someone would take his sister to a club and then leave them behind afterwards. As such he called Lorenz, and when that didn't work, he called one of Lorenz's friends, who gave Lorenz a serve.

Louise eventually found her phone (strangely enough, after it had been ringing for over a minute), talked to her brother in Afrikaans and we all jumped in a cab back to the Slab. Let it be noted that while I initially found Louise attractive, her completely bipolar nature and her abilility to behave as a destructive force of nature put her firmly in the 'Avoid Like the Plague' file.

Anyone who's reading this and knows my past relationship history is probably thinking 'If she is crazy enough to discourage Jason from taking an interest, this must really have been a nutbar.' And yes, they would be right.

Anyways, I spent most of Sunday chilling in the living room at the slab, listening to music of someone's PC, reading a copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable etc. At some point Louise expressed surprise that I didn't have a girlfriend. When I asked why, she told me that I seemed to be a person with my life together, and she would expect me to. While she claimed that relationships for her never worked out because her boyfriends complained that she was too distant.

I bit my tongue, deciding it unwise to say 'I think you'll find your boyfriends broke up with you because you're completely insane. Not eccentric, not highly strung, not high-spirited and not prone to occaisional melancholy, I think you're rubber-room material. Moon-torn. Manic-Depressive. Pants-on-the-head, strapped-to-the-bed, Arkham Asylum insane.'

Sean had earlier mentioned that Lorenz wasn't the most even-tempered type either. Nothing I saw on Sunday contradiced that. Louise eventually left with someone else, and I was quietly glad she wasn't going to spill any more drinks on me or moan about how she needs to find a husband in the next three months or the government will deport her back to South Afrika.

Somewhere between Morning and Afternoon I took a short nap. Chris and one or two others turned up soon after. Discussions of video games, music, Chris DJ-ing for five hours straight and other topics ensued. As night was falling the inevitable drunken political debate began, which was rather entertaining, followed by stories of our grandparents war experiences.

About 8 PM I left the house to catch the bus to the tube, and the tube to Leytonstone. Nenad and his Austrian Berliner friend Clarissa were amused to see me arrive home after nine.

At about 7 AM yesterday I woke up fully dressed with the light on in my room.

Having had such an incredible weekend, I figured that the only thing I could do to make it better would be to have an incredibly productive week, so I jumped in the shower and planned my next move.

First I spent an hour or so going through all the flyers in my jacket and coat pockets and picking out the events that I wanted to go to. I chatted to Clarissa while doing this, answering her questions about where the tube station was etc. Clarissa, in addition to being a seasoned traveller, is also an artist and is thinking about going back to art school. She left to go into London to look at something or other.

After I updated my diary I watched the news on one of the TV stations before gathering up some documents and heading to the Leytonstone Job Centre with a view to signing on. As I might have mentioned before, the money is secondary to the resources to help me find an interesting job.

At the Job Centre I picked up a small magazine with a list of vacancies. It was nearly a week old, but I did find it amusing that it advertised several courses to teach someone how to be a locksmith, focussing on lock picking skills. Hmm. Just the thing to teach the unemployed. The logic of London's local government escapes me sometimes.

I eventually plucked up the cojones to ask the people at the front desk what I had to do to sign on, whereupon they gave me a phone number to call, and pointed me to a set of complementary phones.

Press A. Answer qustions. Pick up forms on the way out. Neato.

Since my route home took me past the local NHS Primary care facility, I figured it was high time I signed on to my local GP as well. Same deal: talk to receptionist, she gave me some forms and an appointment for 1330 today (Tuesday).

Emboldened, I tried to sort out how to send a money order to a friend's magazine in Brisbane so that they could send me a copy, but the Post Office girl was unhelpful. I decided to try another post office when I had the chance.

On the way back up the Leytonstone High Road I bought some wooden broomsticks, a cheap hacksaw and some black mini-tapes. The broomsticks were to brace the ever-bending supports on the clothes horse, the hacksaw to cut the broomsticks and the tapes from my dictaphone recorder, since I only really have the one tape.

I dropped my loot at the flat then took the tube to Stratford, where I returned Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb and went looking for The Mad Ship (part two in the trilogy). I couldn't, so I used the PCs to put in a request and borrowed out a book by Iain M Banks instead. I still haven't started reading it yet, but I'll be interested to see if it is any good.

Back to Leytonstone. Net Cafe => Blog => get turfed out at 9pm => go home and watch Life on Mars season Finale.

Unfortunately Nenad and Clarissa were talking loudly about Clarissa's adventures in Central and South America (includin falling through a Glacier onto an an ice-bridge in a crevasse in Bolivia), so it made it really hard to immerse myself into the show, but I still managed to follow most of it.

My Mother called from Australia just after that, amusingly while Nenad was explaining to Clarissa the phenomenon of the Page Three Girl in English Tabloids. It was great to hear from Mum.

My mother also mentioned that My is having trouble printing out my blog because of the light type on a dark background (which, let's face it, is pretty bad design on my part in any case). So I said that I would email instructions for a solution, which I'm going to do now.

If anyone else is having this problem (or they just can't read the type on the page) try this:

1. Select the text using the mouse.
2. Copy the text using the Control-C function (apple C on a Mac)
3. Open a new document in Word, or Freehand or your favourite word processing programme.
4. Use the Paste Function (Control-V or Apple-V) to copy the text to the document.
5. Print or read as you would.
6. Rejoice!

I watched Prison Break with Nenad and Clarissa, then some of the News and some of The Mighty Boosh, before heading up to my room to read magazines.

That's Monday over.

Today:

Went to the NHS Medical centre to meet the Nurse. Notably occurences: it turns out that I have low-blood pressure. Which is weird, because I always figured that we Logans were hypertension personified. The Nurse saw that I had dry lips and extrapolated out that I might not be drinking enough water, and therefore my blood volume might be affected. She also told me to eat more vegetables.

