More Timewasting

You can blame Sassy for this one.
She did Robyn's two, then did "What's Your Celtic Horoscope" …

Anyone who knows me knows that however gorgeous and seemingly intelligent a girl is, if she asks me what "star sign" I am, she'll never be bothered by me again (I can hear Sassy typing the question already) …

So I'm not going to do that one … alright, I did it … apparently I'm a Chestnut Tree …



I thought I'd do the "How American Are You" quiz instead.
And now I'm REALLY pissed off! Somebody tell me where the hell that seven percent came from ? Eh? I answered honestly; there should be a big fat zero up there …

Bah!

Stop it, Robyn*

Arrrgh …

Robyn's done it again. Another silly quiz. That's two in one day!

And they both go to prove that I'm an obsessive pedant.
Oh, well. Thank you, Robyn. I think my obsessive pedantry is pretty obvious anyway. In fact I'm kind of proud of it. And somewhat disappointed they didn't ask any difficult questions.

* If I were not such an obsessive pedant, I would have put a smiley emoticon here, but as I've previously told folk that they're welcome to shoot me in the head if I ever used one, then I'd better not …

Book Snob

Thanks to Robyn for dragging me back into the world of silly surveys.

This one is actually pretty accurate, although I'd rate myself MUCH higher on the book snob scale.
And why is there no section for obsessive fetishists who have their favourite bookbinders lovingly craft custom bindings for their books? (My bookbinders love me) …

They're also right when they say that "other people's grammatical mistakes make me insane"; in my case, psychopathically insane.
When I was a toddler, my mum gave up her job at the printers (where all her side of the family worked - a clue there, perhaps) and worked at home as a proofreader. She sat me on her knee and taught me to read, proofreading things like accountancy textbooks and really dull stuff, so that when I started school they had to send me down to the town library a couple of times a week to get decent "grown up" books to read.
I'm known to several blogs on my bookmark list as "the Mad Proofreader" for my intemperate outbursts and lists of corrections. So watch out! It could spread to my blogpal list …

Last Gasp

Whew!
Finally, it's the last day of November.

Many have fallen exhausted by the wayside, but those of us who have survived National Blog Posting Month crawl gasping over the finishing line, our brains scoured, devoid of all thoughts and ideas … Nothing left …

We will enter December with our skulls empty and echoing, but nice and clean and shiny on the inside. It may take a few days before any new thoughts form in this void. Until then, you will be able to recognise a NaBloPoMo Vet by the shuffling zombie gait, blank eyes and string of drool from the chin.

And their silent, exhausted blogs …

As for me, I'm going to buy a Yoda doll and spend the next few days torturing it.

Crafty Women

Blame Sassy for this one …

At last, she's got all crafty and shown us what she's made of. Pop on over to see her excellent stuff.
And of course, click on Cakeyvoice's link in my sidebar to find probably the strangest things ever knitted …

Talking of which, Peahen's gallery had an exhibition last year which had a knitted meal in it (thanks for that, Mavis you madwoman).
Here's a pic which doesn't really do justice to the full glory of knitted gravy and beans:


Peahen herself knits some unnerving things (including a stegosaurus) …
But other than being a boffo musician and running her own evil software empire, she's a bit handy with stained glass.

If any of you haven't been to her glass site, here's a little preview of what our blogpal gets up to in her workshop:


This one's "in the collection of the author" as they say (hence the old Les Paul leaning against it).


And this one's on Peahen's lovely glass coffee table.

She had an exhibition at the gallery last year. Our Peahen's a bit reluctant to blow her own trumpet (except of course when she's playing trumpet) so I'll do it for her.
She's a bit good.
Here are some piccies from the exhibition:





This one used to live in my dining room but was only "on loan" (damn).

This is Pea being interviewed by some radio station bint.


And this is a bunch of piss-heads drinking all the free wine (hi, Jo and Gerald).

Sorry, Peahen. I'm crap at crafts myself, so I've cheated and used yours (typical bloody man) …

Busy

"Chop-chop busy-busy-work-work-bang-bang" …

Stop sniggering. I DO work from time to time.
I'm just stopping in at the office for a bit between shouting at builders in Wimbledon and shouting at builders in Sydenham.

The donkey was ill this morning, so the village broadband connection wasn't working before I left for work and there's no guarantee that things will be any different when I get home tonight.

So as I don't have time to write anything, here are a few more crappy old 3D pictures to look at:


Some very early experiments with water, done sometime back in the mid nineties, before I got the hang of things …


… but as I'm in kind of a hurry (i.e. I want to eat my lunch before scooting off again) …

… these are all I have to hand.

I hate these "non-posts" where someone just puts up a link to something or a picture because they don't have anything to say, but given the choice between stuffing down a tray of sushi and some miso soup or sitting and thinking and writing something worthwhile, I'm afraid you lose out to some bits of rice and raw fish …

Sorry, but that's just the way it is …

Lefty News

A big hoorah for Sr. Rafael Correa, last seen hurtling headlong toward a sizeable victory in Equador's presidential elections.
Another step forward for democracy and common sense in the Yanqui-oppressed sub-continent.

Sr. Correa's opponent is Equador's richest man, billionaire banana tycoon Alvaro "Nob" Noboa, who has been campaigning on the kind of right-wing Christian fundamentalist ticket better suited to Texas than Equador.
He's been toting a bible and spouting crap like "Like Christ, all I want to do is serve …"
Unlike Christ, he wants to do this by attracting more American companies to profit from Equadorian labour …
Well, capitalism never did Sr. Noboa any harm; no wonder he believes in it. Whether or not that belief is shared by his workers, only the polls will show … and indeed they are showing …

Oh, and just to give you notice so you can get geared up to PARTY, Saturday 2nd. December sees the glorious fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.
Visit Cuba Connect and the Cuba Solidary Campaign and show your support (among other goodies, you can get a copy of that lovely Che poster from my studio). And for smokers, you can get genuine Cuban cigars from the tobacconists on Threadneedle Street in the City and Victoria Street in Westminster (the others just sell "Cuban" style fakes - don't buy 'em).

¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!

Shiny Happy Old People

And so Rod and Sharon, sound engineer and top drawer vocalist, arrive back from Hawai'i, tanned and healthy and finally married.
As I've said before, may copious and effusive congratulations overflow in their general direction.

A big hotel on the north Norfolk coast has been taken over and braces itself for a wedding party full of musicians (second only to footballers for debauchery) … inflatable palm trees, virgin sacrifice, dancing with goats, dressing up as characters from Hawai'i 5-0, industrial quantities of booze, a pretty good covers band, real surf just outside the windows …

Being a professional curmudgeon, I come not as 5-0's Steve Mc.Garrett, but instead come dressed as the twat out of Miami Vice, only to meet up with Michael in the car park, who, being also curmudgeonly inclined, has coincidentally come dressed as the twat out of Miami Vice.
Crockett, a suspiciously white Tubbs and the lovely Miriam enter a plastic and neon Hawai'i to be greeted by the newly nuptualised Mr and Mrs P, who are ludicrously tanned and almost illegally happy.

Lots of beautiful women kiss and hug me, but unfortunately, they are mostly the wives, girlfriends and daughters of other musicians. However, I am distracted from any potentially available mate by the fact that - for the first time in ages - the gang's all here. Yaaay!

The gang are a hardcore of musicians who have played together in way too many bands and at way too many recording sessions for the past twenty-five years or so since we first met (a couple of years back Steve gave me a beautifully boxed set of some of his favourite sessions we had played at … it ran to eighteen CDs).

And so the night disappears in reminiscences, tears of laughter streaming down our ravaged old faces. Even though I try to keep my music and my blog separate, some of these tales have been set aside for future posts as they are so bizarre they just have to be told.

Tragically, Steve - an extraordinarily gifted bassist who originally brought the gang together as his "dream team" of pretentious, virtuoso, session prima-donnas - has been struck down with motor neurone disease and has been deteriorating for some time now, so because of this and other band commitments the gang very rarely come together on stage these days.
He is remarkably chipper, telling us how his electric wheelchair makes dog-walking a lot easier, though not for the long-suffering hound being dragged behind him.
This evening, however, he is getting about with a stick which is great to see. He even manages a dance with Sonia, bringing a lump to my throat. We all love him dearly.

Steve is organising another charity bash for us - date and venue tba - sometime in the new year, where I'll go head to head with regular guest Ron S again.
That's always fun; we try to do it at least once a year. Ron won Guitarist magazine's player of the year at Wembley two years running (they wouldn't let him back again after that), and we - the grizzled old man and the kid pretender - grin at one another and go at it head to head in a monstrously self-indulgent frenzy of pointless, widdly speed guitar, driving one another on to absurd heights of unlistenable stupidity.
All of which is tremendously popular with our fans, the drooling horde of guitar nerds we call the Salivation Army, and so raises a decent amount of cash for motor neurone research.

The wedding party is a huge success, but the upshot of all our reminiscing is that, by the time we come up for air, all the unattached attractive women have gone home.
Ah, well … yet again I miss my chance for humiliation and rejection.

And I have overslept by five hours and feel like I've cleaned the hotel carpet with my tongue.
Bleurgh …

I need coffee.

Congratulations and much love to Rod and Sharon.

Robyn's Art Circle Pt.2

I thought I'd do something suitably seasonal for today's Art Circle post, so I tried making an autumnal-looking Japanese maple and drooping it over some water.

Trees are a bugger to make in 3D, but tremendously satisfying when you get them right.
Water's a lot easier.
If you haven't got a programme that makes good water, you just get a Photoshop airbrush with a very fuzzy edge and make some splodgy patterns like waves seen from above in black and white. You can save these as a mask and use it in your 3D programme as an alpha channel mask to create your wave pattern. Then mess about with bump mapping to get the wave heights.

This water's a very simple reflective one with a slight pinky-orange specular tint to offset the blue sky where it reflects the broken cloud I put up there.

You can make water as murky as you like. I wanted this one to be very transparent so you can see the lake bottom where the tree shades it (click on the detail below for a bigger view).
I gave it quite a high refractive index though, to blur the bottom a bit and make it look a bit more realistic.


Sadly, I really enjoy doing this type of thing. I should be out chatting up girls and trying to get my life back, but yesterday afternoon I sat tweaking parameters until my 3D water made me go "Oooh".

Then I went out to a party and totally failed to chat anyone up, but more of that later …

Meanwhile, Back In The Sandbox

Mikey's entry into our little Art Circle with the post of one of his old Bryce scenes makes me dig out some of my own stupid kids' stuff.

So. Up into the attic for the boxes of floppy discs. Then back up into the attic again to find an old beige Mac that actually has a floppy drive in it. Drag it down the ladder, network it up (Woohoo! It still works!) and start searching for old junk without getting sidetracked by Prince Of Persia 1.0 …

The first thing any man of a certain age does when he gets hold of a 3D programme is to revert to childhood.
For Mike and me, it was getting hold of a copy of Bryce when it first came out in '94.

Having loaded it onto our old "beige box" Macs, we peeled off our thin veneer of maturity, threw it in the bin and started giggling like guilty four year olds.
With wild whoops of over-excited glee, we made alien landscapes and spaceships, then we blew the shit out of them with silly explosion noises and lunatic laughter.


Adult responsibility can go suck ass. This is fun!
"Whee!"

"Hey, let's make Mars."
"Yeah! Then we can crash spaceships onto it!"
"Woohoo!"


We each designed our own spaceships, swopped them on floppy discs, then smashed them to bits.
It's an intoxicating experience; feeling your brain turning to mush as you create stupid alien worlds, then invade them with stupid, home-made spaceships.

