All Men Are Bastards : Discuss

It is a salient lesson to learn that blokes are all, by default, bastards. Some don't mean to be, some set out to be exactly that & some teeter on the fence before falling into the 'B' pit that is conveniently located on both sides. So gentlemen, before you get out of your prams & rail against such a slanderous accusation, remember you're screwed before you open your mouths & we'll all save ourselves a fortnight. No-one is gonna thank you for being considerate & neither will they thank you for being an arsehole. It's a tightrope you'll walk for the rest of your life. Deal with it & shut the fuck up...

Ms W very sweetly 'left her phone running' last night at a Sebastian Horsley spoken word thing somewhere in London town (apparently I live there but I've seen scant evidence of this as of yet) & it got me thinking as I sat in pyjamas in my latest digs. Mr H has somehow managed to embrace his bastardhood & make himself popular into the bargain. Bill Hicks did the same. And the 'nice' ones, the Hugh Grants of this world, are also bastards (at least I think he is, judge for yourselves). Do you see where this is going? Probably Rome, & all roads lead there. If I had more time I'd prove it to you with bits of sellotape & graph paper but as I'm in a pub with the worst wireless in the West I'm not going to bother. Instead I'll go back, have a raw cauliflower & one third of a bottle of red wine for my dinner & pretend what's in here makes enough sense to publish. Which it does not...

Substandard Homecoming Blues

Bloody hell. I'm coming back to Blighty tomorrow & I've got the fear. After two months of working in 42˚ heat, drinking my own bodyweight in Stella every day, writing bollocks on the *other* blog & being told that 1000 years ago is relatively recent, the time has come to bite the bullet & crash-land into grim reality. My sources tell me there's a recession on, the weather's pants, christmas is a-coming yet again, Brown is still in & I owe Croydon Council a fucking fortune. Hmmm... I also shall be working in Newport Pagnell, much accoladed for its exemplary service station on the M1 : Be still my beating heart.

But things ain't all bad : There's affordable 'one way' vino & warm beer to be had (God I've missed that), I can eat something without aubergine in it, sleep for longer than 3.5 hours & light fires at night. Maybe live it up a little in the Big Smoke. See some chums. Watch Emmerdale. Throw a party perhaps : Tis the season to be jolly after all...

Not convincing, is it?

Post

It has been pointed out to me that I don't post often : So here's one

(normal slack service to be resumed in a fortnight)

A Dark & Stormy Night

Well hello there! Are you lost? Here, let me help you. Perhaps you're looking for this or this. Quickest way is to pop over to the sideba...Oh, you've already been. Well, if you don't mind me asking, whatever was it that brought you over to this neck of the woods? It's getting late, I see you are unaccompanied & the paths home are treacherous. You'll find scant few tales of camels, tombs & clement weather in here I'm afraid. These are darker portals, traversed almost exclusively by the insane, the foolhardy & the drunk. But alas! I am forgetting my manners : Please, come in out of the cold & sit with me by the Zippo. No doubt you have stories of your own you wish to share & it has been many moons since I've had occasion to have intercourse with another. Pull up a pew while Carruthers fixes us a nightcap. You will join me for a sharpener, will you not? I always find it the perfect way to 'oil the wheels' as it were & most restful on the joints after a long day alone. Now then, if you are comfortable & I may be so bold, do engage me with news of your journey & the many, many sites you must have seen. I have heard tell that it is a much-changed world outside since these old bones last gave me reason to explore it & now that I am reduced to a vicarious lifestyle maybe you could be so good as to enlighten me somewhat. Ah, Carruthers! Your timing, as ever, is immaculate. I think you'll find the hot Vimto is for me & the quadruple Rumplemintz for my esteemed companion. Yes, that will be all. And a good night to you... My profound apologies. After all this time, Carruthers has yet to perfect the social mores that come instinctively to those of breeding such as your good self. No, not flattery, intuition, my friend, intuition! I see you are sporting the latest fashions in keeping with someone of your stature. I note your posture & observe that you have discretely located the nearest exit. Do not be alarmed, I would not expect anything less. My visitors, albeit infrequent, tend to fit a prototype most similar to yours. The brilliant mind, teeming with vigour & curiosity yet laden with the innate sadness of a search unfulfilled, behind which lies captive the potential for deft use of language marred by hesitant commentary & a childlike disposition for toilet humour. Am I not right, my friend? AM I NOT...?