Urine Sample? Piece of Piss (sorry, you know I couldn't pass up the opportunity).

Finished by three.

Next up: check out the Leytonstone Library, which is currently covered in Scaffolding inside and out. It makes the library look like a bookish Einsturzende Neubauten video clip.

Chris and I had engaged on a lengthy discussion of Michael Moorcock on Sunday, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of Moorcock books in the Fantasy Section. Which was right next to the Romance Section. Weird.

Tube to Stratford to put £50 into my soon-to-be direct debited by British Telecom HSBC account. It took much less time than usual. Hit the stalls to buy some bannanas, grapes and apples. Stopped at WH Smith to buy doodle paper. Discovered a copy of Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard for 99p and decided to pick it up. Chatted to Alex the Cashier with the Runes tattooed to her wrist. Tube to Leytonstone.

Dropped the fruit at Leytonstone and sawed one broomstick into three pieces, hampered a little by the total lack of ergonomic design on the hacksaw. Used wire to bind the broomstick pieces in place. Nice. One side down, other side to go.

And finally down to the street level to finish writing this blog.

In the next two days I have to fill out the forms I got from the Job Centre. I'm also going to be writing and reading some more.

I've been considering the importance of the over-arching meta-narrative in my fiction (and possibly non-fiction) lately, not the least because of all the fascinating themes I've been finding in Robin Hobb's work. Further consideration was prompted by Chris when he complained to Sean and I that while he isn't offended by violence and gore in and of itself, Wolf Creek seems to be violence, cruelty, gore and general nastiness without any real point.

This came out of a discussion between Chris, Sean and I regarding the Grand Theft Auto games.

Thanks to Nenad putting up Clarissa for four days, I might now have a place to crash in Berlin if I fly over there. Neato.

Random thoughts: I've been experimenting with a goattee these past few days, but I think it just makes me look scruffy. I'm also overdue for a haircut.

But for now, I'm going home.

Over and out.

J

Busy!

Hey Everyone,

I haven't blogged since Thursday. Mostly because I've been hella busy.

Thursday night my friend Hannah wanted me to meet someone as ask me my opinion on something she was organising.

The actual meeting wasn't as productive as I had hoped, but I did get to meet a friend of Hannah's who is wound up with street promotion and claims to have the connections to get anyone killed for the price of a bullet and the tube fare to East London. And I got to see some of the Backstreets of Soho that I usually only see during daylight.

Friday I finished reading Ship of Magic, and made plans to return it to the library (which I didn't get around to til today). Friday night was Johnny Truant in Camden followed by Sick and Twisted vs Global Warning at Electrowerks, Angel.

Running late, I missed Architects but caught a little of Waterdown, who didn't really grab me. Returning to the bar at the Underworld I ran into my friend Ruben, a musician and sometime Tour Manager, also the ex-manager for Johnny Truant. Had a good chat to him before and after the show.

Johnny Truant themselves have come a long way since this time last year, when they were struggling to fill The Barfly (I've seen bigger Classrooms) and band morale was clearly suffering from the problems they were having getting their album finished.

After I rescued my coats from the cloak room and chatted to a PR girl named Lou, who told me that she is currently promoting a Hip-Hop group out of Wisconsin. We had a quiet chuckle about how much of a Hotbed of Hip-Hop Wisconsin was. Later I would remember that Wisconsin is the Epicentre of the American Breakcore scene, ergo Hip Hop might not be so alien. Do'h. But for the moment that slipped my mind. I also hung upstairs at the World's End pub with a few other friends, as well as shooting the breeze with Ruben, before jumping on a tube to Angel.

Tube - Angel - Electrowerks: Sick and Twisted vs Global Warning. When I arrived Alex B was assisting at the door and his girlfriend Na'arma was on the CD stand. Some bloke with a laptop was making some serious noise downstairs, some people were grooving. I liked it, but I also wanted to see the rest of the shindig. Next to the Staircase there was a screen playing DVDs, up the stairs the main dancefloor of Slimelight was acting as the cloakroom and up even more stairs the usual noisey room was playing some noisey sounding stuff.

Notable things about that club: I was wearing my black doc-martins, which did make it hard to dance for extended periods of time because the made my feet hurt. I did some pretty serious dancing anyway. In better get battered by the four on the floor beat upstairs and grooving to the syncopated breakcore stuff downstairs, I watched the weird movies that Alex had brought in.

I might have mentioned that Alex is the resident expert on Extreme Asian Cinema at Terrorizer Magazine. And as such, I found myself entranced for 10 minutes at a time by a Japanese Movie called Versus, which at times seemed to be one continuous fight scene. Alex would later explain that it starts as a Gangster movie, goes to Kung Fu, then Zombies, then Mystical Weird Time Travel, then back to Kung-Fu and finally ends as a post-apocalyptic future science fiction.

Elea, if you are reading this, I highly recommend it, if you haven't already seen it.

Also: I got talking to an Asian girl named Sheena (I'm not sure of the spelling) who was a science graduate working as a research assistant up in Cambridge, and as such had never been to a breakcore party before.

I stayed until dawn, then took the tube home to sleep.

I woke up at the relatively early hour (considering I had been dancing all night, and then some) of three pm, and threw some jeans in the wash. At about five or six my Swedish Flatmate arrived back with an Austrian girl from Berlin that is dossing with us for a few days. She's pretty cool.

We all watched Wild West on the TV, I ironed some jeans to wear to STJ and eventually I got moving, later than I meant to.

When I arrived at STJ at about half ten I was surprised to find that I was one of seven people there. Luckily I like having the near whole dancefloor to myself, and Chris was in fine DJ form, so I danced like a maniac.

I'm getting thrown out of here, and it is time for Life on Mars.

More adventures of Jason Later (I swear I actually get around to doing something productive).

