Highs and Lows of 2007

Highlights of the year 2007 include, rather neatly occasions where there is video footage.

Like the final Deep Fried Wolfknuckles gig at the 13th Note. The covers of You're in a Bad Way, You're like Manchester, and 100,000 Fireflies, tears streaming down my face nd blood pumping out of my finger.




Also the Plimptons invasion of Liverpool for the International Pop Overthrow Festival
The spectacular success of the nekkit chicks website is also an ongoing highligh.

Low points include

That hellish weekend where I both lost my job wih Linn, the girl thing exploding, after drinking all day with Robbie and Colin, necking a bottle of vodka, sleeping for an hour then driving to a Loves gig in London. It still mkes me want to kill myself, and I think has contributed to the bitter and evil man you see before you now. It helps me to feel justified when I'm being a cruel vindictive asshole
In sunny moments I forget and wonder what if... but then it comes back, I bare my teeth and do stuff. Kind of like a little battery of anti-matter.

Hopes for 2008

Something to kind of cancel out the low points of '07, raising my faith in humanity, or possibly just lording over them like dogs.
Oh and buying a sodding house

Ill kid Xmas '07

I has the ill. I has the insomnia, the headaches, the mad starey eyes.

I has works Christmas lunch and a drive to Nottingham.

I has the ill

Rape-spin

Is the concept of 'Bodice ripper' as in romantic novels, just a spin on 'rape', just like calling it 'surprise sex'?

"often characterized by weak females who fell in love with overbearing alpha males." Crikey, what a weird thought.

God knows how I arrived at this page, but its rather interesting

Gah, a meme

Looks like there is a meme about, "Love is..." on Octopus Pie, DieselSweeties, and Questionable Content

I guess this evening I'll have to launch into the nuddy nekkit chicks version

Tase me

Where can I find someone friendly who has a taser is the UK?

I tried Taser UK, but they either don't update their website or are a bunch of cretins promoting lies.

Here they say tasers don't kill
and this popular video shows Canadian airport security killing a gentleman using a taser

Terror strikes

Hmmph, I just read the cleansheets story I mentioned earlier today, this one. Its terrifying for me, but strangely flattering too.

Cleansheet

Crikey, they've started to use my drawings over on Clean Sheets magazine here. Not really something I can read in the office with other folk around, wait until I get home.

Warm fuzzy feelings of success and achievement.

Ah, crisis over, somehow the NumLock key on my laptop had become pressed. But luckily I pressed it again and all my problems went away. I like it when life's like that.

So, as I was saying, I'm still a little drunk from last night, although starting to sober up in the past ten minutes. Dananananaykroyd gig, photies on flickr here. Felt well comfortable there, it was at this place in the middle of Soho, and I was a bit scared, but then realised it was on the same street as the Thai restaurant I keep going to.

A few familiar faces in the crowd, London folk who I just see around and of course the Dananananas. Wee Susan was there, I babbled endlessly, its weird how long it takes for me to get into being able to, I've vaguely known her for about four years now. Strange strobe-lit flashbacks of seeing her in the Barfly, back in pre-Glasgow Indie Eyespy times.

On the way home there was a fire from the direction of my factor, I sprinted over to find a burnt out AA van, would have taken photies, but felt self conscious in front of two fire engines and a few police cars.

56-

Gah, st533 dr4n2 fr60 3ast n5ght and 0y 2eyb6ard has 0yster464s3y been re0a--ed s6 that there are n40bers where there sh643d be 3etters. 5nd 6f f4nny and fr4strat5ng.

4st t6 de06nstrate, here's the new 3ay64t f6r each 35ne

q w e r t y 4 5 6 - [ ]
a s d f g h 1 2 3 + '
z x c v b n 0 , .

Ah f4c25t, never 352ed th6se 3etters 04ch anyway.

The money

I keep on forgetting about the money, the thing with the money, well, I keep on remembering that I'd forgotten about the thing with the money.

We were in Glasgow, the other weekend, it was Saturday early afternoon, and me and Natalie were in the pouring rain heading to the farmer's market in Partick. I'm not a Glasgow bus person, sure, I'll take the underground, but if the bus is an option, I'll walk. I'm uncomfortable being that close to humanity, so its only if I'm in safe company that I'll take the bus.

So the bus was coming and we were sprinting to the bus stop in the torrential rain, and got there about ten second before the bus. It doesn't sound like much time, but we managed to catch our breathes and compose our selves, and there were these two neds at the bus stop.

So the bus arrives, and Natalie springs forth to get on, still catching my breath, I'm slower, so the two neds saunter to get on the bus too.

At this moment I notice a fiver wafting out of Nat's pocket, landing on the ground. I stood to get it, but ned no. 2 being nearer gets it first.

"Excuse me, that er, fiver, its my friends..."

"wha?"

"That money, are you going to give it back?"

"Wha?"

"That five pound note you just picked up, it fell out of her pocket"

"It fell out of my pocket,"

"No, I just saw it fall out of my friends pocket."

"Its mine"

"Fucking hand it over now"

By this time all of us are on the bus, the ned hands the fiver to Natalie, I sit next to her and both neds go upstairs. Natalie, quite impressed that the ned returned her lost fiver, made to go and give the good samaritan a quid, for being so honest. Until I explained that he did actually pocket the money and I did have get it back.

This anecdote gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling inside, I cling to it tightly in dark times. Its weird the way I keep forgetting it happened.

Small

Ah, the genius of burocracy. They changed the text formatting to make the new Treaty/Constitution smaller.

I can't wait until my career as a politician takes off.

Security

What I like about this, is that its a kind of antidote to stories of identity theft and governments losing people's personal records. If you exist, you exist, you can't hide, you can only share.

Is it still paranoia if yer right?

Outside the window here, seaguls squawk and the sun is kind of shining. The last of the green leaves still cling to the trees, and somewhere to my left a laser printer is churning out documents.

Lynsey's claims that there's no vendetta against me, seem a bit shallow as I struggle to log in to Anorak.

I'm guessing there's only two possibilities for what could have happened.

1) Some kind of server problem at freeforums, so only admin folk can log in

or

2) I got a little too close to the truth with the great conspiracy against me, Kitchen, Hart, Tasty, Rachel, they're all in it. Lynso must be in on it, possibly conspiring with Natalie. Hmm, going to have to be more careful in future. Trust no one.

Ooh, maybe its aliens.

Got me so down, I got me headache

Gah, splitting headache, coffee and red bull isn't helping.

What's that Blind Rage? You want me to mug an old lady and strangle some kittens? Sure, just get me rid of this headache.

Wouldn't mind it so much if she'd had the decency to talk to me about it. I thought we were friends, alas, I'm a friend folk don't talk to. I think I can settle into this role.

Maybe it wasn't so much the contents of the webcomics, but the fact that I'd had a part in their creation. I am poison. Again I think I can settle into this role.

Its difficult and at times mindnumbing. It cripples me, thinking of what has gone on, what I've done, and how I can't reach backward and change anything. It reduces relationships to binary decisions. I was zombified at work today trying to come to terms with the aftermath of the other weekend in Glasgow, I wantedto text Rachel or Zee, ask them out to dinner or some other thing, not seeking cathartia, just seeing how we get on, my thumb hovered over send and went for cancel. What could I have done differently?

...

Time passes, and I'm lying in bed still fuming. If the rule is no links to anything misogynistic, then that's the rule, and I'll call it on every link out.

Hmm, actually I'm not sure all the comics that I'd linked to actually apply. I'm sure one of them was about a guy getting his leg amputated, and another was about a guy who'd committed suicide. Hmm, she says it herself in her post, 'some of the links posted crossed the...', but she still edited out all of them.

Hmm, maybe she was just really pissed off when she edited out the links, and she too acted in blind rage,

Ah, Blind Rage, my friend and constant companion. Do you think I should actually post this on my blog, or just let it drop?

POST

Hell yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Mental Judo reprise

Finished typing up my Glasgow birthday adventure.

here

No mental judo required at the time, but its all gone a bit sour now. I guess its some kind of superpower I have, fucking crap superpower. Wondering how I can use it as a force of good.

Hmm, the dog's masturbating loudly outside my door.

Hmm, thinking about avoiding Glasgow for New Year, could be awkward.