Perhaps if George Bush had been encouraged to do this, Iraq would still be breathing, instead of twitching on the floor …


"Kerblooey!"
"Blam!"
"Luke, I am your father."
"Pow!"
"Flash Gordon approaching! Open fire ! All weapons!"
"Boom!"
"Mwah hah hah haaa …"

Having greased myself up and squeezed back into my veneer of maturity, I no longer create and destroy silly spaceships, but I have to admit it was great fun.

Thanks for the reminder, Mike. If I receive a CD with the plans for your latest spaceship on it, you know I'm ready and willing to revert to childhood once again and gleefully blow it to bits.

Rules for living: number one:
Grow old if you have to, but NEVER grow up.

Radioactive Man

After the tragic and heinous murder of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, it turns out that radiation from polonium-210 (by weight, about 250 million times as toxic as cyanide) has been found at his home, at a hotel he visited on Grosvenor Square, and in the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly, currently closed for forensic examination and decontamination.

Er … Oops!

Remind me not to buy sushi from places where Russian dissidents have recently been poisoned.

Mum phoned me in a panic this evening to say "Tell me you haven't been near there".
What could I say but "Er … I often eat there. They do good sashimi. I kicked my way through all the journalists to get lunch there the next day, then moaned about the crowds of freeloading pressmen on my blog."
She howled a bit and went on "They're trying to trace anyone who's been in there."

Then I remembered she's a Daily Mail reader.
For those not from our shores, this is a shitty little rag, run by an ex-nazi which exists solely to frighten the ignorant and the elderly (if a black guy crosses the road in Peckham, they have three inch banner headlines shrieking about immigrants bringing road chaos to the capital).

So I went on line and had a look and managed to reassure her (see the BBC news site's articles on Litvinenko's murder and on polonium-210).

I've had a bit of a death wish going for the past ten years or so, but it turns out I'd probably have to have eaten poor Mr. Litvinenko's fæces or snogged him to be in any significant danger. Oh, well …

My deepest sympathies to his family.

And Vlad … Maybe you should have used thallium after all. Using polonium-201 is a bit of a giveaway. It turns out that you don't just brew this stuff up in your kitchen; it needs a nuclear reactor and a government sized budget to isolate it …

Deny it all you like, but you are in deep shit my son.

Robyn's Art Circle Pt.1

Robyn has been posting her lovely watercolours and has suggested that we all post examples of our own artworks to form a little art circle.

I'm attempting - so far with little success - to photograph my oil paintings and drawings (they are way to big to scan).
Until I figure out how to do that properly, I'll post some of the things I make while dicking around in 3D programmes.

Some of you will already have seen the stuff I do for a living. To get those results requires a lot of failed experiments.
These start off as felt pen sketches, then get worked up on the Mac into the kind of stuff you see here. Then the real fun begins.
Making the actual models in 3D is only half the battle. Getting light, textures, water, glass, metals, reflections, etc. right takes lots and lots of time and not a little jumping up and down and swearing.

These are a couple of the experiments I did a few years back on "how to get water right in 3D". It's pretty easy in most 3D programmes to make spaceships and sci-fi stuff and crap like that, but to make something which can fool the eye into thinking it is real is frustratingly difficult.


This one was just a simple exercise in trying to balance reflections, refraction, light on the water and transparency.


And this one was trying to get still water right, while experimenting with rock textures.


The things I really like doing in 3D are abstracts. This one was a series of geometric shapes made from glass and metal which I tortured for a bit, then shone coloured lights onto (hey, it was a rainy weekend). The result reminds me of the generators on "Forbidden Planet".

I'll try to dig up something more adventurous later (most of this stuff is scattered across several old computers with none too helpful numbers instead of titles … I've always been crap at filing).

Eat Me

1621 …
Dinner time …

Somewhere near a Wampanoag village on the east coast of the new world, a bunch of somewhat ill-prepared religious fanatics are starving to death.

One of them gets a bright idea:
"Hey, those Injuns have got food. Let's invite the suckers over for dinner."

Over at the Wampanoag village, the mail arrives.
"Hmm … We've got an invitation:"

Dear Injuns,

The self-righteous and pompous white folks of Plimoth would be delighted to have the company of you savages for dinner on Thursday.
Unfortunately, we've got nothing in the fridge, so please bring all the food.

RSVP

So Thursday arrives and along come the Wampanoags, who have extreeeeeemely unwisely decided to take pity on whitey.

"Eat Me!"

They bring with them some amusingly shaped vegetables and a fat kid in a turkey suit.

"Okey dokey." say the pilgrims. "We'll take that kid, and when you've done the washing up we'll slaughter you and then we'll steal all your land, hee hee."
(They may not have actually said "hee hee" but you can just picture them sniggering behind their hands).

"Hmm … That doesn't sound like too good a deal to me … You smile sweetly while I go get my tomahawk from the hall stand."


Now this is what SHOULD have happened, had the Wampanoags had their wits about them.


If I had a time machine, I'd go back and find the Wampanoag who said "Aww, c'mon. Let's help those stupid white folks." and smack him round the head.

But unfortunately, that's not going to happen.

So instead I'll wish all of my lovely blog chums over there in the Colonies an outrageously happy Thanksgiving.

(scariest moment in movie history - Wednesday Addams "smiles")

And may the rest of whitey USA suffer acute indigestion.

Thanksgiving reading assignment: Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee."

Screen grabs from Addams Family Values used without any permission at all. Sorry guys, that's just the way it is …

Holy Crap

The Scientologists opened their big new Cult Central in London last month and today we learn that the Met are under investigation for accepting waaay too much hospitality from them.

That's "the Met", as in London's Metropolitan Police … Scotland Yard …
The guys tooling around this city carrying sub-machine guns are suspected of being under the influence of the Cruise/Travolta nutjob posse.
Just thought I'd better get that straight.

And the fourth most senior plod in the squad actually spoke at the big cult opening …

I'm thinking maybe it's time to get the hell out of Dodge.

