“Getting home from long trips always reminds you that you are an adult and you have responsibilities.”
Stuart Murdoch, writing on his blog

So, the CLONES animated video is done and looks incredible. Look out for trailers and suchlike over the coming days. Zef is making a nice pre-loading screen right now, and we’re making a blob-themed Pong game. Bop! Bop!

I filmed some stuff underwater earlier, and got loads of dwr (which is Welsh for water) up my nose, and got a cold. Isn’t that odd? I sound like Mariella Frostrup now. Which is pretty hot, I suppose.

I spoke to Patrick earlier - he of the song - for the first time in seven years. Which is a long time. He is making music and not drinking booze and getting married, which is excellent news. And has purple hair. They played that song on BRMB and he rang up righteously threatening to sue, thinking it the work of some freak snooper who’s stolen his life, as opposed to the meanderings of an old pal. He’s messing with Cubase now, and sending me some MP3s, so I look forward to that.

It is a pleasant side effect of all this musicing, that I am back in touch with lots of my old pals, who I assumed I might never see again. Gwyl and Non and Ginge and Ben and Jen and Tristan and many more from all over this funny grey isle, people who were so integral at certain points, and I then lost, when I moved on, as I can never hang on to phones and was always bad at writing letters. Praise your Skygod for email and websearches. As Madison so stirringly sings, I am no one, I am nothing, without everybody else.

Well, it’s something like that. You get the point.

I was researching weblogs today, for my press officing lady, who wishes to pitch something about artists wot blog, and make an issue of me and all this nonsense, and lord on a pogostick if everybody and their mother aren’t doing it. There’s a pretty big list here, and from that I was glad to become acquainted with the online scribblings of Pete Thownshend, Radiohead, Trent Reznor, the above mentioned Belle And Sebastian, and dear Kimya Dwason, who wrote the following bless mesh of words:

remember that second swim i was going to take?

body fat loss spam.

Awesome or what? It reads like Mark E Smith lyrics, or Jimmy Pop lyrics. I might make it into a song myself. It would be less rude than detailing the lives of old friends, I imagine.

Get me!

So, the video is all done, bar one final piece, which involves me and a swimming pool, and we have to do tomorrow. It is so good, serious, Zef and I are all proud and shit. We totally rule.

And! I have a new shop! In fact, two new shops! A British one and a Yankee one! And they have different stuffs in them! Like clocks with blobs on and coasters with Hnery Kissinger and Pat Robertson and Steve Jobbs on. Serious! Go see! Make me rich!

Actually, first person to buy something gets a free Bear with ME ON IT. Safe as fuck! Get in there!

SHOP USA!

SHOP UK!

So, what else has been happening… well, I WON BALDERDASH! I was totally the don at Balderdash. I am the makeupwordmeaning MASTER. I meant to list all my ace words and meanings, but my Mam chucked the paper. She was just jealous, I suppose.

A also saw Fahrenheit 451. That was pretty amazing. If they were burning all the books, and you had to memorise one completely for it surive, what book would you choose? What book would you be? I am not sure myself. Maybe The Outsiders. I love that book.

So, my Mam’s new house is on this posh ass road in Winchester, next to all these posh ass people. But don’t be thinking juvey delinquency is the domain of the working classes, that posher kids are in any way more respectful to their parentage than those of lower income families, in these Last Days (ho ho). I’m outside having a fag, right, and I hear this commotion next door. This posh little girl voice is all ragging on this posh deep voice, like, “clear orf! I don’t cyare! Get out!”

A bit later, there’s this crash, and the deep voice rises to an exasperated squalk, “Harriet, that’s enough!”

“Oh, piss orf,” comes the reply.

Ho ho. Stay golden, Ponyboys and Girls.

My friends Luke and Holly moved into their very own house today. A nest of love, for an old fashioned English boy and a thoroughly modern American girl. I wish them all the luck, and love, in the world.

Me, I’ve been drawing, and directing this video, which I rather enjoy, and seem to be pretty good at. Another avenue opens up. Oh, there are many rooms in the mansion.

But I have had time to read internets a little, and poetry. On her website, Mary has been writing about that old chestnut, melancholy, my father’s favourite sin. And she posted this:

Ode on Melancholy

John Keats

Which is a lovely thing. But then, my little brother Alexander posted a poem of his own, which goes a little something like this:

My beards

My life divides into beard shaped memories,
What can the future hold for such as me?
I see…
I see a beard shaped future.

Me too br’er.

Cheers Yanna for the photographic funny stretchy black and white history whatsit. As ever, I have none of my won - I lose cameras. That was my hotel room in Vegas that was. How very sweet! I need to pull my trousers up. Note the cheap Fruit Of The Loom underwear, and the lack of proper belt, necessitating the employment of my dressing gown’s belt. I don’t only lose cameras. I lost my white leather Tom Petty belt somewhere in LA. I lose everything! I lost my white ODB school shirt, my pink leather fitted, that huge Spider-Man T, a pair of shoes, a lot of CDs, many toothbrushes, lyrics, songs, bits of my brain…

So it goes.

Things are going off in India. They blew some shit up in Delhi, killing a bunch of people, six or seven at least, out doing their Diwali shopping at the markets. Diwali is a bit like Christmas, I guess. Further explosions raised the toll to 22. And in the South, 89 were killed by a train that got merked by floods. Harsh. Always it is normal folk, about their normal business. Someone get that rotten little Tory upstart, would you, that new Blair thing. Go on. Peace to our peoples.

