Pink Ribbon Day

Last Friday was nominally Pink Ribbon Day, in support of the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign. Now, I'm all for Breast (Cancer) Awareness (hur hur) (I couldn't resist) (I mean, how could I, really) but it wasn't until I browsed closely enough to the collector and read the slogan upon her realised that I realised the proliferation of pink balloons were supposed to represent large, nipple-less boobs. That tickled my fancy so much I had to photograph them; having done so, I had to give the poor buffeted collector some of my pocket change, as well.

On the morning of the same Friday I had to apply for my own job. DON'T ask, it's a public sector thing. Mine is not to reason why, mine is but to do and, er, well, reason why, really. And so on. It's the first proper job interview I've ever had in my life; every position I've held to this juncture has been the result of headhunting, nepotism, and/or bloody coup.

The shortlist for the position held only two names; mine, and that of My Rival. My interview went well, I think, thanks mainly to the coaching of The_Sifter and others. After it was over, I hung around the office waiting to get a glimpse of My Rival as he arrived for his turn over the coals (he was old and poorly dressed) (that's saying something, coming from such a sartorially-askew figure as I), and then went out for a while and stalked around the wind-blown canyons of Thorndon listening to Burzum, trying to invoke some kind of a black-metallar's curse on him. It must have worked; later-on one of the panel told me that he was "crap, though not as crap as we were expecting".

I spent most of the weekend getting drunk, and trying not to get even more drunk.

I still await the official word on whether or not I got the job. Come on already.

..my rival / I'm gonna stab him on arrival..

- Alex Chilton

Thanggyou... thanggyou vurry much... goodnight

Oh yeah. Awesome. Good ole' Marion Hobbs won the election-night battle agin' Battlin' Mark Drunk-ski and retained her Wellington Central electoral seat. In a fit of euphoric altruism, Hobbs instructs her staff to spare no expense in plastering a huge "thank-you" message to her supporters, outside her electorate-office.

And so they do; on a budget of about $2.30, and laying waste to more than 10 sheets of A4 printer paper, this is what they came up with.

It's a damn shame she's no-longer the Minister for the Environment. She could really show industry - nay all of the rest of us - a thing or two about sustainable celebratory practices.

Stuff on my cat

Kate linked to this site. I went there. It's just awesome.

Mother of all nations

Because I don't want to come across as some sort of replicant like out of Blade Runner - lacking any sort of basic empathy - I'm going to make a few obligatory noises to indicate my sympathy for Judy Bailey having been booted out of her newsreading job on One News. *Grurt*. *Mbpphhsprrt*. *Knnnnnnnnnee*.

There. I bet you're glad that's over.

They should get Eric Young back to do the 6 o'clock news. He could vid-link the newsreading. And show us his scars, and prison-tatts. I mean, if he has some. I know I would.

On an unrelated note, Wanda Harland is desperate to find out who the "celebrity basher" is. Drop her a note if you think you know - I think she's running some kinduva sweepstake. Not sure what the prize is (tho' the rumour is it's a pair of really ugly running shoes).

Me? I think it's just some kind of cynical attempt to boost traffic to a blog. ;)

UPDATE: RPK done a funny cartoon about Bailey here. Oh and I know the title of this post is an appalling pun, just shocking, and nowhere near my usual standard (of appalling puns). Shut up. I don't care. Stop emailing me about it.

Run-down weekend

The_sifter gives a fair account of last Friday night's efforts. He does omit to mention about 3/4 of what we drank - including the COLOSSAL shot of Fernet the bartender practically poured down his thoat at Motel - but he's probably playing it cool for the ladies. Shown is some of our party detained by an amusing notice en route to the "Courtenay Quarter".

Y'know, am I getting old, or does that goddamn handful of city blocks lose some more of its class every weekend. At the moment I'd almost rather go drinking in Tawa - and that was a dry suburb until 2002. Or perhaps our friend Anon can us take out for a night on the tiles of Newlands sometime?

[Speaking of ladies; apparently I was the only one who found this notice, posted on the department's intranet, more than a little amusing. Actually when I saw it I choked.]

I had a very quiet but very productive rest-of-the weekend. On Saturday I was mostly unscathed by the consumption of the night before; I even tried to liven up the afternoon by drinking a Bloody Mary but it just put me back to sleep. So I watched a very cool and alarmingly twisted French movie from a few years ago called Les Amants Criminels (Criminal Lovers). It starts off a bit psycho-sexual Bonnie and Clyde or even Badlands, goes a bit Grimm's Fairytales, and then goes places I don't even want to know about. Highly recommended. Includes cannibalism.

Because I'd slept all day I was awake pretty much all night, and took the opportunity to finsh mixing-down the new The Stumps album. (Yes, another one). It has finished-up sounding amazing; I even uploaded it to my label-guy in the States and he confirmed it by sending me an email in which there were a lot of CAPS and EXCLAMATION POINTS! Now I need to find a backer - person or persons who wants to lend me $1,500 to get a record pressed and get my label off the ground. Know any music-lovin philanthropists?

Anyway, that all went so well and I was on such a buzz about it, I got up early early early on Sunday and finished off my solo collaboration with Howard Stelzer. Howie lives in Boston, is a really nice guy, and makes amazing music using cassette-tapes and a pile of recycled and home-built electronics. The collaboration has come out just grand. It is supposed to be being released soon as an LP on Eclipse Records.

Late on Sunday afternoon I went along to the closing party of the 91 Aro Gallery; I got to see The Rick Jensen Trio play some estatic free-jazz, which was really nice; what was even nicer was that the gallery told me they'd sold some of my CDs. So, that night I went out to spend the proceeds and get wrecked with David, Paul and The Jarman. This is the best photo of the night.

Yesterday I had the day off - some time-in-lieu owing to me from the massive stockpile I have accumulated in the last three months. I spent most of it sleeping. In the evening I went to see the new Wallace and Gromit film with The Jarman. Entertaining enough, I suppose. I suspect I'm a bit over the whole thing, though.

Mapua

Thursday and Friday last week I made a flying visit to Mapua, near Nelson, to catch up with my work assisting the clean-up of the former Fruitgrower's Chemical Company site.

Mapua is a lovely-enough place, but unfortunately it's somewhat overrun by hippies, Germans, patchouli oil, and abominable art. Actually, there's nothing much to distinguish it from the rest of the Greater Nelson and Tasman region, aside possibly from the 30-year legacy of the chemical-dump and it's associated health hazards. There's also a proper "naturalist" colony somewhere about.

But I fear I am being somewhat petty; the sun was shining, as it is wont to do, and the birds were singing, and you could hardly hear the Environmental Decontamination Ltd. plant rumbling away barely 100 metres away as it did it's thing; it's thing being to treat truckloads of contaminated material using a world-beating NZ-invented nil-environmental-impact treatment method of blasting the soil with ball bearings and glass marbles until all of the nasty chemical compounds break down. At the right we have my view of the treatment plant, taken from the stylish temporary-office-in-a-container on the site.

At some point on the Friday afternoon, somewhat overwhelmed by the glorious weather and the spectacular scenery, I went and stood on the front balcony of the world-reknowned Smokehouse restaurant, and shot for you, dear readers, this panorama:



It's a truly magnificent vista, as we sweep around from the view of the island directly opposite The Smokehouse, across the beautiful Waimea estuary, and fetching-up on the shore-frontage of what has been shown to be one of the most contaminated sites in all of New Zealand.

