Twinklebum UK

IF PEOPLE WERE MUSIC

2009-12-28T04:11:00.000-08:00

...what would be better....what would be even better is if human beings could be floating pieces of music....if we could just be floating pieces of music.....and our melodies mixed as we passed each other.......tunes would be created as we passed through each other in the air.......fantastic choruses........passionate anthems.....little ditties....like small clouds of melody floating through meadows and over fields......human beings reduced into spirit form...into little melodies floating over meadows and fields.......if human beings could be pieces of music it would be such a symphony of human grief, tragedy and love......an orchestra of sorrow, loss and hope.....if we were made of notes floating over mountains.....or small melodies floating through valleys.......if human beings were just small pieces of floating music floating through the sky......you would get incredible diversity......you would get tender brittle melodies.....delicate tunes.....suddenly frightened off by a big scary tune that emerges like a cartoon villain....emerging like a thunder cloud....loud and raucous.....percussion and drums....dark as rain....frightening off the little tunes who scatter and hide......if we were music....you would get herds of triangles moving across continents together....leaving a petticoat of tinkles in their way......you'd get wistful cellos migrating in threes over woodland........string quartets banding together........a little fugue travelling alone..........the sound of a bassoon would wander through the higher clouds of the atmosphere.....trumpets would sound at dawn........if we were music....... melodies would intertwine momentarily or for longer periods.......temporarily making new tunes together......inventing new sounds......floating together for a while.....but perhaps parting their separate ways eventually......alone again - although changed......a different tune now......incorporating new musical phrases....new refrains.....new musical motifs as they continue on their way......floating through the sky as a piece of music.....every scale of human emotion....floating in the key of life.....

....if the world was filled with hundreds of pieces of human music....millions of small floating tunes....a universe of human melodies.....i wonder if that sound would reach out to space or be heard anywhere beyond our own planet....i wonder if our sounds of grief, passion, love and holy revery would be heard anywhere beyond our own cloud duvet atmosphere.......and i wonder if there'd be compassion for a slightly simple and cumbersome tune who kept bumping its head into treble clefs....the schmuck of all melodies.....who stumbles in trying to keep up with a four four beat.....and who always hits the wrong notes....

THE LABORATORY

2009-12-20T06:34:00.000-08:00

in the breakthrough of our bizarre experiment we managed to reduce the first human being into a light beam.....an accountant called Larry from Mill Hill......passing them through a prism we found that their human light beam was broken down into merely constituent colours of grey.....with no gesture of the rainbow we have come to find in traditional light......it seems Larry was made up simply of shades of grey......tests continue to see whether this is the default colour of all human beings....or whether Larry was particularly dull......Larry's briefcase remains on the table in the lobby.......we have called in the next volunteer...."Martin"....an insurance salesman from Finchley........with "Larry"...."Martin"....and "Chuck"... (currently struggling with a drinks machine in the lobby)...... we are hopeful that we can decipher the essence of mankind.....but already i am beginning to think we should have broadened our catchment of volunteers in this experiment......an experiment to reduce human beings into light and discover the very essence of humanity...

...Chuck has asked Hilary, our secretary for another 20p.....he needs it to get a capri-sun.....

...it is curious to think that human beings came from light beams...

This is the refraction that occurred when passing a dog through a prism

SEA OF UNCERTAINTY

2009-12-06T06:37:00.000-08:00

....i found myself floundering in a big sea where big waves in the shapes of question marks come crashing towards me and threatening to drown me.....each time i wonder... "Will this be the one? Is this the wave that takes me under?"....

....after some minutes being tossed around in this sea i decide my position is untenable...i decide to take me chances and try to ride a question mark......to surf it and see if it takes me to an hospitable shore........anywhere is preferable to being here....i am in a permanent state of drowning and it's no good........i see a big question mark heading my way and i make my move.....grasping it...........at first i am terrified.....but then as i get my footing and ride the question mark i notice a spray of tiny exclamation marks are left in a trail behind me.........i realise my fear has given way to exhiliration....i am sailing through this ocean on a vast question mark.....heading where i don't know.....i notice gulls around me.....the salt sea sunlight spray leaves a glitter trail behind me......some fish skip through the water below me......and i realise that riding this question mark is beautiful......wherever it takes me now i don't care..........riding this unknown into an unknown sea is beautiful and is good enough for me.....after ten minutes i realise i am hugging the question mark.....and seeing parts of the ocean i never dreamed existed.....in the distance i see vast continents....

....then i find myself in a vast stretch of water.....i see hundreds of people all clutching onto question marks....all like myself.....surfing in different directions.....at different speeds.......and it is the most beautiful thing i have ever seen........it is the most beautiful thing i have ever seen......some of the people are crashing into each other to make even bigger questions marks that they ride together.....others ride alone....there are grandparents and mums..... there are families....... there are kids and teenagers...... i see an accountant with a briefcase riding a big question mark ......i see a dancer ......i see some mechanics .....lost in their thoughts....in quiet prayer......i see everyone...... teachers....... divorcees...... judges....... criminals..... people of all nationalities and all age groups......some are giggling...... some are laughing..... some are hallooing at the sheer exhiliration of it all......."how do you do!"....they shout as they pass each other...... a handful however are crying....daunted.... nervous..... agitated on their question marks..... not realising yet how beautiful it is to be in this sea....to ride such an ocean of uncertainty...... with waves towering fierce and mighty above you.... and troughs looming so deep and gloomy below you....... they will realise it....i am sure of it.....

.....i pass through the throng and head off alone into uncharted waters once again..........once again it is just me on this question mark.....but i no longer fear drowning......the world is different......as the sun begins to kiss the horizon good night......as the sun wishes it sweet dreams.....as the fish dive under towards the sea bed.......i am certain of one thing.......if this question mark should crash or dissipate....I know another might come my way and i'll grab that and see where it takes me......another ocean...... another sea always awaits........

......at the same time.....should a question mark come along so wild and unpredictable as to floor me.......that should knock me off my back.....that should toss me under....into a kingdom of bubbles......i fear nothing.......i know that a sea that creates such waves of question marks must have even bigger mysteries at its depths.....and when the opportunity comes along to explore those depths.....i will grasp it with all the love and cavalier confidence that riding this wave has taught me......a sea of uncertainty is by its nature unpredictable and not short of its stormy moments.....but by God it makes for some damn good sailing.....

....come waves....come ocean....come sea salt spray.....come rolling typhoons of opportunity and thundering foam of unpredictabilty.....bring me the biggest waves you can manage.....

THE CROW and THE TIME PIECE

2009-12-04T00:50:00.000-08:00

There was a crow who found a watch and brought it back to his nest. The next day he took it to show the other crows. "If i can work out how this machine works...i will be master of time and conquer all destiny." The other crows ignored him and went off their separate ways. But the crow took the watch back to his nest where he began to study it. And the next morning he studied it. And all that week he studied it whilst the other crows went about their normal business. "That crow has lost it." "He has become a kook." But the crow was determined to understand how the machine worked and what it did. The crow tried to imitate the ticks in an attempt to speak with the watch. It tried to shuffle round in time to the moving hands in an attempt to communicate to the watch via dance. The crow grew frustrated but he did not tell the others. Although it was not too difficult to tell. "Just ignore it - you will never understand." "It is far too complicated." "Far better to spend your time circling the fields and catching mice." But the crow wanted to understand the concept of time and learn to control it. All night he could be heard muttering from his nest as he tried to understand what the watch meant. His feathers became oily and unkempt. His wings were frayed and weathered. His beak lost its lustre. He began to stoop. His body became crooked and twisted from being stooped in observation. "Tick tock." The watch taunted him and still he could not understand what it was saying to him. He slept very few hours. He was up most of the night pacing up and down in his nest. He grabbed restless fits of sleep haunted by the sound of the time piece that had come to dominate his life...

...One morning he didn't come out of his nest. The other crows went over to his nest and there he was - dead - next to a stopped watch.

They looked at him.

They looked at the time piece and they understood it.....they stepped back from the clock......some of them ran away.....

THE CURIOUS WINTER

2009-12-04T00:49:00.000-08:00

It was a curious winter when they discovered that icicles gave off radio signals....and when they found rocks were emitting morse code it was even more bizarre...it changed the way everyone understood nature...and people rushed to understand what the rocks and trees were trying to communicate ....geologists...botanists.... vulconologists....they all tried..... the governments of all countries invested money...... but who would have thought it was lonely i who would take the prize.......after five years amateur research into the field it was i who finally cracked the code....and here are the results of my findings that winter way back then:

RESULTS OF EXPERIMENT INTO ROCK, ICICLE AND TREE COMMUNICATION

Icicles.... "brrrr......brrrrrr....."

Rocks..... "durr.....durrrrr....."

Trees....."frrrrr.....frrrrr...."

Moss.....*(no signal)....

I was awarded a special prize for services to science and had my photo on the cover of Nature. Now that a line of communication had been established with the natural world the hard work began. The long, hard struggle to establish a dialogue with the rocks and grass took form. A field in Shropshire was put forward as an emissary in the Northern English counties. He proved himself a sage ambassador and worthy representative of the natural kingdom. His word was his bond and shuttle run diplomacy to and from the field was never without anticipation of a breakthrough. In China i understand it was a rice field that had taken on diplomatic duty. In Japan a Cherry Blossom tree. In Canada it was a redwood. France had a pebble. Irrespective of which ambassadors emerged in which region of the world - dialogue had begun with the plants and negotiations had started. And this in itself was a reward i could never have expected when i set out with my ice, rock and plant communication device. Three years later, in truth, things are tense and there are disagreements. But this was expected and is nothing insurmountable. The important thing is that we are talking, and recognition of our collective destiny has been the first step towards perhaps forging a world in which man and rock can live in harmony. A tree has been known to dine at the White House, and in Russia recently bushes were allowed on buses for the first time. There is talk of the Prime Minister of England holding a press conference with some sand.

At this stage there has still been no breakthrough in communicating with moss. Work continues but hope is slightly diminishing. At the moment there is talk into using some form of lazer technology but in truth, things are simply starting to seem like moss just doesn't want to talk. But we will keep trying as there is no alternative. Every life form on this planet must be included in any future settlement.

There is hope. I believe there is hope. Because sometimes there are feelings that are so moving in the soul of mankind...that solicit such profound feelings of awe and...dare i say it....inspiration and love....that one cannot help but be convinced of the power of those feelings to overcome all obstacles and create success. That was the feeling i experienced that fateful day when my radio transmitter found the correct frequency and i managed to get the first ruffled message from a nettle.* But perhaps even more than that first contact was the moment two years later...that created an indescribable feeling which elevated hope above all feelings i have ever experienced. It was a feeling mixed with pride and optimism.....and which brought a tear to my eye ..... it was the afternoon i witnessed the moment when a rock spoke from the podium of the United Nations. I was proud to have been there. Below is a transcript of that groundbreaking speech. And i am proud to say i was there, watching from the wings, as history was made that day.

There is hope. I believe there is hope.

UNITED NATIONS TRANSCRIPT OF ROCK AMBASSADOR, INAUGURAL FIRST SPEECH, 2011.

"durrr.....durrrrrrr.......durrr.......durr.......durrrrrr.....durr...durrrrr......durrrrr......durr.....durrrrrrr......durrrrrr........durrrrrrrr.....durrr.......durrrrr......durrr.....durrrrrrr.......durrr.......durr.......durrrrrr.....durr...durrrrr......durrrrr......durr.....durrrrrrr......durrrrrr........durrrrrrrr.....durrr.......durrrrr......durrr.....durrrrrrr.......durrr.......durr.......durrrrrr.....durr...durrrrr......durrrrr......durr.....durrrrrrr......durrrrrr........durrrrrrrr.....durrr.......durrrrr......durrr.....durrrrrrr.......durrr.......durr.......durrrrrr.....durr...durrrrr......durrrrr......durr.....durrrrrrr......durrrrrr........durrrrrrrr.....durrr.......durrrrr......durrr.....durrrrrrr.......durrr.......durr.......durrrrrr.....durr...durrrrr......durrrrr......durr.....durrrrrrr......durrrrrr........durrrrrrrr.....durrr.......durrrrr......durrr.....durrrrrrr.......durrr.......durr.......durrrrrr.....durr...durrrrr......durrrrr......durr.....durrrrrrr......durrrrrr........durrrrrrrr.....durrr.......durrrrr......durrr.....durrrrrrr.......durrr.......durr.......durrrrrr.....durr...durrrrr......durrrrr......durr.....durrrrrrr......durrrrrr........durrrrrrrr.....durrr.......durrrrr......"

There is hope.

I believe there is hope.

-------------

*Tony was the first nettle spoken to in 2009. His first words, although muffled with pioneering radio technology, are credited as, "tttst....ttst..." which loosely translated reads as, "hello...i am Tony"

THE WORM and THE RUBY

2009-12-04T00:48:00.000-08:00

Once there was a worm who swallowed a ruby.....he wriggled on the ground with his belly....the big rock in his tummy bulging through his segmented body.....he struggled over dirt and past stones....travelling to the kingdom of the Wren.....he struggled at night and slept in snatches during the day.....taking shelter in damp patches of grass....protecting the gem in his belly from crows that attacked as he slept for ten minutes here and there....restless five minutes there.....at twilight he would wake up and carry on his journey to the kingdom of the Wren.......after two years he arrived......he went to the king who surveyed him with his beak and feathers....and the Wren said "speak" to the worm.....and the worm regurgitated the gem onto the floor in front of the King......worm dribble over its shiney maroon red glint......and then the worm spoke:

"King....please accept this gemstone as a gift from the worms.....for so long we have perished and suffered under your claws....torn by your beaks.....ripped by your zeal....let us now make this offering as a truce..."

.......the wren ignored the jewel and looked at the worm.... licking his lips.....the worm was breathing heavily and tired from his journey.....he never even raised his head to see the beak descending swiftly down.....or the plush of blood that followed....brighter than any ruby......glowing more than any gem...