Forgive me. I am a foolish old man who, on occasion, falls prey to his lesser judgement. I beg of you, do not think ill of me for so thoughtless an outburst. I seek only to amuse, not to divide. Let me make amends, I pray. Could I not entice you to stay on a short while longer? A stranger met is a stranger no more after all & perhaps you shall find the very things you seek so fervently. But I see how you turn your head, sir. You need say no more. In here, as in life, one has but a short window to engage the interest of others & when that moment has passed it is a fruitless task to pursue it. In times long forgotten when I was in the prime of my intellect, perhaps I would have been more rigourous in my methods of persuasion. And perhaps you would have succombed. But not now. After all, it is getting late, you are unaccompanied & the paths home are treacherous. And I must climb the stairs & turn in. It has been a long, long day & another is due tomorrow. So, farewell stranger! It has been a brief but momentous pleasure to make your acquaintance & should you ever be passing by in the future do look in on us again: You will always be most welcome. Of course, I shall see you to the door personally. Goodnight, sir, & God speed...

*clunk*

 Prick

It's done (sort of)

I got fed up formatting & then writing on catch-up. So I just posted the bloody thing & hang the consequences. I'll be speaking to Apple about those links, vile, disobedient thugs that they are. Needless to say there is little content other than that already written but to make up for it there are photos of senseless violence, graphic representations of the appalling slave-like conditions children are forced to work in to bring fashion to the High Streets of Britain, and pets. If these don't suck you in you are either German or dead. There, I said it...

http://web.mac.com/eggstationzebra

Sleep tight x

*Ahem*

My apologies for the truly shocking lack of activity of late. I'm in Egypt. Working. Honest. I'm also constructing a travel blog that 3 people might actually read so obviously I need to spend time formatting the bloody thing. I'll post it soon (mum). There are pictures of camels & that also, natch. Right now, Ramadan has officially ended, the streets are awash with the blood of innocent beasts & small children are practising cruelty on a scale hitherto uncharted. And the bastards at Deathrow refused to sell me Absinthe. It's a topsy turvy world. In 10 mins I'm off to the Valley of the Queens to see Kenneth Williams' tomb & then going on a camel to practise for Attila the Fun later this afternoon. Although I'll probably be disqualified. I don't make the rules...

This Time It's Personal

A couple of things have been rattling around my head this evening which is two more than usual so worth jotting down..

Been working at the 'Ukranian Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile' for the past couple of weeks which is worth putting in for it's splendid moniker alone. My mission is to paint the domed ceiling in Farrow & Ball blue'n'white & dodge the plasterers who have brought their accents up from Bristol for the duration, bless them. My partner in crime is 'Young' Paul who turns 60 in a month & is going ever so slightly deaf from being the main dude drummer for the London School of Samba & is suffering rather more than usual this week as he's just back from Carnival. Getting the basics sorted is becoming a challenge :

We got enough paint to last the week, Paul?

Eh...?

HAVE WE GOT ENOUGH PAINT TO LAST THE WEEK?

Eh..?

Don't worry, I'm just going down the ladder to check on the paint...

Er...OK....*looks pensive*....Could you have a look & see if we've got enough paint down there if you're going? Not sure if we've got enough to last out the week...

Sure thing...

To add to the fun we have been joined this week by Dave (sic) the Lesbian Fibrous Plasterer whose accent is so thick you could stand a spoon up in it who sings along to Radio 2 as if her life depended on it & hurls around roof lagging as the boys watch on in wonder. You wouldn't want to mess with Dave, mind. She'd spin you on her little finger as she knocked up a brew, letting off a silent but violent at the same time. So we don't. I am astonished by the gut feeling she finds in Will Young, however. The little incubus (thanks Bill, that one was a gift) is hardly noted for his lyrical dexterity, but as I watch Dave's enticingly exposed midriff contracting & expanding with raw emotion I become painfully aware that I have missed more than one meeting...

