Don’t moan. I have never done this before. Last holiday I had was ‘94. True story.
Use this as an oppurtunity to speak amongst yourselves. Upon my return I shall be expecting some seriously intelligent discourse.
SAFETY!
@!
Check the brand new Stunners 130 MySpace for previews.
PAX!
That there was taken by Natalie Gudgeon, she’s safe as fuck. She was snapping Wade and I this afternoon for the cover of Stunners 130. You’ll have something from that to listen to tomorrow, chill out!
Whaddya mean I’ve really gotten into the new Bright Eyes album?! I never cared for him before. This shit is magical. Reminds me of that Mercury Rev album. What was that Mercury Rev album we loved Wade? Had that shit about Spiders on it. Spiders and flies. I lost mine, I need to get that shit again. Anyway. I told Jeres, he said “wow, you’re on the ball.”
I said, “fuck you man! I AM the ball! And I roll where the hell I like!”
Well, I could have.
Oh yeah, sorry Mam. My Mam says I swear too much. My Mam must’ve been talking to that fool Russel Simmons. HAHAHA! I crack me up.
Hmm. Seen that Rudolph Giuliani chap? He wants to be president. He is trying to scare people into voting for him. He says if he isn’t voted for, brown people will kill all the nice white yankee doodle dandees. He also says terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”
HE IS SO FUNNY!
Bless his mad scheming little head. If you see Rudolph today, kiss that head. MWAH! Love for all, even nutbars.
Akira The Don - Bootlegs & Remixes Vinyl
Shiny black vinyl, 10 tracks. Very limited - ie, I have a small pile of them I just found moving my LPs. These were pressed up and sent to DJs before CLONES came out. Click for tracklisting.
Adam Walton and Me, The Edge Of Wales, late last year.
The Greatest DJ In The World, Dr Adam Walton, played the first preview of Stunners 130 on his BBC Radio Wales show last night. You can Listen again for the next six and a half days here. The track was played right at the end of the show, but I seriously urge any of you who’ve not checked out a Walton broadcast before to do so properly - it is a thing of some classical beatuty.
“Wish Zef a happy birthday from us - his biggest fans! We have loved you and Zef since we saw Living In The Future on Newgrounds. Everyone we know loves all your songs and videos, and we all love Zef’s song! We will be singing it in art class on Monday because we can sing in art classes. Thanks again! Can’t wait for Stunners 130!
PAX!
xxxxx
Anna, Emily and Laura
Florida
PS - here is another verse for Zef’s song:
Zef zef he is cool
we all love him in our school
Truth be told it is our dream
To be Zeffy Zef’s hareem”
Zef had a good birthday.Not only did he get a song - Zef loved his song, and from the emails and myspoaces etc seems y’all did too - his Mam bought him and his mate Tom down to London to visit his brothers. What a nice Mam! What a lucky Zef! Her boyfriend Keith followed them about the place with a camera because he is amateur paparazzi.
What Zef wanted to do was go on a boat and get a hat. So they went on a boat.
And Zef got a new hat from the Stoke Newington New Era Cap Emporium, that also sells ludicrously expensive Nikes.
Did I mention the boat? It was a pretty cool boat. If it hadn’t been for all the millions of other people filling up the lake and getting in the way of the oars, it would have been a very tranquil time. As it was, Zef, Tom and Adam were followed around the lake by boats full of teenaged girls. So it goes.
Thanks for all the messages, MySpaces, and emails suggesting CD makers. Hopefully one of these leads will bear fruit. Safety!
Anyone know any good places to get CDs duplicated? Like, 500. Holla.
@!
“Killa” Cam’ron Giles was on telly last night talking about no snitching culture (watch a bit of it here). He went on and on about how he would never ever snitch on anybody ever and never never ever talk to no coppers for ages and ages. After a while, the interviewer asked him if he’d say anything if he knew there was a serial killer living next door to him.
