What was it you said in your email earlier?

“I feel more at one with the climate than I ever have done before. I feel as if the air and myself are not two separate entities but that everything is one and made of one big thing.”

Which is true. That’s the actuality of the matter. And of matter. I just took a slug from a bottle of water. And nothing happened. Well, something happened - I downed two thirds of a big ass bottle of aytac. But I didn’t feel it. It was the same temperature as me. It was the same matter as me. It was like adding a part of me to myself. If that makes any sense.

One day everything will feel just like that.

Boy, Pink Grease were awesome last night. Made me totally forget about the real world for about 36 minutes.

Oh, those crazy Israelis. If they’re not bombing the Red Cross in the Lebanon, they’re shooting up funerals in Gaza. Actually, Israelis isn’t fair. That’s like me saying its Yanks and Britishers raping Iraq. Which it is, but its not as if these actions reflect the will of the British and American people. I know, having lived in both places and done lots of going into bars I probably oughtn’t, that even the crazy right wing racists gun-chuggers aren’t behind out current bloody folly. I mean, its not like they’re even getting anything out of it at all. As one old bugger said to me in LA, “we’re there to steal their oil, that’s fine by me. So what’s this three bucks a gallon bullshit? Something is fucked up.”

Depending on the the time of day, and how long it is since I last quit smoking, I will give you a different answer on the question of collective responsibility, however. Sometimes I think it is as much my fault that all of this is going on as, say, Blair’s, because I have been in a position where I could have killed him twice and I never.

Ho ho, eh? Tomorrow, Greg Palast tells me, “Exxon is expected to report the highest second-quarter earnings of any corporation since the days of the Pharaoh, $9.9 billion in pure profit collected in just three months”.

10 Billion in three months?! WOT? And you still think Blair runs the country?! Are you MAD!?

“Exxon’s brobdingnagian profits simply reflect the cold axiom that oil companies and oil states don’t make their loot by finding oil but by finding trouble,” continues Dr Palast. “Finding oil increases supply. Increased supply means decreased price. Whereas finding trouble — wars, coup d’etats, hurricanes, whatever can disrupt supply — raises the price of oil.

A couple of examples from today’s Bloomberg newswire are:

“Crude oil traded above $75 a barrel in New York as fighting between Israeli and Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces in Lebanon entered its 14th day… Oil prices rose last month on concern for supplies from Iran, the world’s fourth largest producer, may be disrupted in its dispute with the United Nations over its uranium enrichment … [And, said a trader,] ‘I still think $85 is likely this summer. I’m really surprised we haven’t seen any hurricanes.”’

Anyone who observed in horror as that Weather Modification bill passed in the US last Autumn probably felt as sick as I did reading that last comment. The rest of you, stop sniggering at the back and go do your fucking research. They sussed out how to control hurricanes in the 60s. Cloud seeding, I believe they called it. Anyway. If you think the same crazy nutbars refusing to call a ceasefire in the Middle Of The East right now wouldn’t fuck with a storm to make themselves another valley of cash, you’re smoking the same crack they are. Get this into your face, baby - those people we’ve entrusted with our safety, those people meant to be looking out for us - they’re not looking out for “us”. I don’t know when they ever were. Not in my lifetime, bubba. Ain’t nothing nice about these motherfuckers baby. Ain’t nothing nice.

Yo, I gotta say it again: $9.9 billion.

Get me?

I am so excited by my work today I have perhaps foolishly taken a little piece of it and placed it on this here internet for you to look at. IT IS ACE! And after a few missfires in my brain, I have sussed my LP cover. My LP cover is so the shit. If I saw my LP in a shop, and I had no idea who Akira The Don was, I would think, ‘wow, what a fucking awesome sleeve, there is no way the record can be as good as that sleeve.’ And I would be WRONG. My album is amazing.

I had a good day, thank you, nobody drove a tank through my flat, and I did loads of drawing, and achieved all the things I was meant to. I was worrying I might not be able to make my mate Baz’s stag-do this weekend, but maybe I will after all now. We shall see. I have a 16 page booklet to illustrate, a Boom remix to helm, 747s remix to complete, a video to script, storyboard, and do a good quarter of the drawings for…

AH.

I am suddenly less hopefull. We shall see. I have other matters to attend to also. Matters of great, great importance!

My boy Dego was about earlier, someone’sskygodblesshissocks, and he’s off to see his boy on the morrow. Luke’s thinking of more than one now (greedy!). Chandra and Erol are about to start spawning. Boys, boys, and girls, girls, all over. I might maybe have some little babans one day, and teach them to eat vegetables at an early age, and watch out for swine, but then again I might contract cancer of the balls or get eaten alive by a lemur.

I quit smoking again today, which initially appeared to be a piece of cherry favoured piss, then only went and transpired to be quite worse than any of my three previous attempts. Or was it two? Either way, I found myself driven into quite a substantial rage by silliness, shouting at my computer AND my little brother, who is on holiday with his sweetheart in North Wales, and is probably not looking forward to having to come back down here and work on my next video. Oops.