The coffee at The Smokehouse is truly some of the most awful I have ever tasted, but it's not the coffee they are known for. They are famous for their smoked fish of various sorts; all, presumably, caught right there in the estuary, and all, presumably, [sarcasm] relatively-free of the Aldrin, Lindane, Dieldrin, DDT, and other highly toxic dioxin pesticides which have been leaching into the water for at least the last 30 years. [/sarcasm]

On the Thursday night I got unfeasibly drunk with my brother, sister, and some of their friends - it turned into one of those "stay up all night and drink everything in the house" nights - and spent an uncomfortable couple of hours face down on the couch fighting a losing battle with the urge to expel the highly-acidic toxic-feeling liquids in my stomach. Eventually I gave up. Not really any kind of remediation, but a definite and successful decontamination, at the very least.

Bling of a Saturday night

While not even remotely in the league of the $1600 bottle of Hennessey cognac I spotted coming through duty-free recently, my $90 bottle of Herradura on Saturday night was by far the single-most expensive alcoholic beverage I've ever bought.

And, like the Islay single-malts it occupies this kinda price-bracket with, it's utterly delicious, and worth every cent. And in this writer's humble opinion, the nicest tequila around.

Storm-water my bitch up

So I get back from a couple of days in Nelson to this sight, across the road from my house:



and the sudden horrible realisation that my life is going to get considerably louder in the next few months (see second paragraph).

UPDATE: What I'd quite like to know, though, is how the goddamnhell they managed to get a resource consent which allowed them to start work at 6.30 in the morning.

Coming-up on Drinks-After-Work...

We examine the differences (and similarities) between a 1951 Martini made without gin, and a Dirty Bastard Bloody Mary made with horseradish sauce.

In the soon-to-be-bigger-and-better MP3-blogger section of our show, we will present no-fi electro (Coin, TV On the Radio), quite possibly the funniest album title ever (TV On The Radio's OK Calculator), greatest pop moments in Norwegian black metal (Emperor's Anthemn to the Welkin at Dusk), my new favourite band (Animal Collective), possibly even better than all this, brand-new-unreleased-and-quite-feasibly-never-to-be-so tracks from your gracious host; and many, many, more.

Also: local bar reviews (in the section entitled If Wellington Never Had Another Like This We'd Never Miss 'Er, Truly); smarmy-twat 'travel' writing (in the 101 Reasons Why No-one In Their Right Mind Would Live Here section); Blog-reviews (in the Sad, Miguided Also-Rans section); and the Definitive Compendium of Obituaries of Bob Moog (starting with the Economist one, probably).

EDIT: How much like Dr. Strangelove does Robert Moog look? Uncanny... kinda...

Obligatory post-election post

It was a good night, there at J's, watching the election-sport on the box. Drinks and pasta and friends of friends and shouting witticisms at the telly. That sort of thing. The only thing that would have made it sweeter was if one or more of the following had been banished from NZ politics forever:

Winston Peters (I guess you could call 16 hours in bed on Sunday with the mother-of-all-hangovers a "tangi", if you really wanted to)

Peter Dunne (I guess you could call being a snide petulant twat after the results came in "showing a bit of personality", if you really wanted to)

Rodney Hide (I guess you could call spending 5 weeks bullying the poor people of the Epsom electorate "time well-spent electioneering", if you wanted to)

Don Brash (I guess you could call not conceeding on election-night "a victory of sorts", if you wanted to)

But it was as if the Nation of New Zillud, like some sort of collective Powdered Toast Man, cried "cling tenaciously to my buttocks!" And by 'eck, they all did. And all lived to collect another MP's salary.

But I fucking swear, if Winston Peters somehow pulls another 1996 trick and ends up forming a government with the National Party after keeping the country on hold for 3 months, I'm going to steal a light-plane, fill it full of explosives, and fly the bastard into Parliament myself.

PS. The irony is, Mr "yawn yawn" Styles, that if your fucking product was as half as good a tool as it was sold to be, I'd have enough time to post three times a day. Print that out and stick it on your white-board of shame, you seedy Churton-park-poon-chasing prick.

I'm back. I'm bad. He's black and I'm mad.

Yep.. back. To be honest, not particularly thrilled about being so. Not that the internet appears to bear any proof of me ever having been away (apart from on this discussion forum).

I'm a little sleepy and I feel like I left my head in Sydney at the bottom of a bottle of Smirnoff Blue. I'm truly sorry for the lack of blogging. Oh, and get fucked Styles.

How's your day going? Mine is going:

Oh, am I awake? Must be time for a bloody mary and to go to the pub. Do I have to move any gear anywhere today? No? Good. Oh crap. I have to put on clean clothes and go to work. What's this strange feeling I am experiencing... why, I think it's hunger. How strange to be feeling hungry before 11 at night. Whatever can be going on. Ewww.. people I have to talk to about work stuff. Even worse, I have to make some sense. Can I go to the pub now? What about now? etc.

I've brought back some photos, and I'm pretty sure I didn't bring back any communicable diseases. Stay tuned.

[want good food on the airplane? then read this...]

I found this and thought I'd share. It's about the last time I went on tour. I published it once in my 'zine Looking for a fish-drying plant.

...so a few months back I was in this band and we were playing gigs in christchurch and dunedin... and we flew to chch and back on air new zealand and we told 'em we were a cultural group and registered to receive special meals of various types -- the guitarist got vegan which was pretty bad and the drummer got islamic-halal and that was worse but i really scored -- i was jewish-kosher and that was really quite a good deal... 'course i nearly gave the game away when we boarded the the flight attendant asked me if i wanted to open the meal tray myself and here's me thinking "oh yeah you cook it and i'll open it alright" so i said yeah ok and we sit down and then there he is with this sealed tray full of all this kosher food and i looked at it and said thanks and then he sez "are you going to open it sir? because we need to start preparing it right away because this is just a short flight" and i realise that i had to open the fucken thing then and there and verify it's kosher-ness or something and pro'ly say a prayer or something but i just sorta broke the seals with my thumbnail and looking kinda stupid gave it back to him... but the meal was pretty good when they brought it... and it even had a certificate of kosher-ness signed by the rabbi who prepared it... so that night we played christchurch and the next day we went in a car to dunedin and played that night and the next day we came back to christchurch quite late and i went to this party with some people i knew and we ended up going to denny's y'know the all-night restaurant... we went there at about 4.30 a.m. and we had some food and then it was pretty much time to go to the airport for the 6.20 flight back to wellington.. and by this time i was having trouble staying awake on the plane for long enough to eat my kosher breakfast of course which the flight attendants had to prepare specially 'cos of some administrative error and it took them ages -- we could see wellington by the time they presented it to me -- and i couldn't eat anyway cos of going to denny's and all but i felt compelled to try so i wolfed a bit of it and i got indigestion and then had to work real hard to stop myself from laughing when three of them came up and started apologising for their incompetence and virtually bowing and scraping (seriously -- there was no placating them -- they were acting as if i was some kinda v.i.p. and was going to order them to be executed or something or that they were going to pop off to the galley and commit hara-kiri) and the head flight attendant made a special point of pointing out the junior f.a. whose fault it all supposedly was which was a really uncomfortable moment because initially i said "oh it's no problem" and then she pointed her out again and virtually commanded me to commit the hapless girl's name to memory -- actually i felt like a victim of some sort of cultural stereotyping -- are jewish people particularly reknowned for complaining and merciless filling-in of customer satisfaction surveys? (only perhaps in the popular-media seinfeld-woody-allen sense of jewish people)... it was really ridiculous... simultaneously feeling annoyed at this racial discrimination as well as being annoyed and embarrassed that, travelling as i was under false pretences, i wasn't actually deserving of such discrimination, and frustrated at the culture of complaint and litigation we now seem to belong to where something like that can't go wrong without people having to both feel like they have to make a big thing out of it and defend themselves in pre-emptive strikes against the making of the big deal, and appalled thinking "how often does this happen to other people"... especially real jewish people maybe even not from n.z. who really want their kosher breakfast and might get it a little late on an early-a.m. flight from christchurch to wellington, and have to put up with these horrible desperate fawning arseholes... maybe they mistook my tiredness for grumpiness -- should have just told 'em i'm not a all-nighter-and-then-morning person!