So, I had three consecutive, equally distressing nightmares last night. I have no idea why. I remember a lot more dreams than I used to, but they’re only ever nightmares. In one, I was up on the roof of this goliath, cloud penetrating building, like where the purple shit all assembles in Ghostbusters 2, and the roof had a room on top of it, or the contents of a room, like a banqueting hall. The dudes I used to be in a band with tricked me into closing my eyes and lying down on table, then they sat on my arms and tortured me. They were wearing big curly Ronald MacDonald wigs. It was fucked. I managed to wrestle out and gouge at their eyeballs and shit, which made me sick. Then it all shifted, and I was in a car, and Pete Doherty got in, and started smoking a pipe in the front seat, eyeballing me the whole time, sort of drooling, going, “what do you think you are? What the fuck do you think you are?” Then the car was filled with all these weird grey plasticine children, and they were all sticking their hands down my throat, and I couldn’t breathe, and I was gagging all up their plasticine arms, feeling bad about it, despite the whole desperate agony thing, and the car stank of crack, and was going at hundred of miles an hour through these windy welsh backroads, and we crashed into something, and the plasticine turned to pulped flesh, just like that.

Then I was in hospital, and outside it was raining acid, tearing at the walls cutting through the glass in the windows, and Mary was sat at the end of my bed, just staring, dead-eyed, no pupils, smiling, being, just… mean… and I couldn’t move, because I was strapped to the bed.

Anyway. Enough of THAT! I had a good day man, this animated video is looking so fine. I had a better day than Lewis Libby but I suppose Karl Rove must be doing handstands, the sweaty fat fuck. But, you know, these are serious issues at stake here, so let us not crow, or whine, but SCRAP these violent scum.

Statement of Ambassador Joseph Wilson with Respect to the Indictment

Thank you.

I know you’re gonna play me
When you get wind
I heard you’re full of shit so
I’ve been duped again
But if you cover your ass
With the same old song
You might as well be farting
Farting
With a Walkman on
Bloodhound Gang - Farting With A Walkman On

I’m at my Mammy’s new pad in Winchester. It is, helpfully, right by the train station, so no more walking for 40 minutes up Bishopsgate in the middle of the night and getting arrested for me. Safe!

Man, the amount of people I talk to over here who completely missed the whole Basra Incident. Get your knowledge on dudes. Divide and conquer is the PLAN. Serious!

Had a meeting with all the cats who are working on CLONES in the Groucho last night. Apparently it is not standard practice for the “artist” to be privy to such things. Apparently some cats get pissy when they hear that not everybody loves their crappy little record. Fools! Never will everyone like everything! Were that so, we might all as well kill our little selves, for there would be no point at all. Goshdarnit! Anyway. The Groucho. £13 for a whiskey. Serious! Obscenity!

Speaking of which, those Iranians are not helping to avoid World War Three, eh? Wiping places of of maps might be commonplace in these hurricane charged times, but serious dudes! Them boys got NUKES! Whaddya fink yer Doing?

Yo, check back in a few hours for the first installemnt of Zef Investigates. Part One: New Era Caps! Shit is real!

You know you’re back in England when the first thing you see is a giant billboard bearing Robbie “Who?” Williams’ face leering down at you.

And so it goes. I am back here, and have been putting my house in order, which is obscenely expensive and irritating, but aside from that nonsense stuff is good. I have seen a great deal of my peoples, in a social and an intimate fashion, which is good for the soul (Chandra showed me her and Erol’s wedding photos! Erol showed me his synths! Luke showed me noise! Jeres showed me his naked ass! Soraya showed patience! Etc.!), and I have done some laundry, which is good for the skin. Today is the hottest day on October record, I am told, so truly, the sun has been following me about now for a good five months or so. I am a blessed child.

Today I am meeting with all the people who are working on my new single, which should be interesting, and feed my myopic, despotic little nature. I am going to see my wee bro tonight to finish the CLONES animation as well. It is looking amazing!

So, last night Luke took me t Paul Rezzers’ new clubbyband night at Catch to see entirely awesome The Unnamed Musial Project, (I think that’s what they’re called), which was ill, and I ran into all of Ikara Colt! United! In a room! With whiskey! It was very sweet. We are all a lot bigger than we were last time we were all together, in that bus, all those years ago. Claire and Jon Ball have a new band which is very exciting and we are going to make some noises together next week. Finally!

Oh, the picture above is from that Motorola party in New York last week, where Gay Rory blew the speakers and me and Spiky took credit for fixing them. See, I am evidently hilarious.

The Spazz

The other spazz

Back to normal updating frequency as of now. PEACE!

PS - Big up Steve Lamaq, who played CLONES on his Radio 1 show on Monday night. £40! I’m a buy me a rabbit!

So last night I DJed in the Dark Room in the Lower East Area of Manhattan from 11 till fucking 6am or something ridiculous, and I didn’t go for a piss or smoke or anything the whole time, I just played Bon Jovi and Bruza and Billy Bragg and APhex Twin and shit. I don’t DJ often, but it is amazing when I do and so much fun to do. Serious!

Recorded Back In The Day with Emile tonight, whaddayou mean another number 1? Oh my God, serious, big like Foreigner or Journey or something. Maybe bigger. Phis Spector blowing Jim Steinman’s head off with Dre’s shotgun. GET ME!

Nazi Olsen Twin weirdness.

Oh, poor BT not making enough money at all, yeah whatever.

More 12 year old blonde Nazis

Um, more 12 year old blonde Nazis

Love! I fly back to London tomorrow evening. I must pack. Ew! Packing is lame.

Word!

