First time I woke up today, I had a swollen belly, churning spitefully with acids, and was violently sick, twice.

Second time, I had no belly whatsoever. It must be the wheat.

I haven’t eaten any wheat for going on a fortnight. Everything is made of wheat. Certainly everything lunchy. I guess I lived on lunchy most of my life.

I can’t see today - my contacts fell out last night, and my glasses are broken, and the blutac that held them together just don’t seem to cut it anymore. I guess its pretty interesting, this whole guessing one’s way about thing. I am relying on instinct. Usually, my instinct is ace, but I guess it must stink sometime.

London, it has to be said, is prettly bleak, through the blur. But some things, even in the grubby dark of the pre-dawn, look beautiful. People spend their whole lives looking for clarity. I don’t know if its worth it.

I asked my friend how she was. She replied, “Happy, strong & insanely confused about what to do with all this power invested in me by the Universe. And confusion can’t wriggle its way into a sigil. A sigil for clarity perhaps?”

And I thought, fuck! Why didn’t I think of that?

I don’t think too much though.

Tell you what I do do though - I go to Cambridge to play a gig. NOW! CAMBRIDGE! WE ARE GOING TO SMASH YOUR FACE OFF!

Stokey, I’ll see you at one am. Look after my Smiths records, I only just rediscovered them after all.

PS - Jeres has been on and on about this Chris de Burgh song I have never heard of, and how ace it is. I just copped it. JERES YOU VICIOUS BASTARD! Are you MOCKING ME?

I have not written for a small while, it is true. I finished that “mixtape” and celebrated by joining my mad eyed, house-seized Atlantan friend Trey at Lupe Fiasco’s Cargo gig. It was rather fun. I got drunk, Trey did some good natured wooing, and Lupe, displaying a rare foreknowledge of his foreign audience, spat something along the lines of,

Lupe
The new Jay
But when I’m in the UK
Call me the new Sway

Ho ho, we thought, and all was pritty good, until after four songs dude ran out of Kanye instrumentals to rap over, and took to rhyming half heartedy over his album tracks, raps and all, not even bothering to do anything with the choruses save wave his glasses about. But, despite the seeming unarsedness, dude was pretty charming. And he does spit with confidence, and clarity. Clarity is important. I mumble too much - but I have boundless energy. So I get away with it.

The next day, I was beavering away in my lab, when I got a message from Jimbob’s manager, giving me a heads up regarding the surprise Carter USM reunion at that night’s Barfly gig. I accepted the man’s generous invitation, and with much excitement, descended upon the foul carcass of Camden town. Jimbob was brilliant, Jimbob + Fruitbat etc. was beautiful, old Carter songs were a joy to hear… But it was the Jimbob solo songs that were the best, oddly: Feral Kids was oldpunk mastery, and Angelstrike was just fucking stunning - get your ass on iTunes or whatever and find that song, it is fucking immense.

I got disgustingly drunk that night too, ending up in a gay bar, oddly enough, upsetting my friend Luke by getting more unwanted attention than him, and the next day the hangover to insult all hangovers, laugh at their shoes and run off with their mum’s accompanied me on an arduous, confused, and expensive journey to Haye On Wye, where I missed The Goblin Wedding itself… but at least saw the speeches, and video footage of the young Goblin Baz doing intense and freakish Liam Gallagher impressions as a teenager. (Huw Stephens was indeed, an excellent, gracious, and considerate best man.) We were later treated to mid-twenties Liam Gallagher impressions, as the newlywed Goblin performed a cover version of Live Forever that moved Martin Carr to such an intense state of drunken emotion, he fled the building and fell on his arse in the mud, missing most of my acclaimed DJ set and ruining his lovely suit. And The lovely Goblin Bride herself, a vision of grace and lunacy, chainsmoking with zeal and weeping like a drunken newborn.

It should be noted that I forgot to dress posh for the wedding, and was thus the only boy there without a tie. And with a hoodie. But my acclaimed DJ set saved the day, quite frankly, so I would hope for my insulting attire and extreme tardiness to have been forgiven. I should also take the opportunity to thank Sweary Mary and Mashup Carr for saving my non-hotel-booking ass from a wet night sleeping in a barn. And to congratulate The Goblins on their beautiful day. A wedding is always a beautiful thing - even on a wet Saturday like yesterday, in this foul year of our lord, 2006, but a Goblin Wedding is like a school disco with more in the way of boobs and facial hair, and it will never be forgotten by any if us. Apart from, perhaps, Martin, who was so drunk I sincerely doubt if he remembers any of it. I for one, will be haunted by the memory of his remorselessly abrasive DJ set for the rest of my todd. And yo, there was a fucking double rainbow in Hay On Wye yesterday. DOUBLE RAINBOW for the Goblin Wedding! Amen.

Hugo Chavez, after withdrawing Venezuela’s Israel ambassador, called the Israeli attacks in Lebanon “genocide,” and “a fascist outrage”.