so i was going to say next time you fly air new zealand tell 'em you're jewish and sit back and wait for the fun to start but about a week after this air n.z. announced they were stopping serving meals on domestic and short haul flights and i couldn't help feeling more than a little bit responsible.

Going to Sydney-o with my effects units in my pack...

Yeah.. going to Sydney on Thursday morning, to play some The Stumps shows and a solo gig too. Here's some links with info if you think you wanna make it.

Friday night (2nd Sept) I'm supposed to be doing a solo seht show at the latest Impermanent Audio event, and on Saturday night The Stumps are playing in the Sound No Sound extravaganza at The Mandarin Club. No idea where the show on Sunday night is; guess we'll find out when we get there.

UPDATE

Sunday September 4th
The NZ Possie @ Yvonne Ruve {104a Hibernian House / 342 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills}
plus whoever you wish to collaborate with.

Spam, spam, spam, spam...

In the last few days I've received various unsolicited messages from Puffin A. Earthward, Recollection T. Geometry, Senselessly P. Angioplasties, Dionysus Schwartz, and, uh, Himmelfarb.

Working for a living never looked like so much fun.

Blog, death, and blog-death

Because every other bastard has been posting (even Kate), I thought I'd better do something. So - since we have several orders of business, let's get into it.

1. Charles is a dirty ho.
The other morning she woke me around 5.30 making all sorts of racket. "Oh" thinks I, "Charles has brought a mouse in" for she was making all the right sorts of running and tossing and jumping noises. After a brief period of silence I got up to check and she surely had caught a mouse, for I saw her sitting there in the cold grey of dawn, looking very pleased with herself, chewing with a mouse-tail hanging from her mouth. "Good on ya Charles" I thought, "give it what for" and went back to bed.

An hour later I was again roused from my slumber by Charles doing her daily morning-wake-up routine. This involves jumping on the bed, standing on my chest, saying something like "rrah rrraow" and giving me a big wet sloppy Charles-kiss. A big wet sloppy Charles kiss is a strong nuzzle/headbutt where she sticks her big wet sloppy cold nose in my face, and sometimes licks me on the mouth as well. Usually I manage to avoid the licking; this morning I did not and I spent several minutes feeling sick and trying to convince myself that I hadn't just earlier seen her chewing on vermin. I succeeded partially; the self-deception lasted until I got up and stood on a still-juicy mouse-tail in the bathroom.

2. Java my script up, masher
Hey the second piece of Java-script I've ever written is now live on this page. See if you can spot it. (Tip - you might have to refresh the page a couple of times).

And of course if you're enough of a nerd you'll know how to inspect the page source and so on. So get fucked. I'm mainly talking to you, Styles.

3. My new site.
I've been working on an electronic bio/portfolio. It's as simple as possible - it's all HTML with no scripting or anything, 'cos I want to be able to drive off of a CD-ROM. To test it I loaded it onto stephenclover.sphosting.com. I'm also experimenting with an idea to foil email-address harvesters - encoding my email address backwards in the "mailto" link. I'm not sure that it's so obvious what to do once your mail app fires up, though. Ultimately I will write a piece of code which decodes some sort of an encoded email address - like my own derivation of base-64, or the weird encoding they use in SMS messages or similar... and this will work like a treat!

Anyway if you wanna check it out go right ahead but be warned; pop-ups galore!

which leads me to...

4. Good, free, no-ads, no-pop-ups web-hosting.
Is there such a thing? Any suggestions. Subdomains are ok. Or else, anyone want to lend me some webspace and a subdomain while I get this thing going? I plan to ultimately get a domain and proper hosting and so on, but for the moment, I'll consider anything.

5. WTF of the week.
Is it my imagination, or are cullottes somehow back in fashion? Perhaps not ones like those (right) but cullottes all the same?

Floaters

I just found out that the new girl one of my friends is seeing is someone I was seeing for a while about 18 months ago. This's never happened to me before; it's a bit weird.

I recently worked out that one of my favourite blogs, one I read all the time, is written by someone I went to high school with. Now THAT's even weirder.

Oh, and I just discovered something floating in my coffee. Which is weirdest of all; since I made it and I definitely didn't put anything in it.

*sings It's a small world after all...

Sightings and double-takes

Really irritating not to have my camera on hand this morning as, riding the bus downtown to work, spied groups of people dressed almost exactly like the wonderful and enigmatic The Residents, prancing along Lambton Quay. Was enough to cause me to violently double-take, injuring my neck slightly. Principal difference between these folk and The Residents of course is that The Residents tended not to wear sandwich-boards advertising brand new Vodafone 3G services (sorry, not going to link to Vodafone).

Wonders at feasibility of following...
me: "Hey, Boss, gotta go home sick, neck hurt quite badly."
Boss: "Oh yeah? How'd ya do it then?"
me: "Turned head sharply cos thought spied lengendary San Francisco anonymous art-concept multimedia pop-band walking along Lambton Quay. Cricking noise, yelps, etc."

All downhill from there, one suspects.

More The Residents here (erm The Residents 'bog' [sic]), and here.

Geek slut

...is one of my favourite blogs. I've been meaning to link to it for ages. His tagline reads "Geek. Soldier. Slut. A glimpse of an American horn dog" - and what else do you really need to know? Well, it's insightful, entertaining, and usually more than a little frightening. WARNING: this blog may or may not be work-safe; depends where you work, really.

Ross P. Kettle's newest cartoon is again a damn funny one; at least for my New Zealand politics-enabled readers.

NP: La Monte Young's A Well-Tuned Piano. I'm not going to upload it, because it's about 5 hours long.

NZD and a QP

Tonight I went to the launch of the new Quality Planning website. Minister for the Environment Marion Hobbs (you'd think I'd be able to link to her somewhere.. but no..) spoke, and everyone was happy and clapped. I drank wine, and then I drank some more. I wasn't exactly responsible for the QP site; but put it like this - if certain parts don't work, it's definitely my fault.

This is my new NZD profile photo. I really like it. It's from my blue period. I think I look really hot and I hope all the ladies do too. I quite like how it looks like someone has smacked me in the eye. Actually it looks like someone - or even different people - has smacked me in both eyes. In reality it was about 4am when I took the photo and the only thing that had smacked me in the eye was a dozen beers and several martinis. I particularly like the ambiguous way that it looks like I've got two double chins; or else only one chin and two Adam's apples.