“Never before in my time at the bar or on the bench have I ever had to deal with somebody who voluntarily allowed himself to be buggered by a dog on the public highway.”
Judge Alistair McCallum

I made myself entirely useless with booze again last night. I woke up in my hotel spread eagled on a pile of socks and wires and ash drenched in make up looking an albino Alice Cooper wondering what happened, half blind, and so confused that it took me an hour to work out I hadn’t got my contacts in, and another hour to find them. Last thing I remember was bumping into Huey from the Fun Loving Criminal in this bar with palm trees in it, and Madison and Marty disappearing. I think we had some kind of lock in, but I can’t really remember. I hope I wasn’t rude to anyone - I was on the back end of a lot of whiskey and no food since Wednesday, so you’ll have to excuse me.

Was in the studio with Emile earlier, and saw the wrath of Kay Slay, who was all pissed off at some engineer, who had just literally fled the studio. Kay Slay is fucking massive, yo. He’s like eight of me. That chain of his looked heavier than my head.

That studio’s pretty ill though. They recorded Capital Punishment and DPZ’s Hip-hop there, for fucks sake! Classic shit!

Hey, my cabbie earlier was a Goshdarned Indian revulutionary poetry writing intellectual badass, yo. We kicked it. Freestyling and beatboxing in the cab. It was sweet.

I still seem to have eyeliner on. I look pretty.

Gay Rory was in town last night, DJing with the Franz Ferdinand boys at some telephone company party in Manhattan, so I went down to see him and Spiky and Amy. It was fun! I experimented with whiskey and cranberry, which is not entirely disagreeable. We got roped into a rather bizarre photo op with some oddly dolled up blonde child, who looked rather scared behind her forced smile, who none of us recognised, but later turned out to be Keith Richards’ daughter, who is an It Girl, or something, Lord Bless her and show her compassion and mercy. What a terrible life it must be for her, it is really quite awful. I shall have to not have children, I suppose, as it seems nigh on impossibly to raise chiddlers when one is a musicing person and them not turn out completely screwed whatever you do.

So, Gwilym made a good point in an email this morning, calling me out on my rambling and emotional post yesterday which included a number of hastily organised issues, banded together to try and illustrate some vague point or other. Forsooth:

This is why conspiricists are never taken seriously:

Pompous rant over. Forgive my spelling for it is shit.

Now Gwil makes good points. I personally choose to take those “I believes” and “it looks like” as admissions, as that is the language of public politicians, who are forced at all times to be covering their asses. That such “I believes” and “it looks likes” are uttered at all is incredible, and should cause any thinking person to investigate further. Which is what I trust you all to do. You can then draw your own conclusions. I draw mine, and present them, in a sloppy and garbling fashion, as is my wont, as I am a gobshite muscing person, and not an academic. So it goes.

However, I do reject the “conspiracist” tag, Gwil, in honesty. To not take the mainstream media’s offal as given, and to question the motives of one’s leaders should be normal process for any good citizen. Do you not think?

Certainly, as a result of the 25 years of lies I have endured from the powers that be, I am nowadays more inclined to take anything they say as a likely fallacy first, which may be the opposite approach from many. But in the middle of that, is the truth. Which is why all this communication, and dialogue, is dope whether we agree or not.

Also, I personally would not reject the oppinions of a man based on his age and eyesight. That is just weird.

I’m off to the dentist now. Peace!

I dismantled the shed and built a boat.

Basically, Katrina made me ill, and I wrote a song about it, and I felt better. Now the song is making other people feel ill. But they too will feel better soon, and forget, and the bodies will rot, and the malls will be built, and Karl Rove might get indicted, but so what anyway? Katrina, perhaps, awakened some to the maggot-ridden core of American politik, and some of those some are now baying for blood, as is the natural, base, response to such things. But so what?

Jeff Wells wrote the following today, with his usual pithy eloquence:

“John Dean once said there was a cancer on the White House. It can appear now as if the cancer is the White House, and all America needs is a good Bushectomy. That’s a start. But the cancer is metastastic, and it didn’t begin at the top five years ago. Whoever’s indicted and for what, it’s just a start. 9/11 wasn’t the brainchild of Karl Rove, it just played one on TV. The covert networks of intelligence, drugs, arms and terror had been in place long before - even during Democratic administrations, for all the good that did - and the pattern of opening doors for Atta and friends while looking the other way was well established before November, 2000. Bush can be blamed for much, but there is much that remains beyond the reach of nominal leaders, even if they are wicked.

I don’t mean to be the wet blanket here. I just want to suggest that the prize is more than a few heads on a plate, or even an entire White House. It must be, if it’s to mean anything more than another false dawn.”

Do you see? If all we do is keep writing songs about Katrina and feeling better, we are fucked and stupid. We have to hang on to that disgust, by the goddamned throat, with both hands, but somehow not let it consume us. I don’t know how to go about doing that, and I got myself into a dark and terrorful place trying last month - my solution was to do a full 180 and forget it all in a weekend of self indulgence, which made me feel awesome, like kids on cartoons mean when they say awesome, but it didn’t help. I know it is something to do with balance, but I have yet to even come close, and I am still in danger of turning into Wobbly Headed Bob.

See, Wilma is coming now. Earthquakes fuck millions and it barely registers. Blair knew Bush wanted to go beyond Iraq. Even a so called Labour Party will allow plastic fascism to enslave its people. The British train babies to blow up babies, they say we’re past the cold war and Blair buys enough Nukes to take out God, and the former President of Indonesia admits that the Bali bombing was planned and carried out by the Indonesian military at the behest of “Western powers”.

And my little brother Alex writes, “I realise I’ve come so far that all it takes for me to look at someone through pink sunglasses is for them to show a (singular) sign of being interested in me. Which could be catastrophous, if not cadaveric, if either of those were words.

Then later a weatherman said that a cold front was flirting with northern ireland. That’s the bronze.”

AHAHAHAHA! Do you see?