I don’t know what’s going on, but a great many of you have written to me over the past week telling sorrowful tales of being dumped. I don’t really have much in the way of advice on the matter, to be truthful - I might be pretty good at making new songs and pictures out of other people’s old songs and pictures, but I am pretty crap at making lasting muticity out of flesh and poetry. In my experience, if the ones you rather fancy aren’t boffing idiots called things like Daff or James or Ishmael or Prince Imraan Ballyhoop The Third then they’re drooling acid and going at your neck with scissors, or sneakily turning into your Mum. This one time I thought I saw some kind of middle ground, but it turned out to be a bubble in my right eyeball caused by flouride build up on the inside of my over-worn contact lenses, and I had to spend all night in Moorfeild’s eye hospital squinting at Lil’ Kim’s freakish visage in The Source - which might be shit this month, but it was even shitter on that one - while a fat lady with eyes as thick as porridge and a hide the colour of bile wailed at all and sundry for the duration about the mystifying gall her husband had had to run off with her cousin Thelma. And what that has to do with anything I will never know, but have you ever heard of anybody called Thelma outside of a cartoon about a pussyfied dog and a bunch of hippies in a van running into random politicians and pillars of society dressed up as pederasts and chat show hosts? Me neither.

Oh yeah - don’t worry. You’re going to have loads of ace things happen to you (alongside loads of crappy things, but that’s OK, in fact, that is NECESSARY for the enjoyment of the ace), for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. SWEET!

“Life is just a lie, with an “F” in it”
Sage Francis

Israel’s incursion into Lebanon and the establishment of the “Security Zone” in the early 1980s allows it access to the lower reaches of the Litani River (which flows within 10 km of the Israeli border). These actions, coupled with past unsuccessful attempts by Israel to reach an agreement with Lebanon to share Litani water, have led to great Arab concern that Israel will unilaterally divert the Litani into the Jordan River…. In a letter to the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, Chaim Weizmann noted [in 1919] that Lebanon “is a well watered region . . . and the Litani River is valueless to the territory north of the proposed frontiers . . . . It can be used beneficially in the country much further south” This interest in the Litani continued through the 1950s, when both Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, Israel’s Chief of Staff, advocated Israeli occupation of Lebanon up to the Litani River. The fact that Litani water is very high in quality with a low mineral content only enhances its value — and the perceived threat.

During the years of southern Lebanon’s occupation, there were persistant rumours, eventually proven unfounded, that Israeli engineers were constructing a tunnel to divert the waters of the Litani towards the south. As Lonergan and Brooks write, “the lack of any evidence supporting the claim of an Israeli diversion of Litani River water does not mean that some Israelis do not covet the Litani River. It is the only nearby source of surface water that would allow Israel to maintain its present consumption rates and avoid the difficult choice of whether to reallocate water away from agriculture.”

If Israel again reaches the Litani and holds it, the pressure will be that much greater to exploit Lebanon’s waters, because the environmental exigencies are that much more exacerbated this century then they were even twenty years ago. In 2002, Ariel Sharon threatened Lebanon with war if it diverted the water of the Hasbani River from the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s largest reservoir. How will nations behave when they’re dying of thirst? America’s giant Ogallala aquifer could go dry in two decades. Sooner or later, we’ll find out.

Indeed.

We.

Shall.

Those of you that like noises will be glad to hear Mothboy has a new LP on the way. You get a tste of it on his MySpace page - Down, featuring the vocal talents of Jeres and Raya is a masterpiece of some gargantuan proportions. I am very proud that those terrible words were recorded in my front room.

Also on Moth’s page is a song with me on it. I recorded the vocals in New York, two years ago, when Interscope were about to sign me. It was an odd time. Stranded in a limbo between a past and a future. I was very young, you know. Young. Naive. I have learnt so much since then. Even when I am at my weakest, now, I am strong. I can feel it.

Listen:

You can’t fuck with me.

You can try.

But it doesn’t matter.

I know what I am.

I

Am

An

Idea.

You can’t kill an idea.

I am here now.

I exist.

I always did.

And I always will.

I read The Independent on the bus this afternoon and I cried. Three hundred odd dead in Lebanon. 100 a day in Iraq. Some fool of a columnist bragging about snorting “fat lines of coke” with Keith Allen.

“Israel warned Lebanese civilians to leave the south of the country.”

That’s Eliana Sleyman from Jounieh, Lebanon. Maybe she’s dead. Maybe she’s “displaced”. I know of her existence because she posted her photo on the Chris de Burgh’s fan page. She loves Chris de Burgh. I love Chris de Burgh. I love her.

Today I saw my friend Luke, properly, for the first time in ages. We went sailing on the Serpentine in Central London. We had a picnic. We spoke to each other, all day. It made me very happy.

I bet Eliana wasn’t happy today.

I’m crying again now, so I will stop. Goodnight, oh my beautiful people. I love you, I love you.

I had plans last night, but misscomunication, and a faulty CD burner changed all that. I found myself amidst some covert mission, making like Pole-Nosed-Pat, and now it transpires I might have somehow managed to fuck it up, so I may just throw myself off a bridge. Or I may go sailing with Luke. We shall see.

Jeres and I were listening to Genesis and Phil Collins and Alphaville until it got light today. That was nice.

“Now the night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting - that’s pride fuckin’ wit ya. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps. Fight through that shit. ‘Cause a year from now, when you’re kickin’ it in the Caribbean you’re gonna say, “Marsellus Wallace was right.”"

Man, this shit just gets funnier and funnier.