Hank Marvin'

All I to yesterday was half a box of Cadburys Celebrations. I spent the entire day lying in bed, drawing pictures and clicking refresh. It paid off, my nuddy pictures blog had its busiest day ever, 7,000 hits in 24 hours.



It is something to be proud of. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy that something I made, people flock to see.

In other internet news, over on Facebook, Lars Frodo will be my last random addition to me friendslist, from now on, inclusion will be based on invitations to coffee or parties. No more random vague acquaintances.

Okay, so this will see me acquiring no new additions ever again in all likelyhood. But I'd get old and bitter any other way too.

See the monkeysphere thing, about how the human brain only really knows 150 people at any one time, and how that seems to contradict these folk with thousands of Facebook friends, and the whole 'Connector' idea from Tipping Point. Maybe its still valid, its just that everyone over the 150 people limit falls into a new category of folk, a 'safe' category with probably some tag to help remembering, and who can easily fall into the monkeysphere if necessary, and fall out again just as easily.

Ooh, what a terrible thing, the curse of the 'Connector' that they hold their friends so loosely. Damn me and my habit of falling for them, so months and years later, I'm still mourning the relationship, and they have topped up their monkeysphere without a second thought.

I was thinking about sening her an email inviting her to Nottingham with me, there's space in the car, then I thought the better of it, too creepy, and fear of rejection.

Chesticles

Wondering if this will work as an animated gif



Everyone needs a hobby. What I reckon is that its like that thing in rock music, how the Rolling Stones played their guitars low down over the groins with long guitar straps so youhad to wrestle with the guitar to make it sound the way you wanted it to, but the Beatles played with short guitar straps so they were playing over their hearts and had more control and it was easy to make the guitar sound right. You get these two sounds, one from the groin and one from the heart.

Its the same different between porn and erotic art.

Schedule

Right, the plan is to stick in London and go to gigs and stuff until the end of the week, then on Friday drive up to Nottingham and return to London on Saturday morning. Drive back to Manchester on the Monday 24th, stay there until friday, then drive up to Glasgow for the last weekend of the year.

No plans from then on other than to drive back to London in time for work on the 2nd.

If you want a lift anywhere or to go for a coffee, call me 07947 839984

Unedited gig review for LNFGIES

I'm just going to stand over by the toilets on my own, scribbling in y notebook, mulling over the past week and the past twelve months.

"... I had to rescue somebody you'd cornered", I thought so

I thought I'd arrived at the last Twee as Fuck of the year stylishly late, but alas, I'm early enough to catch one of the free CDs on the door. I guess there's thirty people here by 10pm. I glimpse Thorsten and Camilla sat at the other side of the room, their latest eagerly awaited podcast is a corker, I wonder if they'll do an xmas one. I keep my distance to avoid cornering them ad wonder when the bands start.

Bar staff look bored and in a glistening corner of my mind I feel like dancing. I wonder who else I know will be here tonight. that immortal conflict of wanting to see friends and acquaintances, ex-lovers and goddesses off of the internet, and yet avoid corner them, engaging in conversation.

This is notebook number five for this year so far. I haven't looked up since I started writing this evening, so engrossed in my own thoughts.

Another beer or back on the soft drinks of the driver? Its a no-brainer.

I spy another bloke here on his own, at the opposite end of the bar, we glance at each other suspiciously, I think he's jealous, he left his notebook at home. He reminds me of Robbie from IoMoPS, I wonder if he got round to doing his Christmas song for this year. May I suggest "Wednesday Girl at Xmas" or "Little Miss Maybe's first Xmas" as possible song titles.

Girl here, alone at the bar, looks like a girl from the year below at school, I scribble about it in mynotebook and avoid looking up.

Realise the fallacy in wanting to avoid being creepy, but at the same time, standing on my own, next to the toilets, scribbling. Wish bands would hurry up, get on stage and fuck off so I can go home.

I fear about how quiet Twee As Fuck is tonight. Maybe the overload of scenesters last month scared off the hipsters, but equally the scenesters decided the scene wasn't for them. Is this the damnation of the twee scene or did I just misjudge this night and there is an elsewhere to be, Stoke perhaps?

Nah, too much Hibbett for one year for me.

Four skinny lads take to the stage, no drummer, they are from Sweden, they are The Margarets. My ex-way many months ago coined the phrase for them 'Swedish kids with handbags'.

They sound like two parts early Stone Roses and one part Acid House Kings. Easy G, C, Am, D type songs with noodles and phaser effects. Stephen Pastel would be proud of the vocals, Best use of iPod for drums, crowd noise and St. Etienne/Just Joans found movie dialog clips.

Ooh, I just remembered, at work todat, a colleague was playing some Polish funk rock, and one of the songs sounded remarkably like The Just Joans's 'I Hear your the man now John'.

Stood nearby the bar here is a tall hairy chap who looks like Big Duncan from Dananananaykrod, but he smells different, he runs a label called Wax.

Ooh, Elaine the promoter comes over to say hi. I get all nervous but try to come across as a pro-muso journo, fail badly. Scribble note 'must come up with more sensible bloggery muso journo things to say in similar situations'.

I spot PopKid from Spiral Scratch and elsewhere this tall scrawny ginger girl who I;d swear I was in a drama society with at university a decade ago. The place is filling up and I feel about one chessboard row less self-conscious.

A short girl tugs on my arm and asks of I have a cigarette and suddenly I'm in Bolton, November 1995. Time travel fucking terrifies me. I'm in the Academy Bar, I can't see my girlfriend, but if I could would she recognise me? The jacket and the sideburns are thesame, besides she'd be about 14 years too young. Time travel fucking sucks.

Twelve years and one month later St. Christopher take to the stage, a two-piece tonight. The chummy Yorkshire accented between and mid-song banter in stark contrast to the shoegazery noise. They're missing their drummer tonight, relying on a drum machine.

Whilst its kind of easy to get lost in the music, the 14 song set is dragging. Its only at the last song I find they're an old Sarah Records band. Revering C86 folk probably care deeply, but I want to see the headline act.

The two people in the crowd who still give a crap shout for an encore, luckily they don't oblige.

The Buffalo Bar is full, folk chatting amongst themselves, scant regard for the music, smiling, engrossed in conversations. Time has passed, its half midnight, do bands usually go on this late, I try to remember.

Hatcham Social on last, a three-piece with a standy up drummer, matching hairstyles and torn jeans. They play in an inwardly facing triangular formation. Strange, difficult to describe songs, clunky guitars. Folk in the crowd and behind the DJ desk were dancing and singing along. It seems jolly good fun, but the words are low and the ba ba ba choruses are like another language.

The Plimptons Christmas EP

Whilst there's barely a music blog out there that isn't covering top Glasgow The Martial Arts's retro-Happy-Days-esque style of music and their free album download (. . .)

Only the most cynical of Glasgow comedy rock band ex-managers would try the same sort of Christmas giveaway. So here it is, in its entirity The Plimptons Christmas EP in giftwrapped zipped download for you listening pleasure.
gies yersel a rightclick download

Internet

So after the internet-based excitment of yesterday, now sadly removed from this blog, character assassination is only ood for a few hours, and after going through my Facebook friends list removing anyone off of the internet who I might possibly have 'cornered' in the past. I was quite shocked to discover how few of my Facebook friends are old Bowlie survivors, only a couple, possibly one or two if you discount the 'Glasgow music scene'.

Six years of my life, with nowt lasting friendships. Not that there wasnae friendships, just that I've deleted these folk for one reason or another over the past few months, I have a small updated list of reasons why. Whilst 'bunch o'cunz, the lot o' them' has merit, it can't really be that true, but then only one net survivor sent me a birthday message.

Whilst I succeeded in killing off the messageboard, that cunt Kitchen succeeded in killing off all my friendships. Pretty venomous really. I thought I was the evil one.

This one time after I'd been off Bowlie for a year or so, after both Kitchen and Quagga had sent me messages telling me to move on and how my life would be better for it, Idles dragged me out to meet Quagga and secretary in Mono. And for hours they were all talking about Bowlie, before I realised they were just taking the piss and I ought to get the fuck out of there.

Bunch o' cunz, the lot o' them.

Drained

Eep, I am knackered. The inspectory people have just gone, I'm starving and exhausted, and all there is to eat is chocolates from yesterday.