On a lighter note, there are new photos in the pictures section Photos of me. Oh me. Me me me. Holla at yer lad.

Dear Katie. The Circle is Complete. I went to Vegas. After reading that copy of Fear And Loathing you lent me all those years ago, outside Hooters at the top of the steps in Birmingham where I once saw Tony Blair and mused that I could so easily shoot him and save the world, well, I went, and it was just as I thought, but then a whole load more. I didn’t take a load of drugs, because I grew out of that, but I did drink a lot, and I did gamble, for my sins.

It looks just like Steadman’s drawings, even now, fourty years after the book was written. Can you believe that place is only sixty odd years old? How messed up is that? How crazy are we, we people, that we just, like, Build a city of vice in the middle of the goshdarned desert, just because we desire, just because we can?

Well, we did, and I went. Jeff took me, and his Mam, who lives there, and is a Grand Hustler, sorted us free rooms at the top of this crazed hotel, goliath windows overlooking the strip. I took some photos, but we left the camera. Maybe it’ll come back and I can show you. Maybe not. Strangely, my memory is relatively vivid, despite all the booze, all the booze, all over those two days and nights I tore up that place, with my new friends, with my wonderment. I gambled, which I never do, and I left with more money than I entered with, so I shall leave it at that, I think. Gambling is weird, but it was fun, all babysmall like that, in the midst of all that confusing, swirling carpet, all the lights, all the noise, the waitresses with no clothes on, the old ladies sat at slot machines, faces veering between grim determination and brief joy, the old men who tip so hard, so hopeful for free sex, so happily and wilfully ignorant that nothing is free in Vegas, let alone the rest of the world, and least of all sex.

Ho ho, ho ho. Jeff sat down at the Wheel Of Fortune and won $500 on his third spin, then taught me blackjack, and I won $200. We drank “free” drinks, and we ran about in circles, because these casinos are designed to make one do just that, and I saw a bunch of ladies who looked like 4 Non Blondes covering Sweet Child Of Mine. Then we hooked up with his brother Ray, who grafts out there in real estate, which is all you can do really, save croupier and strip. The place is expanding like a great cancer, and I wonder when the bubble will burst. When the oil runs out, Vegas is Fucked. Its in the middle of the desert! Man cannot live on chips and G-strings alone, much as he might like to.

Anyway. Ray took us to a restaurant inside a casino, as everything is in Vegas, and we had the best steak I ever had, that was like steak pudding or something, and some complimentary oysters and caviar, which was LOVELY, and I always assumed I’d hate that shit. Reminded me of being a baban in Wales by the sea. Met some of Ray’s peoples - a dude who just got back from Iraq and his merrily deranged wife. He was in Haiti for 4 years, then Iraq for a year, and said nothing in the world compares to the horror he saw go down there. He seemed relatively sorted, but why shouldn’t he? He reminded me a little of my brother Marek. He kept it in.

I met a safe English croupier at our next spot, won $200 at blackjack and pissed myself at the decapitated statue they have of Lenin in the foyer. It was 20 feet tall and had white paint dribbling down its neck and torso. It was violent, and huge, and reeked of vanity.

That night, or that morning - time becomes an irrelevance in Vegas - we had a party in our hotel rooms with some safe peoples, and I tattooed everybody with Sharpies and Jeff crashed into baby Jeff sleep, so Charity took me out on the town, as t’were, and we went to restaurants and clubs and bars and casinos and fields and roads and all manner of glittery weirdness. It was ace.

I met Charity in the most unlikely, but perhaps the most likely of places - Sapphire, the self styled “world’s largest strip joint”, a neon blue monolith to man’s selfishness and greed out amongst the dust and the glitter. One of the first things she said to me was, “segregation is the beginning of genocide.” I know because it says so in the “Vegas” text file in my Blackberry. Charity did missionary work in Africa, but the attitudes of some of the participants upset and disillusioned her, so now she paints, and is saving up to move away from the dust and open a gallery. We got kicked out of a casino because I didn’t have an ID, we got kicked out of The Rainbow for throwing olives at a dartboard, we grappled with attempting-rapists, we danced (which I really don’t do enough. I love walzing, it is dope, even if I am not as smooth at it as I might be), cab hopped, went back to that Sapphire and met all Charity’s friends, danced more, won money, drank untold quantities of Jagermeister, and wound down chatting to locals and playing pool at The Double Down bar just outside Vegas, which reminded me a little of that place in From Dusk Till Dawn. It had the greatest punk jukebox in the world, from which blared Sham 69 and 999 and X-Ray Spexx and - get this - The Parkinsons! No shit! I was amazed, and probably babbled about it a bit much. But still. It was the perfect end to a bizarre weekend, and Jeff showed up with my crap at 10 or whatever, and I bid Charity a fond farewell and slept all the way back to LA, where I awoke and drifted dreamily through the end of my session with Danny.

I couldn’t sleep on the plane back to New York, but I closed my eyes and thought a bit. Cleverly, Jeff forgot his keys, so we spent a while sat outside his apartment on Bleeker opposite the hidden mission, where poor folks qued for coffee, and the sun turned the sky from dirty tar, to ash, to saltwater, as a dumpster rumbled slitherishly along the pavement, until James came round with the spares and let us in.

And then.

I slept.

Firstly:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY NAN AND MY LITTLE BROTHER MAREK!

That’s them up there. My Nan’s hiding behind my Nan in innit. Neither of them like having their photos taken, cos they’re SILLY. Look at posey half nudey Marek. Marek is buff ting, bless him.

So, I have a musicplaying machine (and 77 pals! I love you all like Jesus!) on my MySpace page now, which is pretty hot. I’m a update it pretty regularly. I might stick some new joints up there for like, a few hours when you isn’t expecting it cos I am tricky.