Hang in there, over and out.

J

Hoidy, Poitnor

Hey Everyone,

Today I did more reading.

Last night I did some writing on the Straightedge thingo which I promise Patrizia Muzzoculo I would write.

I'm finding it hard going to write it, but I do intend to have it finished by Saturday night.

The hard thing is that it isn't meant to be a history of Straightedge etc since Patrizia is already familiar with all that, so I have to write it as nothing more than a personal reaction to it all. But at the same time I don't want it to be to personal in its views etc.

I'll figure it out.

I seem to have been incredibly hungry today.

It is a weird feeling, since there have been times of my life when I was used to not feeling hungry at all.

Weird.

I'm glad to see that caoine is still alive. I was starting to worry.

I had two 1000 mg tablets of Fish Oil yesterday morning, and two last night before going to bed.

I haven't noticed any particular difference, with the exception that when I burp it's like I've just eaten a Sardine Sandwich.

Mum said take six, but she didn't specify the size of the tablets. So I figured that six 325mg tablets would be the same as two 1000mg ones.

Enough of that.

Elea, if you're reading this (or if anyone else is who can pass on the message), I tried to reply to your email, but the message bounced from your gazoonga attack address.

Gotta go,

Over and out.

J

Oi, Hoi Polloi

Hey All,

While I was waiting for T-shirts to wash today, I did a whole lot of barbells.

Strangely enough I can do 25 reps of five Kilos each side pretty easily, but when it is ten kilos a side I can only manage about ten.

Maybe I should have invested in a smaller increment of weight. Going up five ki's at at time might have been a little hubristic.

Nevermind.

Random Thought (probably suitable for the Rants Page K told me to put up):

If Brokeback Mountain is always called The Gay Cowboy Movie, why isn't Capote known as The Gay Novelist Movie?

Is a Gay Cowboy something of a Man Bites Dog, while a Gay Novelist is just a given?

It's kind of funny, I don't recall seeing a member of the Village People wearing a cravate and holding a typewriter.

Maybe my readers who've been to Mardi Gras in Sydney can tell me if there is a Novelist Float.

/Random Thought

I had a play with the Learn Italian programme late last night. It has a function whereby you can record your voice repeating the vocab to compare your accent.

I think I'll have to get into the habit of firing it up during the day, so that neither of my flatmates are kept awake by me shouting in Italian.

Because you can't learn Italian Quietly.

Anyways, I'm getting turfed out.

When I get home I might burn a copy of the Gentle Ben CD K sent me and pass it to the What's Cookin' Folks.

Gotta Go,

Over and out.

J

Hi Ho

Hey All,

Today I did a whole lot of ironing, and as I've probably expounded before, ironing can be dicey for me, because without something to read, or a street to navigate, my mind wanders and sometimes I can get a tad emotional.

As happened today. A couple of days ago my Mother told me that if you take six capsules of Fish Oil with Vitamin E every day it can help lift (or at least even out) your spirits. I think I'll give that a try.

Last night I had another conversation with Nenad, my Swedish flatmate, about the various services I could receive if I signed up with the local government employment agency. Sounds good, I'm going to do that this week.

I worked out today that reading a page of the book I'm reading takes me 90 seconds, give or take. That means that reading the whole book will take me 22 hours, give or take. Thats seven days at three hours a day.

Why I didn't think of that at University I'll never know.

Gotta go.

Over and out.

J

Hey all

Hey Everyone,

Last night I wound up getting pretty drunk at the Devonshire Arms.

When I get drunk I tend to do silly things, and last night was no exception.

Except the silly thing that I did was promise a Philosophy Professor, who is supervising a student's PHD on the Straightedge Movement, that I would write a thousand word essay explaining my positions and opinions on Straightedge, speaking as a person who has been straightedge and has come through the other side.

Of course, what is really silly is that she wrote her email address on a piece of paper, which I then managed to lose. Nevermind, she is still the girlfriend of Robert the Spite DJ and friend of Richie, so I have a fairly good idea of how to get my material to her.

By the by, besides being a University Professor and a Devonshire Arms DJ, she is also an occaisional contributor to Terrorizer, so I will make sure that anything I pass on to her is good material.

Anyways, besides drunken promises to gothic academics, last night had plenty of interesting moments.

I made it to the Devonshire Arms at 2120, 20 minutes later than I meant to. But that was cool, I got talking to Richie and Patrizia and Robert. People kept buying me drinks, so I was pretty tipsy for the most part.

The friends that Richie wanted to introduce me to were a couple who run an industrial label and a magazine as well. Definitely good people to know. The friend of mine from Strength Through Joy with the KMFDM tattoos on his arm was there as well.

I wish I could remember their names, but the female half of the couple did write down some URLs for me, and fortunately I managed to not lose those pieces of paper between then and now. The female half of the couple, a short girl from Belfast with red dread extensions, did tell me at length that I was very cute and I was sure to get laid at Slimelight. Ha, proved you wrong.

Anyways, after the Dev shut Richie and I took a bus from Camden to Angel and arrived at a strangely thin crowd at Slimelight. I was still pretty drunk, so I threw some crazy hip-hop moves on the Noise-techno dancefloor upstairs.

Richie and I talked at length about stuff, politics of various outfits etc. Alex Boniwell and his girlfriend Yarma were there, putting up flyers for the Sick and Twisted night next Friday anywhere they could find space. Purely randomly, I mentioned Silverfish, and it turned out that Silverfish were one of Alex's favourite bands in his youth, so he filled me in on a whole lot of things about the legend of Silverfish and their intense live shows, as well as telling me that the Guitarist Fuzz is now as sound engineer etc. He and Yarma left early, and I promised to see them on Friday.

I also wandered around and found my pal Callum holding court on the downstairs dancefloor. At ground level the Trad-Goth Djs (this was one of the nights when all three dancefloors were opened) were playing the Cure, the Birthday Party, Siouxsie and other old school stuff.