Bah, no milk in the factory for my tea either.

Its like everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.

But without the everything.

On the plus side, my Feedburner feed thing has started working. Seems like it has a 24 hour delay.
Feel free to add yersel with this button
Subscribe in a reader
If you're interested in having a daily dose of post-it note based erotic art

zzzz

I am exhausted, nackered, drained and hung over. We have some quality inspector peeps coming today and I'm stressed, or maybe its strain.

The past few days of 'birthday' celebrations, putting on this mask of sociability, making the effort of gratitude and replying to text messages when I just want to get on and have a normal day.

Dev the wheeler dealer in the warehouse here, spent a good half hour yesterday trying to get me to buy a scrap Smart Car he'd acquired. "It'd be useful for spare parts", "Treat yourself my friend", "Just in case anything happens to your Smartie", "£400, £200, £100, £50". And so I had to spend twenty minutes disuading him. It was unpleasant. I'm not cut out for that sort of thing. I would have stabbed him in the eye, but he needs depth perception for driving forklift trucks.

More rounds of present this morning as I discover mail that came yesterday, stacks of presents from Nat and other folk. I'm completely undeserving and struggle to reciprocate, the guilt is crushing.

Bedroom is a tip, laundry all over the place, looks like Jax's room on a bad day. My life is a mess, maybe I can fix it with fire.

I just want it to sleep and all this to be over.

Eeep

29

Ah, another birthday. I awoke feeling uch the same as I felt yesterday, that it wasn't my fault, I was miles away, but if I was there I would have done something, if I was nearer I would have come running.

Already on the way into work I stabbed two birthday well-wishers, one flatmate and the security guy. We've had our first crisises as there's a huge shipment coming this afternoon and the factory heating isn't working, the guys are freezing and there'e nothing much I can do until the engineer gets here, well, I could keep them warm with rounds of hot drinks, bah.

I can't wait to get home, turn off my phone and start munching my way through my birthday packet of chocolate digestives. Mmmmh.

If my gran were still alive she'd be 100 today, but she died many years ago.

Yet another IQ test

Still on Facebook, this time it calls itself the simple IQ test. It gave me 132

So, along with all the other IQ test results, here and here, my funky new average IQ is 122.

Probably better ways to spend my evening, but hey ho

In disguise

I just realised I dress like Optimus Prime

We have matching sideburns

Happy Birthday (Judo not required)

Blog temporarily made private over the weekend cos Andy Hart found it offensive and was being a dick as always. I had not enough time and inclination to sort it. But now I have.

Photies from Glasgow
here

Report from the weekend in Glasgow below...


Friday - 19:23
I sit, at long last, on the plane,
my fate in the hands of a pilot. I am
helpless.

Not quite enough time in the airport to
buy snacks, too much queuing for security, foreign
folk needing to queue jump to avoid missing their
flight. At the check in desk, so paracitic
credit card chugger. I script in my head what
I'd say, I'd ask if he has a credit card,
one of those, and does he pay it in full
every month. Does the 16% APR look set
to be reduced in line with interest rates and isn't
10.5% profit a bit steep?

The bus dropped us off, leading to
a frantic dash to the check in desk, this
immaculately designed building raped with security
barriers, they look temporary, in that way
that things do after they've been in place for
fice years.

Was running late to get out of work,
firing of a final salvo to Anorak. Why
is it always antagonistic and confrontational
Is it me? No, cos even when I'm not
there Tasty fires salvos, even when I don't
mention stuff, Tasty brings things up.
Maybe he has never stopped loving me.

It ain't healthy, this running through
my head.

"It might help if you asked The
Plimptons to write some good songs" quoth he.

"If they did, would you listen?" Untyped.



The chap sat next to me is getting
frustrated. "Fuck" he says,. The plane isn't due
to leave for another five minutes.

The stewardess with the mic is amusing.
Two lost passengers, are we sure we're
not them? Are we sure we're going to
Glasgow?

Friday - 21:37
The venue isn't open yet, The Beat Club
375 Sauchiehall Street, so I head to ra
Noodle Bar for ma dinner.

Somewhere behind me and to the left a
chap from my first year at university is having
food with his friends.

Since I stepped off the airport bus,
Central Station stop, I've been filled with
glee, I'm home and dry. The streets warm and
embracing, familiar and safe.

This one time I ate in here before a
Belle & Seb gig at the ABC, there was a
crowd of ten or so of us, bickering over eating in
or take away.

Saturday - 00:47
The Beat Club is dark and neon lit when I wander
in, through the murk I see Paul Smith
of Pin Up, and thence emerges Martin Smith
and in the distance Adam, friends. I spot
five or six people, Plimps and entourage. On
stage are some noisy shoegaze Oasis kids. If
they weren't too young I'd figure they were taking
the piss.

Text message from Robbie, he's round the
corner at The State, and seconds later, I'm there
too. Finton Stack, and a chap called Anders, the
name's a little familiar, but I've never seen
him before in my life.

The chaps are there sampling beers
uninterested in joining me at the Plimptons gig
probably awaiting the new album rather than
internecine gigging.

We chat, time passes and I return to
Pin Up Nights.

It was years ago, 1999 when I
first met John D McGonagle, one of the
founders of the Pin Up Nights franchise, him and a chap
called Graham. We'd been competing against
each other in the elections to be student
president at Strathclyde.

I didn't see John D at the gig, thing
slowly fall apart I guess.

Excitement buids before the Plimps take
to the stage. I recognise folk in the
crowd, the smiley foreign lass from
Sounds of Sweden, Chris, Dave and
Katie from the Just Joans, ancient
scenesters from long ago.

The place explodes when the Plimps
take to the stage.

They have the new album in their
minds, still raw, not recorded. The
band all psyched, Rowan smiling eyes
asparkle, Martin overcome by crazed animal spirits,
Cal the youngester fitting in neatly to the six-piece,
Adam twitching by the mic, on home turf, Neil
back to the audience sorting out levels on his
bass, Paul - eyeliner.

Whilst there are still the regular old favourites in the
set, Could I Be Loved and John Major, they
take the opportunity of a full band to play the
more complicated stuff from their 2004 debut
album and earlier demos, The Plimptons Rap
even gets an airing.

Tracks from the third album include Lonely
Old Man, who's MySpace references could date quickly
and Virgin on the Ridiculous, which sounds
terrifyingly like Elvis Costello, Paul Kelly's influence
in the song writing.

Most terrifying of the evening are the
people dancing, looks of glee on the audience's
faces isn't enough, there are mobs of
complete strangers dancing in front of the
stage, folk coming up and shaking Adam's
hand after the show.

What have they
gained since I left?

Text message from the girl, she's just
finished work, Robbie, Finton, and Anders
are there so I head off.

---

The next day, the weather's shite
as we head off to the farmer's market in
Partick, on a quest for duck eggs and
homemade sorbet.

Some further acquaintance from uni is
running one of the stalls, selling porridge oats,
my eyes glaze over as I try to recall
how I know him, but the moment passes.

Robbie and Finto are there,
four of us head to a bearby Polish Deli
for pickles and kabanos. In Glasgow its
still a novelty instead of the norm.

The weather's still crap as we sit
in The Three Judges. I leave myself at
the combined mercy of the others' expert
knowledge of fine beers and ales.

The rain is torrential with blobs of
snows, the girl's feet soaked, when we
call round at my old flat to pick up
mail. A good carrier bag full for
me to wade through an hour later at
the Bon Accord as we're served a
succession of Bloody Mary derived drinks.
The one with floaty nits of horseradish
is unexpectedly
pleasant, but
would be a
task to persuade
others to sample.

An indian
takeaway, the
film Chopper
with Eric
Bana and NCiIS
on the TV.

Its dark and wet out when we
stagger into The Cellers. Used to be the
Brunswick Cellers back in my day, now its still
cold and gloomy but utterly without soul.
Flatmate Alan and his wife Claire are here
for my birthday. They haven't seen us since
the wedding, two months ago, they
bring gifts. I melt in a gooey mess of
happiness, leaving Natalie and Alan to
do the talking. The Wolfknuckles soldier on,
Iain Thornton is still around, no one's
seen Teamie in months, the old club nights
are achanging, naked woman on fliers.
Bis still playing gigs. Working over
Christmas. Teamie appears, the
descent of the Winchester, change, change,
change.