The second thing that won't bugger off is this : My lil brother is apparently in love (according to my mother). You'd be right in thinking 'How come you got that second-hand?' Well, for the last couple of years we have been lock-horned in a pitch battle over a flat that I live in & he has invested in & for reasons too complex to go into here it's all gone tits up. Large style. So we haven't been doing a lot of the ole chitty chatty of late which, to a point, I regret & to another I feel is probably the right thing: Money & family are awkward bedfellows at the best of times but when things go wrong, boy do they go wrong. Anyway, the idea of my brother being in love is somewhat bizarre as, how can I say this, previous laydees haven't exactly lasted much longer than a choc ice in a microwave. And to up the ante, the latest is a celeb. Or at least the sister of one. Which counts if you are editing Heat magazine. And the celeb we are talking about here is 'A' list, not your Big Brother dross. For reasons I shall one day go into at length I have a slight issue with such people, pleasant though they may be, particularly when looks are involved. I still believe in the somewhat naive notion of a meritocracy, the idea that celebrity comes to those who have earned it through what they have achieved & not what they look like, who they are going out with or how much money they have. Now I could be getting all previous here as I have never met said laydee & she could be blinding (probably is, actually) but I am painfully aware that should a meeting ever take place I will have to bury these gut instincts deep if I am ever to have a Buckleys of patching it up with me bro again, something I have been led to understand he is keen to achieve. And whether to post this at all as it is late & I have necked several Sailor Jerrys (helps me type, you understand) & the idea that this won't get back at some point is, at best, optimistic. Hmmm, the bosom of the web or the bosom of the family, I'm on the verge...

Ahh, fuck it...

Dog With Tits

Being a charidee worker, one's ceaseless plight to help the disaffected can occasionally harden the heart. However, from time to time one gets a bolt from the blue that plucks every string & this post is the most recent & possibly the most profound. Anyone out there with a pulse surely cannot fail to be moved by Dog With Tits's virtual fate: He don't need money, he don't need a bra, he just needs your help at this difficult time. God save the King!

Shite Blogger Alert, In Yer Basket...

Where did everyone go? It were all trees last time I looked...

Food

I am not a foodie. Fuck food. Food is merely petrol you need to top up with from time to time to make whichever carcass you happen to be trapped inside move around a bit & do things, & like petrol it is overpriced, overrated, smelly & facing extinction. Alex Cox got it right with Repo Man as did NASA with their inventive solution to zero-gravity lunches. No frills, no washing up, no choice, no nonsense. This, my friends, is the future: Deal with it or get off the pot...

I had the poor fortune of having to witness yet another celebrity chef reality monstrosity on the idiot's lantern last night. Yes, having: My flatmate Ursula actually enjoys making & eating the stuff while she watches other people making & eating it, can you imagine? My living room is a cross between the inner circle of Dantés Inferno & an Escher staircase. That chef what doesn't iron his face is barking contractual expletives at assorted inept celebs attempting to bolster their dwindling incomes in order to go out & buy more food (or, more likely, have it cooked for them) & then eat it. The whole shebang is utterly, utterly ridiculous & I am at the point of weeping into my Bombay Bad Boy with fury but as man of the household I exercise an heroic restraint, feigning interest for what feels like an eternity but is in fact the time from rolling opening credits to 1st ad break. Never in living memory have I been so grateful to see the Halifax's multi-talented Howard warbling his talented way across the Channel. Ursula is no fool : She instantly detects the suppressed venom & catapults herself at my Achilles heel. "Isn't it interesting how Gordon has become the object of desire for most well-adjusted modern women." Bitch. Brilliant, but Bitch nevertheless...

I am beside myself : There are more flaws in that one sentence than there are flavours of Jelly Belly (which, by the way, I highly recommend should you need a meal between treats) & the sheer volume of CPU power required to retort completely blows the processors on duty. I have to leave the room, fizzing in defeat, leaving Ursula & Gordon to enjoy their wild raspberry & mint fucking cheesecake, washed down with a half-bottle of Muscat d'Alsace or Skol lager. Whichever...

The Amateur Eye

Spotted in Herne Hill shortly before I moved to Crystal Palace where the average is a reassuring 60. How many 'use poo' in your neck of the woods, readers? C'mon now, don't be shy...