“If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me? I wouldn’t call and tell anybody on him—but I’d probably move,” said the rapper.
New York City’ rap station Power 105.1 have announced they aren’t going to be playing any more rap songs “with degrading messages and images” in them, according to The New York Daily News. What their definition of degrading is we have yet to find out. “What we’re doing is holding labels and artists accountable for what they say and how they say it,” said a spokespersonage.
This is happening becasue some white radio DJ called some black women nappy headed hoes, and Al Sharpeton and Jesse Jackson say it’s hip-hop’s fault (Watch Snoop talk 93% SENSE on the subject here). Luckily, KROCK are still gonna play all those emo records that go, “I hate you you fucking bitch I’m gonna kill myself and you and your family,” and white teenagers will continue to be completely respectful to white girls and never rape them, not even when they’re blind drunk.
“If we are to believe the emerging timeline of events,” writes Kurt Nimmo, “Cho Seung-Hui killed a woman and her RA in a dorm, went back to his dorm and captured a QuickTime video rant, burned a DVD, trekked to the post office with two 9mm weapons in tow, mailed the DVD, along with photos and miscellaneous writings to NBC, and then marched over to Norris Hall and killed another thirty or so people execution-style.”
Meanwhile, Sky News’ website reports that “Police investigating the Virginia Tech killings have expressed their regret that video made by Cho Seung-Hui before he murdered 32 people was broadcast… Virginia Police Superintendent Steve Flaherty said he was disappointed US channel NBC, to whom the tape had been sent, chose to show the disturbing footage.”
Sky News have it, conveniently streaming to the right of the article.
A student from the University Of Colarado has been arrested after his classmates snitched on him saying something about “understanding how someone could kill 32 people,” according to “university police Cmdr. Brad Wiesley”. Cos they have University Police Commanders in Colorado.
Almost 200 people were killed in Baghdad yesterday.
I could go on. But I am tired.
So, I couldn’t sleep again last night. I gave up trying at 6 or whatver, got up, read a comic book, answered some email, did a few push ups, got my hot ass out the house and walked the streets of my mannor. Shit is lully over here in Stokey. The sun is blazing, people are going to work, I’m bopping about in a vest saying good morning to my public. YES!
Haha. The park was full of dogs and school kids, because it was morning, and I sat down on the only dry bench (they were all getting varnished by an enthusiastic ole lady/middle aged lady boy tag team) and read a rap magazine, watched the wildlife., and thought about Christmas. I got my own personal Christmas coming next week. I am a lucky boy. All praises to the sun. I got a camera too. Look at the dope stuff I found in my fuckin’ pond!
1: These lil buggers were out with their mama, chasing stardust. I relate to that, I am a go getter.
2: I am told that rotten old slave-runner Her Maj owns these fuckers. They are all surface, no feeling, these swine. I relate, cos I heard that Manics song too.
3: Terrapins 2007! Same log, different year. Some shit never changes. They stare at the sun. I relate, I look right into the sun’s eyes, and I’m right back like Cap’n AmeriKKKa’s sheild every year too.
4: Yeah, Her Maj’s birds sure are pretty vicious. I relate, cos I have been nasty too you know. When I’m drunk I’m mean, swear down and say sorry.
5: All perspective mayne innit. Bars are all around us, if we care to look. These ducks and terrapins don’t. I can relate, I don’t pay attention most the time. Who wants to worry about that shit all day long? Anyway, aint noboody built a cage yet that can hold an idea, and I am just one fucking brillaint idea.
YES!
OK, I’m a do some work now. Sort you out a preview of Stunners 2, redo the vocals for the demo for this song that’s gonna blow up your summer like water bombs. I love you, baby.
So, that’s a picture of ME, with my GANGSTA NEW PHONE. This time last year I was rocking a Blackberry, and everyone was all like, oh my God, that is amazing, I so have to get one. Now they have. Well fuck them! I got a fuckin really old Nokia, but it’s all SHINY and BLUE, and the battery will NEVER DIE, and its software will NEVER CRASH cos all it does it MAKE PHONE CALLS and SEND TEXTS!