SLEEP RELIGION

2009-10-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

Has there ever been a religion that has emerged dedicated solely to, and worshipping, the act of sleeping? There must have been some cult that saw sleep as the highest form of revery? I guess i came close to that cult when i was on the dole. And meeting up every fortnight at the job centre was our congregation. Forgive me brothers, these past few months i have lapsed. I long to return to bed, to church...

WORRIES

2009-10-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

If you could get a puppy and fill it with all the worries that trouble man - would it explode? What about a goldfish? How about a horse? Which animal would have the greatest resistance to the worries of man? How many months of mortgage worry would a pig be able to handle before it exploded? Could a hamster worry about a job application? Or would it just explode on the treadmill? How tough are animals? How long would a dog be able to worry about catching a plane before it exploded? What if you piled on the pressure and gave it a load of gas-bills to worry about too? Could animals deal with the worry of man?

They live in a world that is more immediately close to the perils of life and death - but how would they deal with tax returns, insurance claims and worrying about finding money for the service charge on a block of flats?

The answer is probably not very long - but i'm up for trying out this flight of fancy.

I recommend an experiment where a gorilla and a flea are kept in a separate room, each left with a tax return.

Then we study how they react and see which one explodes first.

I reckon gorilla meat would explode all over the perspex screen first, sliding down in little kebab shaped lumps.

The flea would pop shortly after.

Then i'd call in the turtle and the cute-faced bush-baby and ask the lab assistant to bring in a load of council tax and water and electricity bills...

This bushbaby wouldn't last five minutes with a tax return and then a load of gas bills arriving through the letterbox

SLEEP

2009-10-18T02:39:00.000-07:00

Do the cells in our body ever "sleep" or are they permanently awake? And do trees and plants sleep? And what about amoebas? Does the AIDS virus ever sleep? Does bacteria nap? Does plankton have a snooze? How is sleep carved out among the living kingdom? Do rose-bushes catch forty winks? Does pollen sleep? Are there ZZZZ's emanating from all living life on earth? Does seaweed drifting through the ocean sleep? Do barnacles get some shut eye? What's going on? Is the world sleeping? Is every living thing asleep except I?

(Plankton snoozing on the ocean bed. What are they all dreaming of? Are these particular planktons brothers and sisters? Were their parents killed by a whale? Are they orphan planktons? Is this an orphanage for plankton? I hope they find a home. They're like the Oliver Twists of the Pacific).

THE LOOK

2009-10-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

I just passed Julian Barrat from The Mighty Boosh in the street. He had the calm and tranquil look of a man who had made it. It was the complete opposite of my look. Literally a minute later i passed Martin Freeman from the office. The same look.

Then I passed Dean Gaffney...

(This is a true story)

SHOWBIZ ANIMALS

2009-10-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

I just passed Russell Brand coming in as i was leaving my agents. The juxtaposition was glaring - he the fat cash cow coming in ...........me - the skinny, boney goat on its way out....knocked knees, weak and wobbly...... He - giant fat milkable udders weened on pastures of luscious grass....buckets of cash to be kneaded out...me...wrinkled little serengeti nipples...like raisins.....shrivelled from lack of water in a parched and sun baked desert.....only dust to be milked from them........that was the juxtaposition......and i could forgo the money.....but Russell's also the reason why no-one in the entertainment industry has been having sex for the past four years......

NB

He was wearing eye-liner, i was wearing bags under my eyes.

THE BOMB

2009-10-12T01:56:00.001-07:00

How would we feel if chimpanzees were working on the bomb? If somewhere in a jungle they were secretly acquiring nuclear technology? How would we feel if chimpanzees suddenly announced to the world, "We have a nuclear bomb....now you will listen...". Their demands would be minimal i believe. "More bananas." "We want apricots." But could we allow this kind of threat and air of menace to go unchallenged? I imagine they would sleep next to their bomb. Jungle vines and caterpillars crawling at night. Snoring next to their tinned messiah. There would be an anxiety that it could go off at any time. Monkeys are after all a reckless and agitated species. One slip or falling coconut could spell ka-boom. Surely such a threat to world harmony would have to be scuppered? Would some kind of daring raid have to be plotted to rid these monkeys of their bomb? If we didn't - would a group of aspiring gorillias on another mountain top also work towards obtaining nuclear technology? And once they had the bomb, what's to stop the orang utans and macaques getting the bomb? The baboons...the capuchins....the bonobos....they'd all aspire towards getting the bomb. And who are we to deny their legitimate claim? As it stands, we are the only monkeys who have the bomb, but it's only a matter of time before other primates want in on the action. If we wish to maintain our strategic dominance and position of primacy on this planet, we need to prevent all other monkeys getting the bomb now. We cannot allow the world order to be challenged so that lesser primates subvert the balance of power and we find ourselves in a position where - god forbid - a load of monkeys hold us to ransom. I say we bomb the jungle now before monkeys obtain nuclear technology. It's only a matter of time...

THE TRADE OFF

2009-10-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

I am poor and my flat is cold. Some would say the artist's way is not a career - but this i know, this i know:

.....Whilst you go into an office to work, I go into a daydream...

EDGAR ALLAN POE

2009-10-10T16:36:00.000-07:00

Two days ago was the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's death. Edgar Allan Poe was a dishevelled genius. A frayed and brilliant man. Can I recommend any soul that reads this go out and buy The Fall of the House of Usher and other tales. Poe is a fucking lunatic. An extremely literate lunatic. His prose is a fucking nightmare. Literally think of having a panic attack, a mental breakdown and a nightmare all in one go and this is what reading one of his stories are like. It’s fucking exhilirating. But I do think if you have a tendency towards mental illness you should be careful as it is likely to bring on an episode. There should be a warning at the start of his stories comparable to the warning you get before TV programs saying, “Warning – this program contains flashing images that may cause epilepsy…”

“Warning – this book contains word combinations and rhythms that are likely to induce paranoia, panic attacks, fear and mental breakdowns – (if you have that kind of brain that either wasn’t finished properly at birth or has been damaged during transit through life...)”

I don’t think I have ever read a writer place you right at the epicentre of madness so superbly. It’s a horrific fucking maelstrom. I think I sort of remember Jack Kerouac capturing a bit of something towards the end of Big Sur, but this is something altogether different. This is intense. The words aren’t a description of madness. They are the physical embodiment of madness objectified in language. Furthermore, what’s great is here’s a writer who understands language as a physical, rhythmical and sensory experience. It’s not just about a plodding delivery of plot – a dreary fetish which we have in all mediums in our society – whether it be film, documentary, prose and even most of the crap poetry you might pick up. Don’t get me wrong – he writes these incredible plots – but he also seems to have this hypnotic style – these chunky paragraphs - rhythmical crescendos that are not always logical or sensical - but which splash about language in great swirling pastiches of fear and nightmarish mirror breaking moments. He is a paragon of intensity to all aspiring writers interested in the shadows and battle-grounds of the soul.

Anyway. I just happen to be having an Edgar Allan Poe moment.

Edgar Allan Poe - you poor troubled tragedy ridden bloody genius.

FLATMATE

2009-10-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

A big, fat fly has come to share my flat with me. I don't want to chase him out because it is winter. He is big and plump and looks like he needs a place to stay. It is October and winter is starting to leave his calling cards on every chilly wind and falling leaf. I don't want to turf this fly out. He has flown around my room two times now and has settled on the wall above a picture. I am going to give this fly a place to stay. Hopefully we can make it through winter together. I will leave him saucers of sugary water. I think that is what flies eat. Or at least i think that it's a dish they will be grateful for on a wintery day. I'm not going to give the fly a name, but i hope he makes it through the winter. It will be good to explore spring with him. To explore the first icicles starting to melt. I am going to give him a place to stay. It's a tough winter coming. I can feel it already. I think we will make good companions, the fly and I. We will make soup together. And pace up and down together for warmth. Me walking a threadbare rug. He buzzing round the light fitting of a cold room. Perhaps we will meet up every winter and survive it together, the fly and I. Going our separate ways for the remainder of the year, we shall meet up again come the first appearance of the chilly wind and the falling leaves, announcing winter's impending arrival and intention to stay in our town.

At times i feel benevolence to all creatures on earth. True unconditional love is when you can apply that to the AIDS virus or ebola. I guess that's where it becomes a bit more difficult to express your love for all existence. It's hard to love a virus. Or a disease that makes children bleed out of their eyeballs. Extending love to all God's creatures can be quite challenging. Some of them just don't seem to get in the spirit of things. There are very few viruses that are down with the summer of love. Most of them are pretty selfish squatters, and tend to ravage their place of stay. There are few AIDS viruses that leave a body like they found it. No ebola virus tidies up before they leave.

But i'm pretty confident this fly won't cause much havoc in my flat. I'm sure he won't mess up my pots and pans. If the truth be told, things are already pretty messy here...

So, for the time being i'm going to extend my compassion and sympathy to this fly. It's cold and it's hard and it's winter bound. He's a little traveller on life's journey and i don't mind him squatting with me for a while. He can stay up there on that wall and make it his own.

I hope we get on this little fly and I...

UPCOMING GIGS - OCTOBER

2009-10-09T01:03:00.000-07:00

Monday 19th October
Porthole Comedy Club - Kilburn

Thursday 22nd October
Monkey Business Comedy Club - Kentish Town

Thursday 29th October
Scram Comedy Club (Upstairs at The Masons Arms) - Harrow

Do try to come down and say hello.

It's good to get out of the house.

And it's always nice to share a coca cola with you afterwards...

THE ALARM CLOCK

2009-10-06T02:13:00.000-07:00

Is there anything more sadistic than an alarm clock? History has spawned many brutes and fiends but there is no sadist to rival the villainy of the alarm clock - who punches you in the face - pulls you by the hair - drags you out of sleep without so much as a second thought for your well being. Marquis De Sade has a lot to learn from the alarm clock. For the cold and calculated infliction of pain there is none to rival the malicious spite of the alarm clock - who inflicts pain with a yawn. A bully who commits domestic violence behind shaded blinds. Who lands black eyes before dawn. The morning alarm sounding at 6am...5am....that wrenches you from the sleepy kingdom without so much as a pang of interest or concern. Who leaves you wounded for the rest of the day. Who shows no sorrow or remorse. Who sheds no tear. The Alarm Clock. Sadist and Assassin of sleep. Killer of Dreams. Unrivaled in cruelty. Unparalleled in spite. Whose glee comes ultimately from seeing you leaving out the front door, submissive....resigned....head bowed.....knowing you will return like an abused and broken partner that night...returning each day for more punishment...

REVOLUTION

2009-10-06T01:57:00.000-07:00

If the sun can't even be bothered to get up why should we? Yes to bed. No to work.

WINTER IS COMING...

2009-10-06T01:28:00.000-07:00

Winter has only been here five minutes and he's already kicked summer in the nuts and spat at spring. What a bastard...

...this rampaging hooligan punching people with fingers of frost...slapping the faces of soft-cheeked women at bus stops...tripping up school-kids.....slipping on ice........what an utter bastard...

...a bastard has come to town...

...Winter.......with his icicles hanging like phlegm........spitting at our houses.....

...somebody get this bastard....

...this fucking hooligan marching through our town like he owns the place...

..forcing the men-folk to get up early and defrost their cars...after this snowflaked fiend has vandalised them in the night....covered in frost....

...Where are the police?

...somebody get this cunt...

...how long is he going to terrorise our town for?

a rampaging bastard is marching through town and it seems there is nothing we can do...

Who spawned this lawless monster?

STORM TREE HILL

2009-10-04T03:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a tree on a windy night...a gusty night..a powerful night...when the air is energised...but it is early on...before things have really kicked off...just a few leaves march forwards...like scouts precursing the storm...

THE CHERRY LADY

2009-10-04T03:25:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of a walnutty lady walking through a woodland meadow of cherry hue...i'm not sure where she's going but she has folds of skin under her neck...has arthtritic fingers...and has a nose that tapers like a turnip...

THE BED

2009-10-03T03:22:00.000-07:00

Oh man, i've only finally got back to my bed and it welcomes me like a double sprung heaven. The duvet is like a canopy of stars wrapped around myself. Is there anything so kind and loving as a bed that welcomes you in spite of all your aches, groans and foibles? In my will i leave everything to my mattress...

NIGHT LIFE

2009-10-02T07:39:00.001-07:00

on discussion with a friend we have decided we need to slip as into mist...into the hobo palette of the night...two insomniacs into the dream city...immersed in the landscape of midnight alleyways and empty city blocks...until we reinvigorate our vagabond gypsy souls...at one with the ghost-scavengers of a city asleep...4am ghouls and 3am junkies...1am short cuts and half past two taxis....soaking up that gloopy glory and morning dusk of a dusty street waking up to buses and people in suits and briefcases once again...returning home to sleep...to dream...to no work the next day....a fridge fall of beer...and birds twittering in trees...a notepad and pen by the bed...we need to return to that vagabond gypsy life...i think very much a matter of our souls depend on it...but we're both pushing thirty...and she has a job...and i'm past my best...jaded and crumpled....creased like the rest...our souls creak like the hinge on an old wooden door...i pray a night time in London...will open it more..

...i pray a night life in london will open it more....

A SMALL GRIPE

2009-10-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

I'm a mellow man, but what i'd like to share with you, that i despise today, is this: I despise off the peg humourisms - stock phrases or comments that people use to substitute not having a real sense of humour. Off the peg humourisms that people throw in there because they are unable to genuinely engage in the conversation with any kind of spontaneity or comedic originality.

The most contemporary example is people saying, "FAIL", after outlining an unsuccessful, questionable or embarrassing venture. For example, "I shit myself at school. FAIL."

It's on a par with people saying, "Anywaaaay", to move conversation on from something deemed weird or out there.

Perhaps the most despised however is the phrase: "Only on Tuesdays!", which is the most pitiful attempt by a person to masquerade as being able to engage in spontaneous, jocular chat.

Eg.

PERSON ONE: Do you eat penguin often?

PERSON TWO: Only on Tuesdays!

You absolute c**t. I hate you and everything you represent. I hate your life. I hate all you aspire to. You are a pig of human culture. You turn all that is capable of love into a conduit that channels only shit. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

An extreme reaction?