Callum had a pal with him named Colin, who later recognised me from after the Skinny Puppy show when he and I hung out with a girl named Alice, who I have not seen since.

It was pretty funny to see him again, since in the six months, give or take, since the Skinny Puppy show there have been a bunch of developments in my life in London.

I started going to Strength Through Joy and Sick and Twisted. I met Alex B, Richie, Chris and Lydia from STJ and a bunch of other people besides.

I started reading and writing more and all that.

Anways, I wandered around, danced about, slowly sobered up, said hi to people (a lot of the usual suspects were missing, for whatever reason), occaisionally admired a tall girl, six foot four and counting, wearing purple hotpants with legs that distracted every all in the vicinity etc.

After the club closed at 0730 Me, Callum, Colin and a retro dandy in a pinstripe suit went to Starbucks for breakfast. I had a slice of Chocolate Cake. The Dandy told me that Kate Moss was briefly a regular at Lady Luck, about 18 months ago, and she was, in his experience, a much nicer person than you would have thought. Besides which, without the makeup and the lights, she wasn't really a person you would notice.

Intersting.

Colin and I swapped notes on what we had been up to over since the Skinny Puppy show. Callum took and invitation to listen to a demo of my old metal band as an excuse to explore my Ipod and laugh at some of my curious playslist choices ('Betty Boo? Bette Midler? Har Har Har!').

After a while we all peeled off.

I took the tube to Camden, bought two bandanas, explored the market etc.

Then I took the tube to Tottenham Court Road, walked up to Regent Street via some Soho Backstreets (Brewer's Street etc) and went to the Mac Shop, where I picked up a Tutorial Programme to learn Italian. I've decided that since I am in such an international city I might as well learn all the languages I can.

I want to find a typing tutor programme, since my typing is pretty good but not amazing. The Ringfinger and Pinky Fingers on my right hand are still clumsy and weak, and that slows me down.

I had to take the tube home after that tout suite in order to catch Tescos before it closed at 4PM (damn Sunday Trading).

Sunday Shopping completed, I headed home and tried to watch an episode of Enterprise, managing to catch the first half but falling asleep on the couch just long enough to miss the rest.

Nenad, my Swedish flatmate told me that an Austrian girl is going to stay with us for a few days from next Friday. That's cool with me.

Tonight I'm going to try to make a list of things to do tomorrow and next week before I pass out from sheer exhaustion.

Getting back to Patrizia the Professor from Melbourne. She was pretty impressed that when she mentioned that her academia mostly dealt with taking Continental Psychoanalytic Readings of horror movies, applying the theories of a bunch of French Post Modern Feminists, I was able to reel off a list of theorists (Kristeva, Cixious, Irigary (sp)) to add to the ones that she had mentioned.

All in all, an interesting 24 hours. It is probably exhaustion, but I feel strangely flat now.

Still, even though my Glass Half Empty character tells me that I am probably still moving in Circles, at least I have evidence to show that the Circles are getting Larger.

Much to be done.

Over and out.

J

Land Hoy!

Hey O,

Yesterday and today I spent reading.

I'm not mentioning what book I'm reading in case people try to spoiler it again, but it's just starting to pick up.

My Tube Book right now is Arabian Nights, which is actually turning out to be a strange read. I'm less than a third through it right now, but it seems to be a highly questionable piece of literature. The overarching meta-narrative seems to be: Women are devious and untrustworthy, keep them in subservient positions or else they will cheat on you with you blackamoor slave. Then the only thing you can do is slay them all with your scimitar.

Last night was Hellbound, the Terrorizer night upstairs at The Mean Fiddler. Ran into Alex B and Richie, said hi to Matt from Akercocke. Danced about to Alex B's set, a more metal oriented set than the one he usually plays at Sick n Twisted.

Richie invited me to meet some folk at the Devonshire Arms tonight, which is where I am headed right after I'm finished here.

Also: started writing lyrics for a metalcore parody/critique idea I've had called xXEROXx. (ie the Metalcore Band that looks and sounds like every other Metalcore band).

Strangely enough, the lyrics I'm writing are reading like Ignoring The Guidelines by Raised Fist.

Tomorrow I make a list of all the things I want to do next week. And buy food, because I'm running pretty low.

Over and out.

J

Weirdness

Hey,

Today I finished reading The Invisibles, which did end a little flatly. But Epic Apocalyptic conspiracy tales usually do.

Strangely enough when I was at Tesco late last night, I made the mistake of joking to the night staff that debit cards would one day be unnecessary because we would all have tattoos on the back of our necks and microchips surgically implanted on the back of our hands.

It was a mistake not because I came across as a paranoid lunatic, but because the cashier was a member of a hardcore Pentacostal Church that seriously believes every word of Revelations is going to come true, one way or another, and that we are in the last days. D'oh. I really have to learn not to talk about religion to people. Not when my own religious beliefs are so weird, not to mention prone to incredible reversals, dualities, internal contradictions and the like.

Personally, I'm not inclined to fell that the end of humankind is any time soon, no matter what people tell me. I'm just not the type to believe that we're going down without a serious fight, come hell or high water (and we've all seen plenty of the latter).

To defuse the situation a little, I mentioned something that somebody told me at STJ After Party a few weeks back, that being that in antiquity the trade routes through the middle east invariable took traders through the Plains of Megiddo, therefore the writer of Revelations would have believed that whoever controlled the Plains of Megiddo would control the world.

And then I bolted.

My cousin always said never trust anyone that is crazier than you are.

No, actually she said never sleep with anyone crazier than you are. A guideline I've never been good at following.

Back to our regularly scheduled Pogrom: after finishing The Invisibles, I cleaned up my room a little (not to self, buy more magazine racks) and threw some jeans in the wash before hitting The High Road to do what I've been meaning to do for a couple of weeks: spend £10 to buy another 10 kilos of weights for my barbells from the gym on the High Road.