DUH!
It probably also freaks bees out. The bees are all fucking off now. Have you heard about this? The USA lost 60% of its bees last year. Now all of ours are fucking off. Serious! Do you know what Albert Einstein said about bees? He said if they were to bugger off, “man would have only four years of life left”. And you know why they’re buggering off? Cos they DON’T LIKE PHONES!
AND NEITHER DO WE! They make our sperms commit suicide, they give us massive lumps of cancerous puss in our brains, and they have ruined more a hell of a lot of productions of Hamlet. But what to do? We are all addicted to instant communication. I am having a big ole rethink, that is CHURCH right there.
Anyway. Bees man! What the fuck!
So, Jeres took me to see Feist earlier. It was great, we totally didn’t go on the piss at all, and it was seated and everything. I am feeling this sort of civilisation in the live performance. I was reminded throughout of Tom Petty for some reason, later I figured it must have actually been Stevie Nicks I was thinking of. Anyway, shit was ace. Feist has such a beautiful voice, and she moves in a really odd way, which is cool.
Oh yeah, I meant to say, now I done got this gangsta new phone, my number is still the same, but I lost all of YOURS, so text me your numbers please.
Goodnight!
Most people will tell you that poetry is useless. Which is true. But so what? Some of it is good for what is left of our souls. That is important, eh? In times like these, for sure. The following I know to have been described as depressing. I do not think it is. But then, my favourite band used to be The Smiths, and they always made me smile.
Dinasauria, we
born like this
into this
as the chalk faces smile
as Mrs. Death laughs
as the elevators break
as political landscapes dissolve
as the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
as the oily fish spit out their oily prey
as the sun is masked
we are
born like this
into this
into these carefully mad wars
into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
into bars where people no longer speak to each other
into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
born into this
into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
born into this
walking and living through this
dying because of this
muted because of this
castrated
debauched
disinherited
because of this
fooled by this
used by this
pissed on by this
made crazy and sick by this
made violent
made inhuman
by this
the heart is blackened
the fingers reach for the throat
the gun
the knife
the bomb
the fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
the fingers reach for the bottle
the pill
the powder
we are born into this sorrowful deadliness
we are born into a government 60 years in debt
that soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
and the banks will burn
money will be useless
there will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
it will be guns and roving mobs
land will be useless
food will become a diminishing return
nuclear power will be taken over by the many
explosions will continually shake the earth
radiated robot men will stalk each other
the rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
the sun will not be seen and it will always be night
trees will die
all vegetation will die
radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
the sea will be poisoned
the lakes and rivers will vanish
rain will be the new gold
the rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
the last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
and the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
the petering out of supplies
the natural effect of general decay
and there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
born out of that.
the sun still hidden there
awaiting the next chapter.
-Charles Bukowski
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. “They were sick and some were dying,” she says. “Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable ‘looking from the side’.”
It is time we in Britain and other Western countries stopped looking from the side. We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush-Cheney-Blair “long war” edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation’s independence from rapacious America. The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (with tales of their “ordeal” almost certainly authored by the Ministry of Defence – until it got the wind up) is both a farce and a distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for “Operation Iranian Freedom”. Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike. According to Russia’s leading strategic thinker General Leonid Ivashov: “Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets… at least 20 such facilities need to be destroyed. Combat nuclear weapons may be used. This will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond.”
If you read one thing this week, make it this John Pilger article. Cheers Jane for the link, I ain’t checked dude out for a minute.
Evan Dorkin, of Milk & Cheese and Dork fame, has been one of my favourite comics people for about 12 years, but the dude seems to be a lazy fuck and only puts shit out like, once every 3 years (no exaggeration). So how hyped was I to discover today he’s been doing a comic strip for goshdang MAXIM magazine in the UK, about our dear prince Harry. I have posted the thing, which I found on Dorkin’s blog, for your reading pleasure. Obviously, I don’t read Maxim, but if any of you lot do, and happen to have any of these strips (I have no idea how many have dude’s done), scans would be so appreciated it will hurt you, for all the love and appreciation, yes it is true.