“It really causes indignation to see how the state of Israel continues bombing, killing… with all of the power they have, with the support of the United States, he continued. “The Israeli elite repeatedly criticize Hitler’s actions against the Jews, and indeed Hitler’s actions must be criticized, not just against the Jews but against the world. It’s also fascism what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people. Terrorism and fascism.”

Which, as Jeres noted, was very succinct. There are few men in positions of such power willing to speak with such clarity. We accept this, which is pretty sad.

Three weeks in, history, as regards this recent outrage, has been completely rewritten before our very eyes. Those two Israeli soldiers were captured in southern Lebanon. And Bush, and Blair, were aware that Israel planned to “crush” Hezbollah way in advance.

From New Statesman:

“At a Downing Street reception not long ago, a guest had the temerity to ask Tony Blair: “How do you sleep at night, knowing that you’ve been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis?” The Prime Minister is said to have retorted: “I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000.”"

Do you understand this evil?

The “anti-Semite” mails continue to flood in. I was on that march on Saturday (100,000 people undeaded by TVetc!), and I saw a gaggle of Orthodox Jews in full regalia carrying a banner reading, “Judaism rejects the Zionist state and condemns its atrocities” Are they anti-Semitic? Maybe, huh? They were fucking brave, I know that much.

Bravery is what we need right now. Actual bravery. Let not the swine confuse bullying with bravery. The sort exhibited by these fine people.

The NORAD issue has finally broken into the mainstream (cheers Vanity Fair). The NORAD issue, for me, is the among the biggest smoking guns in the whole 911 coup (in which, as someone noted, there are so many smoking guns one can barely see for all the smoke). Hijacked planes being allowed to hit their targets? The world trade centre? Where was the flight response? Where was NORAD? NORAD was engaged in a drill, simulating terrorist attacks nigh on identical in their nature to those which occurred, one the same fucking day. Five drills, in fact. Wargames, they call them. Bear in mind the exact same thing happened on 77. And that’s the tip of the fucking iceberg. Rhandi Rhodes’ show earlier covered it pretty fucking well.

From that article:

“When they told me there was a hijack, my first reaction was ‘Somebody started the exercise early,’” [Lieutenant Colonel] Nasypany later told me. The day’s exercise was designed to run a range of scenarios, including a “traditional” simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum. “I actually said out loud, ‘The hijack’s not supposed to be for another hour.’”

The article’s author dismisses this as coincidence. Boy, was 911 a big day for coincidences.

Have at ye: 11 Questions Avoided by the Media On NORAD Tapes.

Indeed. I have been asked on occasion these past few weeks what Israel’s destruction of Lebanon has to do with 911 and 77. And all I can think to say, is, everything.

What was it about a week being a year in politics? Right now things are speeding up to the point where I can barely focus. Fresh outrages come from every angle, and those that seek to enslave us aren’t even pretending to be good guys anymore. Blair holidays with the Bohemian Grove babyrapists as the world burns, and even The Daily Mail starts to read like The Independent. Meanwhile The Sun reads like some Porno Whizzer And Chips, Lily Allen rolls about in cocaine, and the Middle East burns.

The UN won’t save you, a new souped up version with a load of nukes run by Bill Clinton won’t save you, nanobots won’t save you. If we cannot see what is on front of our faces by now we are blind. As Jeff Wells puts it,

“The new flesh of 9/11 enhances our perception, but not our reach. We can look up and see - we’re invited to - but the invitation is one to reinforce a sense of helplessness. The great public spectacles written in the sky - the gaudy lights and the falling towers - are meant to debilitate us, and pin our hopes passively upon a “disclosure” by the intelligence community’s own information warriors. Nothing good, and nothing true, can come of that.

In a Rumsfeldian sense, we should know enough now to know that we know enough. But the insight 9/11’s new flesh gives us into America’s unnatural state of affairs becomes debilitation, if nothing changes by it. How to be the change is our challenge. Perhaps our last challenge.”

Thom Yorke sees a pretty direct challenge. From his website:

ive had enough of this
our government sitting on the fence with the US while world war 3 appears to be breaking out in Lebanon and Northern Israel.
we must throw Tony Blair our of office NOW.
he does not represent the views of the british people.
he does not represent the views of his foreign office and officials.
he does not even represent the views of those in his cabinet.
he cares far too much about his relationship with Bush, and Murdoch.
this man is not fit to be our prime minister.
its a nice sunny day. come on lets do it. you know it makes sense.
a vote of no confidence. or something. anything..

I think 100,000 is fantastic. I think the rest of you need to join us. Remember how the people of Venezuela took to the streets, in protest of their president’s removal from office by coup, and GOT HIM BACK? These things are entirely doable. We are pretty fucking close to a situation in which Lonely Blair invokes the terrifying new powers in the Civil Contingencies Bill and suspends Parliament. If this happens, we are fucked my British friends. See Palestine? See Lebanon? Iraq? Remember the 1940s? That’s us. Most of you, I promise, will not like it.

