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