Dream : 17/07/08

Just got in from a garden party with the parents of my Godchild at which I met an attractive woman who swore her sister had video-interviewed Banksy in 2002 & was going through the hoops about revealing his identity. As I have spent the best part of this year taking a couple of his paintings off walls for clients I have no respect for whatsoever (true) I recommend she keeps schtum despite the obvious financial benefits. A couple of days pass. Consciousness is regained outside a massive warehouse somewhere in North London. I am in the foyer (sorry, was brought up in a time when that word meant something) waiting for the bull-necked penguin to let me in. I casually pick up a newspaper as the penguin gets onna blowa. Article on page 6 declaring 'Banksy's Identity Revealed' & a forthcoming 'fuck-it' party at the venue outside which I am now standing. I wonder...I am half-cut, watching Mr Banks give instructions to student labourers cutting & bagging vast quantities of pills & cocaine in a sweatroom usually manned by Primark over the working week. He approaches me, an unfamiliar bonce inside his inner circle & we discuss my Russian submarine corps watch to which he has taken a fancy. Banks is wearing a Wurzel-stylee white smock & has earlobes that rest upon his shoulders. I comment on these. We laugh heartily as I exit room searching for the smallest one. My colleague Bianca approaches me in a state of distress : "Egg", quoth she, "I am pregnant, oh woe is me." I calm her down with a can of Relentless & kind words. "No, you don't understand, the baby is Banksy's & now that he is outed it can never be the same again..." I am thrown by this revelation but out of consideration I offer up a portion of my wine cellar as temporary creche which, out of consideration, she refuses. She is a true friend...

Builder Jour

"Roobehrooobehroobehroobeh der ner ner ner nah ner.......Dooyadooyadooyadooya der ner ner ner nah ner......."

We are approaching face-off at the Hop Pole site, Tewkesbury, Spring 2008. It's the 37th time this piece-of-shit song has been aired at ear-splitting volume on Builder FM this morning, my nerves are frayed beyond language & just to up the ante a mite further everyone's favourite short-arsed Welsh Chippy has decided to join in. Again. I am perched on a scaffold staring at a C18th wallpainting, a Swann Morton scalpel shaking temptingly in my hand as our hero opens his tar-corrupted lungs wider than Mary Millington's legs & spews forth into the working environment. A brace of other Chippies & a lone Spark attempt chorus but the complexity of lyric flummoxes them temporarily. I look to my colleagues for support : Mark is oblivious, buried deep in headphones offering him 'At Home He Thinks He's A Tourist' & Bianca is single-handedly trying to figure out the point of Jenni Murray. This one I'll have to go alone, Mary mother of God... 

Chippy 2 (or Spark), in lieu of any creditable vocal contribution, straps on a hand tool & air-planes us seemlessly to the bridge "Duh'ner ner, ner ner ner ner ner, der ner ner ner ner, ner nerr..." as Chippy 1, bereft momentarily of the oxygen of publicity, lets off a spectacular fart that could blow the guy ropes off the NME tent at Glastonbury. At this point the Kaiser Chiefs magnum opus is drowned out entirely with peals of hysteria eminating from every corner of the building, rocking the scaffold/house to it's foundations. It seems I am the only person in striking distance from the massive radio with a face like a wet wednesday & hands that would prefer to be doing dishes but I am fucked if I'm going down for this. My eyes dart around inside my head, looking for a viable excuse not to be doubled up & briefly losing motor skills but I find nothing. Fortunately for everyone, the Chiefs have kindly provided a no-brainer outro, allowing Chippy 1 to pick up the baton & run with it straight through to the finishing post & me to regain a semblance of composure & personal dignity, narrowly avoiding a senseless loss of life...

It is over : All camps retreat to their original positions & a mantle of comparative quiet descends over the battleground. Chippy 1 plugs a hole with a dowel he prepared earlier & Chippy 2 helps him by watching. I return to my duties but make a mental note to boycott any products by Caterpillar in future. I turn once again to Mark & Bianca who, like extras in Dr Who, appear not to have moved one iota. When they return how can I ever explain th.."Hey Hey Wanna be a Rockstar..." (ad nauseam)

Loser Magazine

In 1988 I bailed the UK for Australia to pursue a career in either film or music, didn't really care which. In reality I ended up working for 'Charlie Chan' who ran the 5 Cent photocopy shop just off Melbourne's Swanston Street, a man notorious for making a documentary called 'Sex & the Animals' which he promoted with two pigs that he kept in the shop for a bit (& photocopied them), spray painted 'sex' on one & 'animals' on t'other & paraded them outside the central nick during rush hour until he got arrested. I loved working for Charlie : He was dangerously insane, the size of a pepperpot, ancient, balding & omnipresent. Every band gigging in town would rock up at some point (unless they were signed wankers) armed with bags of shit Charlie would encourage to throw onto the copiers : Syringes, bullets, porn, mucus, semen & occasionally Farelle's tits if she could blag a guestie (Farelle & I would 'man' the shop when he was off shooting up or speaking to producers). Occasionally he would turn up at 6pm sweating like a fat girl at the disco & turf us both out, swearing he had a "meeting & could you just fuck off now. I MEAN IT." When Charlie's eyes bulged & turned ochre simultaneously we knew he did. So we did...