Drinks are drunk and baby its time to
move on.

The weather's still crap as me and
Natalie find The Flying Duck, the entrance
is hidden, but inside its homely. We
strangely see Bis's Sci-Fi Steve fluttering
down the corridors like the fifth Doctor,
before we pay in and retrouve Robbie and
Finto.

The latest version of that crowd is here,
faces missing, far away, unexpected face
now here, like Big Duncan and Wake The
President, last see in London just days
before.

Robbie dragging me to the dancefloor for the Rutles.
Nat dragging me to the dancefloor for some other dancing
Me dragging Robbie to the dancefloor via Gav for Hectors
Natalie taking photies of the boys, looking cool
Fear / jealousy of Natalie and Finto chatting and flicking through my camera, then remembering faith and the phrase 'true blue'
Flashes of years gone by, similar folk dancing similarly
Somethings change, but not everything
Text message from the ex-wife, she'd just finished work and wanted to know where we were, battery on my phone failed before I could reply.
For a few seconds I thought it could be awkward were she with us.
Robbie mentioning some sad news about an ex- in London. Feelings of helpnessness "But I should do something"
More booze, more dancing.
Trying to get Ally to play Pipettes.
Trying to get Ally to put on more bands at the Winchester
Replying to Colin's post on Anorak offline.
Switching on lamps and eating cashew nuts, pilferred from the night before.
Dancing to Stone Roses.
Smiling at Finto and Nat dancing to Pulp. Did I really drag him out to the Winchester?

Did I have fun, damned right, didn't
even have to apply Mental Judo.

Next morning we stagger to the
bus station. A man dies of a heart attack
in Waterstones. I step onto the Megabus
and vanish.

New favourite comic strip here

Something in the middle of this reminded me of the bit in Tipping Point about how whilst 80% of people get jobs through "Friends" actually its mostly through "Acquaintances" who you only vaguely know, and only about 3% through close friends. You're generally in the same room/sphere as friends so you're competing for the same opportunities, whilst with "Acquaintances" there's greater opportunities

Gah!!!

To much stress, rail trouble getting to Stansted, so I'm having to get a coach, whilst at the same time, frere's asking if he can borrow my car this weekend, which will mean trying to get him put on my car insurance and finding some way to hand over my keys to him without missing any transport connection.

Need to somehow escape from work, get home, find my car insurance policy number, get back to work, somehow get out of work early again and so on.

And at the back of my mind is this nagging suspicion that Glasgow's going to be an empty shell, I'm paying hundreds of pounds, travelling a thousand miles to stand on my own in several empty rooms in aid of relics from the Glasgow music scene and people I used to know.

Whilst l'esprit d'Hibbett and Mental Judo is keeping me going, but I have blissful fantasies of being mighty mighty pissed off by the time I arrive home on Sunday night.

Success!!

Crikey, my porno video has had 79,000 views in the last two days, that beats my previous best on youTube by a factor of ten.

Not Safe for Work, but it does have a cracking soundtrack

Click here

So, are you coming out on Fri/Sat for me birthday? C'mon its Plimp/Winch respectively.

More of this sort of thing

Sometimes comic strips

I have vague memories of being Shelley Winters here


And I think this XKCD was one of my posts back when I was doing the illegal and almost got me fired Linn Products blog


In other news...

I'm getting rather psyched about this weekend. I'm going to get really drunk, make a fool of myself, lose lots of friends, sleep on a street corner, drink coffee in the 13th Note and spend lots of money.
Yay.

Vague memories last night, trying to get to sleep, of being at IndieTracks and getting a train ride in the middle of the night with someone, but I can't remember who. I worked through in my ead about thirty people from that scene, before coming to the conclusion that it might have been Robbie, but probably wasn't, was it a girl?

Mental Judo

This song, verse two.

For my birthday one year
Two of my friends took me out for a beer
They'd invited other people I knew
To come and meet me
I didn't mind
That hardly any of them arrived
But the other two spent the whole night
Going on about it
I said I do not care
If there's never anybody else there
I'm going to enjoy it for what it is
Not not for what it isn't

Mental jud
This way a round'll be cheap
And we'll be sure that we all get a seat
When we go out dancing, 'cos we're going out dancing
Mental judo

Has made me book a flight to Glasgow next weekend, whence I'll be going to Pin Up Nights to catch the mighty mighty Plimptons on Friday night and then The Winchester Club on Saturday night. If anyone fancies a drink, I'll probably be buying with wreckless abandon in the hope of making friends with acquaintances and trying to find somewhere to spend the night.

Its my birthday see, and whilst there's probably dinner and acquaintances closer to the time in London, there's a great density of friends in Glasgow, and don't forget you get extra bonus points for social interaction, rather than just being seen.

Starbright

Idly listening to music on random from my PC when Bis's 'Starbright Boy' comes on. I'd been watching the video on youtube weeks ago, but I don't recall downloading the song. Time passes and I discover that I'd been listening to the Hey Hey Honeypop podcast. Amongst the many fine fine tunes on this podcast is Town Bike's 'Trouble Fucken Rocks' which sounds a little like The Loves's 'This is Love', but a fine tune nonetheless.

The podcast was constructed by CrystalBall who I often see at gigs, I say 'hi' or make eye contact and then run away and hide. I really ought to stop hiding, neither good for me nor anyone else.

However, thus inspired, I think I might do another podcast, I seem to have lost the last one in the fog of the intermeme. This new podcast will include such songs as The Kinks's Harry Rag

So, my last night at in Swiss Cottage. Had dinner with father at our usual chinese, and talked shop for a while. Its kind of neat we have this regular thing.

I'm now on disc four of season two of Buffy, still channeling mid-90s me. Memories of staying home in the evenings writing letters to Julia, sometimes three or four letters a day. Kind of like email this century or IM, but back then it was still snail mail. Never got my end away, we kissed once as I recall. Some pyjama party I'd been invited to.

Actually, now I think about it, she fucked me over. I was a nice guy who she could introduce to her parents, so when she was going out with an arse-rapist, she told her mum it was me. And when he hurt her, I got the blame. Rectal fissure, I seem to recall.

Last saw her at Reading '98, along with Zee.

There's been a vanishing on Anorak, and I can't find anyone else mentioning it. Whilst in nature, at any moment a blur of a hawk can swoop down and whisk Brer away to bunny heaven, I prefer a little bit more warning of these things online.

One happy customer

Job done

Draft article about the Plimptons part 1

Hi, name's Chris, I used to manage The Plimptons. They're a band from Motherwell who've been going on and off since December 1999. I didn't know them back then, I was too busy slashing my arms at uni.

It wasn't until I graduated and discovered the joys of AudioGalaxy on the internet, where you could download music for free in 2001. I'd tried searching for the names of local venues, hoping to get some live tracks, when I discovered a song called "When the Supernaturals Went to the 13th Note" by The Hector Collectors. The 13th Note was this cafe/venue in Glasgow, it was a weird lo-fi tune, sounding like a bunch of schoolies crouched round a tape recorder with out of tune instruments. Luckily later that week the Hector Collectors were playing a gig, so I took the girlfriend along to sample their delights.

A ramshackle bunch, I can't remember the precise lineup of the Hector Collectors that night, but Adam the lead singer came and spoke to me after the gig, not cos he recognised me as a popular local music journalist, that came later, but becuase I was the only person at the gig who wasn't friend or family, I was a fan.

The Hectors lineup changed a lot over the years, always revolving round Adam and Iain Smith, but sometimes including folk like Big Gav on drums, Big Duncan on bass, Paul McDermot on bass, Chris Elkin on guitar, Joe Kane and Paul McGaz on backing vocals, Paul Kelly on keyboards or maybe drums and on one occasion Alex Huntley on keyboards. They had a warm fuzzy sound, of the amateur, songs about local fanzines, local crap music venues, staying in at night and surfing the internet. John Peel played them a few times.

Late 2003, Adam gets me to go along to a gig by his other band The Plimptons, playing at The Tchai Ovna. The Plimptons were different, less evolved, more surreal. Songs about not returning video tapes to dead people, and the epic Captain August rock opera. There was just two of them that first night, Adam and Martin. Martin had a red mohawk and piercings, looks like a drunk Big Issue seller. The Plimptons weren't as popular as The Hector Collectors, I wasn't sure why.