Perhaps.

Anywaaaay...

THE SANCTIMONIOUS FACE

2009-10-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

I saw a horrified expression from a lady in Oxford Street when someone brushed past her. She gave a "Did you see that?" expression to her husband who was with her, and she continued to stare sanctimoniously towards the disappearing bumper, her shocked face trying to announce to the whole street that someone had bumped into her and how rude.....

Lady - there are eight million people living in this city - you're gonna get bumped into.

The fact that i punched her in the face was less expected and you can forgive her for then looking shocked...

NATIONAL DOODLE DAY

2009-10-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

I've just received my letter to take part in the National Doodle Day competition but i'm not sure whether to take part after having not received my trophy from two years ago - where i beat the more famous Helen Mirren with five votes. I won it with five votes. Not BY five votes but WITH five votes. They were pissed off that i wasn't famous and so didn't give me the prize as i'd ruined any publicity they could have for their charity by being a rubbish unfamous man. I'm even less famous now than i was then so i might really go for it and really fuck things up for them...

I'm gonna fuck this charity up...

Here's my doodle from back then:

http://www.nationaldoodleday.org.uk/celebs/doodle.cfm?doodle=Lee%20Kern&set=all

It's a piece of crap.

Now i'm gonna work on the Sistine Chapel of Doodles and really mix things up.

If that Helen Mirren bitch wants to bring it, then try.

Not this year, sweetheart. Not this year.

Papas got a brand new pen and he's gonna whip things up.

We'll show this fucking epileptic charity they don't come between a man and his prize...

THE BEDROOM COUGH

2009-09-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to cough yourself out of existence?

Could a series of coughs culminate in a cough so large that you just disappear from the universe?

Leaving just a duvet and your impression on the mattress?

Effectively spontaneous combustion - but a cough...?

Your mum hears an almighty cough coming from upstairs and when she goes into your bedroom you're just not there?

How many people have disappeared from a cough?

And where do they go?

What parallel universe of coughs and splutters do they disappear into?

Oh God...it's a sickly episode of the twilight zone....

(Constellation or cosmic cough? Are the nebulas we see merely the vapour trails of celestial coughs? Where Gods and mortals have burst and become at one with the universe? Is the milky way a cosmic fossil of some gargantuan cough?)

(Is this the cough of a plague victim from 1665 who disappeared out of existence? Perhaps it is the cough of a scullery maid who died of consumption during the Victorian age? We will never know....)

LOSING IT

2009-09-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

Daydreaming at Tottenham Court Road Station.....a queue building up behind me whilst i'm fumbling in my pockets trying to find my house keys to open the turnstile....i actually got out my keys on their chain and held them towards the turnstile machine before i realised there was nowhere for me to put my keys in the machine and that i had to use my oyster card in order to get out.......the by now large queue of people must have thought i had alzheimers or was a bit simple as i finally reached for my oyster card to get out....and allowed them also to leave the clogged up station........i literally don't stand a chance.....i know i'm going to get dementia......i know i'll be putting dishwasher tablets into the microwave and posting my mail into my own closet.....

THE TWO WEEK COUGH

2009-09-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

...i want someone to fire a harpoon into my chest and pull this cough out of my lungs....i'm reaching for the deepest cough to expunge it all in one go....but it just doesn't come....this cough has reserves and battalions i didn't even know about....an army of coughs marching along the capillary kingdom...hunting down the throne and crown of my good health...seeking to put General Catarrh in its stead...enacting his military junta and fascist rule over my body and what it can and can't do....this is my darkest moment....i may be conquered.....disappearing into the great gulf of history in one giant onslaught of coughs.....disappearing....leaving only a duvet and this bed with my impression in it......may god be with me.....

NOTES ON TURNING THIRTY

2009-09-15T15:15:00.000-07:00

As I reach thirty-one I set down this note on where I am in terms of my thoughts, beliefs and the insights I have gathered from my time on earth. The truth is I haven’t got a clue. About anything. I have no clarity in what I think about anything. Politics. Philosophy. Ideology. Beliefs. Life. Love. I don’t know what I think about anything. I have many opinions but no beliefs. The only thing I am certain of is that most days I am torn between wanting to sit down and do nothing - and knowing that if I don’t take the washing out of the machine it will smell funny. That isn’t the basis of a belief system. It isn’t the foundation of a religion. It’s not even the germination of an ethic. If I was to proffer that information to Kant, Hegel or Nietzche they would look at me blankly for a moment, before returning to their huddle to continue their proper conversation…

The truth is, as we get older, many of us become less sure of things than we were in the past. Some idiots become more set in their convictions – like racists or people who think everything is political correctness gone mad – but by and large people become aware of the subtle nuances that underpin the act of life on earth. People become aware that things aren’t that simple. Life and its struggles become more complex. The certainty of youth gives way to hesitancy and doubt. The simplicity of teenage conviction splinters into adult computation. No decision is neat and clean. Choice has many branches and picking one always leaves you out on a limb. When you’re a kid you’re not aware of all this. You’re just busy living it. Riding on guts and instinct. When you’re younger you live in primary colours. As you grow older you live in shades of grey. When you die you go into the black - and that’s the only thing of which I’m certain. That - and that when I open my washing machine it will stink and I’ll have to wash it all again…

…and like my socks and pants in that washing machine my thoughts are always tumbling and changing and spinning round. Sometimes clean, mostly dirty. And here’s little me - going past thirty…

love to you all

I dedicate this birthday to all those who haven't got a fucking clue what's going on

OFFAL

2009-09-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

Imagine if you had to carry all your internal organs in a rucksack over your shoulder? It'd all be sloshing about and dripping...you'd have to be so careful with it on the train....perhaps people would take better care of their organs if they could see them each day?....if you saw the skin on your face getting dry you'd attend to it....if you had to zip up your liver each day and saw how fucked it was getting from alcohol maybe you'd cut down on the booze....similarly....having to pack your dark treacle lungs might make you quit smoking.....if we had to carry around our organs they'd be more in our face and we couldn't ignore them...as it currently stands the human body is arranged thus: out of sight - out of mind.....at least when it comes to our innards....i think we need to see our guts in order to get more of a handle on what's going on inside us....

MY FAVOURITE THINGS ABOUT WEDDINGS

2009-09-13T17:15:00.001-07:00

1. There's no place for a single man on the dancefloor during the first dance. You just sit there like a numpty with all the other bedsit wankers and wait. Maybe - if you're lucky - we'll let you dance to YMCA later.

2. People who get married get bought loads of stuff for their flat - but the single man - who could probably do with a helping hand - gets nothing. It's just another kick in the teeth of the single man. You are single - you don't get a party and you get no presents either because you haven't found love and this is your punishment. Maybe you'll think twice next time before not meeting your soul-mate and falling in love.

3. Cost of attending weddings. After the stag do, and the present and all the other costs of attending a wedding - they may as well include a section at the bottom of the invite where you fill in your direct debit details and they just bill you that way.

4. Are you with someone from Switzerland who doesn't speak any English and a couple who sit there and don't say anything? You are on the shit table.

MAZEL TOV MARC AND LAUREN!

WISHING YOU ALL THE BEST ON YOUR VOYAGE OF LOVE

13.09.09

x x x

WHERE THE WILD ACCOUNTANTS GO

2009-09-08T06:43:00.000-07:00

A colour picture from a story i started years ago called "Where the Wild Accountants Go." It's about a craze that spread through the middle-aged men of the suburb. They started dressing like characters from the children's book, "Where the Wild Ones Are" in order to reclaim the excitement of their youth. They would dress like that whilst commuting and around the house. Their wives just had to put up with it.

This picture is of Alan.

He is on the Jubilee Line and the doors are just about to close.

TURNIP MEADOW

2009-09-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

Weird turnip head lady with roots for hair and high heels and mini skirt stepping over midnight heath near a pond where gloopy insect skaters swim at 4am...

(click to enlarge pic)

TASTE IT WHILE YOU CAN

2009-09-05T16:19:00.001-07:00

Life is like an ice lolly in the sun...it melts away quickly and has just a crap joke at the centre of it...

A CONUNDRUM

2009-09-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

What is the balance between how you are feeling that day and a particular encounter you are having as it relates to the overall success and enjoyment of the occasion? For example, if you had a headache and met Jesus it might not be as good as you had hoped. Conversely, if you were in a fucking brilliant mood one day and had a meeting with an accountant - you might walk out of the office thinking, "That was a fucking brilliant meeting." Tiredness can mar so many great occasions. Feeling good can elevate so much pap. What is the ratio between the two factors? When does something which is brilliant on paper become shit cos you're not feeling so good that day? When does something objectively dull become good cos you're feeling subjectively great? But back to the former, more worrying of the two: what if you were tired on the day that the best thing which ever happened to you occurred? You might not even realise it - even all these years later - that the best thing that has ever happened to you - or ever will - has already occurred - but you missed it cos you were a bit tired that day.

Christ, life is a minefield.

TRUE STORIES

2009-09-02T02:30:00.000-07:00

Does anyone know the tale of the girl who would turn into a courgette after midnight and who accidentally fell asleep in the kitchen one evening...

TIME TRAVEL

2009-08-31T03:31:00.000-07:00

For some reason, about a year and a half ago, i didn't have a drink. And then the next day i didn't have a drink. And for some reason i turned down drinks and a year and a half passed and no alcohol had passed my lips for that many months and seasons. And i felt brilliant for it. I felt light, springy and healthy. I became "svelte". Then a couple of nights ago it was my brother's stag-weekend. And we went to Derby. And Saturday night - i was exhausted. I'd had about three hours sleep and i was preparing myself for the long haul of being schlapped from pub to pub whilst being a tired, sober man who wanted merely to curl up into the warm womb of a duvet and gestate there until the next morning. The time was only seven p.m. and I estimated we'd get home about five a.m. and i'd thus have to spend ten hours out with drunken people whilst my head was profoundly tired. My head was a cold dawn battle-field - a jangled mess of barbed wire - where thoughts of sleep were tangled up and strewn across the metal mesh - cut up and bleeding and lifeless - stomachs cut open - mangled limbs reaching out for the crisp white sheets of a bed. But a bed was not forthcoming. And so I decided that the only way to survive the night was to put myself into a deep stasis - like they dream of astronauts being able to do in the future. I had to chryogenically preserve my blood with alcohol so that i could last until the future - which was ten hours away - and which would bring me to my ultimate destination of a bed. In short - I ordered a whiskey and downed my special time-travel medicine. Ten hours later and I had reached the future. I was lying in my bed. My special quantam space-travel serum had worked. Whiskey had allowed me to land in the future in what seemed merely a few minutes. Whiskey had allowed me to traverse hours of painful sober time units, in what seemed merely a few moments of drunken bravado.   And this is how I broke a year and a half of abstinance from alcohol.  

Who wants a drink? 

 The "2000"s are shit.   Let's wake up in 2010 with our special time travel medicine...

A MEETING OF MINDS

2009-08-29T17:40:00.001-07:00

There are certain people that, were they to pass away, would render extinct certain conversations that you have and which could never be recreated with another person. No other human being could recreate the conjugation of your two personalities. The synthesis of your minds and instincts could never be reconstructed. You couldn't start from scratch with anyone else. It is a barren wind that blows through the lost city, where you wander alone as one who once had companionship, but now simply look for a way out of the city....

A REFLECTION

2009-08-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

Imagine a child who took a breath in and never breathed out.

Imagine a person who breathed in the meadows but never articulated them in song.

Imagine if all the things you absorbed through your eyes and experiences were never expressed in word, poem or brush stroke.

You'd be bloated on the world and all that's in it, but never able to give that satisfying sigh which follows exhalation...

Owls

2009-08-24T15:07:00.001-07:00

I saw an owl in an attenborough documentary today and for the first time i realised how supernatural they are. Sometimes they are like old men flying in a secret wood. Absolutely creepy. Other times they are angels. The most graceful bodies of softness that glide through the tender silent snowbound night over branches of forest and into the darkest shadow of a world we can't access.....

...nor ever should....we got no place being in the secret parliament of the night owl...

...i think i'm into owls....

THE MOST DEPRESSING MEAL EVER?

2009-08-24T09:41:00.001-07:00

The man in front of me in Tescos just bought a packet of crackers and two lemons. No matter how bad i may think i've got it poverty-wise - at least it's not lemon and crackers for tea again tonight. I'm no Gordon Ramsey it's true - but at least i'm not eating lemon and crackers in front of a TV set at night. The man was middle-aged too. Jesus. I want to kill myself when i imagine what his living room looks like. The curtains have been there for fifty years and the lighting has forty years of dust on it - like caterpillars of dust crawling round the fittings. Dust maggots crawling along the curtain rails. The grief and tragedy of previous tenants soaks into the musty air of the flat's still and listless atmosphere like stains on the carpet. And what can you do with lemon and crackers when you've sat down on that sofa which has been inherited by a long chain and lineage of lonely men who've acquired keys to that flat over the years? You can either eat the crackers on their own and then eat the lemon for "dessert". You can squeeze the lemon onto the crackers and then eat the crackers that way. Or you can put slices of lemon onto the crackers and eat them like that. The ultimate conclusion however, is that no matter what combination or preparation you choose - you cannot jazz up a meal of crackers and lemon so that it reaches a state beyond culinary despair. There is no way you can disguise the fact that you are chewing on grief....swallowing missed opportunity...and suffering the indigestion of regret.

Bon appetit.

That's your life you're digesting right there...

THE DRUNKEN MOON

2009-08-24T05:49:00.000-07:00

It’s one thirty am. I’ve finished the film i’ve been working on but cos all my friends have real jobs I have no-one to celebrate with. So i’ve got pissed up on my own and have been listening to music. I had a couple of beers then reached that tipping point where you realise you’ll never really “get into orbit” unless you burst the stratosphere and break the earth’s gravitational pull. You came this far in the outer space program so you may as well go all the way? So i got really pissed up cos i wanna plant my flag in the drunken moon...