I might have mentioned about that particular Gym before. Previously the bloke behind the counter was surly and sarcastic, even when I was buying stuff. A couple of months back I noticed that there were spelling mistakes on the signwriting in the windows: 'Need to Loose Weight Fast?' etc.

I took this as proof that Steroids Don't Make You Smart.

It might have been a better bloke today, or maybe he had actually learned to be nicer to paying customers.

So now I have ten more Ki's to play with. Of course, I know from experience that upping the weights on your barbells is addictive, so it's entirely possible that by Summer I'm going to look like Popeye.

Here's something funny: following a link of somebody's myspace page, I found one of those silly take-a-quiz type personality test pages.

I am sad to say that I only came in at 47% Punk Rock, and I wasn't as much of a Tortured Artist as I thought (fair play, I haven't cut of my own ear lately), but I was happily surprised by my Evil Genius score:

I am 91% Evil Genius.

I am pure evil. I lie awake at night devising schemes of world domination, and I will not rest until all living souls bend to my will.

Take the
Evil Genius Test
@ FualiDotCom

I always knew it was true.

Tonight I either go to a Salsa Dancing Class or go to Leicester Square for some more Stand-up Comedy.

I may or may not flip a coin to decide.

In another window I'm looking at some nice artwork by a scandinavian fastasy artist called Par Olofson. His style seems familiar but I can't seem to find anything about him in the usually limitless resources of the net.

I was also looking at the official website for a London Magazine called The Naked Punch , which one of the STJ kids was writing for. It seems to be just the wrong side of pretentious intellectualism for my taste (and that is a pretty broad border for me).

Their structure seems to have a hell of a lot of Editorial Staff and not a lot of contributors. Which is pretty damn weird to me, even though I haven't actually seen a hard copy of the magazine to check it out.

I did look in the article archives and find an article titled 'Why Marx matters to Artists'. I didn't read the whole thing, but from the first paragraph, it seemed that the writer had it the wrong way round. The case he was really arguing was 'Why Art should Matter to Marxists'.

I tried to sign up to the Events Email Newsletter for the magazine, but it repeatedly rejected my Hotmail account address. Shall I make the comment about classwar and internet, or does someone else want to.

[time passes]

My sister emailed me the link to the SixFtHick myspace page. The two songs on there are cool, of course, but what strikes me most funny is that their page reveals that Roland S Howard now has a Myspace Page.

Read that again: Roland S Howard has a Myspace.

I wonder if Nick does?

Hmm. The mind boggles. 'Hi, I'm Mozart, and here is my Myspace Page. Thanks for the Add.'

That's enough meandering from me for one day. I'm up and off.

Over and out.

J

Rofl

Hey All,

I didn't actually wind up getting any food yesterday.

What I did was take the train to Tottenham Court Road to buy Invisible Kingdom from a small comic shop on Charing Cross Road.

Two interesting things while I was there: there was a Japanese/British family there (Mother, Father, Small boy), with the Mother and Father sitting on the couch. At some point the Mother asks the kid: 'Do you want to go to Borders?', to which the excitedly exclaims his assent.

Which made me smile. Even if they are just going to raid the considerable Anime Shelf they have at Borders, it is still good to hear a kid excited to go to a bookshop.

Other interesting thing: some kind of bluesy, swampy music was playing on the stereo, which turned out to be... Early Fleetwood Mac. Evidently pre-stadium filling coke-roadie straw-blowing Fleetwood Mac.

Bizarre. I knew that Mick Fleetwood had form on the early UK Blues scene, but this had me blindsided. More investigation may be necessary. Of course, if I start to turn into too much of a hippy, I authorize Elea to travel to the UK and shoot me in the head.

Speaking of my Sisters, my mother told me that my other sister K has started doing Akido with my mother. If she stick with it, that means she might wind up with Two Black Belts (the first being in Tae Kwon Do). Kirsteen Logan, five foot two of martial arts fury.

I've commented before how whenever there is women's kickboxing on the TV, there always seems to be a trailer-trash looking freckled redhead. A curious pattern. Like how in every notable french movie there always seems to be Jean Hughes Anglade. I just checked on IMDB and it turns out he did a cameo in Leon (ie the movie that inspired The Professional).

Speaking of buying food at Tesco (which I wasn't but let's pretend I was), today I received my quarterly envelope from Tesco regarding my loyalty card, which now has 450 points on it.

A couple of weeks ago I read something that Warren Ellis had written along the lines that Loyalty cards are actually data collection systems to better allow the big corporations to narrowly tailor their marketing to targeted individuals. And I don't doubt it.

This was interestingly illustrated today by the inclusion a couple of vouchers for double points etc on soap, yogurt, chicken, bread and paper kitchen towels ALL OF WHICH I BUY ON A REGULAR BASIS!

1984 is upon us, Brothers and Sisters, we're all zeros and ones, numbers being crunched in the machines.

I did mention that I bought the final Trade Paperback volume of The Invisibles yesterday? Some of you might be aware that Grant Morrison (writer of The Invisibles) actually sued the Wachowski Brothers for lifting ideas, concepts and bits'n'pieces from The Invisibles (the settled out of court). I tend to credit reading stuff like The Invisibles with triggering my occaisional bursts of Meta-physical thinking, deconstruction of the social and corporate apparati around me, inquisitive paranoia about the media, etc.

Fresh narratives lead my internal explorer through doorways in my mind that previously I hadn't thought to open and inspect.

Either that or its some kind of mild manic episode.

Does any else feel the irony that Postmodern language theory (including post-structuralism etc), which in part deals with the problem that the way that Language necessitates the encoding and decoding of information frequently creates barriers to communication and understanding, is so often written about in such a way that is almost incomprehensible due to the language used?