I was watching Hustle And Flow, when a nagging feeling interrupted my enjoyment, so I stopped the film, and had a look for my telephone. I couldn’t find it, so I rang the number from the house phone. I coudn’t hear the ring, and there was no answer.
Weak, I thought.
I wondered when I’d last seen it, which was just before the ping pong party (If you wanted to know what 20-something white people do on Saturday evenings in London these days, apparently is is have ping-pong tournaments). I suspected that I might somehow have lost it there, so I rang the number for a while. Eventually, someone answered.
“Seeele -oh”
The voice was foreign sounding - European, or something. Italian. Czech. I don;t know. I’m crtap with accents.
“What?” I said. “Who is this?”
“See Leh Oh,” said the voice.
“Excuse me?” I said
“Selector”.
The voice sounded pleased with itself.
“Oh,” said. “You seem to have my phone. Where did you find it?”
The voice laughed.
“My phone now,” it said. Then the line went dead.
“Shit,” I said.
I tried ringing it back a whole bunch of times, but it kept just going to answer phone (I have a really annoying answerphone message right now), so I called T Mobile instead and got them to cancel the sim card.
“If you ring back tomorrow after seven, we can get you a new sim card ordered, and we can block the phone”, said the woman from T Mobile.
“Why can’t you do any of that now?” I asked.
“If you ring back tomorrow after seven we can do it for you sir,” she said.
“Some rotten swine has my telephone,” I said. “I have spoken with him. Why can’t you use one of your satellites to pinpoint his location and blow the phone up or something? What if I said he was a terrorist?”
“No sir,” said the woman, with some boredom. “If you ring back after seven tomorrow we can block the phone and order you a new sim card sir.”
“Right,” I said.
“Is there anything else I can do for you today sir?” asked the woman.
“You have done enough,” I muttered grimly, hung up, and paced about a little, considering the implications of this latest mishap. The swine with my phone could have sent all manner of horrible text messages to people by now. He could have rang my mother and tried to frighten her. He could have read all my text messages. The gross perv. I bet he gets cancer. What a cock end.
I looked out my window. On the ground opposite, Trampy hopped from side side in his doorway, sucking on a cigarette and waving at passers by for money. Asshole, I thought.
Gosh!
The new mixtape is finished. What a journey these past three days have been! Wade’s just gone to drop it off with the people who are going to press it up. I am going to tidy up, then I might go to the Rio and catch the late showing of The Blues Brothers, either that or I’ll have a little sleep.
OK! Have some photos.
1: This Morning
Aw, he’s so sweet when he sobers up.
2: Brummy
This is the evil Greg Smith, playing a very intense and emotional song last night. I have known him for 10 years, somehow.
3: Piper
On the left you’ll see Mister David Piper pointing at Wade Crescent’s eyeball. Piper made some excellent contributions to the Stunners 130 mixtape.
4: Stunning!
Here you will see a celebratory misters Crescent and The Don, listening to their new mixtape, which they have called Stunners 130, for reasons you’ll discover when you hear it.
That’ll do!
Mayne, I am a pissed of Donovan and no mistake. it is 5:25 or so here in Stokey. The sun is threatening to come up. Traffic roars along the High Street. Seagulls shriek (which makes no sense, in the middle of the city, but there you go).
Louder than that roar, somehow, are the wails of my old mate Greg’s 19 year old girlfriend. Louder still, the pathetic responding whinnies of Greg. The banging of the doors. The jangling of Jeres’ guitar. The snoring of The Wade. I am awed at the collosity of this din (and Wade’s ability to snore through it). It is nuts. I though last night was bad (Last night the Brummies showed up at 4am and made a smelly noisy row in my room). Last night was nothing! I’d feel sorry for myself, but then there’s my poor little brother next door, who has to get up to go do some lame ass job in an hour or so, and what did he do to deserve this crap? I would feel sorry for Jeremy, who has a gang of Brummies in his room, but he bought them back here, and he has been an obnoxious drunk asshole all night anyway. Fie on him!