...I wonder who was the first pissed up man to walk on the moon? Who was the first pissed astronaut? Who was the first astronaut to go for a walk whilst off his tits? Surely that would have been a holy dawn? When you conquer the evening through drunken time travel you achieve a strange kind of breakthrough. Realising you have reached dawn and conquered the night is a great thing. And something that makes you feel grandeur for life. Imagine being pissed up and then stumbling over a hill and then just stopping as you take in a horizon that shocks you. In your astronaut’s suit you see earth. A million years below you. The first astronaut to gaze upon this beautiful planet whilst pissed up. That would be an incredible morning and likely to bring you to your knees. Then you’d have the first holy piss in a moon crater and feel the incredible mystery of mornings and dawns which cavemen and scientists have never understood. That astronaut would have had a glimpse of something we’ll never know. Could he return to earth after that?

Accountant

2009-08-24T05:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a colour picture of an accountant sitting on a back wall with his briefcase taken from my picture book, "Stanmore Accountants"

PILLS

2009-08-20T01:48:00.000-07:00

...the people handing out the London Lite and London Paper are essentially handing out sedatives to help people cope with the journey on the tube. I gratefully receive my medication each time I take foot down the steps towards the underworld...

THE JONNY CASH MOBILITY SCOOTER

2009-08-18T14:46:00.001-07:00

Okay, whatever, fuck you - i have just had the best evening ever - i discovered the Jonny Cash mobility scooter. It was early evening and i was walking through Victoria Park and on my phone. I walked my way up Grove Road and then cut my way through to the canal. Then i had to tell my friend that i had to go and i'd give them a call back later cos i heard a sound coming from the water and i needed to check it out. Then i walked through the reeds and discovered the Jonny Cash Mobility Scooter...

...there was a man on a mobility scooter....a pimped up mobility scooter...with a sound system playing Jonny Cash.....he was an old disabled man....on a scooter.....and he had rigged it up with a sound system and was playing Jonny Cash in the early evening by the canal.....i sat down in the grass and started listening to Jonny Cash with him......it was Jonny's best album....the prison one......and we listened to it in the sultry summer air.....the weather must have been as hot and close as it was in the prison it was recorded in....

"...it's dark in the dungeon way down in the mind..."

"...i stuck a .44 beneath my bed..."

"...nineteen minutes to go..."

...it was amazing....the Jonny Cash Mobility Scooter guy was looking out across the canal at the sky......weighed down by years....but energised by Cash's unparalleled elevation of the fugitive lives we all lead.....we are all fugitives on the run from death....dodging misfortune by a hair's breadth....vaulting defeat by a gnat's whisker ....but all ultimately caught up in the end by justice and the grim reaper.........it's that sweet defiance though.....and there on the banks of the canal.....that old guy on his mobility scooter was the most defiant outlaw in all of London.....

...Jonny finished his spit in the eye of it all.....i shook the dude by the hand and left....i didn't ask when or where he'd next be playing his records.....one day his music will call me unexpectedly again...whilst going about my business i'll hear the prince of darkness singing from some reeds.....whispering from the boggy mist of some hidden marsh.......until then....the mobilty scooter guy will simply be around.....living on the edge for all us sinners..... riding into the night like the meanest outlaw...though at three miles an hour.....

Written on train after interview with Big Brother Contestant

2009-08-18T14:45:00.002-07:00

listening to Starlite Walker on a train with hot sunlight cuddling my face and the music kissing my soul...i need to become a wanderer in the wild seas of night and the thick jungles of day...this TV rag is all too much waste of life...man, there are forests out there and mountain plateaus to be conquered...bring on the dawn expeditionary accountants...hacking through jungle with their calculators... let solicitors set sail on galleons into an ocean of....let cab drivers explore caves...let the world commune with raw, wild holiness...ecstatic communion with rocks and gull cliff nests...in the sails...in the rigging....let's go Columbus...let school kids put down their pens and become an army of explorers...just let's fucking do something...cos this is no good anymore....let's march into the jungle leaving no letters behind or promise of return....let's grab the tide now before it goes...before we're all washed up on the beach of missed opportunity....let's go Columbus...let's go Alan...let's go Keith...let's go Douglas...let's go Sandra...let's go Hilary...let's go Janet...let's go...

A NOTE ON REDEMPTION

2009-08-18T14:45:00.001-07:00

For the few...redemption comes fast and suddenly....a single moment of heroism....a sudden act of selflessness....

But for the majority redemption is not on overnight thing.....it is not a single moment of blinding light or revelation.....it is the long, hard slog of daily life...trying to do the right thing and failing....day by day striving to be the better man when you know you're on to a losing streak.....redemption is the piecemeal stacking of good deeds....trying to do things right....failing....trying to achieve peace through goodness when forces without, and occasionally within, get in the way.....for the most of us....redemption is not given to us on a plate.....redemption is earnt....

Voices from Victoria Park

2009-08-18T14:44:00.001-07:00

Snippets of conversations heard in Victoria Park

"....no......you've already got your ice-cream....charlotte's got hers....you finish yours..."

"...nah man i got raided...i had an ounce of powder on me.....nah.....i used to like when i was a teenager...like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen....that's when i was with those Romford boys.....like Charlie and Danny ....but i don't really anymore or nuthin.....i'm telling you man.....bare jokes...."

"...i don't have a chalice...."

"...fuck that bitch...."

"...you should meet him....you'd get on with him....i think he works in advertising or something..."

"...leave the goose....it's protecting its babies.....can you see the little baby geese ducks...?..."

"...where are you?..."

I Miss the Whackos of Suburbia

2009-08-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

I've woken up today and the strange feelings of summer...a cocktail of excitement and wanting to hit the streets...is blended with a slight loss and sadness that the crazy bums and whackos who i grew up with in Edgware won't be there....hitting the streets in a new town with its slightly meaner, hard-edged and utilitarian bums is not the same....i don't have the same connection to them....there is no history with them.....at the same time.....i think there is a difference in species between suburban and urban bums.......they come from the same root but have branched off into different evolutionary families....i guess it's the difference between healthy wood pigeons and urban pigeons....urban pigeons being a tougher, grizzlier breed.... feet gnawed off by rats....dirtier.....there is a sweetness that is lacking and which is to be found in the delicious plumpness of the woodpigeon....something brought about by circumstance.......the bums here are so covered with pollution from the city it is almost as if the city gave birth to them itself....like there is some womb pulsing, throbbing and gestating in a wall...that ejects them out from a drain and into a gutter during a rainy evening.....the bums here are like that.....or else so pumped with heroin they have become ghouls...craving opiates like a vampire needs its blood....

....the bums and whackos of suburbia had a special charm in that you can see the vestiges of the old home and life they had.... because they were still clearly one of us beneath a few layers of dirt and a couple of layers of craziness.....they could almost be your neighbour.....i'm not saying city bums don't have history or humanity.....but you know what i'm saying....there was defnitely something of a warm summers day about the bums where i came from......and this morning i wish i could see them...

...Wordsworth speaks affectionately of the Old Cumberland Beggar....

...as for me...

...i love the crazy shouty man who wanders up and down Edgware with a plastic bag having a go at imaginary women...."stupid bloody woman"....i love the lady who would wear mens shoes and woolen stockings who wanders out of Edgware station saying, "He wouldn't hold the door open? What would Aunty Judy say!"....as she disappeared down the street you'd hear her incredulity settling slowly like dust in her wake......"You wait until i tell aunty Judy.....you wait until i tell aunt judy..."

...i made a film about one of the most famous and beloved of these street personalities....known as the "Edgware Walker" he would walk around suburbia in only his underpants...many myths and legends surrounded the man...some say he was a doctor...others a brain surgeon.....the film found out the truth.....which was more profound than anything we could have imagined...

.....after he died...and left the streets a little less charismatic than they had previously been.....my favourite for a time was a kid who i named in my head "Gavin".....he wasn't strictly speaking a bum.....he was a day-walker.....one of the unemployed and unemployable human misfits who float through the streets.....streets you think you know whilst you're at work in front of monitors....but which are inhabited by a different class of human being to your own....just as an oasis in the serengeti is populated by different creatures at different times of the day......during the day the streets are owned by the bums, losers and freaks....we are an army unto ourselves......have no fear though.....we're fucking useless.....that's why we scatter off to our bolt-holes when you return from work......boarding ourselves up until day comes again and we can reclaim the streets....

....Gavin was part of this suburban underclass who weren't anchored to the infrastructures of ordinary working life.....i include myself in this....and thus operated on completely different rhythms and timescales....

....Gavin was a wonderful gift to all the people of Edgware....i'm not sure how many people realised it.....but if his thread was removed from the story of suburbia...the tapestry of life would be slightly less colourful...

...for a period when i had no internet and would have to go to the internet cafe opposite the Masons Arms.....that's when i saw "Gavin - the internet kid"....he clearly had a streak of jewish diaspora madness in him.....he would have had it whether he grew up in Edgware or in a Russian village beset by pogroms....he had the harrassed trauma of someone seeing his mother raped by Kossacks.....glasses and gawky.....thin-framed glasses on his baby bird beaked nose....he had delicate bones like thin internet wires.....Gavin would spend all day in the internet place....giving pound coin after pound coin to extend his stay.....chatting on Yahoo messenger to strange geeks in chicago.....Gavin wore a chequered shirt like a kid in a school musical production of Oklahoma.....he had jeans.....oversized trainers with a nameless brand that seemed to be exclusively owned by kids like Gavin all across suburbs.....his jeans were too short......Gavin suffered mental problems and wasn't all there......above all he was the most harassed person i have ever seen......when he tried to put his token or enter his code into the computer it would never be easy....it would never just work....the computer literally seemed to reject all his advances....and he'd start arguing with life and fortune for not just letting his code be accepted....and he'd go back and forth to the desk trying to sort it out......and then when he'd get it working he'd spill his drink all over the keyboard and start quietly cursing his misfortune again.....emotionally exhausted......distressed that nothing could be easy....by the time Gavin managed to properly get logged on and working he'd have to go back and pay for another token and the whole thing would start all over again....i imagine it must have taken a profound amount of energy to be Gavin....it must have cost him a fortune too.....i'd leave the shop and hear him arguing with the machine for not accepting his new token and hassling the man at the shop to help him.....and i like to believe that the people who he wanted to go on line and chat with were having exactly the same dilemmas in whatever corner of the world they lived in...and that in truth....this group of harassed misfits would never really be able to have an interaction with each other....the strangest group of friends who must have all met online at the same time in one rare five minute window where everything all went swimmingly for them...

...i'd always see Gavin in the internet cafe and there was a homely comfort in seeing Gavin undergoing his trials with reassuring regularity...

...after i'd seen him a couple of times whilst checking my email i would recognise him in places other than the internet cafe....my eyes tuned into Gavin's frequency and i could always see him or sense that he was close by......and he would always be locked into some kind of struggle or inane trouble....some kind of battle with a plastic bag....tormented by a paper cup blown his way and staggering around his feet......Gavin was tormented by all the low-scale detritus of suburbia...litter....a leaf blown into his face....a puddle that wasn't there earlier.....it's like all the very smallest and crappest things of the town had conspired to make Gavin's day as difficult as possible....like mischiveous imps and tiny goblins....knowing they had no power over the real, adult people in the town.....they had decided to pick on Gavin and make him the object of their cruel amusement on an otherwise slow day....

...i guess i can kind of understand the perpetual state of harassment Gavin was in....if i was being hounded and tormented daily by burger wrappers....doors not opening the right way....and buses pulling off before i got to them....i too would be stressed and near breaking point....

.....he was Edgware's own Lo.....Lo was some bird from Greek mythology who was hounded by gadflies....she had to wander the earth....never finding a moment's rest or peace.....perpetually being bitten and tormented by horrible little gadflies...never a moments respite.....

....but this is all too much.....i'm going overboard....cos if i focus on this i discount those very special moments when you'd see Gavin walking with all the peace of a buddha who'd finally managed to pay off his mortgage and could think about that holiday in the sun....a buddha who was finally gonna devote himself to drawing or painting water-colours or something he'd always wanted to do......these were the good times for Gavin.....beautiful moments when he was so in synchronisation with the suburb....he'd be mumbling stuff to himself....little poems of contentment....psalms of peace....during these times Gavin would be able to walk without tripping on a curb....the ring-pull on his can of drink wouldn't snap off leaving him with an undrinkable drink.....he'd be able to be Gavin and the suburb wouldn't punish him for it....

....and i guess the lesson is that there's a benevolence out there that cuts even the biggest of nebbishes a bit of slack now and then......i'm not saying it's God......i'm just saying in the numbers game of eternity....even a nebbish has gotta luck out once in a while....

...and when Gavin lucked out we all lucked out....

What if...

2009-08-18T14:42:00.002-07:00

What if every time a poem was written a child dies?
Would poets still write?

What if every time a song was written a baby dies?
Would musicians still compose their songs?

What if every time a book was written or painting painted someone innocent somewhere died?
Would authors and painters still commit their works to page and canvas?

Would artists continue in their work if every time they gave birth to something a child died?

There are two areas of interest in the above flight of fancy for me.

The first concerns the artistic impulse that is as powerful as the urge to eat, sleep or procreate. The dilemma faced by an artist having to repress such an impulse when faced with the potential loss of life is huge.

The second is perhaps useless arseholes like The Jonas Brothers would think twice before penning another album.

Dipshits like Banksy might reconsider before painting up another load of shit.

And Patrick Kielty would call a full stop to his career immediately.

If every artist considered their work a matter of life and death - and only those works of art worth dying for deserved to live - then maybe all the purveyors of crap and heartless shit would shut up shop and we would live in a world that valued heart and sincerity a little more...

My Grandpa Intervenes for Peace...

2009-08-18T14:42:00.001-07:00

My grandpa saw two people fighting and in a tussle on the floor near the checkout at Sainsburys. He went over to them and pulled them apart and said, "Come on now - break it up." One of them then got up and scarpered out the shop. He then noticed the other one on the floor was a security guard and the person he'd been wrestling with had stolen stuff. My grandpa helped a thief escape. I am proud of my grandpa.