Ie the language of these ideas about decoding ideas can only be decoded by someone who knows how to decode the language used to encode these ideas.

Some things are so hard to put in a paragraph.

What I'm trying to do is work out why I learnt more about post-modern cultural theory from reading a comic than I did at the University of Queensland.

High culture and low culture collide in such bizarre ways. Shostakovich (the Russian Soviet Era Composer, sometimes sampled by Hip-hop DJs) was getting a hell of a lot of press recently, because it was some milestone to do with his life or something. [checks wikipedia entry on Shostakovich] Okay it was the 100th anniversary of his birth.

But here's the thing: I found a book about Shostakovich at the Stratford Library recently, and in the Blurb it mentioned that he would encode anti-soviet messages into his music.

Fuck me. I've heard a bit of Shostakovich, and at no point do I recall saying: 'That discordant horn stab, there: That's all about the Boshevik repression of Kropotkin and his fellow Anarchists, and there! That cymbal crash says to me that the Red Army marching on May Day clearly shows that the Soviet State is really no different to the militaristic fascists they oppose. It's all so clear!'

Of course, I'm not an expert in listening to classical music and reading the images and events behind it, not having a huge background in opera or symphonic composition or the like.

But having said that, as a politically aware Black Metal fan, I know exactly what it means when I read that such and such's new CD is infused with huge, nationalist overtones.

Of course, that often means that the band in question has been cribbing musical notes from Wagner, which can be heard even by pretentious hacks like me.

And how do we know that Wagnerian musical memes indicate right-wing idealogy? Because we know that Wagner's musical, political and personal ideology was right wing.

Fair play, it is easy enough to listen to Wagner and Wagner influenced music and hear grandiousity, insistent forward pulses and all the other things that volkisch fascists, past and present.

On a side note, did you know that the Nazis hated Jazz? Apparently, apart from being made by Black People and Jews, they were also offended by the chaotic, syncopated rhythms and the alien sounds of the extended harmonies used.

Tell me if I've mentioned it before in this blog. I suspect that I have.

Enough of that. Maybe K is right: I should make a rants page.

Back to our regularly scheduled programme: After buying the Invisibles Trade last night, just for fun I went to Leicester Square, whereupon somebody passed my a flyer for some comedy upstairs at a club called Oxygen. I suspected that the quality might be questionnable, but it would only be £2.50 to get in, so I figured I'd go along anyway.

As it was, most of the three of the six comedians were pretty ordinary. But two really stood out. Aaron Barschak and a bloke who I think was called Paul Brennan. What I gleaned from watching them? Standup comedy is all about the Rhythm and the Energy. Without that an act is almost certainly doomed to failure.

The notable exception being Steven Wright, but of course, that man's material is so ridiculously surreal it exists outside the usual rules.

Completely by chance I was sitting with two Jewish Melbourne boys who had just spent the southern summer studying international law at the University of Jerusalem. One of them had a yamulke clipped to his tightly curled hair, both had blue eyes.

There is a stereotypical comment about Australians in there somewhere, but I think I'll let it sit.

When I got back to Leytonstone it was raining, so I figured that rather than do my food shopping and risk worsening my cold in the freezing wet, I'd go home and go to bed. Which I did.

And so ended the latest of the many Valentine's Days I've spent single.

Now I'm going to tweak my CV to play up my computer skills so that I can hand it into a Net Cafe on Charing Cross road that is looking for staff.

Over and out.

J

Happy Valentines

Hey Everyone,

It occurs to me that I am becoming a tad blase with my blogging. Which isn't good, since the regularity of a blog is directly proportional to a blogs ability to hold onto an audience (and since I suspect my audience doesn't reach double figures, I want to hold onto all the readers I can).

Anyways here's the news etc:

This morning I got up at about half-eight and made a list of things to do. Washing, shopping etc. I didn't put lifting weights on there because I am still recovering from that lousy cold, and I don't want to risk running down my body too hard.

What I did put on my list was 'Spend three hours working on short story ideas'.

The reasoning for this is

a) I want to get into the habit of sitting down and writing a certain amount every day (even if this does make for a dangerous veering into Jeffrey Archer territory, smug, slimey Tory swine that he is) and

b) SFX Magazine is running a short story comp (I might have mentioned this already) and I want to have a selection of short stories to choose from, polish and submit. A selection is more than one, so it helps if you have one finished.

As it happened, I had a short story idea that had been bouncing around my head that I figured was pretty much complete as a narrative went, so I threw some towels in the wash, fired up the laptop and ran with it.

The intention was to have the story come in under 2000 words, since that is the upper limit for the competition. As it was, the story came in at 2300 words.

I did finish it, I think it even took over three hours. I hung up the towels and watched the 2000 version of The Great Gatsby. I think the version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow is probably better.

And the story? I necessarily think it's brilliant per se, and I'm not sure about the pacing etc. But it is a first draft and it does have a beginning, a middle and an ending. Even if the ending is a little weak in my opinion. I always say a song isn't written until it's rewritten, and I guess a story is the same.

Speaking of rewriting, recently I read a newspaper reviewer give Stephen King's new book a hard time because it is essentially a rewrite of The Stand.

I think she was being too hard, since the story goes that Stephen King had to rewrite Carrie three times before anyone would publish it. Ergo he still has a few rewrites left on his other novels.

More short stories to be knocked out over the next few weeks.

Still on the writing front, the Ben Lee show that I went to left me feeling deeply conflicted. IE 799 other people seemed to enjoy the show, Ben was a good showman but it was effectively an acoustic show better suited to a coffee shop than an club and I was bored to tears, wishing I had gone to Bauhaus instead.

Thinking I should abandon the review, given that I'm supposed to turn in the review no more than four days after the show and it has already been over a week as I struggled with the my conflicting reactions to the performance.