If you couldn't tell, my webcam sucks. Actually, it's not my webcam; that's all we're going to say about that.

Tonight the rest of The Stumps came around. I played them the new album I've been mastering for several months now, and only just completed. They loved it. We got drunk and played it very loudly. We were supposed to be practising but we never got around to it. It's only two weeks now until we go and play gigs in Sydney.

Last night I dreamt - once again - that I was having sex with one of my workmates. Well, it wasn't even just sex - it was a full-blown relationship and house-buying and interior decorating and all that crap. And the workmate in question was someone with whom I have hardly had anything to do; have hardly spoken to for more than 12 months, even. Am looking forward tonight to finding out if the curtains arrive and if we get the loan approved. And so on.

Love is a fist

I felt sick all day today. Sick like going to get sick, like soreness building up in my throat and so on. Had to go to the doctor (The Mill Liquorsave) and get myself a script (1 litre of Teachers)... just took my medicine (a COLOSSAL belt of whiskey followed by another big glass to be sipped) and feel a lot better. Hence I am sitting here, eating my tea (stir fried bubble'n'squeak - leftover rice, leftover pasta, some chopped cocktail olives...) and blogging.

For weeks after The Jarman left, I was telling everyone that I was loving living alone. And I was.. I mean, I wasn't lying. I really was enjoying my new-found freedom and ability to do whatever I wanted and get really drunk all the time and be a bit of a slut. I just realised, however, that it's all bullshit. I hate living alone. What I meant, when I told ppl I was enjoying it, was really just that I was enjoying feeling less bad about coming home after 9 or 10 hours and spending several more hours on my own stuff. I was feeling less guilty about working late into the night every night recording new solo seht material, or building the next The Stumps album, or correcting the artwork for a new release, or making up 20 parcels of CDs and sending them to radio stations and magazines all over the world... fuck I just read all that and it makes me sound like such a shit boyfriend; forget you ever read it and just carry on about yer business, ok?

I'm listening to the first Mr Bungle album, and it's so GREAT! Goddamn it, it's nearly 15 years since my best friend Iain Wickens brought it to school and said "Man you gotta hear this album, it's got the new Faith No More singer on it, it's INSANE". And it's nearly ten years since one of my 'friends' (read - fucken loser who I lived with for a while) stole my CD copy of it. To this day I don't believe that the dick realises that I knew all along. Arrgghh.. long story, ok?

The other day I was feeling adventurous so I whipped up a profile on NZ Dating; "I'm gonna wreak some havoc" I said to myself (and to the_sifter, if I recall correctly). Wish I'd never bothered now.. just keep on getting emails from people whose feelings I can't bring myself to hurt.

Ms. Brown is going off, if you hadn't been keeping up. Also the_sifter aka J 'to the muthafucken dancing-with-myself" S has appeared in the drinking buddies on the right. *hic*

There's no place like home... there's no place like home... there's no place like home....

Ross P. Kettle's latest cartoon...

is really funny.

Good weekend, all?

NP: The proto-goth/industrial granduer of the Cocteau Twins' Persephone, from their 1984 album Treasure.

By the way, calling it proto-goth/industrial isn't by any means intended as an insult; just trying to place it, y'know?

A good bloody mary, these days, is hard to find

I like Bloody Marys a lot, but I often find other people don't. Possibly it's because they're piss-weak (the Bloody Marys, I mean); possibly it's because they (the non-believers) don't know any better. Either way, I myself like them very very hot and strong. I could number the bars where they make a Bloody Mary to my taste on the fingers of one hand; the number of bar-staff who do the same are even less numerous. So obviously, I had to start making my own.

I've linked to this Bloody Mary recipe [drinksmixer.com/drink581.html] before, but to be honest it's on the piss-weak side. There's a good number of variants if you inspect the table on the right side of the page, and some of them get pretty fancy - clam juice? Wasabi anyone?

Ultimately, however, I had to come up with my own special recipe. I've been working on it for weeks and weeks now, and I'm finally ready to share it with the world. It's not actually too special, but without any further ado, I give you:

Stephen's "Dirty Bastard" Bloody Mary

90 ml (3 oz) pure tomato juice, chilled
60 ml (2 oz) vodka of moderate quality, chilled
30 ml (1 oz) sherry, preferably dry
15 ml (1/2 oz) Worcestershire sauce
8 very generous dashes of Tabasco sauce
a big squirt of fresh lemon juice, preferably straight out of the guts of a fresh lemon
a large pinch of sea salt
a big grind of pepper
at least a tablespoon of horseradish cream
a big ol' dash of celery salt

Combine in a shaker with ice, shake long and hard and then pour the lot - ice and all - into a shortish, round glass.

Forget about all that celery stalk shit, just slug it down. You'll possibly be left gasping, and with a very tingly feeling in your guts. That's exactly the point.

Notes:
1. All liquid measures based on the rough equivalency that 1 single measure = 30 ml = 1 (liquid) oz.
2. Chilled vodka is vodka kept in the freezer. The better the quality vodka, the less it freezes, or so I understand; conversely, the more it freezes, the more of those really sexy ice crystal thingies form inside the bottle.
3. A generous dash of Tabasco sauce is obtained by upending a bottle of Tabasco sauce and thumping it with the heel of your hand. The ejaculation is voluminous and spectacular, so make sure your aim is true.
4. For sherry, Noilly Prat will do. Whaddaya mean you don't have any in the cabinet!?
5. You'll wanna be careful with the horseradish cream: not too many additional ingredients, and no chunky bits. Seriously, the chunky bits are EWWWWW.
6. The name? The resulting drink is not not the most attractive shade of red - any painters out there will know what I mean when I say it's as if I hadn't cleaned the all the green out of my brush before I used it in my red.

Ms. Brown got over it...

... and now she's been added - in her rightful place - to my drinking buddies.

That's not her picture, though... that's just an image of Melissa Ethridge (following chemotherapy) I'm temporarily leeching from some website. I found it by querying google images for "ugly lesbian", and it returned pictures of Ethridge. Wow.

Melissa Ethridge rocks. So does Ms. Brown.

Miscellany, thirst

I feel I should point out that I am fucking terrified is some sort of a new-lad response to the somewhat-earnest I am not afraid (thanks to Smackie for this link too), which went up following the recent bombings in London.

Cereal disappointment of the week: Kraft's Grape Nuts, which bear no relation to grapes or nuts, but are rather much more like little pieces of barley shrapnel which have a tendency to shred the roof of your mouth.

I wish I would stop dreaming about having sex with my workmates. And mainlining heroin into my large intestine (I don't even know if this is possible, let alone a common-practice).

Oh, and right at this moment, I really really really need a drink.

Fear is what I feel...

I am fucking terrified (thanks to Smacked Face for the link).

Bring me the liver of John the Baptist

Remember when you were a teenager? You were starting to drink, but you had no idea about the power of booze. The best thing that could happen to you was that you would get hammered on cheap vodka and spin around a few times and fall over and throw up, y'know "Welcome to the awesome power of booze, junior" and that would pretty much be the end of it. You now know your limits.