Speaking of which, we were driving down Sunset Boulevard yesterday, and we saw Tricky! He is all small like me! I yelled, “Oi! Tri’Y” at him out the window, and he beamed like a little goblin and was all like, “awite mayte!” and he had an excellent twistydready Kid N Play thing on top of his head. So big up him.

So, yeah, we were going to Interscope for a meeting, and that thing happened again with my computer. Did I mention that last time? So, we went to play Iovine some new songs, and we go in, and I sit on that ridiculous God sized sofa of his, that’s more like two beds, and switch on my laptop. And I get the famed (amongst PC users) blue screen of death. And I spend the whole meeting trying to make it work, and it keep giving me this fatal error. I’m like, BUGGERATION! The thing seems to be utterly dead. So after the meeting, we go to a repair place, and switch it on… and it works fine. And did ever since.

UNTIL I WENT BACK TO INTERSCOPE!

So, my initial theory, which I suggested to Jimmy, that Interscope has an evil force field around it that kills my PC, full as it of goodness, WAS CORRECT!

Which is WEIRD. I have never come across a place with an evil force field that blue screen of deaths my laptop. I don’t like it. EW!

So. You think our Western governments are twats for exploiting ugly and murderous instances of “islamofascist terrorism” to their advantage? Well they are. But the same rubbish happens Everywhere. Look at this douche in Russia, claiming he’ll raise the Beslan dead for votes and stuff.

Still. I love Ghostface.

(Notice I didn’t swear today in honour of MY NAN! She don’t like the swearing, she says only says “bugger”. Yeah right!)

I’m a hypocrite! Whoo! And I bet that you’re a hypocrite! Too!

Lalalalala.

You know, I actually kind of can’t wait to get back now and play you all some of these songs live innit. They rule.

Yo, I just set up a MySpace thingie. I had one a few years ago, but deleted it cos weird girls kept sending me weird messages and even weirder boys kept sending me even weirder ones, but that’s OK: I’m used to freaks now and shit is cool, and I figured out how to change the background so it looks fresh. Check it out - myspace.com/akirathedon. There’s an MP3 player uploading, but its not there yet.

Man, I get some funny emails. This one, from a lad called Nate, immediately made me think of that South Park episode where Cartman was singing about Jesus spreading his love all over his face. Forsooth:

Are you a christion? I am not asking because i am a jesus freak or anything but my friend was telling me about this contest for christion music, any kind of music goes. Now if we entered something and won you preform in from of a concert of about 5-20 thousand people. I am not sure of the number but it is a good number and also there will prolly be some agents there looking to pick some artists up. Now dont get me wrong, truthfully i dont ever go to church or preach about god because i am acually discused by the way christions just throw around there religion , like bush loves to do. But I was thinking that if you got a agent then you could then go into the real music busniess. I dono but i thought it sounded interesting. Leme know what you think about working togeathr on a song for it or even entering it.

Dude, if I ever decide to “go into the real music business”, you can bet I’ll call your ass, and we can go exploit Jesus together. It’ll be ace.

This one, I found sweet:

Dear Akira The Don

P.S.: Cheers!

Cheers Gavin!

And this I found kind of sad. It started:

“hey i was wondering if you could come by america and do a show in a piss poor mid size city in pennslyvania, (4th fasting growing region in U.S , but who gives a shit) i just thought it be cool if you could do a show at the croc rock or something, i’d totally get the word, well i try, any way living in the future is the shit and i mean that in a good why, i would listen to the rest of your stuff but theres a firewall around it because i am at school,(hack it but have not got around to it) anyway i am starting to ramble. please reply, peace out ( not other dumb American… i hope, bush fucks babys…

Jordan”

Then was followed up with:

“Dear akira, thanks alot for the return of mail, glad that there are sitll famous folk who can talk to us common folk…

Jordan”

I mean, how sad is that? All these young Merkins living in fear of being sent off to murder people for no good reason by goons they know are lying to them?

Dude, I’ll wait till I get back to England before I pass judgement. It’s been moving swiftly in an ugly direction for a while now, and I’d hate to see you hop from a frying pan into a wok.

So, this dope looking movie appears to be some kind of big budget Hollweird documentary. Queer indeed. And this shit about clowns trying to abduct children is just plain terrifying.

Sweet dreams folks! I love you, no matter what!

Look at Bashy’s lovely face! Gotta love Bashy! Dude’s a dude! Serious!

Bashy is my favourite emcee this week.

Blah blah hammer my bandwith, ATD10 is online now, blah blah.

Wrote another song last night innit. Best thing I ever did. Sums it all up. Best bit of rapping I ever conceived. I love my job. GET ME!

IT.

IS.

HERE.

ATD10: CLONES. A brand new mixtape by me.

A new song from me, a bunch of bootlegs, some awesome tunes, a Bubba exclusive, and more knowledge than you can shake a dog at. WOOF!

Online now.

Tracklisting:

Akira The Don - Subterranean Homesick Blues
Akira The Don ft. Tom Petty And Method Man - The Joint
AKira The Don ft. Swiss - Rick Witter’s Jackin’ For Beats
Bearman - Beer
Bruza, Shizzle & Napper - Ave Some Of That
Skepta & Jammer - Swag MC Burial
Da Cream - Moving Remix
Lioness & Bearman - South Of Thames
Bruza - Pum Pum Riddim
Bashy - Death Is Just A Page Away
Akira The Don ft Leonard Cohen & Crazy Titch - Waiting For The Singalong
Monsta - Once Upon A Time
Crack Village - Crack The Whip
Gonzales - Too Long
Akira The Don ft Electronic & Mobb Deep - The Real Message
Daminan Marley ft Black Thought - Pimpas Paradise
King Geedorah - I Wonder
Fat Lip - Joe’s Turkey
Bubba Sparxxx - Wonderful
Carole King - Music
The Goats - Tricks Of The Shade
UGK - You Don’t Know
Ghostface - New York
Akira The Don ft Pheonix, Biggie & PE - Emotional Heatwave
Katie Melua - Nine Million Bycicles
Towers Of London ft. Dizzee Rascal - ATD Dun Seen It All
Akira The Don ft. Narstie, Solo & Spandau Ballet - Still Gold
Akira The Don ft Bashy - CLONES (Mothboy Remix)
Morrissey - I Like You

ENJOY!