Ho hum. I shall lie here then, and worry about the cancer this laptop’s likely creating in my balls. At least Stunners 2 is sounding dope.
Dope ain’t the word, actually. This thing is historic! Hurray! Hurray!
I hope you all have a lovely day.
Happy Birthday my boy Joey D! Sorry I ain’t coming through to help your celebrating ass out, I AM FULL OF CRAP!
Serious.
Goshdang, quitting fags is some bullshit! I mean, truth be told, it aint that hard. In fact, it is pretty easy. However! The second I quit, I got whupped upside the head with some sore-throaty, snotty-brained, sore-nostrilled lung-shaking rottery. PLUS hayfever! Like, cheers! Way to kick a brother when he’s down! I feel like shit!
Rah though, three Brummies turned up at my door this afternoon. They are in Camden right now, but they’re coming back. I have no idea where I’ll put them. My little brother says he’s locking his door. I don’t blame him.
Hey, did you hear about Bushwick Bill? HE FOUND JESUS!
I don’t know where. Maybe in a fortune cookie. But he found him, and now he’s making “rap for Christ“! So that’ll be no more songs about rape then. Remember that time he held his baby out a window so his girlfiriend shot his eye out? Rah though!
Bad news! Lil Wayne has put off finishing his new LP for the time being, according to the Illseed.
Good news! Lil Wayne has gotten a part in my new favourite cartoon, The Boondocks! OMG! How ill is that?! Apparently he plays “a cousin from New Orleans who has survived Katrina named Reef. Weezy and his character made such a splash on the show that the creators are re-making some episodes to put Weezy in them. If everything is a go, Weezy may be a permanent character on the show.”
ACE ON A HORSE!
Pretty cool huh? There are more here.
Plus, I think the same people done found Cam’ron’s rhyme book.
Damn, the new Sopranos was great. What fuckin’ beautiful television! Such humanity! It was totally sweet, mayne. Right, I’m a go to bed and read Hate.
PS - pollen came back to get me. WEAK!
So, yeah. It is a good day. Third day off the fags. Got that coming-off-fags hangover. My throat is sore and my nose is stingy. My head is thick. But shit! Mushtaq and I made a RAP CLASSIC yesterday. And speaking of which… LIL WAYNE’S NEW MIXTAPE IS HERE. HUZZAH! This is great news, eh?
Other news - ATD14 was gonna drop later this month. Maybe it still is. But before that, get ready for…
Stunners International Vol. 2!
Me and Wade are hooking that up tomorrow. This one’s gonna be crazy. Ya dig?
PS - I saw The History Boys the other day. Man, that was a fucking terrible, grotesque FOLLY of a movie. Also, its main argument seemed to be that it is OK for a 50 odd year old man to fondle his students’ balls so long as he’s, like, kind of a good teacher. I disagree, call me Paxman if you wish. Anyone out there see that movie and NOT get that? All the reviews I read were totally positive. I thought it was rotten to the core. Should I start writing for The Daily Mail?
PPS - Remember I was all pissed off about R Kelly’s new video the other day, and this current trend for making records about how ace it is to break up relationships and cheat on people? Well, that bloody Avril La-ming is on it now! She - who is married - has done this weak ass teeniebopper thing about stealing peoples’ boyfriends. It is pretty catchy, still. But still! Get lives, losers!
PPPS - this mixtape is pretty cool, but Weezy’s version of Crazy was a BAD IDEA.
Lion City! Be kind!
That is all.
Terry Jones, writing in The Guardian:
I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? That’s what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it’s hard to breathe. Then it’s perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can’t be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.