While my mind reels from that horrorfest, it's time to wave bye-bye to the lovely Robert Altman.
I'm going home to watch a M.A.S.H. and The Player DVD double bill tonight. I suggest you do something similar to honour the man.

Tom Purdew Pt.4 - Teachers

À la recherche du …

We have to wear caps when we're in uniform.

And if we are in uniform but outside the school, we are required to doff said caps to teachers, parents and governors.
For a kid just starting grammar school, who wouldn't know a governor from a hole in the ground, this is a bit daunting.
We do, however, miss having to wear gowns by one year. Which is a bit of a swizz, because they're great for playing Batman.

The Big School is huge, like a scary city, with places we're forbidden to enter and others we're just plain terrified of. Our little gang gets lost for the first few weeks. We get bullied. We get yelled at and hit by the teachers and præfects (yes, Latin is mandatory to O level) for just standing there looking confused.

The teachers' corporal punishment armoury is formidable. There's the cane, of course. And Mister White has his slipper; Messrs. Montacute and Fosdyke are all too ready with a heavy wooden blackboard eraser to the head. There are rulers to the hands, chalk thrown at the head, all manner of slaps and punches to head and body … and Mrs. Gardner, the deputy head, rules by sheer pants-wetting terror.

Oddly, nobody is afraid of Old Slump, the half-dead headmaster who sleeps, toad-like in his study all day. He is a master of delegation.

For a kid who has been teacher's pet in primary school and shoved forward a year for being a girly swot, the Big School is a real smack in the face with reality. Suddenly there are other kids smarter than me. There is a pecking order and I'm not at the top.
Arse!

The teachers come in two basic flavours:
Flavour one is the old guard. Hardened and embittered old disciplinarians; they will all retire when we leave after our seven year sentences as the school is due to become a "comprehensive" under education reforms and will be filled with filthy little oiks.
The old guard are determined to take it out on the last year of grammar school kids … us.
Flavour two is the young, wide-eyed and innocent wave of liberal, anti-corporal punishment, caring educators. We love their classes for the first few years; it is only after we realise they haven't the balls to beat good grades into us that we start to turn against them.

I find as the years pass that the most terrifying and the harshest teachers are the ones I come to like and respect far more than the wishy-washy drips who let us run riot.
In fact, in my final year as a præfect I am best friends with the child-eating gorgon Mrs. Gardner who, as I've said before, shares a passion for avant-garde music, lets me wear my hair long and wear my dope-stinking old afghan coat, and lets my rock band play school concerts (unheard of back then, when guitar was not allowed in music class).
And I get through all seven years without being caned once …

Special mention in the teaching awards goes to:

Miss Mc.Carthy (English Grammar) and Miss Jackson (French). A couple of elderly spinsters of uncertain sexual proclivities, who share a small bungalow in the town and who make an excellent cup of tea for a student who has been out gigging all week and so needs to be watched over (at their bungalow) while he catches up on his homework.
Miss Jackson is ex. French Resistance and goes understandably apeshit at any mention of Germany; which must be uncomfortable in the modern languages staffroom …
Miss Mc.Carthy is without a doubt the best teacher I have ever had. Bless her wrinkly old stockings. She instils in me a love of books, a love of learning and a pedantry beyond all reason.

"Fifi" Harcourt; another elderly French mistress and apparently a bit of a goer in the nineteen-twenties. Imagine Margaret Rutherford after being dead twenty years, yet behaving in an unnervingly frisky and flirty manner, and you will get Fifi.

Bernie Culpin; the only one of the new breed to garner any respect from me, probably for introducing me to the Communist Party; though marks deducted for not accepting an essay on John Lennon and the peace movement (JL is very much alive at the time, and so not of "historical significance").

Mr. Phillips; for seducing Andy P. and getting kicked out (not for the seduction, but for the brazen flaunting of their relationship).

Mr. Stuart, a Scotsman madder than Old Knudsen, who makes a damned good athlete out of me by shouting a lot and hitting my shins with a hockey stick (his constant companion).

Mr. Grove (Religious Education); for producing more kids than he actually teaches. We all feel sorry for his poor, permanently pregnant wife.

And finally, Miss Moore, Head of Art (Hi, Priscilla), the micro-skirted and admittedly hot school tart; for leaving her knickers hanging on the mirror of her sports car, and for leaving me in sole charge of the art department all through my final two years while she fucks her way assiduously through the sixth form register; which results in
(a) me winning the school art prize and
(b) copious sex with Judith F in the art office …

Happy days? I honestly can't remember …

Fun With Reptiles

Gaaargh!
Even the bloody disposable cups at the water cooler have got Christmas messages on them now! I'm doing my bit for the environment by using a glass from now on.

And it's almost time to run from the horror of Jo and Little Jo decorating the office.
If Little Jo thinks that singing bloody reindeer is staying out of her bottom this year, she had better think again. And if she's not careful, the tree will follow it.

This, however, on the BBC news site this morning, successfully distracted me from depressing festive arse and cheered me right up:

"An unusual clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida's swamps.


The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.

The remains of the two giant reptiles were found by astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park."

I can see some Everglades rangers' wives getting shoes and handbags this Christmas …

Kicking Vlad

Somewhere up there in whatever passes for my own personal and somewhat squalid pantheon, a minor and very miserable little deity seems to know I like mondays and is determined to spoil them for me.

This morning, in the pitch dark at 5:30, with the wind and rain lashing down, I get to my parking space at the station to find my nice lockable post has been ripped out of the ground and a trashed, stolen car is parked in my space.
No other free spaces, so I park in the £12 a day car park down the road and run through the rain to catch my train …
Which crawls along at 40mph, due to "adverse railhead conditions" (it's raining) …
Then it breaks down in the middle of nowhere and we sit for another hour with the heating off …
And when I eventually reach London at around nine-thirty, the tube isn't working because of over-running engineering works, so I walk the four miles in the rain.