THE KOSHER KADDISH

2009-08-18T14:41:00.003-07:00

After a tip off that there was a kosher section in the Cambridge Heath Road Sainsbury's I headed down there the next day. I don't keep in the least bit kosher but there are some things i get cravings for - like viennas and vorscht - that i have to satisfy - and it's a nuisance to wait until i'm in North-West London in order to stock up on chopped herring and the like. When i arrived in Sainsburys i found the tiny little kosher section - it wasn't labelled or anything - i don't know whether there are fears of reprisal attacks from the halal section - and i purveyed what they had on offer. It was extremely limited. I found my viennas and i got some vorscht - but the range and volumes of produce was limited to say the least. The saddest commentary came with the only product that was extremely well-stocked and of which there was no end in supply of - yarzheit candles - jewish memorial candles for the dead...

...With a Jewish community long since departed - and perhaps simply some elderly ones who got left behind....who never got on the last boat....who never joined the exodus when the middle-class Moses came to lead them out to the suburbs... with just a few aging stragglers left behind.....with their doilies and net curtains....the only ongoing viable product to sell to this aging population are yarzheit candles - so that they can tick off their dead friends as they themselves wait in line to have their moment to become memories flickering in the flame of a candle.... eventually their name will be incorporated into the awkward mumbling of prayer in someone's front room...as people eat fishballs in kitchens....and the mourners sit on small wooden chairs....shaking hands and thanking people for coming....the grim-faced hosts of the bleakest party...

...but for now....until that time comes.....in Sainsburys on Cambridge Heath Road....tucked away near the back of the store....is a shelf well stocked with candles for those that were left behind in these crumbling tenement blocks......for each old person that potters alone in a kitchen is a candle with their name on it.......for each old person who prepares a simple meal and who eats alone at night there's a yitgadal calling them like a shofar.......for each old person surrounded by ornaments and the bric-a-brac of a sedentary life....there is yarzheit primed to burn for them.....

...eventually it will get bought by a friend of theirs - an old bubba or a man called hyman - a woman called renie or a man called morrie....someone with a ventilator.... someone from a bridge club.....a shtarker, a nudnik, a mensch or a yenta.....but one day it won't be replaced....as eventually there will be no-one left buy these candles....no-one to remember the last of these wrinkled relics to pop their clogs and join that great kalooki game in the sky....

...In the interim...and until that time comes....there are small amounts of vorscht and viennas still for sale on the shelf....and i'll do my bit to eat them......I am considering stalking the kosher aisle from a distance so i can see who the last of the vorscht buyers are....

...in truth i don't need to.....i know who they'll be...

...I know they will be as old as any prophet at the end of their days...

...I know they will smell of old, holy books and synagogue cloakrooms...they will stink of yom kippur and pesach....the bad breath of fasting....rosh hashana and apple and honey......they will have arthritis in their knuckles....fingers warped........gravity will be pulling them to the earth........biscuit crumbs on their chin.....condemned bodies beyond renovation.....beyond repair....

...anyway...i also bought some olives and some cleaning stuff for my flat.....i came home and wrote this poem for the East End...

...one day a minyan of ten men will be needed to say Kaddish for the Kosher section...

...and the final siddur will be shut...

...as the lights go out in Sainsburys...

THE CHANGE IN FORTUNE

2009-08-18T14:41:00.001-07:00

So i was at a bamitzvah and on the dancefloor rocking my one year old nephew to sleep in a kind of dancing come sleep rock motion. And he'd nestled into my chest and he was off, clinging to me like a monkey, and i a gyrating gibbon. And in his hand was a helium balloon which he'd fallen asleep clutching by its ribbon. And "Baby Love" was playing by The Supremes. And then he woke up and on doing so his hand let go of its grip on the balloon and the balloon obviously floated up towards the ceiling. And i've never seen eyes stare so intently at something. He just didn't understand. Life was so amazing. It was so amazing. And then suddenly it was so shit. He just stared at the balloon trying to comprehend how his life had just so suddenly transformed. He just couldn't understand how this turnaround had happened. Baby Love continued to play.

I'd hate to get to the point where we don't even bother to reach out for balloons that float our way - but i'd be the first to concede that watching those balloons float away is shit.

We got Mikey a new balloon.

As I left at the end of the evening i saw he was asleep in his pushchair holding a helium balloon.

I hope it's there in the morning.

I can outwit ten year old boys

2009-08-18T14:40:00.004-07:00

I bought a cadbury's cream egg McFlurry in McDonalds and then as i'm walking out a kid asks for my peel off label which could win me a free drink or something. "But what if i win something?" i said. "I want it." He sighed upset that i wouldn't give it to him. Then i peeled it off and looked at it and said, "Oh my God! Ten thousand pounds! Yes!"

That kid was so gutted. He genuinely thought he'd missed out on his chance to win ten grand.

As i walked out i felt like a real winner, having tricked a ten year old kid into thinking i'd won ten thousand pounds when really i'm as poor as a beggar and had won fuck all on my sticker.

I'm a winner.

Tramps

2009-08-18T14:40:00.003-07:00

So i was walking down the high-street with about four bags of shopping, arms all full, when i had to walk past the tramp who sits outside the newsagent just before the tube at Bethnal Green. And he said to me, "Can you spare any change?". And cos i had all this cumbersome stuff with me and cos i was in my stride i kind of raised my shopping bags up to indicate my arms were full and i couldn't go rummaging right now and said, "Sorry, mate", to him whilst walking on. It was ten metres later near the bird-shit bridge that i realised that what i'd essentially just done when asked for change was to respond by showing a tramp that i had four bags of lovely food that i was going to go home and eat right then in my nice, warm flat. And i'd smiled at him too.

Is it possible to have any social interactions these days without some form of collateral damage?

I'm sure it's not just me.

Revolutionary Jugglers

2009-08-18T14:40:00.001-07:00

Whenever you see the revolutionary crew as you did on the streets today - you always see jugglers. There's always some people walking along juggling. Any protest or political march there's a juggler. What the fuck is with the jugglers? I don't get it? What's their intended role when the revolution has come? What purpose do they serve? Will they be in charge of the NHS? Will they be responsible for sanitation? I don't understand what the role of jugglers is in left-wing ideology or in a future utopia. Now I've read the Communist Manifesto and nowhere in it does Marx or Engels mention jugglers. It doesn't mention any kind of street-entertainer. Chairman Mao's little red book mentions nothing about jugglers. I saw the terrible Benito Del Torres film "Che", and nowhere in the battle for Havana do you see a juggler. I don't get it. How have these people ingratiated themselves to the left-wing community? What do they bring to the table? Yet every march you see them. What dictator or fascist is going to quiver and crumble at the sight of jugglers marching towards them? Who the fuck are these radical jugglers? What do they want from us?

When the time comes - do the right thing...

2009-08-18T14:39:00.003-07:00

First i learnt how to bleed a radiator. Then i filled in a tax return. Now i walked down the high-street and saw signs that a new Iceland was going to open and thought to myself, "That will be handy."

This is bullshit. Will somebody stop me becoming what i think i'm becoming?

I swear to God - if i ever put up any shelves - i will kill myself.

The Pope and AIDS

2009-08-18T14:39:00.001-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI said today that condoms would only exacerbate the AIDS epidemic in Africa. The pontiff said condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse. I suggest we present the Pope some bird with AIDS who he has to sleep with. Then give him the choice that he can either pray he doesn't get AIDS - or he can wear a condom...

...by adopting such a policy we'll soon be able to work out what's most effective

Comic Relief

2009-08-18T14:38:00.003-07:00

I'm not saying the state of comedy is poor or in need of overhaul, but i watched Comic Relief this weekend and was deeply disappointed. I liked some of the sketches and stuff they had of English comedians - but these new talents they'd found in Africa just weren't funny. If anything it was quite depressing. One entire sketch was just a kid dying of malaria. What's funny about that?

Who's commissioning this stuff?

From Today's Sun Newspaper

2009-08-18T14:38:00.001-07:00

BRITS 'LIVE JUST LIKE ANIMALS'

'Hate preacher Anjem Choudary said: "Brits live like animals" with their "alcohol, gambling, prostitution and pornography"

I have never once seen an elephant pissed, a whale at the casino, a toucan with a hooker or a terrapin reading a porno.

The Sickness Unto Death

2009-08-18T14:37:00.001-07:00

I'm ill in bed and have no new DVD's so i've taken to browsing through books with illness-related titles to see if it can lead me to a new understanding on the nature of sickness. I've just been looking at Sören Kierkegaard's book, "The Sickness unto Death". Kierkegaard is labelled as a "Christian Existentialist" philosopher, and no doubt he is a clever guy. And if you hold a gun against your brain and force it to concentrate on every word so you totally stay on top of how each word interacts within his sentences and thus create a meaning - then you can get some pleasure from his stuff, (in as much as you can get pleasure from having to metaphorically hold a gun against your head and force yourself to concentrate). However, if you don't stay brutally on top of processing each word with the same systematic dispassion that a robot operates with - then you're fucked. I mean, listen to this:

"The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self."

What the fuck does that mean? It's the equivalent of saying the word "beans" to yourself over and over again until it loses all meaning and you're just making noises with your mouth.

Check out this other bit:

"Despair is the disrelationship in a relation which relates itself to itself. But the synthesis is not the disrelationship, it is merely the possibility, or, in the synthesis is latent the possibility of the disrelationship. If the synthesis were the disrelationship, there would be no such thing as despair."

Seriously - i love the guy's balls. I wouldn't have the nerve.

Can someone lend me some new DVD's please?

Sickness, Shakespeare and Evolution

2009-08-18T14:36:00.003-07:00

Lying in bed ill i'm trying to take some solace in the fact that i seem to have such a shit immunity system and always get stricken with inevitably lame sabbaticals from being able to proceed in my day with health. I'd like to take solace in the fact that, were i one day to die from one of these illnesses, i would be facilitating human evolution by removing myself from the gene pool and allowing the strong and the healthy to flourish. I'm trying to do my bit for the collective good of humanity - but then i remember that the collective humanity who i'm trying to do good for watch Piers Morgan interviewing retards - and so i think - no - fuck you - i shall not die today. I'm going to live and let my faulty genes stumble towards their pathetic conclusion. I want to be permanently in the craw of humanity, even if it just means you have to occasionally hear me coughing in the background. I'm going to do everything i can to thwart the reverse-evolution of mankind into a regressively dystopian nightmare by staying alive. (I have a slight cough and feel a bit dizzy).

POSTSCRIPT

On this theme of petulant resistance towards death, perhaps one of my favourite Shakespearian characters is Barnardine from Measure for Measure. Barnardine is some hard-drinking minor character who has been sentenced to death and has been on death row for ages, but every time they come to his cell to take him away for execution he essentially says, "Piss off - i can't be bothered to die today" and rolls over into his straw, drunkenly farts, and refuses to get out of bed. Perhaps one might say his guards could be a bit more insistent, but his chutzpa in the face of a death sentence is admirable none the less....

e.g.

BARNARDINE: I will not consent to die this day, that’s certain.

GUARD: O, sir, you must; and therefore, I beseech you look forward on the journey you shall go.

BARNARDINE: I swear I will not die to-day for any man’s persuasion.

GUARD: But hear you...

BARNARDINE: Not a word: if you have anything to say to me, come to my ward; for thence will not I to day...

[Barnardine returns to his cell]

My other favourite Shakespearian characters, (who have a slightly different take on death), are the two thieves in Macbeth...

"I've been so raped in the face by life that i just really couldn't give a shit anymore what i do" - one says...

"And I've been so butt-fucked by fortune that i'll wager my life on any old crap for the chance to either change things or die" - says the other...

...I'm paraphrasing of course...but i think the spirit and the essence of what they say is there. I think perhaps i would like to translate the whole of Shakespeare into such a format....and if in the future I am more permanently consigned to a sick-bed...I think perhaps i will...

APPENDIX

Here are some translations off the top of my head...

"Out, out, brief candle" = fuck off life

"Now is the winter of our discontent"
TRANSLATION:
Oh joy, shit upon more shit - can't wait for fucking summer - that'll be good...

The Final Frontier

2009-08-18T14:36:00.001-07:00

Infinite love crystals....cosmic cubes of hope...unimaginable dream infinity...

Space gravy
Space Chips
Space Pie

Fractilised love philosophies...shimmering diamond triangles of heaven...

Space pudding
Space crinkle-cut crisps
Space Ribena

I'm Going to Sue the Church...

2009-08-18T14:35:00.003-07:00

The church says a lot of things, but by preaching that I will go to hell for not accepting Christ they are publically asserting that i am a bad person, a sinner and thus deserving of the basest retribution that can be imagined - burning to death in a lake of fire and being raped by Satan. This subsequently constitutes a slander against my reputation. It could possibly even constitute incitement to harm me - as someone who deserves to go to hell is being placed outside the margins of civilised society and thus legitimises harm against them.

In essence, the church is carrying out a libel and character assassination against everyone who doesn't believe in God.

If you are unhappy with the church's slander that you are going to hell - join me.

I am going to launch criminal proceedings and seek damages for harm to my career and reputation - not to mention seeking restitution for the emotional trauma caused.

I have a right not to believe in God and at the same time to not be publically accused of being destined to go to Hell...

Return to TV

2009-08-18T14:35:00.001-07:00

Okay...seriously...i haven't watched telly for a YEAR AND A HALF - a YEAR AND A HALF. And then i bought a telly and put it on....and what am i watching? A fucking program about the food you eat...

...seriously - is this the only thing we care about as a society? Still? I've given it a year and a half guys...i took time out....and there's still programs about eating food?....are we mentally ill? Is this all we care about? It's obsessive compulsive disorder. It's mental illness. I've literally taken a year and a half sabbatical from watching TV and i turn on the telly - and it's like time hasn't changed - i've simply switched on from where i'd switched off in 2007...

How the hell can people not be bored of watching this stuff? And it's the same hideous TV rhythm and voiceover and terrible stingers. AND it's all shot in exactly the same way. It's horrible. And what's more they did a "comical" bit where the "record" scratches and the music stops because something "funny" happens. It's not funny. It's not funny to do this "joke". How can the people not want to die when they put this on in the edit? How can the editor go home to their family when they know they've done a comical "record scratching" effect on their film? How can the producer not feel ashamed for saying, "Maybe we could do a record scratching bit there?"