It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn’t be able to talk at all. Of course they’d probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn’t be humiliated.
And what’s all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It’s time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That’s one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.
The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn’t rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it’s just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!
What’s more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting “stress positions”, which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It’s all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.
And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is “unhappy and stressed”.
What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her “unhappy and stressed”. She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.
As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer - whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.
The US is planning to attack Iran’s nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities by the end of this month, the Kuwait-based Arab Times newspaper reported Wednesday.
Citing anonymous sources in Washington, it said that various White House departments had started preparing the political speech to be delivered by the US president later this month, announcing the military attack on Iran.
The speech will provide the ‘evidence’ and the ‘justification’ for the US to resort to the military option after failing to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions, said the report.
According to the Times, one of the justifications expected in the speech is Iran’s alleged role in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq by supporting various militias with money and arms.
The US president’s speech will also point to Iran’s political interference in Iraq, obviously in cooperation with Syria.
The sources were quoted as saying that US will not resort to a ground attack in order to avoid human losses.
I have just learnt that, while copies of my debut LP, When We Were Young, have sold out in the UK, a few have just been made available in the US, for the princely sum of $9.99.
Get them here while stocks last.
http://search.insound.com/search/searchmain.jsp?select=meta&query=akira+the+don&fromindex=1
!!!!!!!!
PS - it is summer here in the UK! I just went to the park and saw ducks fall off logs! ILLNESS!
PPS - Big up Holloaks, that show on which I was played last night!
PPPS - I have writted a huge new pop song that you are gonna LOVE!
The new Dizzee Rascal single, Sirens, is awesome. Think The Prodigy’s Their Law crossed with Slick Rick’s Children’s Story, and you’re in the proverbial ballpark. It is fucking sweet as a nut sweet like Tropicana to hear more proper storytelling from UK cats. The revolution came, as promised. Bizzle’s at it on his new album - one track specifically (produced by ME, haters!) is so visual it should be a movie. Obviously there’s a bunch of it on my new record, but always did that shit. I am a pioneer. A thieving pioneer. Where’s my crown at? HMM?
Haha. Don’t worry. I will get what’s coming to me. The slaps and the daps.
What’s super awesome about the new Dizzee single, for a part-time chaos magician such as my self, is the video. Who’d have thunk Grant Morrison’s reach would be so wide? Following The Matrix, etc. The Invisibles gets jacked again - one of the earlier issues featured a scally scouser being chased around a London estate by Red Coats - and I mean the horse riding, fox hunting, child molesting types, not the Butlins-dwellers. And guess what happens in the Dizzee video? Those same redcoats go to East London’s Bow, in search of a Raskitt! I am totally made up. I wonder if Dizzee’s read The Invisibles. Maybe not. Collective consciousness is a motherfucker.
“We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.”
David Lynch
I was just trying to read The Independent. I can’t be fucked with newspapers right now, they are like children’s colouring in books, but stupid, but I was reading it anyway, because it was three am or so and the busses aren’t so regular at that time of night. I’d accidentlally left my copy of Ham On Rye at home. I stayed up till just before seven last night - well, this morning - reading that. I couldn’t put it down.
But the girl sat next to me was shouting at the man who kept trying to put his arms around her. He, in broken English, said what he thought were reasuring things, and tried to hold her. She shouted at him. Eventually, he got up, and took a piss in the doorway of MacDonalds. She looked at me in exasperation, and smiled, with a little anger. “When he comes back,” she said, “please tell him not to talk to me.”
I said, “Maybe you should have done that yourself, a long time ago.”
“I work with him,” she said. “He’s fucking Polish. I don’t mind drinking with him, but then he always tries to be all fucking nice to me, look after me, fuck me. He tries to fuck me. He wants to stick his hand in my pants. I’m sick of it.”
“My Grandad was Polish,” I said.
She burst into loud, violent tears.
“MY granddad is dead! Today. He is dead. I have to go to Kent and sort it all out tomorrow.”