I still like mondays though. So nyaah nyaah to whichever deity is trying to piss me off. You're looking for a wedgie at the very least, matey.

Which brings me on to Vladimir Putin.

Look, tosh. If you're going to poison people you disagree with, DON'T do it in a sushi bar in Piccadilly!
I would say don't do it at all, but I understand that there are times when the democratic process just isn't enough and you just have to try to kill someone.
But don't do it where I'm trying to buy lunch after an already stressful morning and have to fight my way through a horde of fucking journalists on expense accounts who fancy a free plate of sushi.

Look what you've done. I was doing alright but now you've made me all grumpy, you ex KGB twat.
If there's anybody in Moscow reading this, please give Vlad a kick up the arse from me.

Don't Look At Me Like That

I know …

I'm supposed to be writing something interesting.

And I'm also supposed to be doing my housework and ironing and gardening and cleaning the car and polishing the bath and mowing the kittens and all that shit.

And I know I've just been collapsed in a giggling heap on the sofa watching Spaced and stuffing my face.

Well bollocks!
I haven't had a bloody "do nothing" day for years.

If you want to read something, pop over to Robyn's and catch up on Maryann. I'm now going to watch the rugby, then settle back down in front of Spaced with a big bar of Green and Blacks' Maya Gold chocolate.

And I'm not answering the door to anyone.

Go on … Bugger off … Today, it's all about me and the sofa.

Curry Breath (A Thank You Card)

A huge thank you to Mike and Sharon for last night's curryfest, and the totally excellent prezzie of two full series of Spaced on DVD (Jessica Stevenson … Ooooo).

Sharon's a great cook, but last night Mike had a new curry recipe and a kitchen window-cill full of chilli plants … and a fridge full of beer …
Picture the Three Stooges making industrial quantities of hellfire curry while drinking and you get some idea of the goings-on.
All in all a splendid evening of curry, beer and wine and toasting our tootsies on the lovely log fire, and chat and movies and "Bully" on the PS2 … waaay past old Dive's bedtime …

Somehow, this morning I am awake and clear headed (and no arse-gravy from all the chillis).
So hoorah for Mike and Sharon.
Thanks again, guys.

The Miserable Git Goes Christmas Shopping

Into Norwich for coffee and breakfast.
This is the week they actually start playing fucking Christmas music in the coffee shop. Mince pies I can stand, but not festive "cheer". It just makes me want to buy guns.
They can just kiss goodbye to my custom from here on in. I'm not going back there until I hear they've started playing Bowie again.
Luckily, Norwich is still stuck in its Frasier Crane stage, so there's plenty of other bookshops which sell coffee and brekkies and have big friendly sofas.

Mum has driven up from Suffolk today as it's the annual emptying of the bank account for the yuletide festival of Mammon.
Luckily, she has not brought any of the Mad Bints with her.

As anyone who has been here at the Planet long enough will know (see The Truth About Everything), Christmas Day is an anagram of Mad Scary Shit and that, for me, is what the spirit of Christmas has been reduced to. And trying to shop in Norwich after the third week in November is blind, suicidal insanity. So mother drives up to Norfolk and we get in a pre-emptive strike before the queues reach critical mass.

That's it … I'm staying out of the city now until the January sales are over. We've just emptied Borders and Waterstones (I always buy people books; force the buggers to read instead of sitting in a drooling heap in front of the idiot box). I'm knackered and both our bank managers are crying in the corner. Then we go back for CDs and DVDs and lovely opera for my mad aunt, Nurse Ratched, and crappy, stinky stuff for the elderly, and tat for the kids …
Christmas may be all about "giving", but I'm buggered if I'm paying £4.99 for a roll of wrapping paper, so I hit the Pound Shop for that.
And it's home-made e-cards all round this year to stick it to those profiteering bastards at Hallmark.

Mike and Sharon are throwing me a late birthday party tonight, so at least I can seek refuge from festive tat in Mikey's strange world of monkeys, robots, video games, large nude women and NOTHING TO DO WITH FUCKING CHRISTMAS.

Quick change of subject:
Robyn's photo scavenger hunt subject this week is "plush".
As my house is devoid of "plush", I'll use the same get-out clause as Robyn has and post my cat.

Meet the late, great, Kate. named after Kate Bush, for the bushy tail they both have, as well as the racket they both made, and because "Kate" was the closest thing to "cat" I could think of.
Click on the images if you like a larger pussy (sorry, Robyn) …


Kate was about as plush as a cat can get. I really miss her, though not her habit of waking me by leaping off the bedroom window-cill onto my bladder.
I am catless at the mo, though Jerry next door's cats have the run of my house.
I like them; they sleep in my garden and crap in Jerry's.
Which is as it should be …

Forgive me, J …

I know it's wrong and I'll go to blog hell and have blog dæmons using my bottom to store pointy things in, but I keep one of my very favourite blogs as a guilty little secret from the rest of the gang.

She may never forgive me, but I just have to steal this from her post yesterday as it's the funniest thing I've heard in a long, long time:

"As I was leaving work, the marching band was practicing on the field
outside of my building. It always gives me a lift, and I try to see if
I can recognize the song in the few short minutes it takes to walk to
my car.

Today, I was having a problem figuring it out right away. It had a catchy melody, and sounded like it was from a musical. Then it hit me. What would Brian Boytano do?

They were playing a medley of songs from "The South Park Movie"!

I am going to be so sad when it is no longer marching band season..."

YES!!!!!

Oh me, oh my, there surely is a God …

Somewhere in the United States a college marching band may well be playing the jaunty tune that is "Shut Your Fucking Face, Unclefucker" (with its 'challenging' wind solo) …
… or "Kyle's Mom's A Bitch", or "Blame Canada" or Big Gay Al's "I'm Super (Thanks For Asking)".

Well I'll be a "donkey-raping shit-eater" …

This Is Carlton Your Doorman

A bit of light relief after yesterday's wonderfully stimulating religious education debate with Robyn.