Months later my gran had passed away and I'd used her inheritance to buy a CD burner and CD printer, and set up a bedroom record label, Ivan Lendil Music, the first release was my arm slashing music from uni. It was a little crap. I needed a proper band, and so when Adam and Martin dragged me to Strathclyde Uni's Student's Union one night and asked if I'd release their album, I jumped at the opportunity.

The two piece became a three-piece with the addition of Andrew Soares on keyboards, a demo single was made up and sent to local radio and press, a debut album The Songs of Ignorance and of Inexperience was made up and stocked in the local music shops, copies were mailed out to all the music bloggers we knew. A tour was booked in a handful of Motherwell, Glasgow and Edinburgh venues. We had tour t-shirts!!

Andrew Soares was kicked out of the band one night at the Tchai, only to return briefly the following night at Edinburgh Student's Union. my flatmate Alan Wolfknuckle Patterson joined playing bass, Rowan Hackett on drums, and a new keyboard player Craig Pulsar was recruited. Craig lived in Edinburgh, but he had a car, and his keyboard skills were formidable. Adam had known him from the Littlest Album project years before.

My constant pimping of the Plimps was alienating me from internet communities and girlfriends. I got booted off the love of my life Bowlie, disavowing me and my label from an indiepop market.

Ivan Lendil Music had two more bands, The Owsley Sunshine and The Just Joans. The Owsleys were Glasgow psychedelic legends, lead by Joe Kane, they were up to their third or fourth album, it had been recorded and lost and rerecorded countless times before Adam got involved to get it to market. The Just Joans were like the missing link between The Hector Collectors and BallBoy. Bedsit soundtracks that made the hairs on the back of yer neck stand on end. When Adam first passed me their demo tape and I listen to it in my car. I had to stop in a layby, blinded by the tears.

The Just Joans ablum sold out the first run of twenty copies at their debut gig. The Owsley album, I still have a few hundred copies under my bed.

part 2 to follow

Questions

1) Who's the American who religiously reads this blog every day? and how much influence do they have here?

2) How do I do an SQL join, where I'm joining a table to itself?

SELECT * FROM "BOMs"
LEFT OUTER JOIN "BOMs"
ON "BOMs"."TopLevelPartNo" = "BOMs".PARTNO"

3) Where am I sposed to be going this weekend? What's the plan?

4) How many gigs can I go to this week? All of them?

5) Can I beat my previous best on eBay and get more than £1.20 for a Post-It?

Epiphany, wait... no

I went to bed last night suddenly remembering the pain you've caused, the heartache. I went to bed with fire in my veins. I went to bed remembering fuck that shit, there's no going back and I should never even try.

The big Facebook backlash is starting, Huge McLeod's on about how its crushing under the weight of its own spam and fucking zombies (ooh, rotten corpses), Boingboing's getting a hard on for the social niceties and being unable to reject a friend request from folk you don't like or don't want to be friends with, and there's this big swell about how Facebook's sold out on privacy now their selling all our data to advertisers. All factors that could lead to a neat tipping point.

Where next? Anorak or Twitter?

Hmm, its probably just one of my mood swings and by this afternoon I'll be clicking refresh, gazing at .jpgs and wishing thing'd be like old times.

I there anything I can do to help?

Loves labours lost

I was halfway through testing my sixth Kandy when a sudden burst of rage and jealousy came into my head for loves lost. I am Heathcliffe.

Whilst its madness to dwell on all those who've slipped away, or who I pushed, and it'll lead me to sobbing in dark corners, its still a useful tincture on life's compony.

The guys downstairs here were surprised I was so old and so unmarried and single. I had no answers and no explanation. All I've got is a series of tables, graphs and pie charts, and an undiagnosed bipolar habit of being very open, talkative, charming and kind, and also quiet, snipey, obtuse and evil.

I've started pinging more of these Londonish sex bloggers, I guess its the scene I've staggered into, so I might as well embrace it.

Still kind of pissed off that Reverse Cowgirl embedded one of my post-it animations without any explanation or backlink to the nakedchicks site. Whilst I understand thats the way the internet works, its not exactly courtesy.

So I've watched almost twenty episodes of Buffy this weekend and its kind of weird. I'm regressing or channelling the mid-nineties. Can't find Julia Roe on Facebook, but on the TV they're doing all teenagery things like watched indian movies in bedrooms late at night cos they're too skint or young to go out and do other stuff.

I'd be so nice to just hang out with lonely souls and do nothing, but alas, I've constructed myself in a way that makes that impossible.

I found Faye on Facebook for maybe the second or third time, but still didn't click the add to friends button, I think I knew about the "Fuck that shit" thing with her years before Idles introduced me to it.

Ooh, ooh, ooh though, I went to the V&A with Axel yesterday and then for food and drinks.

hmm, ice cream on my own

Here and there

I'm house sitting at Fiona's again. Its nice here, I finally get to watch the Buffy box sets I've been harbouring. My Laundry's on in the kitchen and I have a huge tub of Phish Food.

Managed to get all the Naked Chick Post-its in the post and a few Just Joans CDs, I need to make up some more copies and also select some more Post-Its for eBay.

The chick on Reverse Cowgirl embedded my Vicky Vette animation but without any backlink so I rant about it here.

Natalie's trying to drag me up to Glasgow for my birthday. Now usually I spend my birthday alone in my bedroom, (2005, 2006), but maybe I ought to make an effort.If I head up on the 7th I could catch the Plimps at Pin Up and Robbie might be able to make it out. I wonder who else I can drag out agains their will.

Work/Play

Very busy and stressful at work, I'm having to force myself into being a manager rather than a hands on engineer. Round peg square hole type problem. I'll get there eventually, I just need to be able to switch from overall big picture to fine detail work quickly, and get someone to help out the turntable guy.

So last night I went along to The Windmill in Brixton for Lostie's Sequins gig. They were pants, but My Sad Captains were yet again London's answer to The Great Money Trick and The Laural Collective who were also playing were fabulous. I'd taken Axelle along with me, its been weeks since we last saw each other. Getting home from Brixton is still a pain in the middle of the night, especially with the underground closing so early.

No review or photies for Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy, my photies are crap, and being the first online the next day doesn't contribute to the betterment of the human race. No scrawled review as my interpretation of the gig is miles out from everyone else, and its awkward.

I saw The Loves the other week, I've been writing and raving about them for eight years now, I've travelled hundreds of miles countless times to see them, but the other week, they were pants, the sound was crap, the execution was pedestrian, the crowd were disinterested, the crowd felt awkward and adversarial unto themselves. Alternatively the consensus on the thread over on Anorak was the complete opposite, it seems I was wrong.

So people reading LNFGIES would get a completely unrepresentative view of the show, the band and the crowd and random readers. Even if I'm honest and just write what I see, its wrong and unjust to the bands on stage and the promoters promoting..

And right now, I don't quite have the backbone to do it in the face of adversity. I don't have the self-belief to write as I see.

Drummond Times

I think I missed this Bill Drummond snippet

The solution

Herein lies the problem.

Skipping blissfully into a magical world I life to call real life, where I'm the manufacturing manager for the UK's leading hi-fi manufacturer, and I ask my friendly neighbourhood bunch of frothing at the mouth communist/socialists what I can do to help dismantle the capitalist state, they tell me to fuck off.

I think DS has got my take take on environmentalism

Refreshing

Early phonecall from frere yesterday morning lead me to drive over to visit my niece Amelia and famiy on the coast of Essex today. She's grown a wee bit and it a little bit more sentient than last time. Still obsessed with books, or wanting me to read every book she has. And she keeps coming out with new words that her parents hadn't taught her, weird stuff like knowing Spiderman was on this evening, or the rudiments of the game of Snap.

Driving over was a tunnel of channelling, with no radio in my car, my mind jumped on all it could, the whole Romford thing and going past the church where my brother and Lou got married, was it five years ago, all that business with a girl the first time round. Then I have these fuzzy memories of family stuff, doing uncle duties with a girl sat next too me looking beautiful in Manchester.

I realise that no matter how many times I click refresh, a girl doesn't update her blog, and her photos mean nothing and there's no email and no bowlie, and nothing out there. Maybe I'm just greiving not having anything to play mind games with, but would I?