She wept. She looked very young.
“What about his children?” I said
“They’ll only care about the estate,” she spat, bitterly. “They don’t give a fuck about him. They’re doing a cutting thing on him! What is it when they cut them?”
I said, “an autopsy?”
“Yes,” she said. “That. He had heart failure, but he never had it before! He died of a broken heart. My Gran died 83 years ago. 83 weeks ago. A broken heart. It is bad that he died. So bad.”
“No,” I said. “It is good. Even if you don’t believe in heaven, they are together now. Mingling in dust forever. They lived. They were in love. It is good.”
“He never got to fuck her,” she said. “She was raped when she was 22. She never let him fuck her. But he loved her. Even when she got alzheimer’s, and would hit him. She called him a prick and fool. She said she didn’t know him. She would hit him with a broom handle. He put her in a home, but he visited her every day. He loved her. He said, ‘we made vows.’ She was his third wife, but he loved her. Now he is dead. It is bad.”
I said, “so it goes. Don’t be sad. Love is always.”
The man came back, wiping his hands on his trousers. He tried to put his arms around her. She screamed at him.
“You Polish prick! My grandfather died!”
“I’m part Polish,” I said.
“I just want the bus to come!” she wailed.
I asked her what bus she was waiting for. It was the same one as me. I lit a cigarette, and she asked for one. I said, “OK.” The man was trying to put his arm around her. She hit him in the face with the back of her hand. He protested, feebly.
“He was a good man,” she said. “He didn’t even hit her much. He was in a war. And she wouldn’t even fuck him”.
The man tried with his arm again. She got up and screamed at the sky.
“Polish prick!”
The bus came.
We got on. I sat at the back, and she sat in front of me.
“Did he get on?” she asked.
I said, “no.”
“I work with him,” she said. “He’s OK for a drink. But then he tries to fuck me. He thinks I need looking after. Where did all the real men go? All men do now is cry.”
I said, “David Beckham cried a lot in ‘99. Maybe that gave them the idea.”
“That man is a fucking fag!” She said. “A Polish fag!”
“I’m part Polish,” I said.
She wiped at the corner of her mouth. There was crust on it, and she missed. It stayed there.
“I need a real man,” she said. “Like my granddad. He loved my Gan. He fucking loved her! She wouldn’t even fuck him!”
“Rape is a hell of a thing.” I mused. “Maybe I wouldn’t fuck anybody if someone raped me.”
“What would you know?” she demanded. “What do you know about love?”
I said, “It’s the only thing that matters.”
“I need a cigarette,” she said. She lit half a cigarette. I don’t know where it came from. She got off at the next stop. “What are you looking at, you fag?” she shouted at the man sat adjacent to me.
I got off at the stop afterwards. I took my packet of cigarettes out of my pocket, and lit one. It tasted of cardboard. The didn’t sell Embassy Number One at the club I’d just been in. I didn’t even mean to go there. I watched the new David Lynch film this evening. It freaked me out. Even the actors in it say they didn’t know what it was about. I thought it was obvious. It was about how we see women. And it was about infidelity, and jealousy, as a metaphor for chaos, and control. My friend Chandra has a new club night round the corner from that cinema I was in. I went there afterwards. It was OK. Chandra was making a good go of things. I was proud of her.
So this week, baby, my favourite band are Muse. This is kind of odd, as I thought I hated Muse. When I first started doing fanzines back in the late nineties, regional press officers sent me loads of copies of the same Muse promo every time one came out. I didn’t like them, because I thought they sounded too much like Radiohead, and I threw the CDs at men in grey track suits from the back seats of moving cars as I tore around the city of London in search of drugs and women, piloted by a gipsy psychopath called Charlie who kept a sawn-off shotgun in his boot.
Yes, those were the days. Now, Muse promo CDs cos eight billion dollars on Ebay, and I couldn’t give two fucks about Radiohead. Muse are everything I want from rock music. How did I not realise?