Indeed, thanks yet again to Robyn for pointing me at this silly accent quiz.


I cannot do a Noo Yawk accent to save my life, but it seems the quiz thinks that's the closest to my Norfolk/London Brit accent.

Actually, I used to do a good Julie Kavner as Brenda, yelling "Rhoda", but that's about my limit.

I loved that show back in the seventies. Lorenzo Music (great name) drawling "Hello, this is Carlton, your doorman" cracked me up every time. And of course, the magnificent Ms. Kavner is still with us, voicing the sexiest woman on TV.

Judging from my test result, I should be able to converse intelligibly with Sassy and Rich and the rest of the New England Posse, though I have no idea (being Brit) what a New England accent sounds like. Perhaps we should all type in our vernacular (although this would make our Scottish friend utterly incomprehensible).

My favourite accent of all (even more than "Minnesota Nice") is the one Eddie Izzard does in his James Bond sketch, where the guy's accent-changing voicebox is stuck on shop demo. A drunken party favourite down our way. "Ah, Meester Burnd".

Comments in your vernacular, please.

Mr. Ranty Pays A Short Visit

So farewell then, Milton Friedman.

I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but I'll make an exception for Friedman,
Good riddance to the shit who brought us Thatcherism and Reagonomics.
Almost worth buying a plane ticket to dance on his grave.

The New Bond

Just been over to The Other Girl's blog to put the case for Stephen Fry as the "Sexiest Man Alive".

George Clooney, my arse!


Norfolk's own hunk of gorgeousness could lick Clooney any day (and probably would).
Watch Wilde again. Watch the man on QI. Listen to him speak. Peer inside the biggest brain on the planet. Dribble down your cardie as he turns those piercing eyes your way. Revel in the wit and charm of the only possible contender* for the title: "Sexiest Man Alive".


And while Daniel Craig (the blonde Bond … "We expect you to dye") may well have worked out a bit, there is only one man truly born to play Bond (in much the same way as he was born to be Wilde).
Blofeld would have never stood a chance against such übercool rapier wit.

Genefluct unworthily in his general direction.
Laydees and gentlemen. Stephen Fry. Sexiest Man Alive. No contest.

* Runners up: Old Knudsen and Eddie Izzard.

Drooling Nutjob Creationists

Phew.
After yesterday's ludicrous comment-deluge, hopefully we'll get back to some semblance of normality today; especially as I'm working from home and the donkey who trudges round and round to power my village's alleged broadband connection has not been well of late.

Reading New Scientist on the train last night and this: New Scientist article on the insane future of America scared the shit out of me.
I'd heard of this place before (Patrick Henry College), but the article brought home to me just how close we are to having the world's biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons controlled by the lunatic Christian Fundamentalist 'Taliban'.
In a supposedly free country, to raise children with closed minds and train them up to attack reason and reality with drooling fucking hogwash is a far greater danger than any possible terrorist threat.
Read the article.
Shit yourself with fear.
I'm suddenly glad to be as old as I am, as I'll be dead in a few years and won't have to see it happen.

The Unbearable Shiteness Of Being

Unaccountably back down in the dumps.

Having managed to cheer up a bit last night, I fully expected to wake up at 4:40 this morning without my usual scream of horror at still being alive.
No such luck.
It's not the bleak suicidal despair of one of my periodic and strangely attractive black depressions; more just a general feeling of shitty blah, mingled unpleasantly with the fag end of my crappy birthday and the looming horror of the tacky commercial onslaught that is the British Christmas "Season" (gak).

Having said that, it's a lovely sunny day, Westminster is its usual chaotic and hilarious fuck up of closed roads, barricades and armed police running around like headless chickens (it's the State Opening of Parliament today … whee); lots of bored TV crews clogging up the coffee shops and blocking the pavements with boxes and wires and expensive looking tripods to kick on your way past.
And good old Red Ken (our lovely Socialist Mayor) has announced that anyone stupid enough to be still driving a 4x4 in Central London will now be charged £25 a day for being a complete arsehole.
And I've got a lovely bowl of miso soup in front of me (and haven't yet spilled it in my keyboard).
So plenty of reasons to be cheerful, but a somewhat disheartening lack of actual cheer.
Bum …

"Oh well, what the hell."*

*Try to cheer up old Dive by playing a ridiculously easy Spot That Quote.

Tagged By Old Knudsen

Oh, arse! A bloody meme …

Thanks for nothing, Old Man.

I hate these things.
For the record, this is the most piss-poor excuse for a meme I've ever come across. Uninspiring, tedious questions which deserve nothing more than the vitriol heaped on them by Old K and now myself.

Okay; let's get sweary …


1-Do you like the look and the contents of your blog?

What a fucking stupid question.
If I didn't like the look of it, I'd change it, and if I didn't like the content, I wouldn't write all this crap in the first place.
Tosser.


2-Does your family know about your blog?

Yes. But like Old K, they couldn't give a monkey's.


3-Can you tell your friends about your blog? Do you consider it a private thing?

I consider solo masturbation a private thing … oh, and puffin frottage.
If I'm masturbating with my friends, then it's not so private.
And I use the blog to spout off about stuff. What good would it be if no bugger read it?


4-Do you just read the blogs of those who comment on your blog? or you try to discover new blogs?

Of course I do. And I'm constantly trying to find new blogs from desperately lonely women who live just down the road from me. Preferably ones with poor eyesight and low self esteem. No luck so far …


5-Did your blog positively affect your mind? Give an example.

Only to the extent that my friends don't have to put up with my ranting any more. I can rant at strangers, which is nicely therapeutic.


6-What does the number of visitors to your blog mean? Do you use a traffic counter?

I couldn't give a toss.


7-Did you imagine how other bloggers look like?

I try not to but the bastards keep posting photos of themselves. And if I see another fucking baby blog, I'm going Godzilla on this stinking planet.


