Let it rain
Because I am a bitter, twisted, maleficient, dolorous, catabatic, blaadekka, fulking, drumheaded gimb-boy (hey. me making words up here, did ya notice?) whose blood runs evil and thick, I wish it rains and turns a little corner of Pilton, Somerset into a pestilent maelstrom of darkness, rain and mud so foul it makes you want to commit suicide on the spot. I have experienced it in 1997 and 1998. I know the depths of despair that a person without wellington boots can plumb. You are glad to be rid of such days, but somehow content you have survived them. But, those who got tickets deserve such nastiness. Fucking internet geeks, or something. Think of God being desperate for a piss, having been, say, delayed on the Circle line for an interminable period, like I was yesterday, then relieving himself mightily. It makes me laugh. It makes me cry.

Of course, I know it will be lovely and sunny. But life has never been the same since I dropped my MP3 player, whilst drunkenly demonstrating why I wanted to throttle Damien Rice with my headphone cables on a train home from Brighton, and was then kindly told that my 6000 songs were gone, destroyed, wiped from existence, by this charming Indian fellow, and that I would have to stump up 179 euros to repair it. Anger, then loss, then resignation, AND NOW BACK TO THE FILTHY FURY.

Creative Zen... I'm going to get you.  ¶ 4:33 PM

  Clarification
Dead Kenny has implored me to come up with the reasons why I didn’t like Brass. Well, Here we go, as Aidan Moffatt once said (along with fuck cunt shit pish bollocks):

Fellow Mancunian novelist Gwendoline Riley does it so much better (if only the obsession transfers from cloud cover issues to actual precipitation and whatever she’s been reading lately). Her latest, Sick Notes is brilliant, much better than her previous book Cold Water, despite being completely the same. It treats the same lost girl story in a much more delicate and funny way. (and that’s despite her publicity photos looking like she has just been licking canine piss off a cactus)

I didn’t think the major plot twist surprised me at all, considering that it strikes a strong resemblance to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. I saw it coming a mile off, he says as arrogantly as can be.

Was it the non-lubricated anal sex scene that put me slightly off? Katharine Viner’s fellow Orange Prize judge was right, this is somehow vulgar, distasteful and just blarghhh and downright ugly PORNOGRAPHIC (Go and buy it now, you pornophiles). Somerset Maugham had a phrase for female characters such as Milly, and which he used for his equally wiful and annoying creation Mildred Roper - ‘vulgar slut’. Reading it does make you feel like your cerebral cortex is being flooded with penises, VD, bodily fluids, orifices and depravity. All very well in moderation, but when it reaches saturation point, you have to stifle a yawn or headbutt something to get the filth outta there! Mind you, this is a positive in some people's books.

And the soap opera clichés, ‘we’ve always been friends, but I realise I’ve always loved her. Yes, even when she was 13 years old! (oo-er)’ Purr-lease, of course you did, you big twat. (This coming from a 28 year old man)

I am heartily sick of books, feature articles etc, that look up at the sky. Helen Walsh continually describes it AS IF I WOULD CARE. Of course that brings to mind epigrams and titles of the works of Oscar Wilde and Fatboy Slim *strokes imaginary beard*.

And shagging shouldn’t really sell this sort of book. "People don't want to talk about the book, they want to talk about you...in relation to the book." Debut novelist Helen Walsh tells Vanessa Craft why sex is a hot sell. (Say it ain’t so Helen.) Does she really want to be Jilly Cooper crossed with Denis Johnson? (That is not meant to sound like a recommendation)

Having said that, however, it’s very well written and conjures up a sense of Manchester’s drudgery in a very adept manner. And there’s always a place in my bookshelf for some brutal truth and honesty. Although as the Guardian reviewer also said, she could do without shouting her next novel and instead writing it. Even though I’ll buy it and read it anyway.

  ¶ 2:36 PM

  Break me
You know how much I love ex-Red House Painter Mark Kozelek, a.k.a. the guy in Almost Famous who outed himself when he thought Stillwater's plane was going to do a Lynryd Skynrd. Errr, maybe that was the drummer. Well, the ones that weren't Billy Crudup, he of bad career choices (Charlotte Gray?), and Jason Lee, alternate whore (The Enemy of the State, Kissing a Fool) and sarcastic demigod (anything with the hands of beardmonster Kevin Smith on it).

I'm a sucker for his doped-up melancholy shit (why did I use the word sucker, when I have never ever said it in real life? why did I add shit? Why am I expanding the parentheses?). The album I have been mostly listening to is his new project Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway. Carry Me Ohio is especially good, and obviously catchy. I do not understand why none of my musical comrades never listen to his stuff. I have tried to encourage you. But really, you're just animals and barbarians, with hearts made of iron and dung I say! Without a romantic cell in your weak, wheaty bodies. Some say he is depressing. Of course he is. That's the point. But it's reassuring depressing. There is a difference. And yes, I do realise my imploring you to buy any of his stuff will be burned in the furnace of your indifference.

But he did the really cool cover of The Cars' All Mixed Up. THE ONE THAT WAS IN THE GAP SCARVES AD.

You liked that, didn't you?

And Summer Dress is very appropriate for now. Awwww...