I'm also afraid that if I submit the review I'll come across as a snide bastard reviewer. Which I am, but I prefer to save my bile for shows which were patently bad, not just ones that don't meet my taste.

There are much better Australian bands coming through London soon.

Grr. Tough call.

I'm going to get some food and think about it. Then I might rewrite the review in a way that doesn't make me seem like such an asshole.

Over and out.

J

Piffle!

Hi-de-ho!

Aside from buying some more food (I had eaten pretty much everything, down to the can of tuna in the bottom of the cupboard) yesterday I also finally got around to taking the curtains in my room to the local laundromat and giving them a good wash and spin in the dryers.

It sounds a strange thing to be proud of, but owing to my windows always being closed, as well as the on-off heating in the flat, my curtains had started growing green fur. Which didn't really matter so much, since they were red curtains (it wasn't so much of a clash, per se), but I did figure that it really wasn't something that I should tolerate for long.

I would have actually sorted it out a while ago, but I don't have a dryer in the flat, and I didn't want to hang them up damp, since that would be a variation on the situation which caused the deplorable state of affairs.

So now my curtains are clean, dry and my room is actually smelling much better (ie much less musty) as a result. Huzzah!

(geez I'm terrible)

Anyways, I have no idea what time I turned in last night, but I do know that it couldn't have been more than half an hour into The Magnificent Seven that I realised that I really wanted to sleep. So I lay down, fully dressed in my now-less-musty room under my defurred curtains and that was that.

In the same vein I have no idea what time my mother called from Australia. But it is always nice to get a call from home.

I woke up this morning at about half five and amused myself reading American Gods and T-shirts that had been hanging up to dry.

Mid afternoon I watched the OC, followed by Stargate, followed by Star Trek Enterprise. It is the first time in quite a while I've seen any of those shows.

The Star Trek episode I saw was most memorable, being the second part of the A Mirror, Darkly two-parter, with an alternate universe where everyone was evil instead of benevolent and instead of the Federation of Planets there was The Terran Empire. The evil universe being complicated by a Federation Starship from the 23rd century somehow being lured to to evil universe, 22nd century.

It seemed to be the Star Trek writers and actors poking a whole lot of fun at themselves. For example, one scene involved a carnivorous reptile loose onboard, to be investigated by a security team, all wearing red tunics.

Naturally, everyone wearing a red tunic is dead by the next scene. Brilliant.

Tomorrow begins another week.

Here I come.

Over and out.

J

Hey

Hey everyone,

My regular readers (if such a beast exists) will be wondering what happened to me since my last post.

Here's your answer: I celebrated getting a new phone line by getting a terrible cold which left me in no state to venture out of my flat from Thursday to Today.

The good news is that I managed to spend the time I didn't spend semi-comatose reading. And as a result I finished Assassin's Quest, the third book in the Farseer Trilogy, this morning. (I can't believe I spelt Assassin wrong twice in my last post. I blame the cold I was coming down with).

It was especially good news for me, since I saw that some comedian was kind enough to post a spoiler of dubious quality for me.

I hate Spoilers.

But I did really enjoy the Farseer Trilogy, even if Hobb did start to telegraph some of her punches in the third book. There was a depth to the writing that I really enjoyed. You really got to know the characters in all of their dimensions and I have to confess feeling sad for some of them at points.

Of course, at the same time I was always looking for the strings being pulled by the author.

Possibly my favourite character in the trilogy was The Fool, who I originally viewed as the Deus Ex Machina of the story but quickly realised that The Fool represented so much more.

Enough about that.

Here's something that has had me thinking for the last couple of days: In the media I keep finding the words 'Red Line'. Iran insists that it won't use nuclear technology to make a bomb because that would be crossing a Red Line. Making cartoons about the Prophet Muhammed is crossing a Red Line say Islamists. The Chancellor of Germany says that when the Presided of Iran talks about the Holocaust being a hoax, he has crossed the Red Line (page 2 of last Sunday's Times, no less).

It might just be that using the words Line in the Sand may not be deemed politically correct for some obscure reason, but it does strike me as strange.

Especially since to from Leytonstone into London, I have to ride a Red Line.

Maybe it's just the after effects of watching Lost, mixed in with the Bad Wolf incident on Dr Who.

Still, I'll be looking out for any more Red Lines, and posting them as they come.

For now, I have to go buy some food, since being sick since Wednesday means I'm all out.

Over and out.

J

Phone Line!

Hey All,

I finally have a phone line.

However, I don't actually have a phone...

So right after this I'm going to Tesco to pick one out.

Yep, they sell phones at the supermarket here in Leytonstone. And computers, and clothes and all other kinds of crap.

I think it's called horizontal integration.

I think it should be called 'making sure that the customer doesn't go anywhere else, so that he never notices that our prices and range aren't as good as somewhere else'.

Still, if you want to buy a phone after 10PM at night, it's a Godsend.

Backtracking: Sunday night was interesting. Just for fun I went to Camden to see a London-based Italian band called Mab. Four Italian girls playing Gothed-Up slightly anachronistic rock. They were actaully pretty good at their instruments, although their lead singer's soprano grated.

In support were Interlock and Maleficient. Two bands that would have been right at home at the Basement back in Brisbane.

After the show I got talking to a pretty girl with nice great cheekbones and a burgundy betty-page haircut (which on closer examination turned out to be a wig). She seemed to like me.

Also saw at the show: a bloke with knee length dreads that turned out to be the singer in a band called Milk-Plus. Notable because I got talking to the double bassplayer in that band at Inferno.

I would be listening to the Milk-Plus myspace thing but this isn't my usual internet gaff, so I don't have any headphones.

Other news: after several marathon efforts, I finished reading Royal Assasin by Robin Hobb, the sequel to Assasin's Apprentice. I'm pretty sure that it is at least 200 pages longer than the previous book, so it is interesting that I managed to get through it faster.