You hear the one about all terrorists being Muslims? Apparently so. Well, your boy Dan Gillerman, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, went on O’Reilley the other day arguing that Israel was doing the world’s job for it, that Iran intends to nuke us all, and that “While it is politically incorrect to say that all Muslims are terrorists, unfortunately, it’s true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.” WOW!

Now that is a statement. I find it quite amazing that, in suggesting the Israeli government might be vicious, warmongering gaggle of swine, I get emails calling me an anti-semite, and this dude goes on telly making fucking BIZARRE statements about a whole people, and nobody says shit.

What Israel have been doing around their borders for God knows how long is TERRORISM. What we have been doing in Iraq is TERRORISM. What we have been doing at home is TERRORISM. Yo, let us look it up in the dictionary…

Main Entry: ter·ror·ism
Pronunciation: ‘ter-&r-”i-z&m
Function: noun
1 : the unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion

Get me? ATTACK OR COERCION.

So it goes.

Oh, back-up on that anti-semite thing. Shall we look up semite in the dictionary?

A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.

Man, our speak is bent so double it can’t but limbo. AWOOGA! LET US RUMBLE!

I watched a documentary many years ago, by accident, on BBC4 (one of those digi-channel preview on terrestrial telly things they used to do). It was that one about the failed coup against Hugo Chavez a decade or so ago. A couple of Irish filmmakers happened to be there when it all kicked off, and got the full inside story. It is still amazing, I watched it last night on Google. You should do the same.

Baban, mae’n boeth yn fama.

Serious. That is why I am not wearing any clothes. FACT! Ah, the joys of bachelorhood. I can sit around my flat in the crazy boeth writing video treatments and drawing pink blobs in ruffs and smoking bones, and when I go to the fridge to get my water, I can SWANG DEEZE NUTS!

OK, calm down, Jesus.

We had an excellent time in Abersoch on Saturday, thank you, amongst the surfists and the madmen. North Walians don’t take steroids like the South Welsh do. Nor do they wear so much fluffy pink. It was a totally different vibe. I saw loads of old mates and played a gig with Jeres and Dego and Mary and we were super. AND we had Monster Munch on our rider. It was a very good rider. Cider For Jeres and everything. Plus I had a spiritual experience on top of a fair ground ride with Mary. I could see the sea. I got swanged about at 300 miles an hour and it was awesome. I always loved fairground rides, the nuttier the better. They make me feel very alive. I wish I could fly with every fibre of my being. I think I am supposed to fly. I think it is my destiny. One day my brain and my being will become as fluid as they need to and I will be at one with everything. I can’t fucking WAIT.

Still, I amn’t one for murky jacuzzi’s full of flacid Dirty Sanchez/Carpet Cock, even if they are on top of a red double decker. I left Mary and Crew in that mess at about 3am and went back to Bangor with Buff And Zoe. Dego was eating sweeties in a hotel. Jeres was dreaming in a tent. Zoe was in seventh heaven cos she loves Feeder, and I gave her my AAA pass so she could go meet them. Meet them she did, ecstatic she was. I am to this second bemused at how much joy so feeble a band can in spite, but it was very sweet.

I saw my old man on Sunday. He’s bought a house with his lovely lady, and has been tending to his garden. It is not a bad garden at all, I was impressed.

Old people go to bed early though. I sat up and watched Bill Hicks. All Bill Hicks spoke was truth. We need more of his kind (Alex Jones is weirdly reminiscent of Bill Hicks, incidentally). I had weird dreams again, but I don’t know of what and why anymore. I haven’t room in my waking life for the other. But there will be plenty of time for all that soon enough.

Lonely Blair is still the funniest dude pretending to work in politics today. You hear that one about how the UN need to send in a force to Lebanon to stop them firing missiles at poor Israel, who ain’t done nothing save, ur, illegally hold hundreds of Lebanese men, women and children in torture dungeons. Sorry, happy smiley rendition mansions.

“Israel’s war upon Lebanon would be a disproportionate response if Israel were actually responding to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers. It isn’t, of course. (If it were, we may have seen a limited cross-border incursion that resembled a rescue mission, rather than these blunt-force deep attacks on Lebanese infrastructure.) Rather the war, like most wars of aggression, is a response to the pathological necessities of the aggressor’s ideology.”
Jeff Wells

Israel: Dear Evil terrorists Hamas and Hezbollah. Don’t hit civilian targets or we will fuck you up and so will God.

Hezbollah: Dear masterful Israel, fair and balanced recipient of 89% of USA’s international aid moneys. Right you are. That would be totally lame. We shall make out sneaky way to your military bases and kidnap some of your soldiers. This is because you have nicked a great deal of our womens and childrens and we want them back, if you don’t mind.

Israel: WE WARNED YOU! Fine. We shall bomb the fuck out of your airports while planes are taking off. We will bomb fuck out of your ladies and your babies. We do this because we can. Plus God says it’s righteous as fuck. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

UK: Alas! Those filthy ragheads and their unjustified grievances!

USA: Israel has a right to protect itself against soldier nickers with loads of bombs!

Lebanon: Ow! Stop it!

Israel: WE WARNED YOU! STOP CRYING! All we did was bomb fuck out of your shiny new airport and your TV station (and sixty odd of your nasty civilians). Shut your piehole!

USA: Oh the horror! Iran did it. Iran wants to put Jews in fires! We must kill them before they use their huge armoury of nukes against us and God!

Lebanon: OW! OW! OW!