About my previous rant. Sometimes I do wonder whether my wonderful skill at regurgitation with the added spice of the swear word and explosive anger may have come from reading these guys recently: Ted Rall (liberal vitriol at its coruscating best; a man who does not hold back, and who has wonderfully drawn attention to the derogatisation of homosexuality and its associations with Satanic buttfucking by the right-wing), David Aaronovitch (he wrestles with his conscience and the facts, which may explain why his columns veer away fromm the curse of dogma) and Greg Palast (deconstructs the arguments and the edifice of corruption so well, but is still derided... sadly and unbelievably)go on with the Reagan reputation burning.

But no. I only read the Aaronovitch before I read it. I think everything else came from viewing Oliver Stone's Salvador, reading about the Laffer curve, film of a lot of poverty-stricken and cold looking unemployed Americans, some William Keegan, black and white pictures of Reagan in his reign of terror as Californian governor, his appearances in The Killers and Bedtime for Bonzo (the one with the chimp), his cheesy speeches (whose underlying message was if you have money the world is yours, if you're a single mother on welfare, you and your progeny are fucked if they don't join the army and end up fighting in sandy places), a cursory reading of his strange biography Dutch, newscasts about his demise, turds falling from Margaret Thatcher's mouth and being generally alive in the 80s. There is more, but it is lost in the ocean of my subconscious; a mass of teeming information, images, words, text and emotion; some fading, some dead, some sounding as strongly in my brain as memories of destroying ant colonies when I was a child and that fucking wee-ow-wee-ow theme tune to that fucking Virgin upper class suite advert with Alice Cooper.

Yet saying, he "beat communism" on the front cover of The Economist (or some other globally respected magazine; fuck facts, let's get in touch with our emotions. I know Rush Limbaugh has all his broadcasting career). Well, if the analogy is, a football game and USA were playing Russia and after, let's say, 80 minutes, the stinking, decrepit, disease-ridden Russian old fogies, suddenly shot themselves out of the sheer misery and pain caused by years of decaying physical and mental processes, allowing the Americans to pump in as many goals as they could in the time allotted (let's just imagine the foot of a Russian corpse being gently nudged to allow restarts), then yes, Reagan did beat communism.

Remember: everyone is biased. Accept it and admit it and get on with your life.  ¶ 12:21 PM

  I'm on a soapbox with my Uzi primed
So a bloke deserves to have his face on a common denomination banknote because he happened to be around when the shitty, rotten structure of Soviet socialism began to fall? No fucking way. Ronald Reagan was a reactionary ass, who supported some of the most repressive regimes ever to have gang-raped and butchered nuns, communists, freedom fighters etc, boosted defence spending to obscene levels and pissed with blind abandon upon the poor of America, covertly blabbed like a yellow-bellied scumbag to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and who during his days as Governor of California would have happily shot every drug-smoking youngster, and actively fostered the current generation of power-mad political swine. But you know, he had a great television manner. God, he looked like a movie star. You only had to look at Giraffe Bush and Monkey Bush to realise that this smooth huckster was actually succeeded by a menagerie of sub-intelligent zoo animals. His psychological effect on people did do some good. Even if he didn’t mind whether it was a nuclear winter morning in America.

But please, just because a man dies does not make him a martyr. He was a nice guy: yeah, because he had all the power and privilege to be one. He got the front end of trickle-down economic theory and he fucking loved it. Then, of course, when you stuff the pig, all the poor is going to get is high-quality shit.

You should have shed your tears when his brain began its inexorable journey towards mushy-dom ten years ago. Right now, I think most of the Reagan-mourners show up some prime and disturbing psychological deficiency. Like all the bereaved, they mourn for themselves (If he is in a better place, why the FUCK are you crying about it? He’s happy now, although let’s not get into the ways and wherefores of mental illness and the eternal soul). Sure, they loved his power and his poise. They got their jollies off it. But where do they look to now? Fuck ‘em. Let them drown in their own shit.

-That was a party political broadcast from the Come Fuck Me In My Ass, You Right Wing Pigfuckers Party.
  ¶ 4:16 PM

  End of the day
Seen the Royal Tenenbaums? Remember Eli Cash's apartment? If so, you will know these Miguel Calderon artworks. Somehow hilarious and utterly disturbing at the same time.

Just finished reading Sam Lipsyte's Homeland. It is funny, not only for its fucked-up facial ejaculation, crack-smoking scene and use of the words 'ass clown' and many wonderfully skewed tangents, but because you can see the shadow of your own impending failure and disappointment, made reality (albeit in fiction). Etc. Actually, there is quite a lot that's fucked-up about it, but that's exactly the reason why you should read it. But don't read Helen Walsh's Brass: filth porn Mancunian slang university collision literature. She is like, SO, obsessed with skies (and cocaine). Doesn't she ever look at her toes?
  ¶ 4:42 PM

  Three Months Without Piquant Californian Wit
Save the OC! Channel 4 are a bloody disgrace. Big Brother blows stuff. Hollyoaks is poo. I am vocabulary-deficient at the moment. But I do love how Josh Schwartz has made it his wish fulfillment toy. I would too, if I had the power to subjugate nations and enslave the world!

Had a spiffing week, reading the Waverley Encyclopedia and doing something on the wireless. I whomped some south of England ass. Obviously this is as good as it gets and I will crumple like transparent plastic wrapping flung on a festival camp fire. Time to die...

La la la sunshine.   ¶ 4:05 PM