Being a little bit older than that now, but not any wiser it would seem, I performed an experiment similar to the above exercise the other night, with spectacular results. The purpose of the experiment was to see how many martinis and vodka 'n' limes I can safely drink in two hours. The results of the experiment have been documented in the latest edition of an esteemed medical journal, but I will summarise them here as 0 < x < (i+j) (where i is the number of martinis and j the number of vodka 'n' limes). The experiment was actually conducted in two parts - (1) as above and (2) a follow on experiment to determine how much hard liquor I could then consume as quickly as possible and still remain standing.

I started at home with three home-made martinis - put it down to a combination of boredom and nerves. That night I had a date of sorts ("a couple of drinks after work") so after having fortified myself so effectively, I strolled downtown to meet her. We repaired to the nearest dark, quiet bar (Good Luck) where we drank vodka dressed with tortured lime flesh. After two of these, we moved on to Tupelo where Ms. Brown was holding her birthday drinks. "Brainwave" I thought, "I'll buy a round of 1951 martinis for myself and 'the date'". Beautiful drink, beautifully made, the only problem? She didn't like it. No problem, I fetched for her another vodka 'n' lime. Not one to waste a beautiful drink though - beautifully made and all - I sculled her martini and then, feeling strangely thirsty, finished mine off shortly thereafter.

It all happened in an instant. I distinctly felt a hand reach in and tie a knot in my cerebral cortex. I swayed. All my powers of reasoning and logic were gone. I was having trouble starting sentences, and even more trouble finishing them. And I needed air. Date decides it's time to go home. End of part (1). The answer to the problem in question is less than 5 martinis and 2 vodka 'n' limes, in about two hours.

The rest of the night passed in a whirl. One Manhattan and another vodka 'n' lime later and I began to have trouble staying on my feet - not helped by my enthusiasm for a birthday dance with Ms. Brown from which we both ended up sustaining injuries on the concrete. We left Tupelo soon after for a friend's place where we were served COLOSSAL vodka 'n' sodas in those COLOSSAL wine glasses - they really were inappropriately large. Later still we walked back across town to Havana. You must bear in mind that it is only due to the precepts of logic and the post-match analysis that I can relate this to you as I have absolutely no recollection of doing so. At Havana I couldn't talk, could hardly stand, and was having trouble seeing. Got separated from the others, couldn't find them, panicked, and went home, stopping only for chocolate milk and random kleptomania at the mini-mart.

I'd actually advocate performing a similar experiment every few years or so - it was a quite useful undertaking - but obviously not in quite the same circumstances. My predilection and propensity for making a complete twat of myself in front of the people for whom I have the least desire to make a complete twat of myself in front of is quite breathtaking.

Image courtesy of http://agrino.org/elocon/fun/04

Kitty hates us

From the deserted service station across the road from my house...

indie-show 1-August-2005

Indie show time again (well, it was on Monday night):

Billy Corgan | All things change | The future embrace
Interpol | Slow hands | Antics
Bailter space | Glass | Tanker
The Sound | Desire | Jeopardy
Gang of 4 | 5:45 | Entertainment
Band of susans | Ice age | The word and the flesh
The Unicorns | The clap | Who will cut our hair when we're gone
The Jam | In the city | In the city
Maximo park | Graffiti | A certain trigger
Interpol | Obstacle 1 | Turn out the bright lights
The Killers | Smile like you mean it | Hot fuss
Richard Hell and the Voidoids | Blank generation | Blank generation
Bush tetras | Things that go boom in the night | Boom in the night (compilation)
Shellac | Song of the minerals | At action park
The A-frames | U-boat | Black forest
The Fall | Frightened | Live at the witch trials
Luna | Still at home | Rendezous
Luke Hurley | Mona lisa | Make room
Ride | Totally forever | Totally forever (single)
Billy Corgan | Now (and then) | The future embrace
Luke Hurley | Make room | Make room
Arthur Russell | That 'sus / wild combination | Rough trade sampler CD
Arto Lindsay | Cross your legs | Envy
Comets on fire | Pussy footin' the duke | Blue cathedral
Heka | Twilight | Last spiritual gas-station (before the end of civilisation)
The Buzzcocks | Something's gone wrong again | Singles going steady
Tindersticks | Jism | Tindersticks (s/t)
The Elected | Go on | Me first

I played two songs from Billy Corgan's new album; two from my favourite score of the moment, Luke Hurley's Make Room LP (more Luke Hurley, also here); and rockin' new tracks from The Unicorns, The Killers, and Maximo Park which fit in beautifully amongst old favourites from The Jam, The Sound, Gang of 4, The Buzzcocks, Band of Susans and Richard Hell. The A-frames and the Bush Tetras completed the post-punk extavaganza.

I also featured another track from old friends Heka, and something off my brand-new LP copy of Shellac's At action park - and goddamn it sounded good!

Ranos has left the building...

but he's got his blog up and running. Check it.

Subway she is a porno...

Reasons which may go some way towards explaining why Interpol weren't as great last night as I was hoping:

1. Apparently they have been on the road for 18 months. I was exhausted after one month touring; I can't even begin to imagine how they are feeling right now.
2. Their setlist needs reworking. They opened with a dirge and the bulk of the middle of the set was all songs in the same tempo and pretty much in the same key as well. More variety required. The end of the show and the encore fucking rocked.
3. Uber-hipster bassist Carlos D's proto-fascist outfit (and here and here); don't get me wrong, I love it, but it may have invoked bad energy from some fucken hippies or something.
4. Hiring a touring keyboard player from a one-man Kraftwerk tribute act is a mistake. No one wants you to jump around behind the keys like a twat, dude, but just let us know you're alive from time to time, ok?

Ok, ok, just joking about #3.

I always watch the bass-player at gigs, for an indication of how the band is feeling; it's a simple trick but more often than not, it works. Last night Carlos D. was pretty much fixed to the spot, looking like he was having about as much fun as I was having; that is until the 2nd to last song in the main set, when he suddenly sprang into life, prowling the stage and skipping around waving his huge bass. Then the band woke up with a bang, and roared through the last songs and I was suddenly nodding away with a huge grin across my chops and it was a real shame when the house lights came up, signalling the end of the show.

And I still have trouble paying $60 for a ticket to a gig.

All images (c) the owners where applicable. Click on any photo to follow link to owning site.

Cold turkey... has got me... on the run...

Last night was interesting. At the last moment I dragged myself to Mary Newton Gallery for the opening of their latest group show, featuring work by David Cauchi (see David's invite here) (my previous excursion to a DC opening) and The Jarman. David is showing a new ink-on-paper work which is bloody good (there's a moderately poor - by his own reckoning - picture of it here) even if he's ripping me off to buggery. (Ha! Just kidding, Dave). The Jarman is showing some more of her ever-popular plastic-bead burning houses.

You know how when you're in a serious relationship, your friends become her friends and her friends become your friends and so on? That all goes to the dogs when you break up. How weird was it walking into a room full (there were 100+ people there) almost exclusively of The Jarman's friends. I had such an instant paranoid seizure ("just add water! ready in seconds!") I almost had to leave immediately. As it was I had to latch on for far too long to the couple of people I know independently. It was a huge relief when Gary F. arrived.