Maybe Tobin had it right, you should bury the corpses in the walls and run away.

Neat the way the media aren't mentioning much about Tobin's conviction for Angelika Kluk's murder or his previous violent attacks on teenage girls, in respect to the current Brookside plotline-like discovery of bodies at his house.

On the way back to Alperton I fell asleep at the wheel, my car collided with some and left huge dent in one of the wheels. Its kind of shook me up a lot.

Maybe she's in a bad way too and would welcome communicae, coffee and kite-flying. How would I know.

Crikey the nuddy site has had 50,000 hits this month already. Kind of warm fuzzy feelings but also a feeling of cheating, lowest common denominator crap. Porn, traced. Whilst the stats and the dollar a day from google bring me joy, its a lonely life.

I've spent many hours toda going over in my head all that I've lost, the girls who slipped away for no good reason, or I've pushed away for whatever transient reasons were in my head that day, and no ammount of saying sorry will bring them back into my arms.

Instead I must don my mask once more and stride out into the big dumb-ss world, cease my lurking in the shadows of gigs fearing people, friends and acquaintances, and I must once more become a king of this town.

It took three years in Glasgow, I don't have that kind of time here.

Bidding war for my erotic art over on eBay here, here, here and here.

I am the imagineer, I invoke and I channel, I surf the synchronicities and coincidences.

Yesterday's noticing of Nat's absense from Facebook lead to the arrival of a package today from her, of the post it note pictures I left in Glasgow a month or so ago, along with the sketch that she did of me in bed.

Today I ventured to Brent Cross shopping centre, its the most like Manchester's Arndale Centre I've been in a long while. And if I feel that way, the others would too. There was invokation in the air

Can't seem to find young Nastily on Facebook anymore, I worry a little, but daren't read her blog in case I read something that makes me head do those things.

sPazAmping - Putting yer music collection on random and then commenting on the results, as named by Shoelace

1. Hells Bells - AC/DC
Alan would be proud of so nobel a start point
2. Last Train to Transcentral - The Blue Man Group
Whilst the song sounds just like the KLF original I only know of the Blue Man Group from Arrested Developement the TV series, of which I only know from Nal raving about it and lending me the boxset
3. Raindrops keep fallin on ma heid - manc_ill_kid
I can't remember the name of my old guitar teacher, he taught me it, based on the Manic Street Preachers cover which was a B-side to some Everything Must Go era single. Vaguely recalling that the tape claimed the song was recorded at a live show on some specific date, and halfway through the singing chap forgets the words, whilst when I was at his gig the night before he remembered all the words fine.
4. Pink Flower - Daisy Chainsaw
Each time I see Queen Adreena play live, I see more of Katy-Jane Garside naked. Got muff last time.
5. One by one all day - The Shins
What is this?
6. Sunken - The Village Orchestra
No memory of having heard this before, kind of ethreal and pishy, and long too. More than five minutes
7. Why Won't you talk about it - The Radio Dept
Funnily enough as this song passes, I am talking about it in the Bowlie Chatroom. Rum flows in my veins and I can't feel my toes
8. Annawaltzerpose - Camera Obscura
What ever happened to Camera Obscura's John Henderson? Did Tracy-Anne really murder him and bury his body under the patio? I miss the times when we all used to hang about
9. Rock n Roll Star - Oasis
If I could go back and re-live the past thirteen years, I think I'd hold onto Zee bit tighter, and try not to let go. But shit, apart from that I'd probably do exactly the same things all over again. The same crap bands the same emotional rollercoasters, the same writings. All the same, but just holding onto Zee a little tighter.
10. Feel Good Hit of the Summer - Queens of the Stoneage
11. I hear you calling me - Jonathan Richman
Cunt

mostly

Headmush

Headmush day again. Weird Facebook dreams like the old Freecell dreams of school, and also this weird
bit in the dream where someone had figured out how to you blue sky as a computer screen, and so there were these huge things in the sky that appeared to be jpgs, not so much floating or projected, but just set as if someone had replaced blue with an image.

Also in my mind was this morning a random channelling of wandering around Chateauherault, god knows how many months ago. There was sunshine and overcast skies, there was lush grassland and green trees, and friends with cameras. So so far away.

Wading through Facebook last night I discovered a startling retroactive invokation. While my Rotten Corpses song was written self-consciously ambiguous and unspecific to give me a warm blanket of denial, it seems, the girl in my head was at a gig I was at, and I didn't see her, but she may have seen me. Instead, I lurked at the back with my notebook and camera thinking to myself how much it was like the mid-nineties and Manchester, how right I was.

Nothing planned for this weekend. Chris needs new shoes and a selection of new jackets. More knockbacks being added to the list. An old friend did get in touch about going out, but after several bad experiences I realise I'm desperate, but not that much.

Compare and contrast:-

a) Tracking down local ex-girlfriends on Facebook
b) Tracking down local retired pornstars on Facebook

New IQ test

Hi there all you Chris Gilmour IQ fans, and I know there's one or two of you from all the traffic from google. I just took thing claiming to be the European IQ test. Only twenty minues for this one, but seems easy enough.

This time my IQ was 138, which along with the distracted one from uni and the Facebook IQ test gives me an average of 118.

An underlying thing about internet IQ tests is that they're mostly taken by people in the developed world who've had a decent education and are computer literate and who know they'll get a good score.

Jack

Its getting like this

Money-making schemes

Latest money-making scheme from Chris Gilmour Enterprises - selling my Post It Note erotic art on ebay.

Bidding starts at 50p, feel free to have a punt here

Six Song Set

So I was at this gig last night, feeling all shy and awkward, putting down these feeling to the events of the past three years. Fighting the urge to get out my notebook and scribble notes.

I waited until halfway through the fourth band, started listening to the lyrics, felt less than I dd when I was feeling awkward and shy and ran away home.

Here, camped in my bedroom, I watched the film Cashback, felt less pervy about spending so much time drawing nekkit chicks, and then scribbled a list of band names. I want to be in a band, or on stage, pretending to live some life. I want to be in a band I've never heard of, who'll only play one show and then vanish, leaving some kind of scar or memory. The Royal We have split already and last night I missed catching Patrick's new band, Correcto at The Buffalo But at the same time I wonder, what happened to the band he had with Andy formerly of Bricolage, did they ever end get a name, and what happened to Glam Job?

So Sunday morning, trapped in my room with narly the internet for company, I penned my first new song in almost two years. The song is called Rotten Corpses and I'm calling the band/act/stage name "Six Song Set". Still need to come up with anoth four songs.

Anyhoo, the songs is downloadable from here

I wrote it whilst staring at my bookcase, so the lyrics are :

I learnt Python for Dummies,
And I taught myself SQL,
Now I program databases,
But I've forgotten how to spell.

So I moved to London City,
Starting a new life in this town,
Digging up rotten corpses,
Trying to see if you're still around.

I write songs about you in my bedroom,
Its really small and gets cold at night.
I thought I'd see you at a concert.
Maybe I won't, but you might.

You still surf the internet,
You'll read something and get annoyed.
Did I do that on purpose?
Maybe we're just paranoid.

The chords for the verse are GDCC x4
And for the chorus its like FGAmAm x2 FGEE FGCC

I think the song is more engineered than written. The computing references at the start are a bit MJ Hibbettish to be disarming, then I saw my London A to Z to start the chorus, calling it London City as Alan did when the Wolfknuckles last played. I think the 'rotten corpses' refers to old friends I haven't seen in years, but it could just as much be disparaging about ex-girlfriends, kind of self-destructive for me to use it, more so that that's where I got the song name from. Then on the last line of the chorus is the first use of the word "you", suggesting I'm writing this song for/to someone, picking up on this in the second verse, although its kind of a lie. This is the first song I've written in years, I probably meant to say blog entries, but that wouldn't fit. Again, being disarming by talking about my bedroom in the second line, rather than following the interest about "you". Now with the concert thing, I am people who goes to concerts, and maybe "you" are too. The last verse, fuck, that could be about anyone, but its a little too self-referential given this blog post, for a more detailed discussion on the subject, read this.

Luckily my ennunciation in the song is so crap most of this will be lost on any listener.

If any gig promoters are reading this, Six Song Set are available for gigs across teh UK.