Israel: Palestine! You filthy swineherdists! You’re hiding one of my stolen soldiers in one of your houses! At ye!

Palestine: I never! I haven’t got a house! You blew it up!

Israel: BOOM BOOM BOOM!

UK: Stupid filthy ragheads and their unjustified grievances! Hug a hoodie! A tenner for this knighthood! Jolly ho whatnot!

Palestine: Ow! I throw bricks at you! Forsooth! Ow ow!

Israel: BOOM BOOM POW!

Greece: Calm down!

USA: Shut your cockhole gaylord!

Israel: Syria! You fuck! This is all your fault! We warned you! At ye!

Syria: Eh?

Iran: You touch Syria you touch me! And you touch my Nan! And my cousin! I do not like to be touched. And neither does my Nan! OR MY COUSIN! At ye!

Israel: BOOM BOOM BOOM!

IRAN: BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Lebanon: BOOM BOOM BOOM!

USA: BOOM BOOM BOOM!

UK: Gosh, nukes are way cool. Lets get new ones.

USA: Yes they are! But nobody is allowed them apart from me and UK and Israel.

UK: Yes that is true. Ragheads cannot be trusted.

Israel: BOOM! BOOM! BRAKKA BRAKKA!

USA: Let us rumble! BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Lebanon:

UK: Pop! Pop! BOOM! AHAHAHA! POP!

IRAN: BOOM BOOM DURKA DURKA BRAKKA BRAKKA! POP!

USA: Soudi Arabia! This is your fault for something you did one time!

Saudi Arabia: Wot? But we’re your MATES! And if you throw booms at me I’ll take that cash I lent you back and your entire monetary system will COLLAPSE!

USA: Sweet! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

ISRAEL: BOOM BOOM BOOM!

UK: BOOM BOOM tally ho BOOM!

Saudi Arabia: BOOM BOOM BOOM!

etc.

I think China and Russia and France and Rod Hull and EeYou said something, I was distracted by Big Brother. A LADY HAS HER TITS OUT! I HAVE NEVER SEEN A TIT IN MY LIFE! ARGH! I MIGHT COMBUST!

Oh, that thing up there that looks like that weird old badge that Hitler and Krispian Mills wore?

That’s a US naval barracks in San Diego. Pretty fucking funny huh! Yessiree!

I went to see a screening of My Super Ex-Girlfriend today. My next single - Oh! (What A Glorious Thing) - is the soundtrack of the climax! Yes it is! That’s how cool I am! Luke Wilson and Uma Thurman and Eddie Izzard and Anna Farris (who is BOETH) have a big orgy to it. Kinda. Anyway, it is way cool and I am very pleased and we are making a video with a bunch of the footage.

Wales tomorrow. SAFETY IN NUMBERS KIDS!

You hear the one about Jews in Iran being made to wear yellow stars?

A HA HA HA!

Or how about this one?

“Israel has information that Hizbullah guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers are trying to transfer them to Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.”

AH HA HA HA!

This is propaganda.

We have known that the US and Israel have been planning to invade Iran since they invaded Iraq. Well, since before, but it became obvious to those of us that pay a tiny bit of attention that this was the case since then.

There are so many grotesquely repercussive events unfolding right now it makes me quite dizzy. It makes me reach for cigarettes and booze and downloaded television. My urges are primarily self destructive. I am not giving in to the worst, at present, but sometimes I think I might.

Enron related bankist types dropping like flies. Murder in Gaza. Blair making entirely fucked up comments about… fuck it, look:

“If we want to defeat the extremism, we have got to defeat its ideas and we have got to address the completely false sense of grievance against the West.”

Hold up. Stop the B-line.

“The completely false sense of grievance against the West.”

Dude is so on crack. Dude is on crack, or dude is fucking retarded.

“False sense of grievance?” Decade upon decade of rape, of murder, of pillage, of lies? FALSE SENSE OF GRIEVANCE? Mr Blair, were I to massacre your entire family, piss on your bible, then tell you it was your fault, would I be right in assuming you’d just roll over and smile, that you’d get down on bended knee and gargle my outsized cock for the remainder of your waking life?

Maybe so. Maybe it IS true that the greatest threat to world peace (ho ho) is not the shit spewing bully that’s already nuked two cities to blood charred cinders in recent memory, and the similarly tooled-up buddy we set up for business in the middle of the Middle East after that second “great” war, but a country that - FACT - will not be able to build a nuke for ten years.

Yes, that seems entirely logical. And Israel has threatened to “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.”

Did you get that? Talk about subtle! They’re bombing the fuck out of an already bombed-the-fuck-out-of Gaza Strip claiming the Palestinians to be entirely deserving of starvation and death for electing “terrorists”. Now they are bombing the fuck out of the Lebanese for allegedly nicking a pair of their soldiers (a response the French and the Russians have suggested might just be “disproportionate”). I would claim these dudes to be the fucking funniest fuckers on Planet Earth if Lonely Blair hadn’t already collapsed my ribs this evening. And if Word War III wasn’t particularly funny at all. What with all my people getting blown the fuck up and all. Have you ever been blown the fuck up? Presumably you read the accounts of my peoples wot got spattered in London last year. They were very unhappy about it. Y’all were outraged. Are you outraged now? Or does it not matter because my peoples wot are getting blown up RIGHT NOW aren’t in your MySpace “friends” list?