Later I went to see Kung Fu Hustle, which screened recently in a sold out session in the Film Festival (I almost prefer the alternative name Gongfu). The film - a parodic kung fu farce - is hilarious. Set in 1940s Shanghai (which looks awfully like a Chinese comic-strip version of 1930s Chicago) it has huge and epic kung fu battles featuring techniques ranging from the sublime - The Palm that Falls From Heaven - to the ridiculous - The Toad, and Lion's Roar ("Ooh I didn't know Lion's Roar could be done with a loudspeaker! I surrender!") as well as comedy domestic violence, a gang of sartorially-extremist axe-wielding mobsters (the "Axe Gang"), ancient musical instruments which fire volleys of invisible whirling blades, the worst-looking kung fu masters you can't ever imagine (The Beast - the world's worst killer - was a sort-of cross between Hannibal Lechter and LOTR's Golem/Smeagol) and a ridiculous romantic subplot/flashback scenario involving the lead character as a scrawny, runty picked-on kid and a mute girl.

Highly recommended.

UPDATE For some reason, I forgot to mention that Kung Fu Hustle is screening at the Embassy.

Drinking buddies galore

myegoism blog is another local Wellington blog and it's a great read too; on the strength of her deeds alone, Kate has joined my drinking buddies (on the right there ->) and been added to the Drinks-After-Work all-time honour-roll.

Kate writes candidly and hilariously about her experiences with the type of gallows humour possibly unique to the recently-dumped. Being in the same boat I identify strongly. Oh and if you're wondering about the picture, she's currently incognito. This is, after all, Wellington NZ - home to little more than 100,000; it's definitely better to play on the safe side sometimes when it comes to being read and recognised.

Sheeit, just what I needed. Someone else to go drink for drink with of a weekend.

UPDATE Kate's picture kept disappearing - may or may not have something to do with me trying to leech it - so I made my own copy and I gave her a little black cat as well. It's meant to be her cat Salem.

Funny

I thought this (shiver-me-timbers) was really funny.

Random beauty #1

So I'm sitting working on a track in my multi-track software. I'm having to make some very, very minute adjustments to the gain on a couple of tracks because they are clipping in the mixdown. I'm using the volume-envelope tool on the waveforms; suddenly I've turned a couple of 2D geometric outlines into a beautiful rendering of snow-covered mountain peaks. (Click on the image for a closer look.)


God bless sub-harmonic boom.

Intertwingulation

Trust Jeremy to know a word that dictionary.com doesn't, and is only archived by Google on three different pages on the web. That's not a very popular word at all.

It refers to (at least in the context with which Jeremy levelled it at me) the practice of linking to other web-resources all over the place within your own web-content. Apparently I do it very successfully in my own blog-postings.

In direct contrast to the obscurity of the term, however, the practice of intertwingulation is very common and in my opinion, is one of the main factors that makes the "interweb" what it has become. Another way of looking at it is that I am doing the googling to save you the trouble.

Wasted Brains

Dan Mayer is the latest addition to my Drinks-After-Work Drinking Buddies directory over there on the right sidebar. Dan lives in Denver, Colorado, USA, and as well as a regular blog, Dan writes a very popular regular column reviewing energy-drinks (Energy-Drink Reviews). The good thing about his reviews is that often they provide interesting and useful information about the possibilities of mixing each energy-drink with various alcholic beverages. Dan also has randomly-displayed images and lots of interesting "Wasted Brains" projects.

Last night I headed straight from work to the local bottle store, from whence I obtained one bottle of Cointreau, one bottle of Tanqueray gin, and a cocktail stirring spoon. From there I proceeded directly home, where I made 1951 Martinis and drank them. Yes it's true, Jeremy's cogent remarks on my recent post detailing the events of last weekend left me with such a goddamn thirst that I felt possessed of very little alternative than to mix and serve my own. So I did. To myself. They are a very, very, very good drink and almost-unnacceptably "moreish". I was able to write several important, candid and uncharacteristically-lucid emails under the influence; a bit later, when I had Indian takeaways with Shana at her new place in Lower Hutt, I was even inspired to order entirely the wrong thing in burst of intoxicated and misguided enthusiasm.

Being

On a whim I just updated my blogger profile, and I selected Chemicals as my "industry". While technically untrue, you can only select one "industry", and I felt that my "industry" was much more multi-facted than one selection would allow. Anyway, considering the name of my blog and my activity of the last few weeks, I felt Chemicals was somewhat justified, if not as an "industry" then at least an occupation. It also turns up some interesting blogs when you follow the link to see who else in the blogosphere (neologism of the day, possibly) is in the "industry" of Chemicals.

I was also quite interested in the "industry" of Religion.

I still didn't get around to filling in some of the the other fields like Interests and Favourite Books and so on. I guess maybe one day I'll feel focused enough to choose some.

Forget about Drinks After Work...

How about "Drinks Any Goddamn Time Don't Be Shy You Feel Like It".

Friday night turned rapidly from 'a few beers after work and a martini at Js house' to a 'a few beers after work, a cocktail-binge session at Js, and then 6 solid hours trawling about town in a frantic whirl of booze and taxis and good bars and bad bars and good music and bad and smoke and mirrors and girls picked-up and dropped and lunging and turning and breaking into restaurants through their back doors and... home somehow and sometime and asleep 'til midday.'

Every time I go out with these guys I seem to have skipped breakfast or lunch or breakfast AND lunch and you really think I'd learn wouldn't you but I haven't yet.

Saturday started with three bloody marys at home and then into town to drink beer and cider with J; suddenly we're back at his place again and there's more martinis to be drunk and South African cheese and biltang to be consumed and then the Mexican flatmate brings out the very expensive tequila... then it's - needs must - off to see The Jarman where I have to do my bit and I make my way through the best part of a bottle of pinot noir.

Sleep came easily around midnight and I suddenly wake at 1420 hours Sunday, sure in the knowledge of one thing only and that is that I have to be at the cinema across town in 40 minutes. Two bloody marys is as good a breakfast, brunch and lunch as any, so one shower and two large gulps later I am at The Paramount in time to see Werner Herzog's doco "The Grizzly Man". (BTW cheers, ENZEDFF, for the stink Werner Herzog director profile) (no offence, Rose).

After the film I have to take stock. In order to shore up my situation carbohydrates are called for so on the way home I call into a Japanese grill for some "fried dumpling". At home I just have time for two more bloody marys before I have to head to Te Papa to see another film, this time a doco called "In the Realms of the Unreal", about reknowned outsider artist Henry Darger (scroll down for bio).

Back home again later it's 10.30pm and I'm sitting in front of the computer, composing and drinking pinot. A friend txts me "What you doing?"."Composing and drinking" I txt back, "Come on over if ya wanna" and needless to say she does so we knock off the rest of the bottle and when she leaves at 1am it's all I can do to down a couple of fingers of Teachers, finish off the track I was working on and hit the sack about 2am, rested and ready for the busy work week ahead.

It's now Wednesday night and I think I'm still recovering.

Tit fer tat

Rumour has it that the originating email outing the two scoundrels involved in the ex-sports-star-turned-tv-celeb drug-scandal came from inside TVNZ. Now a (bizarre) (seemingly-revenge-motivated) story surfaces a few days later that a TVNZ presenter is facing charges of sexual violation and assault. Somehow the ACT party got involved (oh wait, TVNZ is the state broadcaster, so of course the whole thing has to be discussed ad nauseum in Parliament, and the government blamed) and Bob's your uncle... or if not your uncle, a very good friend of your father's.