Also, if you, reader blog reader/random visitor really want to help, you could go over to Last.fm and approve the photie for Six Song Set here

The Just Joans - Looking Like Rain video

Post-It Note animation playlist

Three knockbacks on my mobile phone and I've done nothing all day

Website of the day

Carwash

Type commands into the box and the three skimply dressed women do it. Favourites include "wave", "wash car", "dance" and "show pussy"

Of replies

Whilst her overriding memory is of me shouting at her at a party, mine is of walking hand in hand with her through Elysian fields and halcyon days.

Kind of the same as me having no recollection of the worst memories Leanne as of 2000, or just my memory of the event is different.

Shrug, and keep striding onwards I guess.

My internet access at home was off last night, and it seems to be a good thing. I couldn't spend my whole night clicking refresh, refresh, refresh.

Instead I went to the supermarket and after a few dizzy spells and steadying myself on the grocery stand, I actually bought food, and vaguely healthy stuff too. Well, sufficient for three portions of fruit/veg a day, rather than my one portion and a Mars Bar that I've been living on.

Also, excitement last night as I draw lots of nuddy women pics with the vague idea of an experiment. If I put up a new picture every hour on the other site, will it draw an order of magnitude more traffic than usual? I did one picture using pencil crayons too. Pushing the envelope, see.

Alas I arrived at work this morning and got online to find a reply from an ex- from a decade ago. She's right, my unpleasant nuances haven't changed and still cause me relationship problems. Exactly the same things with countless other ex-s. I thougth I'd changed in the ten, eleven, twelve years, but I haven't. Its weird like that.

FFS why can't SQL do heirarchy tree things easily?

I don't care if its a recursive join. I can easily write a three column list, (id, part number, parent) all my parts and all their depenancies and with duplicate lines, and I can easily, by hand, layout the damned heirarchy tree ting, so why does the entire internet database admin community not have an easy bit of cut and paste SQL code that'll do it for me.

I've got 3GHz of speed, 1Tb of hard disk memory and 2Gb of RAM, it shouldn't matter if there are five levels of recursion or a hundred, this damned 'puter should figure it out in a few seconds and display it.

Lazyweb, help me!!

gAH, PANIC ATTACK AND MEMORIES OF HANGING OUT AND STUFF AND ALL KINDS OF JUST NICE THINGS. sEEM TO BE GETTING WORK DONE, BUT MY HEAD IS MUSH.

cHRIST, i'M GOING TO BE THE LIFE AND SOUL OF THE WEEKEND. iF IT DOESN'T WORK throw money at it!!!

mAYBE i JUST NEED A HOLIDAY? nAH, THE CRUSHING LONELINESS IS KILLING ME.

wE ARE NOT ALONE IN FEELING LIKE THIS

I am... Pron-Ninja

Once again, webcomics depict my way of life



Alas, even as I write here, my post it note pron site is getting more and more plaudits from across the blogsphere. One day someone interesting from real life will reach out cos of it, one day. I'm in the top 500,000 most popular blogs in the world now, only 499,999 to go. Boing Boing must be quaking in their boots.

Christmas comes early

Currently dying of loneliness in the evenings, no one's online, I know no one nearby in this town, anyone I do know ain't answering their phone. I need to get off the internet, but its all I've got. Anyone I know online is out drinking with their friends and making new friends.

...must dig myself out...

I was going to do NaNoWriMo this year, and my head and subconscious have been working overtime on ideas and weird stuff, pilots having nervous breakdowns, and crashing into things that aren't there, triggering a chain of events which makes all electricity stop working for an hour or so, but it turns out it was juts the mobile phone network in a small area, but people got scared. Some computer scientist tryingto figure out what it was the plane crashed into, a world reknowned scientist infact, the bloke who created the E programming language which is used in everything from mobile phones to kettles and air-conditioners, very good mates with Stan Lee apparently. Flatmate was starting a new band, lots of guitar distortion pedals, but in a basement flat there was a party going on which we gatecrashed. And all the time people are realising that they live in a post-apocolyptic world, they just took a while to readjust their understanding of what the apocalypse looked like, its everything you see on the news.

Christmas comes early as the postman delivers a CD from Russian Spy Camera, some American band who sound like Franz Ferdinand 2 should have sounded like, and also from Amazon, I have a 320Gb portable hard disc, should be useful for getting all the MP3s off of my old PC. Whilst the storeage capacity is huge, its only an order of magnitude and a half away from the golden 8Tb capacity that's required for the singularity.

I read somewhere that 8Tb is enough to record DVD quality footage for a year. If you can get a drive that that big and portable, you could hook it up to a portable digital camera and record your life for a year, you wouldn't have to remember anything. Any book you read, any note you write and song you here, everything for a year. With OCR software and that music recognition software and a bit of ingenuity, that's what the singularity is all about.

Alas, I'm still stuck in my bedroom wondering why folk I haven't seen in months and last time we met was really bad, aren't reciprocating, and I'm still lurking at the back of gigs for bands I don't care about, unable to talk to anyone else.

I think I'm basically dead.

Crikey its warm, and I've used my skills at work for once. I phoned up a supplier querying a quality issue, and we worked it through and found a solution that decreased his build time and improved quality and reduced build time and storage space at this end too. The sun, it shines.

Last night was rather jolly, well, I ploughed the depths for a few hours, resorting to trying to watch Buffy Season 1 played at 7/8 speed, something to do with the DVD drive on my laptop. Almost sobbing in frustration, I need to acquire a DVD player and TV at some point when I have the space and the inclination.

At the moment I've ordered a 250gb portable hard drive so I can port all the mp3s from my old PC to any other computer in one swoop.

It was late when the landlord dragged me downstairs to eat party food and join them for firework lighting, but jolly good fun. Holding roman candles and firing rockets at each other, lighting catherine wheels and using them as frizbees.

Kind of like back in '94 with Binny and Jim Ashton round Worsley Woods. One or two flashbacks of '97 in the woods round Inverness with the Royal Engineers too.

dckx

How? How? How? How can I have insomnia last night with all thoughts going through my head, only to find that xkcd has, once again, done a comic that neatly resolves it.

Luckily I still have 1995 to draw from. That Boo Radleys refrain "You'll never touch the magic if you don't reach out far enough", it went through my head for years. Did I reach out far enough?

And gnawing my way back into them last night ramblings, can I reach in?

Gah, ma heid's mince this morning. Dizzy spells and paranoia at work. Could be sleep deprivation or my turn at only eating Mars Bars during the weekend, and lack of human contact.

Bit of a crazy rant last night, but it did my a world of good. I gotta find people in real life, not finding people online to meet in real life, and be damned those who do.

Betty Page

Gah, intense bout of insomnia.

You know how sometimes you read so see something that does your head and makes you feel sick and adles your emotions, well I can do that to myself with my eyes shut.

I found myself at a loose end on Sunday night, well, the whole weekend was a loose end, but with laundry done and three hours to kill I set to work doing an animationy thing, its what I do, and fed up with rifling through pron, I found some videos of folk dancing and Betty Page prancing.



The music, I couldn;t quite decide which obscure up and coming indie band to gift five thousand viewers to, so I hopped to Last.FM and picked the last thing any friend had listened to, The Besties.

Sometime on Monday I need to post the video up on my post it note nuddy site, along with words. So in my head this dark November night is Betty Page, and The notorious Betty Page the film what I saw in Edinburgh and those times and those feelings. Christ, someone off of the internet, what chance did I have, being in real life and all that. Folk off of the internet, you only see the weeest fraction of so your heid makes up the rest on its own, the internet words hint at one thing one trait and your head fills in the rest compared to reality, where what you get is what you get. Sometimes your heid gets it right, and sometimes it doesn't. But the only way to be sure is to rust reality.

What am I getting at?

And why did drawing thirty or so picture of Betty Page fill me with anger towards David Kitchen?

Something to do with monkeyspheres.

The human brain has a monkey sphere of about 150 people. Thats how big your tribe cane before before you start writing off people as them and us, before you pigeonhole people and forget them or disabuse them.

You can say "fucking students" or "fucking forign folk" and not count the ones who you actually know or are friends with, cos they're in yer monkeysphere and 'the rest aren't. If you're inside a messagebaord then you're inside the monkeysphere of everyone on it no matter how far away they are, or how close they've been. It makes it so much easier to forget.