This is Meena from Baghdad. She loves Chris de Burgh, and reps that love with this photo in the fan section of the CdeB website. British soldiers are dressing up as Iraqis and shooting her coppers and her (our) peoples. Imagine the stink if she turned up in London with a barreta dressed as Nick fucking Berry! Are you mad?

1234567 is done, now we’re finishing Dead Babies. Danny is currently distracted by the baseball, so I’ve found time to make a mixtape. What fun making mixtapes is! I had forgotten. I have rammed it with 7 new bootlegs, a bunch of my current favourite songs, a brand new song by ME, and an exclusive from a yankee you may have heard of. And some bits of The Prisoner (best TV show ever), It’s A Wonderful Life (best film ever) and an old tape of HST (best Participating Scribe ever) Bravecaptain gave me. Should be with you in about eight hours (the jacked internet connection up these here Hollywood hills is intermittent at best).

Peace be with you Oh My Folks.

This is Omid from Tehran in Iran. He loves Chris de Burgh so much he stuck that lovely photo on the CeDB website. He loves Chris de Burgh even more than me. And Dick Cheney has signed the papers to have him nuked. And Tony Blair and CNN are telling lies to make us think this is a good idea. Fuck Off! Look at his lovely face! These people love Chris de Burgh! Are you mad? We are not that braindead yet son! Outta my face!

You know they banned GTA in Australia? But you know why? Not because it might perhaps condition little kiddies into thinking that bashing in skulls and raping nightfighters is fine and has no consequences. But because there’s Sex in it.

Oh this crazy world! Where they run ads bigging up the army and advertising jellychoppers with planemobiles bombing mosques on them, (serious!) captioned “It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell”. Where your old man shows you Terminator when you’re 11, with all the murder and the carnage, and fastforwards the bonking scene. Where, as Hunter noted, rain is poison and sex is death.

AIDS, lovely AIDS.

Lots of you have mailed me reagrding the Oystercard craziness, with stories of children being told they’ll never travel in London again if they smoke fags and all sorts. Wade sent me this sweet story:

“so not sure if you met my dear bodyguard… well bouncer at da CAFF royale… the nice gentleman… who shuold surely be in some movie… very elegant he is/… but yeah he got an oyster card… and he went thru barriers at heathrow tube without stamping out… or whatever its called…

I overheard an oldish woman in the shop the other day talking to her mate about the price hike, £1.50 for a fucking bus ride, and how she just wouldn’t be able to afford to go visit her brother in Crouch End any more…which is just too outrageous and insane, and in its way will rip apart the fabric of society (such as it is) as fast as any other of their ‘considered’ measures, old and fairly fucked poor peeps unable to give succour to one another in the sunset days… Re your point that the reasoning behind it is to control/contain/keep tabs on the trouble(d) youth contingent, I’ve noticed a poster campaign of late, showing teens on busses lighting up or drinking tinnies and the warning in BIG PRINT across is saying: DO THIS AND YOU COULD LOSE YOUR FREE TRAVEL!!! But like you say, the upshot will probably be that more bikes get stolen than ever, which would really piss me off…”

Indeed.

So, I keep meeting people, and since its very much on my mind the whole Bazra craziness crops up. And people think I am taking the piss, and go, naw, that’d never happen. You be on some bullshit son.

So, I am glad that a serious journalist, whom people respect, has written something proper about it. And as i can’t find a direct link I have pasted it in full thusly. But is is by Jogn Pilger, and his webplace is here.

SINISTER EVENTS IN A CYNICAL WAR

Here are questions that are not being asked about the latest twist of a cynical war. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS special forces men “rescued” from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British military authorities in Iraq put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison?

First published in the New Statesman - www.newstateman.co.uk

Hey, big up Adam Walton, who played Genocide Is Coming To The USA in its unedited 7 and a half minutes entirety on his radio show last night. I am amazed, actually.

PEACE.

PS - The new Curb today was AMAZING.

Even mainstream American newspapers are starting to find it slightly fishy that everytime some shit is going down, we are told our subways may blow up, or they do blow up, or similar.

I talk to a lot of people, and they are all in a weird alignment. Dentists, pollsters, new age hippies, raving republican twentysomethings and hotel doormen tell me that shit is not as it seems and the next few weeks are going to be nuts. That, and we are about to witness the demolition of Watergate as the worst scandal ever to affect an American President.

Woo hoo, eh? Well, perhaps not. Clinton wasn’t shy of bombing people when his collar was getting breathed on, and the swine in charge right now don’t need excuses to kick off attempted armageddon. Because they’re CRAZY! And crazy people in corners are mad dangerous, especially if they have loads of nukes and armed dolphins and tremor machines and the fucking SPANISH FLU and shit.

“Chavez… has told foreign oil companies they owe more than $3 billion in unpaid taxes going back several years. [His] government has said oil companies won’t be able to continue operating in the country if they refuse to pay those claims.”

Man, I love Hugo Chavez so hard! He’s not taking any of those oil scum’s crap! Or IBM’s! Nor Microsoft! They’re cheating their taxes and he ain’t having it!