And so on and so on.

Play nicely, kids.

Helpless

Haven't had much time to post lately. I'm still trying to get over the irony of Mark Blumsky supposedly being beaten up out of sight of the inner-city security cameras he was so instrumental in having installed - somewhat controversially, at the time - when he was mayor.

New drinking buddy for July

Exciting! I got me a new drinking buddy there on the right ->
Martha aka Wanda Harland is from Petone, Wellington, New Zealand, and her favourite music includes a band called happy mondays etc. Umm, which is pretty cool because she's the only blogger in the entire known universe who's heard of them (I suspect this is because it's her own band).

Wanda wants to know who the celebrity drug fiends aren't. And quite frankly, so do I. I betcha anything you like at least one of them isn't who I thought it was. Not that you can tell anymore, for in fear of being dragged ass-backward through the civil courts in a libel case, I removed the names. (Not that it did me any good, for Google has helpfully cached the post).

Name suppression doesn't always serve the interests of the many - in this case, all the ex-NZ-sports-stars-turned-tv-celebrities who aren't currently being hounded by Interpol agents through Asia Minor.

Now it's time for me to say goodnight, and leave you with a picture I done made.

More grist for the mill

Of the last 100 referrals to Drinks-After-Work, something like 97 of them have been Google searches about the celebrity drugs scandal. And most of the googlers have little or no doubt about who they think is involved; two names in particular keep on coming up over and over again.

Foot-In-Mouth pointed me in the direction of Hard News which pointed me in the direction of David Farrar's miserable excuse for a blog which pointed me in the direction of the NZ Herald story about which notes that Aaron Bhatnagar had to shut down comments on his blog post on the topic after people kept posting guesses about the identities of the two celebs; what they omitted but the same story on STUFF did mention is that the poor wee duckie apparently got "back from several hours of meetings" and found "all sorts of unsavoury comments made" and so was moved to shut down comments on the thread in question.

But did he stop there? Did he fuck. As he writes "anyone posting names will have their IP addresses recorded by me in the event that someone important wants to know who they are." Which was as effective a way as any of nominating himself as Cock of the Week. Apparently he's also a member of the National Party.

Anyway I guess someone ought to tell these guys at What-the-Funk - surely as unlikely a hotbed of libel as anywhere.

It was actually a real pity that Aaron Bhatnagar disabled comments on his posting, because I almost expired in a paroxysm of hilarity (o how I do love literary cliches... sometimes) when I read the note from peterquixote, who said (and in the saying so provides the same Mr. Bhatnagar with some real Cock of the Week competition):

Can anyone give a clue, [sic] why would [sic] celebrity on good income ruin his/her life this way? Or are they cheats and low life [sic] from the start?

Peter, Peter, Peter. O my god, where to start. You say so little and yet you say so much.

I dunno. Is this shit even interesting any more?

At least Damien Christie in his Cracker blog had the sense to keep stumm and not post any of his trademark irrelevant incomprehensible bullshit; it would surely have only annoyed me even more.

Everybody's talking, yeah.. *sings*

Now concerning today's earlier post, in today's litigious society one has to be awfully careful how one treads. From Dictionary.com: libel -

1. A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation.

2. The act of presenting such material to the public.

So, in the interest of posterity, I should point out that:

1. The investment advice was received by me in an unsolicited fashion and posted sincerely and without any intended relation to any case currently under investigation or before the courts; for goodness sake take no inference as such, and

2. The linked image is a sophisticated visual pun on the colloquial term for cocaine, and/or any drugs that are ingested nasally, which I thought was so clever I was compelled to share it with everyone who hadn't already received it in their email inbox. Any perceived reference to any business, corporation, incorporated society, or charitable trust is unintentional, and frankly, purely bad luck.

Yeah. Those who know me know that I'm an utter sucker for cheap humour - just keep those emails coming - and that I'm always up for a hot tip, be it on the dogs or the sharemarket.

And in other news: happily, this is the fifth post in a row on this blog that doesn't have a reference to I in the title (after a similarly lengthy run of 'I' posts).

On the run

Sometimes it's too easy to be a blogger. Today on STUFF:

Ex-sports star coy on coming home: One of two former sports stars caught up in a major drug bust says he has no immediate plans to return to New Zealand and talk to the police. [...] The second celebrity [is] also believed to be out of the country.

I'm really feeling for our boys* on the lam, here. Who would come on in to that sort of welcoming committee? I just hope that wherever they are, they know that they're always in our thoughts, prayers, and non-work-related emails, and that they never forget that there are plenty of very reasonable nations in the world - of quite acceptable quality - who don't have extradition treaties with New Zealand.

Note: Term 'boys' used here not with any calumnious intention but in an honourarily-fraternal sense and for the sake of brevity and clarity; our 'second' recalcitrant comrade could of course be of either sex.

Advice for young investors

Start adjusting your share portfolio right now... sell: Charlies; buy: Woman's Weekly.

(from an email fwded to me yesterday)

I also found this, which was forwarded to me this morning, quite funny.

If I wasn't so busy and ultimately so concerned with not sounding like a twat, I'd probably write something profound about drug prohibition.

Ooh goody, I smell a scandal

Ex-sports stars' link to drug ring: Two former sports stars have been implicated in a drug ring smashed by Auckland police for allegedly supplying methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy.

Since this morning's Dominion Post actually ran the headline TV stars link to drug ring, I'm guessing that the "two male celebrities", wanted for "supplying cocaine and cannabis" and "receiving ecstasy", are *cough* and *hurrumph* - though it would be carelessly slanderous of me to actually come right out and allege it.

"Announcing the arrests, police said the case was one showing that stimulant drugs were widely available and used by educated professionals on good incomes, not just by criminals."

If I didn't suspect that it's more to do with the media rubbing its hands in glee at bringing down these irreverant Johnny-come-latelys, I'd congratulate them and the Police for this statement. Makes a welcome relief from their typical scare-Wadestown-housewives-at-the-prospect-of-smelly-poor-people-on-methamphetamine-fuelled-home-invasion-rampages fare.

EDIT *Names removed in the interests of legal ass-covering.

Billy Corgan's musical yoof

If you're like me and you really can't stomach The Smashing Pumpkins (and let's be honest here, colloquial evidence would have it that there's a lot of us about) and you paid no attention whatever to his post-Pumpkins project Zwan (despite the presence of Slint/Tortoise/The For Carnation/Papa M-guy Dave Pajo, and recent Will Oldham collaborator and touring guitarist Matt Sweeney) (and continuing to be honest, any evidence that you'd like to inspect would have it that again, there's a lot of us about) (...); if you're like me you're going to be surprised at how good his new new-wave-esque solo album TheFutureEmbrace is.

Ok. The downside is that it's still Billy Corgan singing, and the songs still sound like Pumpkins songs. The difference here is the production - it's all beautiful synth washes and arpeggios and basslines and ethereal guitars and vocal effects and so on and so on and it's all like it's 1985 again and I really was quite skeptical, believing as I do that nostalgia for it's own sake is no good and a no-good sole reason for liking something - but this effort transcends any of those concerns. It's all quite gorgeous and the thing is that instead of coming across all wry and flippant and apathetic modern yoof and so on (standard stoopid Corgan), the fragility of the words and the sounds somehow offer you up a charmingly-real personal angle by which you can quite easily find yourself being seduced. Dave Simpson in a review in the Guardian Unlimited points to Bowie's Berlin work (Low, Heroes, Lodger) and for my money he's spot on - which really means that's it's actually all like it's 1977 not '85 but that's getting pedantic.