And so the rage, for being excluded from the monkey sphere of those who were once so close, and no matter how hard you fight and how hard you try, youre still fighting harder and trying harder than those on the inside have to. And its so much easier to appear to slip away.

God knows what the academics ave to say about folk who force their way into your monkeysphere, but I bet there a classication for them. Its just rude, its not pleasant. But Its not their choice. I as just trying to stay alive, to stay friends.

Time passes and I wonder if I can ever get back.

I still can't sleep, I just see video clips, youtube ones that stop to buffer every feew seconds. I've had no human contact all weekend, and even the Loves, The School, The Fischers show wa a lonely experience. I can't type up my notes from it, it doesn't do justice, whatever the gig was like for peple there, wasn't what I saw.

I saw cider drinkers feining taking photos of each other, but actually taking pictures of one of these folk I know off of the internet, without him seeing. No good can come of this.

Even more accolades for these damned clips. This one is seven seconds long and now has these badges of honour

• #6 - Most Viewed (Today) - Film & Animation - United Kingdom
• #72 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Film & Animation - United Kingdom
• #17 - Most Linked (Today) - United Kingdom
• #2 - Most Linked (Today) - Film & Animation - United Kingdom
• #54 - Most Linked (Today) - Film & Animation
• #10 - Most Linked (This Week) - Film & Animation - United Kingdom

I can't win. The gig review website vanishes into obscurity, but the raging success of a pron site is depressingly bland. There's got to be more to life than this. But alas, there isn't, I've checked, I've searched, I've been there. Whatever it is out there is invisible to me. I stand in the shadows with scales over my eyes and my ears.

Oh crikey

How many boxes must I tick to not feel so alone? Is my problem that I'm not having the conversations, I'm just shouting and waving my arms about. Or trying to talk to the wrong people.

Not just me then,


But others too

Oh thank fuck, something of interest

Cyanide and Happiness has gone all xkcd on our asses.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Usually his style is different

Almost reminds me of when I did my own tribute

Falling again.

Gah, I've been in bed all day so far surfing the net. Last night's Loves and School gig was a quiet and lonely affair for me, I spoke to no one, drank two pints of Guiness and headed home. I need some friends.

Over in the land of overflowwing success, the post it note website got over 5,000 hits yesterday and one of my You Tube videos has over 2000 views in the past 24 hours, christ, its just 21 frames looped, with some random music soundtrack. Its cheating.

Alas, I can't bring myself to type up the scrawled notes of last night's gig for the knowledge that the pron get a hundred times as many hits is crushing.

No gigs this evening and no positive responses to texts and messages.

I need chocolate, lots of chocolate, possibly salad too to balance it, and a collection of Buffy DVDs.

Why's there no one to watch it with?

My Facebook friendslist is just relics from the past, folk hundreds of miles away and years back.

Must resist the urge to read blogs, they either haven't been updated or there are people having lives without me.

I have the energy and the talent, why am I so bored. Where's my guitar.

Even if I pick up the guit and record something, what's there to do, no gigs, no listeners, no interest. No point.

Right, shower, clothes, shop, chocolate

Its one of those busy days at work again. There was an unexpected delivery this morning so we've been runing about trying to re-jig all the stores without it affecting production.

I just want to sit back with my 'puter and work on the database thing, type up last night's gig, pimp the new Plimptons video and check Facebook every few minutes to see if she's replied. Its not quite the worst thing she can do if she says "no", far worse is just ignoring.

The Plimpton video has received a couple of honours over on youTube

• #11 - Most Viewed (Today) - Film & Animation - United Kingdom
• #57 - Most Linked (Today) - United Kingdom
• #4 - Most Linked (Today) - Film & Animation - United Kingdom
• #25 - Most Linked (This Week) - Film & Animation - United Kingdom

Doesn't it make you proud

Still fun and excitement over on the drawings site three thousands hits yesterday, the same today already. I've had to adapt my style a wee bit, more writing and each picture has to have a title that stands out against the backdrop of other erotic writings blogs and photies.

School tonight and tomorrow too. I love those post-Loves motown sparkly bands.

Crikey, its another one of those days when the post it note website gets thousands of hits. Youpron.com (typo) has just launched a blog aggregator thing which tracks selection of prono blogs, rather than porn sites, and my site was one of the lucky ones.


I have no qualms about hijacking this huge increase in traffic to pimp the Plimptons's new video.

In other news, nothing much really, just abusing Facebook and messaging people from the distant and murky past.

New Plimptons video

The video to The Plimptons Rock n Roll pt 3

Also known as Cupboard of Porn, this video is work safe, unlike my last go at it which was just porn. This one is based on a storyboard drawn by Adam J Smith, animated by myself. 75 individual post it notes frames of animation and a couple of recycled animated video clips.

The song is taken from their 2007 album Pomp, available on Amazon, and was named after Gary Glitter's Rock n Roll pt2

Crikey, Heaven is above your heid has a photie of Idles at IndieTracks. How come I can't get indiepop exposure like that for my stuff?

Ooh, hang on, I can

I'm Happy

This book arrived for me today

It seems to be incredibly intimate and personal, funny, touching and relevant. Oh, the human condition.

Flicking through it and thinking "thats me and Idles", "me in '99", "me and Rachel", "me in '95", "Didn't I write one like that?", before quickly passing it to Merhdad on my right so I didn't waste too much of my day.

Its the book of the blog Beautiful Revolution. Post Secret never quite worked for me, I always felt it was laughing at people, everyone interprets things differently, it brings strength to some. But A Beautiful Revolution was somehow more in tune with my thoughts.

Gah, more of these damned people visiting the blog from searching google about the IQ test thing.

Leanne's birthday today, got her something off of Amazon, maybe one day I'll get my bass guitar back.

Here, help me to pimp my video by digging it here

Labours

Today I am mostly sat on my bed surfing the internet. Last night's failed attempt at watching all of Season 1 of Buffy resulted in the creation of this

74 post-it notes of an acquaintance in from Glasgow's music scene, why? Why not? Its kind of art and we all want to get into film somehow. Feel free to spread the video far and wide on every music and animation and arty website you happen to dabble in. I could become a professional post it note animator.

and I'm sure there was stuff I was to do today, but I can't remember for the life of me what it was. This evening there's some kind of Iranian Sufi rap gig I promised to go to.

There appears to be a quality podcast here, what you can download here if you're either interested in music or a Plimptons completeist. There's got to be a fan out there in the world who likes them other than me. I kind of make money out of them, I'm biased.

It plays heavily on my mind that over on Last.fm The Plimps have over 5,000 listeners. Thats more than twice as many as their contempories, friends and new idols. But seem to me to be less popular, it can't all be cos of my marketing efforts? Can it? My powers are so worthless. On the other hand, they're doing better than this mob and they have devine lineage

This looks charming and unrelated.

Stephen Fry's Blog and MJ Hibbett's blog and song notes are joys to read and far far better than either watching TV, Buffy Season 1 DVDs or going to Halloween parties.

In this one, I was there on several occasions. When he went AWANDERING, I drove past him and thought to myself "That's MJ Hibbett", and in the evening was this Plimptons/Hibbett gig, possibly called Plimp Up Nights, then the next day we dragged the Hibb to the Plimp studio cos it'd be fun, and thence recorded the Hibbett Last night From Glasgow video webcasts.

This reminds me of Glasgow / Bowlie

I am Dr Samuel Beckett, a traveller through time, trying to right what was once wrong.

Natalie came down to visit London yesterday, we met up with Holly and went out, first to The king's Head, site of the 2005 Belle & Sebastain Lookin' back if yer feelin' Sinister Bowlie meet up thing as photied here



Before moving on to a club called The T Building. Rather jolly dance music with no vocals, we hadn't taken enough drugs so we just pretended to dance and made out.



Yeah, I know we broke up about three weeks ago. But that doesn't mean we can't still go out and have fun and things and stuff.

I am trying.

Aw man, this is the coolest thing ever.

I gotta start using it everywhere, religiously.

Theme guidelines are so the way forward in life.

Too much Danananana, I've lost half of my hearing, the top half, I can still make stuff out, but its pretty unpleasant, and most of the review is about Jax when I finally write it up.
Here, join me for some unpleasant Dananananaykroyd action

via Naked Chicks on Post It Notes

In other news, XKCD is a cracker today