DO YOU REMEMBER WHY THEY TOLD US WE HAD TO DESTROY IRAQ? There is a country, financed by our big buddies in the United States Of Amnesia, about to kick off World War III (OK, it kicked off a while back, but whatever), and what does our Great Leader, the co-”liberator of Iraq” say? He says “YOU FILTHY RAGHEAD SAND NIGGERS BEST SHUT THE FUCK UP WHINING AND BEND OVER”.

Bush? He say Syria “needs to be held to account” for supporting and harboring Hezbollah, and we know what that means. And Iran have got a week to open wide and say “choke me”, else the big boys are gonna have to have to “embark on a new course”. And we know what that means too. And he thinks Russia needs “Democratic reform”. This is entirely jokes coming from a man whose country now relies on Republican owned electronic voting machines with no paper trail for its beloved “democracy”.

OH BUT WE KNOW ALL THIS! IT IS ALL BULLSHIT! WE KNOW! Surely by now? It is FARCICAL!

Dr Armitage Shanks left a message on my MySpace page earlier:

“Hey, Akira, I’ve just been checking your latest entries on www.akirathedon.com and I’m totally shocked to find out that you haven’t even mentioned Israel’s completely full-on military assault on Lebanon. Total war is flaring up in the Middle East, and you don’t even seem to have noticed. For a rapper who I admire because of your political edge, I think you could have at least said something. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing. Keep up the good work, mate. Lovin’ the mixtapes.”

And, dude, I am glad my silly noisings are giving you some pleasure. Small mercies and all. But, really, what’s me mouthing off in anguish and horror going to do? What the fuck am I supposed to say? The Bankers have decreed that there shall be war, and war there shall be. War there is. Fucking BBC trots out the press releases, David Cameron says hug a hoodie, Lily Allen moans about not being able to get a mortgage, I’m crestfallen cos this thing me and this girl was getting into is over before it started. I’m a fucking rapper man. I’m a fucking douchebag rapper, and I can’t help shit. I was sat on the bus contemplating the future, and for a billionth of a second, as you do, I thought, why wait? Maybe I ought to kill myself, become one with the void… and then I remembered what Ethan Hawke said in Waking Life about Timothy Leary’s looking forward to his last 6 minutes of brain activity before death, the infinite dream from which there is no waking. And when I got in, I had this mail from Flan. She said,

“I think the boy in the film was dead or in a coma, so he couldn’t wake up… from the car crash he thought he’d dreamed.”

That hadn’t even occured to me.

Being alive hurts. I don’t wanna hurt. And I don’t wanna die. I don’t want my old man to die. I don’t want my Nan to die, my Mam to die, I don’t want Jeres to die, I don’t want Mary to die, I don’t want fucking anybody I love to die, and that includes you, and you, and you.

But you will.

I just wish all of you that I love so hard weren’t going to be made to hurt, and die, so a few babyraping Bankists can keep their dicks hard. The fucking thought of it turns mine to slop.

That’s what the fuck is up.

I smoked 14 cigarettes in the last three hours. Today me and Mark went to Manchester to meet a brilliant music making man whose gorgeous tones kept me warm during my paper round 12 years ago. Sandwitches on Virgin trains are a lot better than they were a few years ago. Howard Donald from Take That wants to work with me. Shaun Ryder’s Dad looks just like Shaun Ryder. I wish I could ballroom dance. My eyesight has deteriorated alarmingly. I feel sick.

Goodnight, cariads. I leave you with a song.

All the lies that you make up
What’s at the back of your mind?
Oh, your face I can see
And it’s desperately kind
But what’s at the back of your mind?

So … stretch out and wait
Stretch out and wait
There is no debate, no debate, no debate
How can you conciously contemplate
When there’s no debate, no debate?
Stretch out and wait
Stretch out and wait
Stretch out and wait
Wait
Wait
Wait
Wait
Oh …

Morrissey wrote that.

I am really hyped about Saturday’s gig yo. Rehearsal tonight was wicked. Although we’re losing Martin to a wedding, we have Mary and Jeres who are just fucking brilliant right now, and we have Dego Brown doing rap texture. Rehearsal was fucking ace - by the last take on Gitmo (Yeah we’re bringing that monster out!) I was having as much fun as person can have with a mike. And they tell me it’s gonna be BEOTH up En Dubbya! BOETH I TELLS YE!

So. Yeah. After rehearsal Jeres and Dego and I ducked into our least favourite Stokey drinking hole, The Jolly Murderers, because it’s open after one. And we ran into Carla. Who I haven’t seen for three years. And it’s odd, because I was only talking about Crack Village yesterday. And DJ Slepton, our old DJ, came by my pad today. I aint seen him in time neither. Carla was part of our gang back then. We used to take drugs and listen to the Wu and play Monopoly and shit. It was ace, because we were babies. Carla was the first person to play me Leonard Cohen’s Diamonds In The Mines. I played her Nick Cave’s God Is In The House. We gave each other song, and now I have Cohen’s heart on my neck and Carla has Cave’s God in her house.

So it was dope. And it was karaoke night in The Jolly Murderers. Jeres sang some risible Paul McCartney song to annoy me. Dego wasn’t having it. I did Lady In Red and bought the house down.

Good times. Moments. I am at my desk now. I am going to Manchester in the morning to meet a man abut making a noise. This is already history.
That’s what art is for. To capture those moments, or the essence of those moments, that our linear perception of reality forget. We wander around blind most of the time. Life slips through our fingers like baby powder.