People don't even have records anymore.

We have i-pods.

The joke's historically inaccurate - even if it ever was funny - which it wasn't.

It was never funny.

If you've ever done a comical "record grinding to a halt effect" in one of your films - kill yourself. Deep down you don't want to live anymore. You've given up the fight...

...jesus...look what's happened to me?...one day i've had a telly and look how i'm reacting?.......this is why i got rid of the TV in the first place.....am i such a wanker for having forgotten?

Yes you are Lee.

God, i hate myself.

I've got this big lump of shit in my living room now - an incredible, state of the art, surround-sound piece of shit...

I'm Like Fritzl's Children

2009-08-18T14:34:00.003-07:00

I had a real editor and technician come round my flat today to sort out some stuff for the films i'm making for vbs.tv. Apparently it turns out that for the past six years i've been editing like some bizarre, weird freak and he doesn't understand how i've made films. I'm all self taught and have essentially gone on some bizarre crooked journey that makes no sense with regard to how i cut my films together. I've essentially invented my own language - which makes me like Fritzl's children. Needless to say this made me feel dead chuffed and i didn't want him to tell me too much in case it destroyed my innocence. He too felt this was important and that it was of historical importance that my retarded editing approach is preserved and that i remain cutting films in a way that makes no logical sense. Necessity is the mother of invention. Not having had any tuition or shown how to do things i invented my own way. It just turns out my own way was fucking stupid...

My Reward for Finishing my Tax Return

2009-08-18T14:34:00.001-07:00

I've just finished my tax return so as a reward i allowed myself to think about my history in regard to what fizzy drinks i've liked in my life. Here is my history...

Cherryade: I liked cherryade a lot and would have it at my grandma's

Sodastream fizzy drinks: My grandma had a sodastream and i would have fizzy drinks there....mainly a cherryade version, (different to the proper shop cherryade cited in the entry above)...

Fizzy Drink Memory: I remember walking down Broadfields Avenue unable to open the ringpull you used to get on a can of tango...

Tango: I went through a massive tango phase towards the end of junior school

Tango: Going into secondary school my Tango phase continued. Summer was particularly intense.

Tango: Around the third year of secondary school something epic happened - they installed drinks machines in the corridors. This ramped up my Tango addiciton and intake to breaks, lunchtimes and after school for the walk home. The drinks machine was also to lead to the next phase of my life, a phase which i describe as "Cherry Cola"

Cherry Cola: I went through a massive Cherry Coca-Cola phase. I mean like ape-shit. This was a very intense period of my life and i would collect 50p's in order to keep up my lunchbreak and walking home from school with Martin Ballard and Daniel Best habit. It was particularly intense as i had never had Cherry Coke up until this point.

Lee does his degree: University 1998-2001 - the "Irn Bru Years"

The Work Years: Aged 27 - 30: Vimto

It is worth noting that consistently throughout all these years i have drunk coca cola too. (Not diet coke). The school years also saw the consumption of Panda Pops and to a lesser degree than Tango - Fanta.

Tango, Cherry Coke and Fanta consumption increased towards summer whilst regular Coke and Irn Bru have remained more "winter" drinks. They are more full-bodied and suited to cold European winters. (Although at the same time i do like a can of coke on a summers day)

I believe that if everybody made a chronology of their fizzy drink geneology you would find out a lot about yourself, who you are, and the world would be a better place. I have written to Amnesty International to see if they'll back my, "What Fizzy Drink do you like?" day - which i have scheduled to be on Christmas day so that it will get mass exposure on the back of that.

Oh Bollocks - i've forgotten to put in the Appletise years. The Appletise years were synonymous with going shopping to Watford as a kid. I would get Appletise and a packet of Onion Ring crisps. The Appletise years were largely a time of innocence. I didn't know what was waiting to hit me around the corner when the Orangina years arrived...

Reflections on Buying a Computer Mouse...

2009-08-18T14:33:00.001-07:00

Grand Theft Auto enhanced my life today. I got up early and had to buy a mouse so i can finish my film. As i walked down the busy highstreet i thought - wow - this is just like Grand Theft Auto - but better - cos i don't have to kill prostitutes or worry about having a baseball bat smacked in my face every five minutes. The noises, the sounds, the smells and the overall spiritual whiff of the city were a heightened embodiment of the world translated into the computer game and experienced interactively in front of a TV screen. Walking in the morning down Whitechapel Road....in a sunlight pigeon strutting box crate morning parking meter Irn Bru revery... hearing police sirens going off to catch early morning criminals....people going off to work...and a few straggling junkies returning back to their mattresses...one has the world of Grand Theft Auto reflected back at you....or vice versa....whichever world comes first in your eyes....it doesn't matter...

Grand Theft Auto renders a city with unbelievable love and affection....footsteps.....traffic....horns beeping....overheard snippets of conversation...people shouting abuse and curses.....music blaring from cars and doorways.....that shifting atmosphere and changing emotional dynamic as you enter different areas of a city....people greeting friends....people sitting on benches...

...in this sense Grand Theft Auto has done no less that what some of the best poets who've dealt with city landscapes have done since time immemorial....from Ginsberg to Frank O'Hara....even Wordsworth with slightly less affection in The Prelude.....attempting to bring to life the splintered cacophony of sights, noises and sounds hitting you as you go for a stroll....that summer or winter or spring rhythm that hits you as you go for a drive through the city or a stroll through the park....or a bus journey....a cab ride...it don't matter...

....the city is brilliant....anyone who lives in the countryside is wankers......

...half of the world live in countryside....

...half of the world are wankers...

...they're totally missing out....

...Grand Theft Auto has a thread of poetry that runs throughout it...

I'm not sure if everyone thinks that when they're killing a whore or organising a revenge attack for a skunk deal gone wrong in order to progress to level two......but it's a little of something i get from a game that - in truth - is characterised by a desperate bleakness in so many other ways.....

Snow Journal

2009-08-18T14:32:00.001-07:00

Things i saw today:

Two giant cocks made in separate parts of Victoria Park. Presumably there is a Scarlet Pimpernel of snow-cocks out there in East London. My friend Jamie Johnson says he saw one in Stoke Newington so he must be heading North...

A black and white gang beating each other up with fence-posts in Victoria Park...

A Bangladeshi gang on Globe Road who had ambushed two police by putting a giant snowball in the middle of the road and then pelting them with snowballs and shouting "Fuck off pigs" when the two police, a man and a woman, had to resignedly try to move this giant block of ice...

The most bewildering thing is the number of lonely men walking about on their own carrying large volumes of snow on their own to somewhere. They're carrying giant lumps of snow cradled in their arms like they've found a chest of diamonds and want to get it surreptitiously away before anyone finds out. It's only snow? And what's their point? What are they taking it away for? They're not taking it to a snowball fight cos they're clearly just a lonely man? And more to the point - there's snow everywhere anyway? They don't need to hoard it or carry it with them in case it runs out. They could just as easily arrive at their destination and then pick up some snow there? Or is there something special about the piece of snow they've found? I guess it's just a fucking special piece of snow. And that's why there's lots of men walking around with snow lumps like they're carrying Blackbeard's treasure and don't want anyone else to see it.

These are the things i saw today.

I also accidentally bought diet Vimto instead of regular Vimto. Diet Vimto tastes of shit and the one thing i bought for myself as a reward for today when working has now turned into a bone of contention and source of angst.

A SOLUTION

2009-08-18T14:31:00.004-07:00

The middle-aged look on at the youth. They have finally worked out how to conquer them: Death by assimilation.

SHORT EXTRACT FROM A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE

2009-08-18T14:31:00.003-07:00

CODA
What is the metre and rhythm of a tax return?

REPLY
I don’t know but it scans like death.

CODA
A tax return has no iambic pentameter? No couplets?

REPLY
My friend give up – there is no poetry in a tax return

Train of Thought

2009-08-18T14:31:00.001-07:00

Was on a train when it stopped in a tunnel and we had to evacuate it tonight. Quite cool. Allowed me to imagine letting women and children go first or slapping a middle-aged man who was screaming and had lost control of himself. Or imagining going round seeing who needed medical assistance whilst we all languished, fanning ourselves with newspapers inside the carriage. I don't have any medical knowledge and everyone was fine, but it was good to imagine all this. I have a secret plan to quit showbiz at some point anyway and train as a paramedic or go to med school. (I once carried two kids out of the road who'd come off their bike. It felt good. Euphoric almost. And with a clear understanding that it was a positive action to help people, untainted by any kind of moral uncertainty or ambiguity). Anyway, the train had stopped because someone had either fallen, tripped or jumped beneath the train. The passengers had to walk through the inside of the train and then exit off the first two carriages which were poking onto the platform at Liverpool Street. I made a conscious decision not to look at the carnage because i think there's enough horror in life without having to add to your memory bank of bad images, but i couldn't help but notice a mangled mess of trainers beneath the train, a garbled mess which some medics were stooping to and trying to speak to. And i conclude by only having this to say: seriously - your life will never be enhanced by falling under a train. I promise - it can only have negative ramifications on how you exist in this world - if you continue to exist at all. So please - do be careful...

Computer Games

2009-08-18T14:30:00.003-07:00

I was playing a game the other day called "Far Cry 2" on the Playstation 3. It's set in some African state where two rebel groups are about to go to war. You have to go in there and sort things out. And i was playing this game for about an hour before i realised i'd just spent the past hour playing a game where i was basically walking around shooting black people. "Surely, this can't be right?" i thought to myself before putting my controller down and looking nervously about me in the living room. What made the game feel even a little more "not right" was, as well as walking around shooting black people, a subplot of the game was to find suitcases owned by black people that contained diamonds - and then steal them. And the easiest way to steal them was to shoot them. For which you got additional points. I don't know. It just felt a little wrong. I mean, if the game had been called, "Rape the African State" with the strapline, "Choose from five different white characters to exploit a crisis-torn nation", it wouldn't have been far off the mark...

Do Video Games Affect You?

2009-08-18T14:30:00.001-07:00

I've just come away from a mammoth session of Call of Duty. In it i winkled japanese people out of foxholes, stabbed bayonets into their throats, exploded their brains and burnt them alive with flame-throwers. I also invaded Nazi Berlin with the unforgiving Soviet army. During the final push i executed Germans who had surrendered, pummeled their faces with the butt of my rifle and exploded entire platoons of Storm Commandos leaving only the boots they were standing in.

As i walked down the suburban street to get to my mum and dad's just now i was sussing out the best sniping positions so that i could take out any accountants who would no doubt have dug themselves into those best vantage points. I calculated where the closest wheely bins were so that i could dive for cover in case i came under attack. I clocked where i would roll a grenade down a garden path in order to blow up the Steinerman's front door.

I wonder how long before the effects of the game wear off and i don't have to wander around imagining i'm living in the fall of Stalingrad?

Smash and Grab in the Vault of Rock and Roll

2009-08-18T14:29:00.003-07:00

Now that the canon of rock and roll is up for rape in the world of saturday reality, phone in and fuck TV, i thought it would be fun to think of my favourite covers i'd like to see played out on TV and for the British public to try to get to number one. Please feel free to add your suggestions of realities you would like to see become true...

Leona Lewis - "Heroin" - by the Velvet Underground

The Sugababes - "I Hate Myself and I want to Die" - by Nirvana

Steve Brookstein - "Hits from the bong" - Cypress Hill

Take That - "The Bed" - by Lou Reed

Gareth Gates - "Transmission" - by Joy Division

Gareth Gates - "Rusty Cage" - by Soundgarden

Gareth Gates - "Touch me i'm sick" - by Mudhoney

Gareth Gates - "Bulls on parade" - by Rage Against the Machine

Gareth Gates - "Country House" - by Blur

Gareth Gates - "Dachau Blues" - Captain Beefheart

Gareth Gates - "Rocky Racoon" - The Beatles

Gareth Gates - "Strawberry Soda" - by Royal Trux

Thoughts on the 254 bus to Whitechapel

2009-08-18T14:29:00.001-07:00

Self-employed people are closer to our hunter gatherer ancestors. They know the pounding turf of the hunt. They know the snorting of the elusive beast. They have to go in for the kill with spears and invoices. They need to go out into the morning mist and hunt in order to put meat on their table.

Those on the pay-roll are more akin to our early farming, settled ancestors. They have put systems in place in order to provide their sustenance in Northern Europe. Tilling the soil they are adapted to times of peace. Corn and barley are planted from the rising of the sun. Nine to five they clock in and out. Over time they will forget how to hunt and kill. They will grow distant from spear and self-assessment taxation.

When the pound bursts and the world implodes they will be no match for the lean, silent, inner rage of the self-employed - who gaze upon the world with the cold eyes of their cro-magnon ancestors. No strangers to the hungry belly, they will kill you if need be, you who have grown glutted on PAYE and a monthly pay cheque...