8-Do you think blogging has any real benefit?

No. The time I waste blogging could be more constructively used looking at porn.


9-Do you think that the blogosphere is a stand alone community separated from the real world.

No. It's a "Sit Alone" community of sad wankers who cannot face the real world.


10-Do some political blogs scare you? Do you avoid them?

No. Religious blogs and those with fucking babies all over them scare me. Stop breeding, you ignorant fuckers. The world cannot possibly feed your snivelling, ugly children.


11-Do you think that criticizing your blog is useful?

Not to me. Criticize all you want; I couldn't give a toss.


12-Have you ever thought about what would happen to your blog in case you died?

No. Why should I care? No offense to some of my American readers, but there is no God and no afterlife. When you're dead, you're dead.


13-Which blogger had the greatest impression on you?

Robyn. She's the person I'd most like as a neighbour. And - other than this meme - I tend to moderate my swearing a bit for her.


14-Which blogger do you think is the most similar to you?

Lonesome, lefty and cynical? That would be Sassy (sorry, gal).


15-Name a song you want to listen to?

Prayer to God by Shellac. The sweariest song about breaking up. Ever. If I had to choose a personal deity, it would be Steve Albini.


Well, that was the crappiest and most boring meme I've ever seen.
It doesn't deserve to be passed on to anyone else, so the only person I'll tag is the sad, miserable waste of oxygen who came up with it in the first place, together with a slap round the head for wasting my time.

More Profanity

An attractive girl accosted me outside the Bank of England this morning on my way across the City, and handed me a stress pig.

While I normally ignore promotional freebies, this one was more than welcome and I happily squeezed my porker all the way to Westminster. There's nothing like a bit of hand relief in the morning …

More on that story later.
In the meantime, all that disgusting wallowing in self pity about my stupid birthday (somewhat compounded at five o'clock this morning by checking Sassy's blog to find a reminder that I would be in Club Suck once again this Christmas) distracted me from a rather nice story in the press a few days back:


I'll quote from the Guardian (I'm sure they won't mind).
"After more than five years of delicate and dangerous excavation on Derbyshire moorland, potholers have confirmed that Britain's biggest cave lies hidden below a fissure known for centuries as the Devil's Arsehole."

Why our dear Mister Knudsen sprang to mind I have no idea, but I'm relieved to discover that the Devil's Arsehole has not yet been bowdlerised by prudish nearby residents. I have great affection for rude historical names since my old mate Babs, up in Shetland, pointed out a standing stone to me, in front of which a small sign read (in a splendid attempt at the local vernacular) "The White Stane Of Willie."

I was disgusted to hear that Slut's Hole Lane, near my brother's house in Attleborough has now been re-named something inoffensive due to residents' complaints. This is a growing problem in crowded little Britain. We need to fight to keep our filthy places filthy.

The most famous example of this is a street I pass along every working day.
For centuries, fragrant ladies have plied their venerable trade there, offering such exotic delights as "penny up the wall" knee-tremblers, as a result of which, the place was officially known by the delightful soubriquet of (cover your eyes, Robyn) "Gropecunte Lane".
Unfortunately, when the Bank of England was located there, they renamed it Threadneedle Street (still a lingering trace of the old profession in the new name).
As if to prove that nothing ever really changes, this is the very street where I was given hand relief this morning.

Here's my porker. You're more than welcome to give him a squeeze …


"Oink".

Crappy Birthday

I can fight it off no longer. Time has beaten the crap out of me and I collapse into the reeking pismire that is my forty-eighth birthday.

Luckily I'll be in a meeting all day which will keep my mind off the utter arse-ness of it all.

When I get home tonight I shall drink myself into a stupor, and hopefully the world will explode before I wake up.

Whoop de do …

Tom Purdew Pt.3 - Dad

À la recherche du …

Remembrance Sunday.
Always gets to me …
In the family, up until recently, it was usually centred around dad's brother Tony.
He was a tailgunner. Just nineteen in the closing months of the war, his plane was shot down and crashed into the side of a hill. Nothing you could do if you were tailgunner. No room in your turret for a parachute …

We lost dad four years and a week ago, so this time of year I really miss him.
But lately, I've been scanning in lots of mum's old pictures for her, so to cheer myself up a bit before my rotten forty-eighth birthday tomorrow, here's a bunch of silly ones to remind me of dad:

When Elvis ruled the world …
Dad makes sure the fields and trees hear the good news that rock and roll is king.
Me and Phil got the old Dansette when mum and dad bought a radiogram in the sixties. You could load stacks of LPs on it and just let it play for hours. That's dad's box of 78s, which we still have. Early Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, et al … Wonderful.

This is the reprobate who somehow romanced mum (before the RAF mended his ways). Handsome devil, isn't he?


And this one cracks me up. Mum when she was around ten, wearing what looks like some old curtains, and with a table mat on her head. Somehow, these two were allowed to breed …

I like this one. This is dad in Mdina, Malta, a few miles from where I was born. He served in Cyprus on 39 Squadron nuclear bombers, but the wives were based in Malta and he certainly looks happy to be here.

And this is him in Cyprus. "Active service" they called it … Hmmm … Very active.
This, kids, was our nuclear deterrent at the height of the cold war. Tremble in your boots, mighty Soviet armies!


And this last one I've put in, not just because I'm in it (ain't I cute?), but because it's the only photo of my childhood nemesis, filled with spiders and darkness, the terrifying outside privy!

That's it: the door on the left (the door on the right is the coal shed). It looks quite benign in the daylight, doesn't it?
Don't be fooled. On a cold winter's night it was the most terrible place on earth to me … Brrr … I shudder even now to think of it.

So that's dad in his youth. He was great and I miss him loads.

Wyrd Creatures

Robyn's photo scavenge for today is the word "growth".