On Lady In Red, Chris de Burgh sings:

“I have never seen that dress you’re wearing
Or the highlights in your head that catch your eyes
I have been blind”

SNAP.

“The use of the beard is most effecitve when in hip-hop.”
Carpetface, 2002

I think, and I might be wrong, because my memory, as you know, is an odd thing… but I think, I played three gigs before I moved to London.

The first was when I was eight or nine, in Ysgol Llangoed, North Wales. Myself and two girlfriends - one of whom I was hopelessly in love with and would go on to renounce men as sexual partners and become a stripper, the other of whom I would later have a thing with, and went on to get married, spawn and work in a petrol station. We mimed to the Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me Baby’. I told everybody I’d recorded the song with Mike Peters from The Alarm’s voice changing equipment. Mike Peters from The Alarm was a mate of my Dad’s, was the reasoning. Only he wasn’t. I later discovered they’d met, once.

Anyway. That gig was pretty hot. We performed in the middle of the school’s main hall. We were called Ken And The Barbies. I was Ken, they were The Barbies. We’d rehearse in the playground, and for a small amount of time, I was cool. All was wonderful until Picky Vicky, so-called because she was spotted picking her nose once, came in brandishing her mother’s copy of the Human League 12″. I was rumbled, and went back to getting kicked in the face every day, seeking solace at the top of the playing fields, where I’d sing Adam Ant and Sisters of Mercy songs to myself and dream of pop stardom.

I wouldn’t perform again until secondary school, at Ysgol Friars, Bangor. It was something to do with Children In Need, and I sang along to Vic Reeve’s And The Wonderstuff’s version of ‘Dizzy’ on the assembly hall stage. The show climaxed with me removing my denim jacket, swinging it by the sleeve, and throwing it into the crowd of amused school children, some of whom ironically brandished hastily constructed “we love you Adam” placards. Afterwards I had a fight with a boy called Raymond in a toilet and went home with a bloody nose. A pattern was beginning to emerge.

After I left home, and moved to the midlands, I formed a band called Narcotic with a goth called Alex, his ex-bandmate goth mate, whose name escapes me right now, and a dude called James who played drums in a Slayer tribute band. He had one of those double kick drum things, that go DOOGADOOGADOOGADOOGA! We kind of sounded like Nine Inch Nails doing Suede covers. We played out first gig in front of 500 teenage brummies at an under-sixteens party in Redditch Town Hall, and split up four songs into our set, when Alex threw his bass at the guitarist, who went right back at him with my mike stand. Drunk with the power that comes from applause, I got off with a girl I shouldn’t have got off with and ended the night being chased over Redditch train station bridge by a bald lunatic with a pool cue (lunatics with pool cues plagued me in Redditch. There were enough pool cue incidents to fill an album. I’ll get on to that one day).

My first gig in London, as part of the early naughties electro-rap combo Crack Village, was four songs long, and when it was over, I was stood atop a bass amp drooling sick out of the corners of my Spider-Man mask with an Irish ex-clown called Cormac’s guitar down the front of my Spider-Man bottoms thinking we were still amidst the third song. I didn’t fight anyone that night, but a new pattern had emerged. Amongst the audience were members of Ikara Colt, Marion (!), and a then unknown The Libertines. Since then I have not played a show where there hasn’t been a slightly famous person in attendance. Those that have seen me drench myself in water and shout obnoxiously over other people’s music include Kate Moss (leathery orange), Ken Livingstone (slippery), Bez (Bez), Chuck D (huge and wet), Neil Tennant (handsome and shiny), and Janet Street Motherfucking Porter (weirdly hot in real life). Aphex Twin came to a gig once, which sparked a nasty rumour that I was in some way an influence on Chris Morris’ vision of Nathan Barley. So I wasn’t too surprised to see motherfuckin PREACHER MAN smiling sweetly at me from the crowd last night (dude had a Karate Kid bandanna!). And I won’t be surprised when Scarlet Johansen comes to a show, and declares her unyielding devotion. Jeres, I am still on course to win that bet.

However, I feel a new trend coming. Born of violence, of celebrity, and of lies. Probably you’ll notice when it happens properly. Maybe I’ll live through it. Maybe I won’t.

In other news, my crack team of lawyers have been working day and night to get me out of a particularly sticky situation, and the end is closer than nigh. I amn’t at liberty to discuss further at present, but I will say, Styles P, holla at my boys. (And you thought being owned by Puffy was a bitch. Sheez!)

Oh, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but guess who’s got his immortal-assed Pop Song prominently featured in the new Uma Thurman movie? Guess which Ghostbustin’ assed director called Ivan Reitman personally picked the thing?

Yeah son, him.

Dude has taste.

Oh, speaking of which, I hear Ghostbusters III is happening. And Ben Stiller’s joining the crew. SWEEEEEEEEEEET! Bill Murray thinks he’s too good for it though. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEAK! Fuck him though, he can sit about being moody with Sophia Coppola, and the rest of the gang can shoot Ghosts with Ben Stiller. I dunno what Bill Murray’s problem is. Bustin makes ME feel good.

Diolch am last night (diolch am meaning thank you for) pobl (pobl meaning, um, people), it was BOETH! Boeth meaning hot.