Expect Bushcorp to start bombing any day.

Question: How do you fuck an area that’s been destroyed by Hurricanes even harder?

You give all the money meant to get that place back together to people from, um, other places. CLEVER!

Hey! White Mike Jackson to sign to Def Jam? Jay-Z and Ghostface collab! Safe!

Oh, and here’s Biggie dissing RA. Mean! And he ain’t got love for Cube, who, to these ears, was his biggest influence! Respect the architect! Sheez! He’s got love for Pac though. And Rage. Big up Rage!

WOAH!

STOP THEM PRESSES!

I was done then, but I just read this.

Last time I was in London I was getting all freaked out by these giant bus ads saying if you were under 16 you would have to get an Oystercard if you wanted to get a bus, or tube, meaning, basically, all kids would have an ID card. All would be completely traceable. Etc. Now, I read, they’re trying to FORCE everyone else to get an evil trackey Oystercard by ramming up the fare for a single journey to £3 (!!!!!) from the already high £1.70, UNLESS YOU GET AN OYSTERCARD, which will lower your fare to - get this - £1.50! Scum! Swine! Redken calls this “free choice!” I call Redken SWINE! SWINE, Redken! DECEIVER! None of your trickery! Get ye hence!

I shall have to get a bycicle again and hope no cash strapped lickle yout who can’t get a bus cos he can’t get an Oystercard cos he’s not needing to be tracked cos his poverty has forced him into teefing and wotnot doesn’t nick it.

“Blogs. I don’t even read them. I mean, it’s so outrageous… you shouldn’t even read it. It’s garbage. Nobody cares about it. Everybody knows the simpletons who are doing it are cowards and they don’t have any influence.”
Bill O’ Reiley

Wow, so my spelling the other day was pretty abysmal, right? Pritty… pritty bad. Yessir.

So, I am in LA again. Is that EST or PST? I have forgotten. Anyway. It is very sunny, and there are hummingbirds and mad bugsies all over the place. Last night Jeff took us to see Sigur Ros at the Hollwood bowl, so I got to drink nice red wine and eat crackers in a box in this beautiful outdoor arena and watch a few stars try gamely to penetrate the LA pollution dome, as we were serenaded in Super-Sound by these Icelandic types. I cried out of my right eye. It was beautiful. I had no idea what they were on about, but they had a wee orchestra, and I kept thinking about all the meanerds and all the genocide, and then here are these wee dudes from Iceland making this awesomely gorgeous noise with bits of wood an metal. Fucking crazy humanity.

Speaking of which, Ron Jeremy was there. Who’d have thunk it, eh? Everybody was very surprised. Which goes to show what presumptuous think-we-know-it-alls we all are.

So, you know, we’re expecting them - them being the “fucking crazies”, as Colin Powell had it, to blow up some trains in New York, and trigger a Earthquake in San Fransisco, and drop a baby nuke in Chicago, use that as an excuse to nuke Iran, and actively fail to do anything at all about bird flu then use that as pretext for blanket martial law. Then Luke emails me this story in The Guardian about how they’ve gone and recreated that spectacular Other Flu, the Spanish Flu that did that amazing job of felling the population back at the start of the twentieth century. Serious! They’ve recreated it! And stuck it on the internet so’s any crazy goofball scientist with a bunch of testubes can unleash MASS MURDER! Whoo!

How is it scientists can so often be so smart, and so Skygoshdarned DUMB at the same time? How is it they can afford to do that kind of shit, but they can’t put non-archaic books in Primary Schools? Why do we stand for this lunacy? IS the last sane man alive actually a RETARD?

The Family Guy movie is very funny in places, but ultimately disappointing. Just so’s you know.

Hey, good news! The EU is making itself useful and challenging the US’s dictatorial ownership of the internet! Sweet! So we’ll have dudes like Charles Clarke running it AND dudes like Paul Wolfowitz! Woo hoo!

Hahaha.

So, the last dream I remember having, I got back to London, and was living in this weird flat, with really high ceilings and sort of piss yellow walls. It was in a fucking terrible state, I can tell you, and I was greeted by this horrid stench, and blood and shit all over the walls and the floors. Then I remember I’ve got a dog (I haven’t actually got a dog), and that the dog’s been locked in here the whole time I’ve been gone. Then I hear this awful growl, and this blunt nosed, sinewy ball of muscle and gristle and teeth and spit leaps at my throat.

Last night, I don’t remember my dreams, cos I my head was full of the song Emile and I did. It is a very happy sort of an affair even though it sort of isn’t.

I am off to LA again now. Peace!

I found a good thing! I found a good thing! Lookitme! I gots balance! Someone chuck me a unicycle!

Now the world is getting older
There’s a few things to be said
Do you believe the things they told you
Do you believe the things you’ve read

From the west side to the east side
Through the windows I’m looking out
You’ll never get bad information
If you believe in the word of mouth

Saying that, I have heard some crap off students in pubs. But so what! Mike And The Mechanics! Paul Young RIP! You KNOW him and Dirty are jamming!

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning… Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”
Frederick Douglass

This fucking stupid hotel desk is too fucking high and the chair’s too fucking short, or perhaps I am, so I have fucking chronic neck and shoulder-ache from being hunched up clattering at it all stupid day. I would apologise for the language were I not in such tremendous discomfort.