Tomorrow I'll hit a bookshop and get myself a copy of the third in the trilogy.

Just for fun today I killed time waiting for the BT Man by reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I had picked up a copy on a whim at WH Smith because it was only 3 pounds, but I hadn't started reading it until this morning.

It's not bad. It's a little darker and grittier than his Sandman comics but still has the sense of humour that runs through all his work.

I just looked through the Myspace of a Brisbane friend and discovered that my old pal Ben Frost is still around and still doing artwork. Weird. How long have I known that guy? For an intolerable hipster he was brighter and more interesting than the rest.

Last night I watched a british made doco on Neo-Nazi bands, the infrastructures that support them and the political organisations they support.

There was some Italian folk singer girl w named Viking, who insisted that she was a Fascist not a Nazi, and explained that she felt it important to be proud of her Italian history. Then they showed footage of her singer a song about not trusting Jews, stumming away on a Nylon string guitar.

Newsflash, Bella, several members of Mussolini's Fascist Party were Jewish. If you sing songs about hating Jews you're a Nazi through and through. It is perpetually ironic that the people who claim to be the guardians of their heritage and history often have no real idea of what they are talking about.

The musical outfits in the programme were consistently pretty damn terrible, and the organisational folk came across a white trash. No real surprises.

My only gripe with it was that they completely ignored the National Socialist Black Metal scene. Even though the Black metal scene is closer to the mainstream than a Skinhead show will ever be, therefore it plays a much greater role in normalising the nasty ideas that Nazis have.

Not to mention that Metal kids actually know how to play their instruments far better than any ten-thumbed bonehead.

Yet another example of the mainstream media not taking metal seriously.

Seriously, how many kids have heard of Burzum and Graveland? And how many have heard of Max Resist?

I might just write a letter to the producers.

In any case, I have to get myself a handset.

Over and out.

J

Hey-Ya, Hey-ey-Ya

Hey Blogonnosieurs,

I've had a pretty interesting weekend.

As I said, Friday I went to see Ben Lee, pretty much only so that I had something to review until more Australian Bands shake off their Post Big Day Out afterglow and Get In the Van to the UK.

And I was pretty underwhelmed, even though on paper it is hard to explain why. It's going to be a hard review.

After Ben Lee I took the Northern Line along to Camden, when I went to a Monthly club at the Camden Ballroom call Inferno. Goth/Industrial downstairs, Metal/Rock upstairs.

Pretty good. I also ran into Chris and a couple of the other STJ kids and chatted to them about the story ideas that they had inadvertantly inspired.

Besides the Slab Crew that I ran into (named after the house where they had the after party), I also ran into Liam, a Sydney kid who I met a one of Hilary's recent shows. He passed me his mobile number and informed my of a low-key house-party at his house the next night. Also met a double-bass player (identified by the stripped down electric double bass that he was carrying with him, which I originally wondered if it was some kind of rifle).

After Inferno, bus home with Django Reinhardt on my iPod, reading and sleep.

Last night I headed out to the House Party at Liam's place, which is situated on Archway Road. Going from East London to North London can be like going to an entirely different city. The buildings often look nicer, less dirty etc.

Anyways, the House Party itself was a fun, if small affair. Met some cool people, eg a veterinary student from Bradford and a couple of others. Hilary was there, but she was sick so she left early.

I had meant to bug out of the party to go to Slimelight, but I wound up staying at the party til 0420. After that, bus to Angel, decided not to go to Slimelight, just killed time till the tubes started running.

At the tubes stations I ran into my friend Blue-Haired-Lee, and later another pal Callum, both club buddies of mine.

Home, reading, jeans in wash, sleep.

Over the weekend both Callum, Chris and another bloke I met named John raved to me about how good Bauhaus were on Friday night.

Let me put this in context: Bauhaus can conceivably be called a Goth Rock Band. And they put on a great live show on Friday. Some would argue that constitutes an inversion of the standard order great enough to tear the universe apart.

But somehow they managed it. And I wasn't there to see it.

I hate Ben Lee.

I'm out to buy food.

J

Hey everyone,

I finished reading The Assassin's Apprentice two days ago and I am already chugging through The Royal Assassin, the second in the trilogy.

A school teacher that I met at the After-After Party on Sunday warned me that the sequels don't get any less bleak than the first. To be fair, it ain't Harry Potter (although HP does seem to be getting darker as we go), but it isn't Fantasy by Mike Leigh either.

The last few days there seems to have been a whole lot of furore in the Muslim world about some cartoons published in a Danish Newspaper that have since been reprinted in a couple of other nations. I keep seeing shots of Palestinians burning the Danish Flag, stories about gunmen surrounding the European Union office etc.

I'm a little lost here: a newspaper in a nation where Muslims are free to be Muslims without fear of Official Persecution runs a few cartoons that implies that there might be problems with the way that some people practise Islam and whole countries fly right off the handle.

refer: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/658

Right. There are Muslims who will tell you that the very existance of Israel is a crime against Muslims the world over, that it needs to be driven into the sea and that Hitler was sent to Earth to punish Jews for their wickedness, but if you draw a picture that might be Mohammed you should prepare for Death Threats, boycotts or worse.

The 21st century is waiting, boys. Feel free to join us any time you want.

***

On a slightly less reactionary note, it is frickin' freezing outside.

Also: tomorrow night I go to see Ben Lee play, which should make for a good review. Though I am going to try really hard to avoid the words 'Precocious Little Cunt' (thank you Bernard from Powderfinger).

Next week I'll have a landline.

I hope. At Strength Through Joy a friend told me that he had been having a whole lot of trouble getting a landline put in, with BT missing appointments etc.

I truly hope that they don't do that.

But if they do I will have to channel my brother Gus, legendary in the Logan Family not only for his Tech Savvy but also for his furious indignation when it comes to institutional incompetence.

In any case, time to wind up here.