Big up my Women, Martin whose keyboard I dislocated, Jeres who came straight from Serbia with a shave and a tan, Mary who was on some shockingly radiant form, Why Lout?, Morty… Y’all wuz ACE ON STICKS. Extra big up John Leigh on the visuals, this will be BAK like the otherside. And super big up all who came to see us, specially the dude who came all the way from Kent, sorry the night was craply scheduled and we waz on late so you had to miss half of it. And if I seemed confused and weird, its cos “idol” is a heavy word, and one is never quite sure what to do with it.

Zef has left me now and my house looks like someone robbed it. I am going to pop to see the terrapins then I’ll come back and sort my life out. Artwork needs a doing, songs need a writing, recording, mixing, mixtapes need structuring, email needs answering, the laundry needs doing and the house needs nuking.

PAX!

OK, I feel close to collapse, but at least I got a proper full person massage today. Another first. I had a mini holiday in Greenwich again, which was an entirely different affair to the last in so many respects, which just goes to show the difference a week can make. I wonder what life will be like in September? I hope it is great.

Anyway. I realise I have an issue with food, which is fucked, juvenile, and unsustainable. It is really pathetic that I have allowed the whole thing to get this bad. The problem with moving out of home whilst still a child is one gets stuck in childish ways. I find myself ow, an adult, having to deal with person issues most people sussed before puberty. I am ruining myself - I used to be well, and now I seem to be a bit broken. At this rate I will be dead by thirty. I need to eat vegetables, word is bond. A change is necessary. Anyone knows how to suppress tat gag reflex, holla at your boy.

I am off to rehearse now. Tonight is the world cup, and I am making my Women miss out. Jeres got the heads up obviously, dude went all the way to Serbia to escape my steely band leading resolve.

GIG TONIGHT!

Rah. Myself and The Women will be playing The Old Blue Last in Shoreditch tonight. It is a FREE SHOW and we will be joined by WhyLout?, Black Piranhas, Christiansilva, and maybe some more. Could play BOOM. Could play Under The Rainbow. WOOGA.

DJing will be provided by myself and The Evil Lorry. Yeah rah ace.

And for those of you outside London (most of you, then), I’ve uploaded MP3s of White Whores, my collaboration with 3RDEGREE, for you to download. HOW ACE AM I? It is -

here

Big up. Bob Bless.

Later.

ax

TONIGHT, SUCKERS! ME! FEATURING! WHY LOUT? & NARSTIE & JOHN LEIGH! SHUT UP! ZULU NATION, FOOL!

PS - Yes Dad, I did go to the park. At, like, 2am. It was locked so I bust in, and lay on my back looking at cloud formations with pink lush in my earbrain. Above, The Grendel Mask in all it’s velvet orange nuclear glory. That, is what the fuck is up.

Wow, I made an brillyunt joke by accident. GET ME!

Zef and I just watched Jarhead. It’s an American movie about marines before, during, and after operation Desert Storm.

Zef said it lacked substance. I said,

What do you mean?

He said, there was no clear anything.

I said, that’s the point.

And the other points?

The crushing inevitability of your partner’s infidelity.

That a man whose father doesn’t have a million pounds has fewer options than one whose does.

There were other points. But those stuck with me.

In Huxley’s Brave New World, the populace don’t even remember fidelity. “Everybody is everybody’s”. The thought of another man laying weird-fingernailed hands on the woman whose eyes gazed so wetly into yours fills you not with dread, with nausea and horror and loathing. Indeed, amongst the best adjusted citizens of this world t’ward which some say we are heading, the opposite is the case.

“Everybody is everybody’s”.

Nobody is anybodies.

But infidelity broke my granddad’s heart. My granddad fought in a war, and one night, keeping watch, he heard a rustling in the bushes. He unloaded his rifle into the night, and the noise ceased.

The next morning, one of the other soldiers found a dead donkey.

“Enfin, bon”, were you French, is what you’d say if you’d just talked about something that disturbs you, but since you can’t do anything about it

you can only accept it.

OK. I have read some words that were written by another for a musical project called The Gulag. You can hear some of it here.

Also, Oddkidd’s mixtape wot I mixed is available to download here (and if that link’s dead by tomorrow I’ll post another). I got back from my meeting (RECORD RELEASE DATE TO BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY!) and she’d swung by and left me the most amazing cream and rusty-red Addidas tracksuit jacket, which is about the nicest thankyou thing I have had in a minute. Which is rap slang for ages, to those of you who don’t listen to rap music (which makes your presence here somewhat perverse, but still).

In other news, Morty eats talcum powder. i forgot to mention this after she came round last week and made a song with me and Dego. Morty eats talcum powder. She ate some in front of me. Cos she likes it. So I ate some. And I didn’t like it. It tastes how it smells. And the taste lingers.

Saying all that, I don’t like vegetables, so what do I know?

I’ll leave you, then with an exert from the Baghdad Burning blog. It is late now, and I must visit my other life, of which I recal even less than this one. Enfin, bon?

Bad Day…

It’s been a horrible day. We woke up to unbearable heat. Our area averages about 4 hours electricity daily and the rest is generator electricity, which means we can use our ceiling fans, but there’s no way we can use air conditioners.

We woke up to an ominous silence- an indicator that the generator isn’t working. E. went next door to check and got a confirmation. It might not work all day. The neighbor responsible for it was going to bring by the ‘generator doctor’ as soon as he was free.