Spurs V West Ham Review

2009-08-18T14:28:00.001-07:00

SPURS vs WEST HAM REVIEW

LOCATION: The Misty Moon Pub, Bethnal Green Road

There's a big yock threatening to hit his wife and she's calling him a cunt. There's another old yock who keeps falling into people. He's about eighty and is all gums and vodka. Young Tottenham boys keep going into the toilet to take cocaine. They emerge rubbing hands and zealously yelling a chant path towards their chairs and vodka and cokes. West Ham loudmouth has spent forty minutes shouting "Tottenham couldn't score in a brothel." He has repeated his joke for the entire game to ensure the whole pub has heard his joke. He looks around to check he's being acknowledged. Wifebeater man is now showing drunk, crag-faced man a knife and making slashing motions beneath a flat-screen monitor. Crag-faced man looks at the knife-based anecdote being acted out. The lines in his face are set fast with cement and dust. His eyes are hypnotised by the movement of the blade. Old betting man with workman's jacket and two stellas lined up is moaning to no-one and everyone about how he needs a draw. He has put a hundred quid on a draw. Stubbled young charmer boy with tattoos on wrists and ten o'clock rum and coke eyes is talking to Filipino girl at the bar and trying to chat her up. "I knew you were Filipino when i saw you. I knew you were Filipino". Filipino girl is looking hopefully towards her mate at next-to-toilet-table who is busy with nose buried in texting friends. Fifty three minutes - Tottenham boys return from toilet after another line of cocaine. They rub hands generating friction that heats up the ambience. Fifty-eight minutes - word "cunt" is heard from back of pub. Sixty-two minutes in, out of nowhere, drunken betting man shouts out, "Get up you black bastard" to Tottenham player. Two black men shift uncomfortably in bar and look down at their vodka and cokes as if they are genuinely into the condensation on their glasses. "Get up you black bastard" gets biggest pub laugh of the night and takes a while to die down. "Black bastard" refrain gets few more laughs and seems to be immune to the law of diminishing returns. Two black men sit awkwardly surrounded by the white working class. An Indian man also shares in their awkwardness. There is a lull as people start to lag through the seventieth minute. West Ham loudmouth man has gone out for a cigarette. Tottenham boys have gone out for spliff on the highstreet. Everyone returns and steps up for the final ten minutes. Eighty nine minutes in and West Ham loudmouth is showing no signs of fatigue and continues to shout, "Tottenham couldn't score in a brothel" - even though at this point they are now two nil up and his whole message has been redundant for the past twenty odd minutes. With two minutes of extra time he then invents a new phrase out of nowhere - "Shit-nem", as opposed to "Tottenham" - and proceeds to say this phrase for the last remaining seconds of injury time as black men and Indian man leave the pub. However it is too late. The final whistle blows and West Ham loudmouth's shouts of "Shit-nem" are drowned out by cheers of Tottenham fans.

SUMMARY: An end to end game with action from start to finish. Solid team efforts with individual performances of note all round.

FINAL SCORE: Two nil to Tottenham

West Ham Loudmouth - 8/10
Tottenham Cocaine Boys - 7/10

Man of the Match - Wifebeater Man with solid beer-gut

Improved effort from Filipino charmer boy.

NEXT MATCH: SPURS vs MAN U, Saturday

The World as we Know it will Change Forever

2009-08-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

I write to you from a very important threshold. If I don't tidy up my flat today it will have passed the point of no return. This is an important crossroads in the course of my flat's history. The choices I make today will have ramifications for both our future and for that of our children. If I do not tidy up my flat today, then everything I have fought for and dreamed of will be lost. Because if I do not tidy up my flat, the dark forces that seek to undo us will triumph. The ecosystem of my flat as I know it will be changed unalterably forever. The delicate balance between life and death that exists in my flat will be tipped in favour of the latter. Today I am faced with an important choice, tidy up my flat - or life as I have previously known it will never be the same again.

I hope that I make the right choice.

May God bless us all as we face the challenges that lie ahead.

Big Brother Nightmare

2009-08-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

Wow - I had a Big Brother nightmare out of nowhere. I didn't realise i was still traumatised. For some reason a few drops must have still been left in the grief tap and last night they plopped into the sink.

It was horrible.

I dreamt last that I was given an opportunity to host the show, Big Brother's Big Mouth, but when the show started the autocue went unbelievably fast - huge massive volumes of text that I couldn't possibly read let alone be able to say.

It was humiliating and it was obvious to everyone watching I was dying and that I knew I was dying. At one point i just stood there on live TV

Then I thought, "Right - I'll show them - i'll talk to the audience members - this is where I'll make up for my terrible autocue by being funny and spontaneous without a script". But by some terrible chance the first person I sat next to was a boy called **** ***** who went to my secondary school - and he hated me - and he wouldn't speak to me - and for some reason I tried to persist in the conversation with him but it was atrocious TV. Then I tried to speak to a couple of others but by this time it was all over.....i was finished....the credits went up as i was being ignored by another person...

Finally it cut to me being outside where there was a small constructed stand like you get in highschool movies next to the American football pitch, and I was scared to turn on my phone which was creaking under the weight of voicemail, all documenting my failure. My phone was literally bulging from the text messages that were in it, waiting to beep when I turned it on, each one like a little audio nail in the coffin of my career.

When i woke up and realised after a few minutes this had never happened - i thanked God. I was so grateful i'd been given a second chance.

I still haven't turned on my phone though.

I'm anxious about what will beep in the inbox...

They Brought Accountancy...

2009-08-18T14:25:00.002-07:00

(Here are some words to go with a picture i am making...but it's kind of difficult to scan in as it's going to be like a pop-up book)

------------

They brought accountancy to the earth that was forged with lava and molten and fists of turnips…

The brought accountancy to the furthest reaches of the earth that was rock and igneous…

To the depths of the dark mountain…

Beyond the valley of interest rates…

Past the lagoon of APR…

The valley of the dead crow…

The cornstalks…

They brought accountancy to the last square inch of turf that carpeted the earth…

Looking there at their figures they realised that they could make a saving by removing love from the equation, and by putting a freeze on wonderment, and by eliminating the soul they could streamline the human experience with greater efficiency…

Orderly management of skulls and bone….

Rapture denial….

They brought accountancy…

---------

(The picture is of this accountant looking over a dim and bleak mountain range....and there are pop-up clouds....and a pop-up bird of prey riding an up-current of air.....and it's all very dark and swaggy clouds loom ominously and it's not a happy picture)

Time is a lonely mountain

2009-08-18T14:25:00.001-07:00

I just walked past a girl in the street. She couldn't have been more than seven years old. The October sun was pretty frosty. She was singing a song to herself.

"Time is a lonely mountain".

I think she was making it up herself.

It didn't sound like a proper song and was the kind of dirgeful repetition a child might sing when making something up.

I just walked past the best poet i've heard in several years and she was a seven year old girl.

I hope she don't lose the good fight in that battle with the lonely mountain.

My sister believes in space cows...

2009-08-18T14:23:00.002-07:00

At 3.50pm I wrote some utter crap in a status update about the CERN machine.

Here it is:

"Lee has been told by a reliable source that there is a cover up & that the CERN machine has discovered a dead baby calf on Neptune. They don't know how it got there."

Then my sister, taking leave of her brain, wrote to me at 3.57 asking if it was true.

Here's our brief little dialogue:

Lucy
is your status true?

3:59pmLee
yeah
my friend daisy who makes films, her sister works for UCL and has been working on the project

4:00pmLucy
DOES THAT MEAN WE CAN LIVE ON NEPTUNE

4:00pmLee
potentially
i'm not sure
personally i wouldn't want to

4:01pmLucy
no me neither
id get rocket sick on the journeys

4:01pmLee
it's fucking freaky though

4:01pmLucy
yeh
how did a cow get up there

4:01pmLee
i literally don't know
i'm trying to find out

4:02pmLucy
ok, let me know

4:02pmLee
it's all being kept totally under wraps though
i think they think people will freak out or something

4:02pmLucy
yeh, well uv just exposed it to people

4:02pmLee
i can do it - i'm not connected with the project
i'm just interested in the truth and i think people should know rather than be kept in the dark

4:03pmLucy
yeh

4:04pmLee
i think it's just so freaky. like something from a film
what's your answer?

4:05pmLucy
i think that maybe cows wer the 1st thing on the planet and we all evoutionised from them

4:05pmLee
then what?

4:05pmLucy
i dont know

4:05pmLee
lucy

4:06pmLucy
yeh

4:06pmLee
do you really believe there is a dead baby calf on Neptune and there's a big cover up to keep it quiet?

4:06pmLucy
oh hahahahaha
yeh i did,
how silly of me to believe something my brother tells me

4:07pmLee
i'm going to put this conversation up in a note

4:08pmLucy
i hate you

4:08pmLee
Lucy - please reintroduce yourself to your brain
you two should maybe go out for a coffee and get to know each other..

4:08pmLucy
ok

CONVERSATION ENDS

John Wayne

2009-08-18T14:23:00.001-07:00

I'm watching The Alamo with John Wayne. This is the first film i've watched with John Wayne and my reaction is - are you kidding me? John Wayne is an absolute arsehole on camera! A supreme arsehole. He is the most arrogant actor i've ever seen. He's basically an arrogant strutting arsehole trying to give himself the best, coolest lines, making smug faces and making everyone else have the crap lines.

Are you kidding me?

Is this guy for real?

An aged smug-arse trying to pass for some frontier fighter?

This Davey Crockett is clearly bloated with bourbon and cigars and country club golf arrogance.

It's actually got to the point where fifty minutes in i'm thinking - you know what - i can't watch this arsehole anymore - i gotta turn it off.

Did John Wayne really represent the aspirations of a nation? Did Americans really aspire to be a smug arsehole?

My God.

He's an arsehole.

Survey by Gordon Brown

2009-08-18T14:22:00.002-07:00

Below are answers to a genuine survey filled in by Gordon Brown:

Favourite film: Herbie goes bananas

Favourite chinese: Deep fried shredded chili chicken

Favourite Friend: Chandler (or Monica)

Favourite Game: Dancing

T-shirts or sweaters: T-shirts

Rizlas or Swan: Rizlas

McChicken Sandwich or McRib Burger: McChicken Sandwich

Favourite hobby: Having fun and hanging out with my friends

Car or bedroom: Car

Girlfriends or mates: Girlfriends

Barbecue Sauce or Sweet and sour: Barbecue Sauce

Milkshake or Coke: Milkshake

Burger King or McDonalds: Don't mind (both)

Park or petrol station: Park

Other notes: I just like having a laugh and hanging out with my mates. There isn't much to do where i live so we just hang out and stuff and have a laugh. We drink by the swings and stuff. I've fingered four girls but i don't have a serious girlfriend. I like hanging out with my mates too much. I want to be a professional footballer. I hate being a politician as i can't have as much of a laugh hanging out with my mates and stuff. I like watching my box-set of Friends. I smoke some puff but not too much. I have to work the next day so can't get too mashed. At weekends i do though, and i go out with Carly and Abigail and we drink Cider in the park and go out and stuff up and down the highstreet. The other week we had jokes - i burst a barbecue sauce in my car on the windscreen when Carly was giving me tops. Then we went down the highstreet mashup and Abigail nicked two spring rolls from a chinese buffet. It was bare jokes.

I hate Tony Blair and want to shank David Miliband.

I've got a real stalker and i bet they kill me...

2009-08-18T14:22:00.001-07:00

I'm so excited to have my own Mark Chapman - i bet i get stabbed. It's well good. It makes me feel like John Lennon. (Incidentally - i'm convinced that if i'd had the right opportunities and breaks - i could have been the Beatles. They just got lucky. They met all the right people. If i'd had the right breaks like they had i could have written Sgt. Peppers and the White Album. I just never had the opportunities they had. Otherwise - I could have been the Beatles. I'm not pissed off - i'm just saying that if i'd got lucky like they did - been in the right place at the right time - i could have been the Beatles).

Anyway - i now have a stalker - and a really good one. Seven emails in two days - none of them making any sense whatsoever. And now they've sent me about thirty photos of their holiday snaps. Then there's also one of her driving a big, plastic, child's car. And then there's one of her squeezed into a suitcase peeking out. This is the one that scares me most cos it looks like a dead person in a suitcase.

Having a stalker is brilliant. And even though it has shades of Denis Nielson about it - and a kind of really depressing sense of loneliness - i'm convinced it's utterly brilliant. This is as good as it gets. Literally. A person sending you photos of them as a dead person and which makes you feel sad about the human condition and how some people have been irretrievably scarred by life. Can't wait to see what they send me tomorrow and how elevated it makes me feel. Probably they'll send me pictures of cats which they've dressed up in little dresses and nighties. Cats - which when you look close you can see they are dead.

Legends of the tramp

2009-08-18T14:21:00.003-07:00

Walking through some dump the other day i had some tramp come up to me and ask for thirty p for "the phone". Now i'm all for tramps, i dig what they do and i've got no problem with them - but how's about a bit of honesty? I know he doesn't use the phone. He knows we know he doesn't use the phone. So why all this phone spiel?

Who's he gonna phone? The wife and tell her he's gonna be late picking up the kids from school? Is he gonna phone the Freedmans and tell them he can't make it round to dinner that night? He clearly doesn't want thirty p for the phone. He's not gonna phone up a friend and have a natter. The man had plastic bag shoes and an old sailor beard hanging off his face like frayed rope. He growled like a concussed bear that had been drinking whiskey.

Who could he possibly want to phone?

As i say - i got no problems with tramps and don't wish to demean them. But you demean yourselves by lying.

Furthermore - i can't even remember the last time i saw a phone-box.

Tramps of England - get a new spiel. This isn't the 1980's. Lying about phone-boxes is no longer a legitimate change tap. Try something more believable - like you need thirty p for i-tunes or something. Then maybe i would have given you the thirty p.

And off he went. In his clothes of sack.

Don't feel sorry for him.

He was happy.

In his own way.

Sort of.

Notes written on the train after a shitty email

2009-08-18T14:21:00.001-07:00

Negation of the creative self is to negate the world and all that's in it

Those who err on the side of caution err on the side of an open grave

Those who oil the executioner's blade aren't spared his axe

Those who opt for the quiet life generate no noise after their death

Those who put a condom on creativity will never truly cum

Those who pursue ratings will die in reviews

Those who make kids wear hard-hats cos they are jaded and middle aged will not be spared the rocks of youth

I hate Pete Doherty, Kelly Osbourne and the cult of celebrity

Those who put wood on the fire of compromise in order to keep warm will choke on its smoke

Being raped in the arse by a Michael Douglas from Falling Down equivalent does not feel good

There is a small rainbow of glory but it's see-through and it's up to us to fill it with colour

The light that comes thru the kitchen window
Is my favourite kind of light

This September i will be thirty

I am fighting the good fight

I'm going to lose

I will try anyway...

Letter and Response to Ivory Coast Spammer

2009-08-18T14:18:00.002-07:00

From :Miss Kaylat Muidini
Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire
Email
:kaymuidini@sify.com

Dear lovely one,
Good day, Please,i want someone like you to help me out after i had pray and fast then believes that you are a good person and that i can stay with you for the rest of my life ,am 22 years old lady, My late dad is a wealthy and successful business man before he died, My mum died when i was a baby, am the only child in the family. Before the death of my dad, he called me secretly in the private hospital where he was admitted and inform me to run away from his house because of his blood brother, who is my uncle. It was on that day, my dad reveilled to me that, it was his brother who poisoned him to this level .