A difficult one at this time of year. All the trees in my back garden are gloriously gold and red, but not exactly growing. So moss it is …


Deep in the overgrown woodland recesses of my unkempt garden/nature reserve, down near the place where the bats and hedgehogs live, lurks one of Helen's weirder sculptures.
Surrounded by the detritus of autumn, but with early primulas coming up behind him around the base of a laburnum, the deranged donkey has become home to moss and ivy. A monstrous growth, but a growth nonetheless. I'll clean him up in the spring … Promise.

Apropos of nothing, while Peahen and myself cavorted around Kett's Hill on thursday, we came across this alarming evidence of canine alcoholism …


Say "Hi" to Drinky Dog.
He tried to panhandle us for small change for his "bus fare and a cup of tea", but we had him sussed.

Ow!

Why does my head hurt so MUCH?

Disjointed, crap, head-achey boring post follows:

I go to bed early with a book (currently re-reading "Ten Days That Shook The World", John Reed's splendid eyewitness account of the 7th. November, 1917 Bolshevik Revolution) and a glass of Rioja and wake up this morning with what can only be described as a stinking fucking headache.

Ow!
I feel like someone's been hammering Kryptonite into my sinuses all night and is now beating my head rhythmically with large parts of a tree.
(Sassy's been to a wine-guzzling evening and I bet she wakes up clear-headed).

I drag my stinking carcass down the landing to the shower.
I have two choices: stay in bed with painkillers and suffer, or get dressed and drive into Norwich for breakfast and some fresh air.

Into Norwich it is. Kick myself in the head with strong coffee. Oh, fuck … Mince pies in the coffee shop … Christmas is coming … Fuckity fuck … Roll on death …
Ow!

They're playing bloody New Age crap over the speakers. At least it's not Christmas music. Last week it was Bowie singing Rebel Rebel. God, I love that song! This week, New Age … I gotta change my coffee shop …
Ow Ow Ow!

Phil turns up and prescribes a nice walk in the (very) fresh air up to Borders. He's ordered me a birthday present but it hasn't arrived yet, so decides to get me a book to tide me over until the grim day (monday), and sensibly won't buy a book from a shop playing New Age crap …

He's a star. He buys me the authorised edition of the final 9/11 Commission Report.
A while back, I saw that godawful right-wing spin dramatised version of events on the telly with Harvey Keitel (shame on you Harvey) and the Report has been on my shopping list ever since (regular readers will know my stance on always searching out source material).

…

Sorry. Tuned out for a bit there. Two minutes' silence …
Today is Armistice Day and I've got the service from St. Paul's on the box. Up in the midlands tomorrow, at the Remembrance Sunday service, Peahen will break the two minute silence in her town by playing the Last Post. I'm so proud of her. She's been cacking herself with nerves. But she's brilliant, so I know she will be perfect.

…

Fuck! That's scary. The Lord Mayor's Procession has just got under way in London and there's Gog and Magog on the TV, the city giants made entirely out of wicker. Edward Woodward must be shitting himself in case they set fire to him again.

Ow!
Bugger this. I give up. I'm going to take some painkillers and go to bed … What a waste of a perfectly usable saturday morning.

Kermit

Thanks, Old K.

Another fucking survey …
This time, it's "What Tarot Card Am I"?
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a toss, but I'll give it a go, if only for the excuse to think about Jane Seymour as Solitaire in Live And Let Die … Mmmmmmmmmm …

So it turns out I'm Kermit the Hermit.
Whatever …

Looks a bit like the picture from inside the old Led Zep IV gatefold sleeve, so I'll take that as an omen and listen to Zep all day today.

No more fucking surveys.

Please.

When Blogs Collide

Oh, spiffy day …
Peahen pops in to the Pit of Sadness, for coffee and a raucous chortle (and to raid my CD and DVD collection).


And here is the Empress Palpatine of her very own Evil Software Empire atacking my iTunes.
Yes I know that's a cranberry and raspberry smoothie; we had the coffee earlier. Don't be so bloody pedantic.

Peahen's blog lives a good three hour drive away, so naturally she wears her most sensible driving shoes (not) and stripey tights for sad old Dive (in colour, too, Sassy).


As it's a lovely day, we decide to drive up to Kett's Hill (see glorious socialist peasant uprising post), where we proceed to follow Kurt Vonnegut's excellent advice from his latest book, A Man Without A Country: "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."


… and watch the sun go down behind the cathedral.

After which, we come home to laugh at Knudsen's blog and watch a movie before the real fun starts …

Peahen has a Superpower (see my earlier post on Superpowers [about halfway down the Scunthorpe post]). She has had this power for all the years I have known her, but today the force is strong in her.
Peahen's admittedly crap superpower is the ability to lose her keys even if they are nailed to her head.

I have to leave for Japanese classes in a few minutes, so we say our farewells and head out to 'Fester', Peahen's magnificent car. Only Peahen cannot find her keys …

Oh, well. We are used to this. It happens every single time we meet.
So we look in all the usual places …
Then we check my car …
Then we look in all the usual places …
Then we check my car again …
Then we tear the house apart, strip out the car and start to panic …
Then we grab a Maglite from my kitchen cupboard, leap into the Divemobile and tear-arse back into the city (at evening rush hour) to search Kett's Hill in the dark for a car key with a black fob …
… in - as I said - the dark …

Luckily, I know all the back alleys and council estate short cuts in my lovely little city, so we do an "Italian Job" through the rush hour traffic and skid to a gravelly halt on top of Kett's Hill.
And THERE IS HER FUCKING KEY!

Well Whoop-di-doo! It only takes a couple of minutes to find it. It must have fallen off Peahen's lap as she got out of the car.
So we "Italian Job" it back out of the city and somehow I make it to Japanese classes (twenty miles in the opposite direction) bang on time.
My car, however, suffers a nervous breakdown (as - almost - do I, when, having skidded and screeched through the traffic and round some particularly nasty back routes at very, very illegal speeds, Peahen says "I think I'd better put my seatbelt on") …

After all that, Japanese classes are a piece of cake …