The electricity came at 6 pm for only twenty minutes- as if to taunt us. The moment the lights flickered on, we were gathered in the kitchen and we could hear the neighborhood children began to hoot and holler with joy.

Before that, we heard the news about the dozens abducted from the Salhiya area in Baghdad. Salhiya is a busy area where many travel agencies have offices. It has been particularly busy since the war because people who want to leave to Jordan and Syria all make their reservations from one office or another in that area.

According to people working and living in the area, around 15 police cars pulled up to the area and uniformed men began pulling civilians off the streets and from cars, throwing bags over their heads and herding them into the cars. Anyone who tried to object was either beaten or pulled into a car. The total number of people taken away is estimated to be around 50.

This has been happening all over Iraq- mysterious men from the Ministry of Interior rounding up civilians and taking them away. It just hasn’t happened with this many people at once. The disturbing thing is that the Iraqi Ministry of Interior has denied that it had anything to do with this latest mass detention (which is the new trend with them- why get tangled up with human rights organizations about mass detentions, torture and assassinations- just deny it happened!). That isn’t a good sign- it means these people will probably be discovered dead in a matter of days. We pray they’ll be returned alive…

Another piece of particularly bad news came later during the day. Several students riding a bus to school were assassinated in Dora area. No one knows why- it isn’t clear. Were they Sunni? Were they Shia? Most likely they were a mix… Heading off for their end-of-year examination- having stayed up the night before to study in the heat. When they left their houses, they were probably only worried about whether they’d pass or fail- their parents sending them off with words of encouragement and prayer. Now they’ll never come home.

There’s an ethnic cleansing in progress and it’s impossible to deny. People are being killed according to their ID card. Extremists on both sides are making life impossible. Some of them work for ‘Zarqawi’, and the others work for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. We hear about Shia being killed in the ‘Sunni triangle’ and corpses of Sunnis named ‘Omar’ (a Sunni name) arriving by the dozen at the Baghdad morgue. I never thought I’d actually miss the car bombs. At least a car bomb is indiscriminate. It doesn’t seek you out because you’re Sunni or Shia.

We still don’t have ministers in the key ministries- defense and interior. Iraq is falling apart and Maliki and his team are still bickering over who should get more power- who is more qualified to oppress Iraqis with the help of foreign occupiers? On top of all of this, rumor has it that the Iraqi parliament have a ‘vacation’ coming up during July and August. They’re so exhausted with the arguing, and struggling for power, they need to take a couple of months off to rest. They’ll leave their well-guarded homes behind for a couple of months, and spend some time abroad with their families (who can’t live in Iraq anymore- they’re too precious for that).

Where does one go to avoid the death and destruction? Are the Americans happy with this progress? Does Bush still insist we’re progressing?

Emily Dickinson wrote, “hope is a thing with feathers”. If what she wrote is true, then hope has flown far- very far- from Iraq…

See that? That’s a flyer. For a night. What it is, is I shall do a PA, which means rapping a few songs minus The Women, and DJing. i AM PRETTY CRAP AT djING, BUT i PLAY ACE RECORDS. Over the top of my DJing, some of my rap-ist friends will, um, rap. Yes son!

More on this subject later.

So, happy July, as a hot pink thing noted the other night. I have been on holiday, in Greenwich, which I am told is in London, but feels rather like a cross between the gay bit of the Lower east side of Manhattan and Ghent in Belgium. Ask me not why. I am rather taken with with the place - today the hot pink thing took me to its park (it had a bandstand in it! With a band in it! A Proper band like wot Sinatra had! Zing!) AND its Cutty Sark, which is the actual Cutty Sark built without the aid of power drills back in the 1800s, and yes, it is very big, and yes, I want one. Modern boats suck ass.

So, I got back to Stoke Newington, which was in itself eventful - I witnessed a bald red headed Englisher fresh back from the world cup befriending a German student, forsooth:

“Fackin expensive, tragedy really, fackin Rooney, but you lot were amazing ‘osts, fackin amazing, we’ve got our istory, but fack it, water under the bridge. We lost, but I ad a brilliant time thanks to you lot. You love your sausages! Fackin crazy fackers. Fackin sausages as big as my arm, and the bread as big as a baby’s! Yes, I lav you my friend. Fackin expensive though, fack!”

And so on. Anyway, I got back, and it seemed as though it were not a Sunday in sleepy Stokey at all, for the streets were awash with noisy jubilance! The nice Turkish man with the sad eyes in my corner shop (and yes, it is on a corner) informed me there had been a festival in Stoke Newington today, and the revelers had cleaned him out of beer and soft drinks. Fortunately, there were still plenty of 1.5 litre bottles of that 50p water I like so well. BOETH YN FAMA!

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome a new Whewell into the world. I believe her to be 13 hours and a few minutes old now. This is quite amazing to me, this birth business, even though it is as old as humanity itself, and I don’t care whether you think it was the chicken, or the egg that did it. All I know is there is wet pink sack of blood and bones and raw humanity somewhere in Brighton, and it could probably do just about anything at all.

Which is fucking NUTS, spa.

PS - MAE’N FOKKIN BOETH A RYDW I’N AR DRUGLESS COME DOWN.

PPS - It is so boeth in my flat that Zef and I just witnessed a little bit of of cotton floating about on top of all the air. It is currently an inch off the ceiling. BOETH!