These mysterious meetings were never discussed. I presumed he was scoring a plethora of chemicals of some description & never gave it too much thought. However, one morning I arrived at 10am to open up (not that there was any point WHATSOEVER in being there before 3pm but he liked to make the whole caboush seem kosher) & found a massive cardboard box spewing its' innards over the sticky carpet along with the more traditional takeaway cartons, vodka bottles, suspect videos & a few pairs of stained suit trousers. Of course I inspected. The box was filled with multiple issues (1-4) of appallingly copied & stapled magazines, finished & ready for distribution. Only the last bit never happened (standard practice at Charlies). It was called 'Loser Magazine : The Magazine for YOU' & from that moment on I was hooked. 'Loser' had virtually no editorial or content, no format & nothing remotely resembling a magazine inside whatsoever. Just endless clippings from the Aussie press, above & below the salt, thrown together page after page after page. And it was hilarious. When your brain finally accepted that this was all it was, you somehow made the quantum leap & every clip became knicker-wettingly brilliant. Think Framley Examiner with real stuff & you're getting warm, yet with 'Loser' you had to join your own dots & briefly allow yourself to be possessed by the author. Fortunately I had the foresight to pilfer issues 1-4 which I still own to this day (although 3 got nicked at a Herne Hill house party also at which my gerbil Utterly Butterly was callously murdered by a certain indie musician putting a tab of acid in her water bottle). For what it's worth I'm reproducing a few pages here :

The First One

Turns out it's not good enough to sit there in the sidelines sniggering & occasionally posting one-liner comments on more finely honed sites than this one, oh no.. Apparently you have to get wet/take the plunge/dive in (etc) if you want to be a contender, Charlie. But, as any fule kno, it's always the First One that kicks up a stink, that threatens to drag the half-baked ideas that refuse to come out nicely like they did in your head straight back to obscurity where they undoubtedly belong. It's these demons we're here to see today:

"Publish vs Delete. They're evenly matched & have been training hard for this moment, Delete traditionally strongest in the earlier stages but if Publish can hold off the initial pummelling I think we could go the full five. What do you think, Tim?"

"Championship whites.  Cliff'n'Sue.  Strawberries."

Exactly. No-one said it was gonna be easy but as my grandmother used to say before she was discovered naked outside Whipsnade Reptile House "If you don't come to the party, you.....you..............you don't..........I'm sorry, dear......................sorry." Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked : Last night my friend Donald & I were trying to come up with the kind of punch-the-sky global appeal chorus that gets played on football matches & commercials, thereby saving us the effort of actually having to form a band & do gigs. We've been mooting this idea for 3 months now & have managed 2 meetings in the pub after which we forgot what the minutes were ("I thought you were supposed to be writing this up" etc..) but commitment to the cause still astonishes me after all this time. He mentioned the plight of Midge Ure, having penned the evergreen 'Vienna' with it's rabble-rousing strapline "This means nothing to me" which consequently denied him the luxury of early retirement (Mr Ure to this day is reduced to selling ice creams from a van in the Easterhouse area & doing the occasional jingle for Radio Clyde). Clearly this is something we must avoid at all costs as our collective age already nudges 90 & the rigours of endless touring, drug abuse & casual sex may well tip us over the edge (although this does have the upside of lowering said collective age).

So many good ones have been had already, godammit! "Inger-land, Inger-land" (I could have been sipping my Tom Collins in Fort Lauderdale RIGHT NOW if we'd come up with that little beauty). Anyway, Donald reckons the football market has long since been cornered & we should concentrate on product. On telly. On the radio. Billboards. Direct mail. And the rest. Look what Tim did with Persil : He single-handedly turned Unilever round, they were going to the dogs before he quite brilliantly tapped into the nations' collective unconscious & made it cool to have a loser telling us to do laundry. I know this doesn't have much to do with writing a killer chorus but that's not the point, the ethos remains the same. We'll come up with the tune later. And the words. Next meeting, wait & see...