Serious as fuck. Your choice.

…That we don’t.

Cheers Zef for the two links that follow, amusingly dry BBC takes on a couple of males engaging in the practice of what one might call, plainly “mind” over “matter”.

70 year old Prahlad Jani has not eaten anything for twenty years.

Ram Bomjan, 16 year old incarnation of Buddah, vanishes into air.

Personally, I am enjoying a clarity of thought hitherto absent for many years. Although it is occasionally muddied by the desire for a fag, which I beat away with orange juice. Get ye hence, foul demon!

I think the fag demon looks a bit like that Shreddies monster who attacks people’s bellies with a big spoon. Bastard.

Jeres is taking me to see the Bloodhound Gang tomorrow. Well, tonight. I’ll post this in the morning, as I have no internet here in this house I am supposed to call a home. But anyway. Luke hates on the Bloodhound Gang. I suppose Luke, a man of words if ever I met one, fails to see the poetry in their superficially stoopid veneer. But Farting With A Walkman On speaks to me just like Morrissey did when I was 14. The Lapdance Is So Much Better When The Stripper Is Crying sums up grotesquely, mournfully, and oh so bitter-sweetly, a state of being that is a home to more men than Nick Cave will ever know or, in actuality, know of. Jimmy Pop is a poet, in that punning, surface gouging way that Jimbob in his Carter days was, but on a somehow larger, more global level. Jimmy Pop gets it.

I don’t. I think I do, then I forget, and am tricked, and wowed, and awed, and confused, and fumblish, and scared - even though I know there is no need to be, even though I know the repercussions will likely, even at worst, be better than the ugly regretful hollow that is otherwise. But that is because I am a SPAZ, even if I am sometimes prone to bizarre and incredulous bouts of opiate serenity, serious handsomeness, and childlike clarity.

Usually I stick to my code, which used to be Just Get On With It, and is more lately the revised, but essentially similar, Don’t Think - Feel… But that sometimes gets me in trouble, in a kind of way I don’t need anymore… in a way the fourteen year old me, listening to Morrissey and Ice Cube and tearing up his arms with penknives, thought he’d be way beyond in a decade’s time.

I need a new code, perhaps - something between, and a little beyond, those two I mentioned. I need to recognise - nay, act upon, what I have learned, and I now know. I need to sever these tethers of which I speak in rhyming verse - fully - and transcend. I used to think this was something someone else might help me achieve, but that never happened. Now I feel perhaps that I was wrong, and I must do this alone.

I write to you from the external stirwell of one of New York’s gothic monoliths. Below my feel I see people, walking, cars, thusting. I am on the 8th floor. I I fell I mightn’t make a sound.

The flight from LA to New York went by in no time, thanks to the company of a safe and entertaining Australian lady (and Jeff). I didn’t even watch a film or nuffink. New York arrived in a blaze of light, then we waited for a cab for an hour or so and I DJed at the airport off of my laptop. A cabbie was totally feeling Bruza. Then I checked into my hotel, which was just like that place in that David Lynch movie where there’s, like, three or four stories set in one hotel over the course of, like, a hunnerd years or suttin. Only smaller. Hotels make me lonesome, which is sometimes nice, in a bittersweet fashion, but it gives me too much room to think. I took a walk about the locale, which I know so well now - visited my old internet cafe on Ludlow, my old pizza place near Rivington. Met a safe old dread who used to be in BAD. Met some rotten soriety (is that the right word?) girls. Read about murder in the local paper. Walked New York, as I used to, full of wonder and joy and sweet sadness.

I was lonesome in my hotel that night, and the TV made me very sad. I saw four girls competing for the attention of some douche, vowing to get surgery to please him, slagging each other off mercilessly for the cameras, while Oprah rejoiced at “equality” on the other channel.

I got The Fear, you know. The TV was full of my enemies. When it was off, the room was too. Swirling around like vicious ghosts. A man missing, I’d heard, last heard from fleeing through a canyon in LA with a pack of dogs after him, their masters baying for his blood. He’d lost his glasses, and someone said a shoe. Never heard from again. Police searching his hard drive for clues. Nothing but an answerphone message filled with screams and barking.

So I slept, and I dreamed lucidly, and with clarity, and I dreamed somebody loved me. And we held each other, and the walls bled, and the universe turned, and the sky roared with static.

When her hair turned black in my hands I didn’t even blink. As the blood rose to our shoulders, all I knew was she wanted a Ribena, so I swam to a shop and got her one.

I awoke bathed in reality, and it smelt like my dream.

We had lunch with James, and I am moving into a new hotel today, because my little Lynchian nightmare has no wifi. So to the Tribeka, and poshness.

Manyana.