But the brain is a funny thing. Listening to the Absolution, I realised that I had, in fact, decided I liked Muse seven years ago. Then I forgot, for some reason. What is is, is the first review I ever wrote for PlayLouder was a review of as Muse gig at The Astoria, in that wild June of 2000AD. I dug up the thing, using Google. They were supported by Twist, the singer of whom was an old friend of mine from Birmingham, and Coldplay, the singer of whom was an old classmate of my flatmate Som. I said Twist were “Tad fronted by a pissed-up Shangri-La”, which was true. Of Coldplay, I noted,
“They look like Kwik-fitters, and sound like them too… the set suffers… from sounding more like Elton John’s seventies slop fallout or a particularly sterile Embrace B-Side. Coldplay obviously have huge potential, but messing about with dull AOR ballads is hardly going to win over the spangly teen goblins milling at the front.”
Which was also true. I just hadn’t counted on the early-middle agers at the back, and Gwyneth Paltrow. And, of course, Coldplay went on to write Embrace’s comeback single. How funny is life!
But Muse?
“Muse look like they’re having fun, tearing through their repertoire with all the energy of a band who HAVEN’T been on tour for the best part of two years. Camp as a festival, as extravagant as a Mafia birthday party, Muse take the increasingly popular ‘Showbiz’ LP, dress it up in one of Ziggy’s old jump suits, crank it up, and spit it out. Pth-oo. Oh, and make the whole thing twice as long, and tack a noodle-wank guitar workout in the middle of every single song. Which is where they get irritating. Not content to let the sheer power of his songs work alone, Matt Bellamy finds himself playing a Joe Satriani-esque piece of twattery behind his head during ‘Cave’, pretending to be in Iron Maiden and Speedy Gonzales all at once in ‘Muscle Museum’, and a weird cross between Giddy (sic) Lee, Freddie Mercury and the Duracell Bunny everywhere else.
Contrary bastards that they are though, no sooner have they bored the arse of you with one of their more preposterous funk-jazz-metal work-outs than they play something like ‘Uno’ that makes the hairs stand right up all over your head. Cerrr-UNCH! Cer-OOONCH! SQUUU-AAARGH! Then cue Matt squealing like a pig on fire for far too long, thrillingly.
This is why Muse will win. They’ve got the songs, the ability, the moves and the power. They make young girls damp and grown men dance on tables playing air guitar. And no matter how much noodling, and how preposterous their theatrics are (and this is what Muse are, theatre…), they will come out every time and blow your head off. They trash their gear, surf on their amps and are cocky, clever little pomp-rock bastards.”
And again, I was right. Muse did win. And I came to love the noodly theatrics. And now I am sampling them. Where life will take us, no one knows.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — Google’s replacement of post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery on its map portal with images of the region before the storm does a “great injustice” to the storm’s victims, a congressional subcommittee said.
The House Committee on Science and Technology’s subcommittee on investigations and oversight on Friday asked Google Inc. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt to explain why his company is using the outdated imagery.
“Google’s use of old imagery appears to be doing the victims of Hurricane Katrina a great injustice by airbrushing history,” subcommittee chairman Brad Miller, D-North Carolina, wrote in a letter to Schmidt.
Swapping the post-Katrina images and the ruin they revealed for others showing an idyllic city dumbfounded many locals and even sparked suspicions that the company and civic leaders were conspiring to portray the area’s recovery progressing better than it really is.
Read more
Early Astronomical ‘Computer’ Found to Be Technically Complex
A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone.
But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.
The instrument, the Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers deciphered inscriptions and reconstructed the gear functions, revealing “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period,” it said.
The researchers, led by the mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth and the astronomer Mike G. Edmunds, both of the University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting their results today in the journal Nature.
They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions, and the gears were a representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.
Read more.
Hey yo, anyone know anything about a rapper from the NO called Ziggy The Wiggler? He used to be on Cash Money. That’s the best rap name I ever heard.