Anyway. Mary said I need balance and write nothing but depressing BLAH nowadays, but I can’t think of anything cheery to report, so maybe I ought to keep my fat mouth shut. But I went out to get coffee and food earlier, got the coffee, them went to the ATM to get foodey money, and lo, it was EMPTY, woo-hoo. I do have a bagfull of quarters, so if I can get over the embarrassment of paying for a sandwich with a bagfull of quarters I shall. I shall have to see how I feel later I suppose. Maybe if I go to bed now I can just delay the whole eating process until tomorrow, when I am sure aid will come, and I can stop my pitiful blatheirng. I did write two songs today. And having done that, I decided to cover Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, which cheered me rather until the neck thing started to really get at me. At least I am very handsome today, as the mirror at my desk reports with some gross regularity.

Apparently Narstie was on telly earlier voicing concern about how his lyrics affect the young ones. When I first met Narstie he rolled into The Dairy to sell me weed, and freestyled at me, “this is a message for the young ones/why do you like guns? Why do you wanna be the hype? Why do you wanna be in the limelight?”

Later, when we came to making a song, he spat, “I’ve got 40 guns and 40 clips, wow, I’m from Brixton,” rounding off with some stuff about how famous he wishes he was.

I love Narstie, bless him, he is at war with himself constantly. As are we all, I suppose, unless we are swine, and think ourselves to be perfect. Narstie said he has two phones so as not to look poor for the fans. I understand how he feels - not wishing to affront the darling New Yorkers with a bag of quarters and all - but I have never had much of a problem with appearing poor, since I always HAVE been poor, apart from a few brief spurts between last month and Summer 2000, which have tended to find me wasting my New Money on rounds and rent and records. I went through a period of buying a lot of Wu Wear and fake gold, actually. I shall pay for that I am sure.

One time, when I was young and in trouble with the law, my probation officer helped me achieve a grant from Prince Charles and his Trust. It was purportedly to buy musical equipment. As it went, I think it went into drug debts, or something similarly unpleasant. Men with pool ques will win over creative ambition, in most instances. Always I am ahead of my means. But it all worked out in the end I suppose. Those years will fuel my stupid songs for many to come, I am quite sure, since I don’t actually have a life these days, dwelling as I do between violently furnished hotel rooms and well-insulated studios. And if I do go out I get so wasted it renders the next few days unbearable and the “memories” dead as doornails (and what is so dead about them?). It is no wonder people’s second albums are always so poor. It is a good job I did all my drugs in my so-called Youth, as I would be all but doomed by now.

Anyway, that Narstie TV show was about the power of the cursed “N” word, which I have had all manner of arguments with upper middle class/lower-upper class DJs about. I would advise you to read this, it is very good, and sums it all up rather well. Hate tends to breed hate. When we were at school we used to call each other “cunt”, and look at how we turned out.

Wade and Daffid mailed me. They have invented a new kind of music, which they call STUNNK (also a way of life, they say. I shall have them fill you in tomorrow), and are both In Love and have Mottos.

“Trim and healthy is the new getting drunk every night
and
love is the new sleeping around.”

Does love fix necks and nightmares? Probly not. I have no idea.

Hey, get this - I just worked out how to raise my seat. I have been squatting like an invalid quite needlessly all weekend. I am unsure whether to laugh or cry, which pretty much describes my whole disposition right now. Die dulci fruere.

I write tonight from the midst of a deeply unpleasant hangover, as we were celebrating the union of James and Dana yesterday, and I drank too much whiskey, and did that thing I used to do a lot, where a part of my brain swuitches off, and I turn into a raging lunatic, and an asshole. Happily, this occured (in the main) once the wedding celebrations were done, so nothing got spoiled. Just me. I can’t remember much of it, but I did scrap with bouncers, and I think one of them might have put a foot up my ass or something, as my right butt-bone is in bad shape.

I watched I Robot just, and really enjoyed it. Fist time I saw it I thought it was rubbish. I don’t know why that might be. But I really enjoyed it tonight, found it moving, even.

Anyway.

Back to the nightmares.

I am back in New York. In a hotel. The room is No Smoking, so I smoke in it, lonesomeley, as one does when one arrives alone at a hotel in a big city. I was listening to music, and that was pretty cool, then I switched the big plastic TV in the corner, that looms, horrorfully, above the twice-as-wide-as-it-is-long bed, cloaked in rotten, nauseating turquoise and mustard stripes, and was made yet more sick. Tony Blair was on it, saluting, Hitlerishly, as his turtle-faced lawyerliar wife gurned at his side, at a room full of Labour Party members in Brighton. They clapped, gaily, along to Sham 69’s If The Kids Are United, and cheered the grinning genocidal maniac like it was ‘97 all over again. Is Jimmy Pursey dead? Am I dead? Dad we slip into a parralel univese sometime in the early nineties and no-one noticed? Was it the eighties? Jack Straw, through gritted dentures, said the only reason “we” are in Iraq is to “free” the Iraqi people. That the whole room didn’t errupt in laughter is initself bizzarre. But a lone eighty-odd year old man shouted, “nonsense! You know that’s a lie,” and was picked up by the scruff of the neck and thrown out.

Am I real? Now Rumsfeld is on, telling us how swimmingly the War On Terror is going, how democracy is truly in flight, how were it not for “terrorists”, there would be no casualties in Iraq.

Oh, and Beck? I’m sorry about the other day. I thought, when you told us a decade ago, that you were Jewish, you were telling the truth. You were not. You were lying to us. Lyingface, Beck! I know now. You were raised a Scientologist. Noone spoke to you for the first week of your life. They told you you were born of Aliens. They filled your head with fear and shit. You left, for a while, but now you are back, paid in full, bold type in their newsletter, trying to convert Adam Green. Giving your money to their lawyers, who defend greedheads and charlatans and tricksters. Lawyers who attack their victims, who attack mindrape and actualrape and the fucking MURDER-ED. Maybe there is no hope for you. Maybe you are The Enemy, not the lost manchild I thought.