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.