Inshort,he seriously warn me to keep this money secretly because he know that, it was because of all his wealth and properties, his brother decided to kill him so that he can inherit all this properties as i am a girl . My dad disclose to me that traditionally,i don't suppose to get any of his properties because i am a girl . He said soonest,i am going to marry to another family but due to his brother wickedness and greedy,he did not disclose to him about this money (US$10.5 million) in the bank and he seriously advise me to transfer this total money to oversea account for my investment,where i will start my new life and finish my education . Because of this reason, i am soliciting your assistance for the claim and transfer to your bank account for the business.

Honestly speaking , i am ready to give you 15% of this total money for your assistance and with extral 5% for your expenses on phone call, please u reply me now if really serious to help me out so that i can tell you more about my intention.

Anyway,you can not understand anything now because it is a long story but please and please for God sake, reply me so that i can tell you more about myself and the transfer.

Best Regards,
Kaylat Muidini

------

Dear Kaylat,

I was very morally upset to read your letter and i want to help you.
Do you have crisps in the Ivory Coast? Over here we have crisps - but we also have raisins - which i enjoy eating. Have you been to the cinema? I saw The Dark Knight. I liked the bit when they made a woman on their computer and it helped them be better at dating. I think if every film could be like Weird Science then things would be a lot different in Russia. I am sad that the Russians make your life unhappy. Your uncle sounds like a wicked man.

I am going to go to the shops on Tuesday. You'll never believe what happened though in Uncle Buck - John Candy cooked a pancake the size of a frisbee. Mind you.....you give or take a little according to Bette Midler in Beaches...

What can we do to help though? This is very important and i want you to listen to me closely - I think i would like to kill your uncle. Would you like me to kill your uncle? I can promise you that i could put a bullet in his head...

You'll never believe what happened the other day - Eugene wanted to get Nandos but i said we had Nandos the other day - and you'll never guess but who should walk through the front door but dad.....with a Nandos!

Let's kill your uncle. I would very much like to put a bullet in his head. I have a spade. I am very glad you wrote to me cos i think we should murder your uncle. I am glad you trusted me and wrote to me about murdering your uncle. But i think we should be very quiet about it though and not tell anyone.

Here is the bank i belong to: it is called the HSBC. They have cash machines on the street where i can get out the money.

Do you need any more? I think i would like to give you my address.

Remember - we mustn't tell anyone cos we are murderers now and we must be very secretive. What is the best way for me to give you my money so that i can murder your uncle?

I promise you that i will put him deep into a grave that he will never come from again - then we will have all the money and we will be happy - just like the dream you mentioned you had like in the Shawshank Redemption.

I think you are right - we have to get busy living - or get busy dying

I am going to cut your uncle's head off and make him eat it

Thank you

Lee

Showbiz

2009-08-18T14:18:00.001-07:00

What is darker than death?
Showbiz

What is darker than the gut of maggot?
Showbiz

What is darker than putrified cow's eye?
Showbiz

What is darker than intestinal tape-worm?
Showbiz

What is darker than the filth of a thousand years
The vomit of a dead horse
The boots of a thousand Nazis...

Showbiz, showbiz, showbiz

Letter to Hertsmere Borough Council

2009-08-18T14:17:00.004-07:00

RE: Parking Charge Notice No. HB11038038

Hello,

I have just received a letter stating that my Parking charge challenge has been rejected. This was met with a quiet sense of dismay from myself, and a tired weary sense that not only is common sense failing to prevail, but in fact truth, justice and reality seem to be taking a back-seat in the bid to rob me of my hard-earned money. Restating my original email to you, and in light of the new context generated by your letter to me - I don't simply say i "had" a valid voucher to stay in your car park, I had and i still DO have the valid voucher as proof of my stay at the Ibis Hotel during this time. Furthermore i still have the receipt of my stay at the hotel too. Please may i have the opportunity to show you proof that i am not a car park villain and that i was legitimately staying in the hotel and entitled to use of the car park that comes with it? Please may i show you actual proof that in this instance i should be allowed to keep my money? Please let me know if that's unreasonable.

In any other circumstance I would love to give you money, and if i could i'd give you 20% of my earnings for the next ten years. However, in this instance i thought i'd give reality one last shot. Please give reality one last shot with me. It might be amazing. All I ask is that fairness, reason and justice be exercised.

Since growing up as a child, we held talk in our house of Hertsmere Borough Council as being a model of fairness, reason and truth. "If you want Justice", my father used to say, "You must go to Hertsmere".

"In Hertsmere - a couple of guys like us could make it."

I ask you to exercise those virtues that, as a child, held me rapt in wonder as i suffered under the yoke of Barnet Borough Council.

I ask you to honour my father who, blind and on his deathbed, is muttering right now, "Hertsmere...Hertsmere....don't worry son....Hertsmere will see you through...".

Please don't let me let him go to his grave a broken man.

I don't think I could tell him that everything he lived for and believed in wasn't true.

All I ask is for the chance to show proof that i was legitimately parked in the car-park and that i shouldn't have to pay that fixed penalty fine.

Thank you for your time.

I have to go now as i can hear my father coughing and clutching a load of Hertsmere information leaflets he took from a post office.

Speak soon,

Lee Kern

Meditation

2009-08-18T14:17:00.003-07:00

I'm watching Vernon Kaye hammering nails into a plank in a competition against a member of the public. This is the week that celebrates Darwin's theory of evolution. What the fuck's going on? Vernon is trying to hammer in more nails than a member of the public, whilst his tongue is lolling out the corner of his mouth, whilst a studio of people cheer and Phillip Schofield narrates the action of the hammering: "That's right - get that flush".

In 1837 HMS Beagle set sail across the Atlantic on a voyage of discovery that was to change the course of human knowledge and understanding.

Back to 2008:

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD: "That's right - get that flush"

Vernon Kaye hammering nails into a plank...

A crowd cheering him...

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD: "Come on...you can do it....that's nearly six nails now...."

Maybe the feral youth pulling our society apart all around us are doing us a favour?

-------

(The program by the way is called "Beat the celeb" and is on ITV. Right now Vernon is trying to name films that Tom Cruise has been in).

Junky

2009-08-18T14:17:00.001-07:00

Whitechapel. Female junky with ferret-like, defined arms says, "Give us a pound...i'm in a bad place spiritually - i'm withdrawing...".

That's the worst pitch in the world. She's overtly asking for money for heroin. And it's kind of admitting defeat. She wants me to help her to fail.

Junk, eh? What's it like!

Mid-Life Changes

2009-08-18T14:16:00.003-07:00

I wish humans went through a massive metamorphosis like tadpoles or caterpillars. How cool would it be if aged thirty we turned into something amazing - as opposed to people conversant in mortgages and house prices? Our metamorphosis into little accountants is no fun. Why can't we, aged thirty, turn into something amazing? Actually, physically change into something different and embark upon a new course in life? From the caterpillar and his cabbage to the butterfly and his nectar - why can't we embark upon a course more divine - something grander - more transcendent? Why do we become conversant in how to bleed a radiator? This is no metamorphosis. I'd rather be a grub.

Hedgehog

2009-08-18T14:16:00.001-07:00

I just saved a hedgehog's life. My sister and i were driving along and saw a hedgehog curled up in the road. So i went out and saved it's life - but now i'm worried i might get AIDS cos don't hedgehogs transmit AIDS or something? What astounded me was how much of a little girl i was. When i touched and prodded the hedgehog with my foot i'd give out little shrieks when it moved cos i was flabberghasted and amazed and excited that it was a living thing. It was a real life living animal and it moved when i touched it with my foot and i couldn't handle that feeling. My adrenalin was pumping trying to chaperone a hedgehog out of the road. Then we saw it crawl away and i was over-excited cos it had a face. Hedgehogs have actually got faces and a little head. It's ridiculous. They're like a real little animal thing with a head. And it crawled away and went into someone's garden as the streetlight contorted strange shadows that disappeared. Then we drove off and we convinced ourselves we'd done a good thing. Then i had a thought that took hold that i couldn't shake from myself. What if that hedgehog had just seen its wife run over? That it's loved one had been killed and it could never reintergrate its soul into a world where its whole heart and reason for living had been ripped out? What if it had been lying in the road waiting to die? Wanting to be run over so it could be reunited with its loved one? And i had come and moved it from its destiny? This thought troubled me, and i think was in no part instigated by "I can't live, if living is without you", that was playing on the car radio. Now i feel sad for every dead hedgehog i've ever seen, believing them all to be broken lovers who've thrown themselves under the wheels of a truck to escape a burning wound that will never heal.

I hope that all those hedgehogs are reunited in their love in heaven.

Road Names

2009-08-18T14:15:00.003-07:00

I have always been crap with directions and finding my way around in my car. If there is a judgement to make i will choose the wrong direction. I also have a problem with the faceless monikers of roads. "A36"..."M22"..."B1649". These things mean nothing to me. If they called roads things like "Toby" or "Martin" i think i'd be okay. I'd remember them. "Where are you?" "I'm with Martin"...."I'm just going to see Daniel". If roads had human names i reckon i'd be able to get a handle on their personalities and who they hang out with. "Joanne and Colin" hang around Reading....and "Dean" will take me to Leeds. But no. They're called things like the A42 and B198. My brain can't grip onto that information. I'm going to start giving roads names. Is that depressing? I think it will only cross over into the realms of sad if i start saying things like, "I see Colin's a bit under the weather", in order to denote that they're doing roadworks, or that Rachel has had a makeover if they've laid new tarmac. But i don't plan to do that.

I want to do that.

Pete Doherty Benefit Concert

2009-08-18T14:15:00.001-07:00

So I trundled along with thousands of others to Victoria Park for the Pete Doherty Benefit Concert. Like the Free Nelson Mandela Concert there was a sense of urgency in the air and the atmosphere was electric. "We are here" people seemed to say. "This is our time and we won't be ignored." Then Hard-Fi came on and played a roaring set. Try and ignore that Gordon Brown, we seemed to challenge via the medium of song. Then our first speaker came onto the stage - Tony Benn - ex-leader of the GLC. He spoke to us, telling it like it is. "Right now...in a prison cell somewhere... Pete Doherty is currently silently suffering, languishing, without any drugs. He needs drugs! Free Pete Doherty!"

Then Damon Albarn came on and played a roaring set. I am sure it shook the prison walls where Pete Doherty lay imprisoned for no crime other than taking drugs and stealing and breaking the terms of his parole.

Then a scrawny figure took to the stage. "News just come in" said the leader of the NUS. "Pete has started to sweat and taken a turn for the worse. He desperately needs drugs. At 2 o'clock - as a sign of solidarity - I ask everyone in the field to take any drugs you have. Pills, speed, ketamine, ectasy - it doesn't matter what you've got. As a sign of solidarity we'll all take drugs."

"Free him! For fuck's sake free him!" we chanted.

Then one of the guys from The Specials came and played a trumpet for half an hour. "Take that Putin" we all seemed to say inwardly - except for the guy from The Specials who said, "Take that Putin", outwardly after he put down his trumpet when he'd played his last notes.

Then two o'clock came and we all took our drugs and had a minutes silence - except for a few people who were schizing out on some bad pills and some coke-heads who wouldn't stop talking. I myself took some pig tranquilisers. If Pete Doherty could have seen us he would have been so proud. As i was descending down into the hole of a pig tranquiliser schiz-out my eyes met those of a coppers. He could see i was fucked, and in my eyes he could see the rage that seemed to say, "Free Pete....free him you bastard...". It would have been easy for him to dismiss me as just another hippy with sick on my shirt - but try and ignore thirty-thousand of us.

It was a great day, and i met Pete Doherty chapters from all across the country. It was wonderful to see their brightly coloured banners. Coaches carried people back home across the country to places like Scunthorpe, Scarborough and Whitby. It was wonderful to see so many people showing solidarity. "Yorkshire Coal Miners behind Pete Doherty". "Margate Trade Unionists say Free Pete." "Muslim Council of Britain say Free Pete Doherty". It was wonderful. I only hope Peter Mandelson was listening. He'd better be. And better tell his friend Tony Blair too...

FREE PETE!

Sing a Song

2009-08-18T14:14:00.001-07:00

I well like having a little nephew to sing songs to. Today i made up a song about a boy who drank a glass of rhinoceros tears. Yesterday I made up a song about a man who had a briefcase crammed full of fleas that burst open on the Jubilee Line. You can make up any kinds of crap and they really like it. I've made up songs about bees, fleas and feet. It seems these are subjects they can't get enough of.

If i wrote a song about feet i'd never get it into the charts. But this is material they lap up.

What a shame that 3 to 4 month old babies don't have much purchase power in the online downloadable market

"I Love You Too"

2009-08-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

Browsing my mobile phone i saw that there are a number of templates one can use for text messages in order to save time or make things more efficient. One of them is, "I love you too". This is depressing for two reasons:

1. That somebody couldn't be bothered to write "I love you too" to their partner and would use a template in their phone.

2. That some people will have a text message that will never ever be sent within their templates. There will be a permanent reminder to all lonely people that there is a message of love they will never be able to send from their phone. That message of love will never be sent to anyone and they will carry it around in their pocket always.

Another template said, "I'm going to be late", but i've got no funny things to write about that.

Thanks

Republicans

2009-08-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Have a look at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48T3DnC7wc0

It's a televised Republican debate from New Hampshire. What I'm wondering is:

What do Republicans who are under fifty years old look like?

It seems that the only Republicans who come out of gestation and into the public eye are fifty year old white men?

Where are they being incubated before this?

Where are the pupae from which they emerge?

Do you think there’s a nest like in Aliens?

Where the mother is laying lots of eggs?

Is there some mucas covered nest from which these anaemic grubs are sheltered from the daylight?

Seriously - what do Republicans under the age of fifty look like?