I only have room for one track, so here's track #2, Mina Loy (M.O.H.), but there's any number of superb tracks on the album - not least the collaboration with The Cure's Robert Smith on an astonishing cover of the BeeGees To Love Somebody.

Billy Corgan - Mina Loy (M.O.H.) (right-click and Save As to download)

I love my leather jacket

The Chills are unique in the history of rock music. I realised this tonight, driving home and listening to Radio Hauraki when I Love My Leather Jacket came on. There are a million bands who could have written a song called I Love My Leather Jacket and for 999,999 of them it would have been taking the piss out of bogans. There's only one band in the world that is twee enough to write a song about the leather jacket which belonged to your best friend who was taken suddenly in his prime by leukaemia and which you now wear in sentimental rememberance of him and what's more you don't even pretend it's taking the piss out of bogans but instead you tell everyone what the song is about with your down-home fresh-faced kiwi-boy sincerity, because you really miss your friend, even now years later if you think about him too much you feel tears welling in your eyes and you wonder why it had to be him that was taken and what you did any differently to be saved, and you want to share this loss with us all because you feel it so greatly, and because face it, you're a naif amongst the swell of hardened cynics and fleeting fashionistas in the music scene.

And that is why The Chills are unique in the history of rock music; so without any more ado, I give you:

The Chills - I Love My Leather Jacket

I should be happy

I've been looking at that previous post for the best part of a week now, and I've come to the conclusion that my claim to having "thrown out" my girlfriend was a little harsh; to be fair, we reached the mutual conclusion that her continued presence in our home was untenable.

Since last Tuesday's melt-down I've been in this weird, numb, no-fly zone just waiting for something to happen. I worked three 12-14 hour days in the last four. I went out on Friday night and got drunk. I've spent the entire weekend sleeping, and when not sleeping all I seem to be able to do is read Phillip Roth, download Norwegian black-metal and wander around the house, looking at all the dirty dishes and wondering who left them since it surely wasn't me.

Last night I dreamt that I started a nuclear war by launching a missile attack on Russia, who obligingly retaliated and bombed Lower Hutt (despite its strategic value surely being less than zero). Through an open window from my office 20km away in Wellington I watched the detonation - obediently shielding my eyes from the glare - and the mushroom cloud bloom. I waited as the blast wave roared towards me and as it enveloped me, I watched my body breaking up into streams of pixels, as if photographed using really bad grainy film. I felt at one with the universe, as if I had suddenly, through a series of reductive transformations, found my place in the proton-stream emanating from the centre, the birth of the universe and the Big Bang.

I've just finished watching I Love Your Work, a neat little art-film which appears to be some sort of a discourse on the nature of self and fame and obsession and the entertainment industry. It's one of actor Adam Goldberg's first directorial efforts and it's quite a stylish little piece, very poetic and meditative; nice, unusual, clever but classy use of cuts and shots, very innovative application and integration with the beautiful soundtrack (Goldberg again, with Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips); thoughtful. It even pulls some neat multi-layered tricks crossing the fourth dimension - the barriers between subject and actor and audience and so on - and ends with a bizarro Rodgers and Hammerstein flourish. It certainly doesn't hurt that the film features the very watchable Giovanni Ribisi, Franka Potente, Christina Ricci, and, weirdly, Elvis Costello. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy it because I just can't concentrate on anything at the moment. This makes watching films very difficult and leaves me in no doubt that I am going to be an utter flake for this year's film-festival.

I should be happy; I've got the reviews I've been waiting for for several months. Aquarius records has, in their New Arrivals #217 list (possibly here, in a week or so) reviewed my recent Application antarctica download form and Communion longplayer CDs. And given them bloody good write-ups. And streaming samples, for anyone who wants to listen. As much worth as a review ever is, these ones are probably worth quite a lot, just because of the clout that is apparently afforded to these guys' opinions.

Help me I am in hell, or something

Well. Tonight's big news is that I just threw out my girlfriend, The Jarman. Call it irreconcilable differences, or something. More later at some stage, I would imagine.

My show last night went really bloody well, in fact almost too well. I was drinking whiskey and beer and I got quite drunk; ended up doing an on-air giveaway that I shouldn't have.

I went to an opening tonight at Idiom gallery. There was some nice work by Gordon Crook (also here and here) but I didn't stay long; couldn't be fucked being in close proximity to so many people. In honour of Dave's post on J. P. Satre, I think I may begin to develop some sort of a philosophy or credo or manifesto or something based on my ongoing experiments with social phobia and paranoia.

indie-show 4-July-2005

Tonight I'm off once again to do the indie-show on Radio Active 89 FM. The show goes from 9pm 'til 11pm (that'd be 0900 to 1100 GMT I think, if you wanted to listen to the stream). For a change I'm looking forward to it - perhaps it has something to do with being a lot more prepared today than I am customarily.

Instead of doing it 1/2 an hour before the show, I already burnt the 2 CDR volumes (as is my recent habit to use, rather than 30-40 LPs), and I've been listening to them all day. It's going to be a rockin' show...

a.r.e. weapons - saigon
aframes - modula [A Frames 2LP,2003]
allen ginsberg - transcription of organ music [Howl and other poems,1993]
amt - do you know where the secondhand record shop is [swr,2005]
charalambides - magnolia [After the medicine show,2003]
flaming lips - The Spiderbite Song (Early mix) [the soft bulletin companion,2000]
heka - Cachet [last spiritual gas station before the end of civilisation,2005]
heka / Temple of ruin [last spiritual gas station before the end of civilisation,2005]
robyn hitchcock - full moon in my soul [Spooked,2004]
robyn hitchcock - welcome to earth [Spooked,2004]
mars - 3e [the Complete Studio recordings]
maximo park - the coast is always changing [LAMACQ Live showcase,2004]
pere ubu - humor me [terminal tower,1978]
pharaoh overlord - mangrove [#1,2001]
plugz - El Clavo y la Cruz [Complete Collection]
Red Krayola - Micro-Chips & Fish [7"]
Red Krayola - The Principles Of Party Organisation [Kangaroo]

scorn - black box [Gyral]
Secret Machines - you are chains [Now here is nowhere,2004]
Shellac - Song Against Itself [1000 hurts]
six organs of admittance - for octavio paz #05 [for octavio paz,2003]
soft machine - memories [Jetpropelledphotographs,1997]
sunn_o))) - hell-o)))-ween [White2,2004]
swell maps - full moon [Train Out of it, 1987]
swell maps - read about seymour [Whatever happens next,1981]
techno animal - needle [radio hades]
the mars volta - the widow [frances the mute,2005]
the raincoats - fairytale in the supermarket [the Raincoats,1980]
the rolling stones - you got the silver [let it bleed,2002]
tortoise - alcohall [Rhythms, Resolutions, Clusters remix EP]
TV on the radio - the wrong way [New Health Rock CDS]
vangelis - blade runner (end titles) [blade runner soundtrack]
white stripes - forever for her (is over for me) [Get behind me satan,2005]

I might come back later and add some notes about some of this stuff.