IkoStar

A bit further down one of the streets where I live is a girl who sells postcards to tourists and sometimes her hair is white and sometimes it’s black.

People (ie: bloke people) come sidling up to her all day and ask for directions, even though they don’t need directions because they know where they are. “ees theese way, down there” she say, patiently. They then ask if they can take her photo, or get someone else to take her photo with them in it as well, with the excuse that she’s wearing traditional Snow White clothes but we all know the real reason: she’s absolutely fucking beautiful… and although the internet is filled with photos of beautiful girls, bagging one of the blighters yourself is a like getting a trophy of some sort, so that’s what they do. It’s a bit like wildlife photography that you could shag… in your dreams buddy, in your dreams… so they content themselves with craftily sidling up to her on false pretences and leaving with a photo, that they examine later, at their leisure. They’ve probably got hundreds of them, but most of them are of their buddies being drunk and tedious a bit like the camper van ones off Borat.

“Yes no problem” she smile tiredly. “You want postcard? Ees for mother. You write her home”

I was never sure why her hair kept changing colour like that. Maybe it was a wig that came with the Snow White costume. Did it mention hair in that story? Lips as red like cherries, eyes bluer than sky (on nice day), skin as white like snow with sun-tan. Shoes as yellow as wearable foot-bananas. I don’t think it ever mentioned hair. Hair as black like soot, or as white like whatever it was before it go soot on. It could go either way… and didn’t really affect the story that much if memory serves… not as much as the white skin anyway which is what she’s named after - which is a bit of a bungle if she’s got a tan… and she does happen to have a tan.

This is a photo of a similar one, but not the actual one, in her black-haired version state… but with similar issues with regards people who know where they’re going constantly asking for directions. etc.

So anyway, I went through this minor phase of hiding behind bushes etc and taking photos of the people taking photos, but went off the whole idea almost immediately when the black-haired version suddenly appeared on white-haired-version day… in the same place as white-haired version who was already there!!!

She went over and started talking to her and suddenly there’s two of them! and they know each other!. I ducked down behind the bushes, panicking. I’d been duped. Utterly and completely duped. I’d been played for a giddy kipper, or herring or whatever.

Why? Why would she do that to me? I don’t understand it. People are fucking weird man, I’ll never figure them out, especially the girl ones. I mean wearing wigs is one thing but pretending to be one person when you’re actually two is unbelievably crafty and devious and to what end? I must have re-read Snow-White a hundred times since, and there isn’t the slightest hint of anything like this happening.

Nothing seems real. I no longer trust the ground I walk on. I’ve stopped watching television. Unbelievable. Utterly unbelievable.

So I was thinking “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to come in there and fucking kill you”, and twenty minutes later, a head pokes round the door… “scuse me, which way it ees to hospital?”

And the row (it transpired) was her friend locking herself in the bathroom with a bottle of vodka, and a razor-blade.

She didn’t die (they hardly ever do) and I was (like) “woah… cool”, but for weeks afterward I’d find tiny little drops of blonde-girl-blood that escaped the clean-up and each time I’d feel like crying, and sometimes I would and sometimes I wouldn’t.

I don’t know where she is now. I can’t even remember her name. She can’t remember mine. Neither of us ever existed. We are free.

This is what you get if you try to access Twitter at Dubai airport:

Dubai may have

• the tallest building in the world, who cares? you can’t use Twitter
• ship-sinkingly expensive archipelagos of man-made islands, but so what? you can’t use Twitter
• any number of modern wonders, but at the end of the day they account for nothing because an ugly stain of doctrinally mandated religious morality is on the place. You’re treated as a child. Someone else decides what you’re grown up enough to see, or say

“Religious, Cultural, Moral and Political values”? Please. Give me a fucking break. These “values” allow some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet and Dubai has been built on what approximates to slave labour… and have you actually read Twitter? It’s just people talking. That is all it is. People twittering.

So I was sitting there getting all wound up about this… then remembered that I am guilty of censoring Twitter myself, after a drunken rant about (ironically) censorship. I deleted my comments because I was suffering from post-alcoholic regret/paranoia. I thought that they could have been interpreted as being aimed at a single person (they weren’t). Yea. Well. I’m not suffering from post-alcoholic regret/paranoia now. This is what I said (in response to this video)

• Who decides this censorship bollocks? It’s fucking pathetic
• It would’ve been better if he’d said “fucking fuck off you cunting cunt” like any normal UK kid
• Bleeping isn’t done to protect children. It’s to protect parents who are too fucking weak to be honest with their kids
• Seriously - Richard Burton (the real one) advocated learning the swear-words of any foreign language first. This is what kids do. I was one
• Nothing personal mind

Which I will concede is an over-reaction etc, but given how drunk I was, I think I got off fairly lightly.

Later that day I was gently reprimanded by a friend who suggested I show tolerance… and on one level he was right. I am of that (difficult) age where we feel irritated at the cheapening of the language - a major emotional objection to bleeping out expletives is that it’s an insidious American meme that is gradually infecting our culture… not that I have a problem with American memes per se (I’m a musician after all) but this one is different. It’s a meme-blocking meme.

On a more visceral level (and more importantly), it pisses me off that some cunt has decided that their “morality” trumps everyone else’s and that they have assumed the right to “protect us”. Or maybe they’re just trying to cover their arses. Maybe they’re responding to an imaginary censor that they’ve internalised by repeatedly hearing the bleep meme… but fuck them. There is a continuum (because it’s underpinned by the same arbitrarily annexed moral authority) between bleeping-expletives, to blocking Twitter, to The Bonfire of the Vanities. Every bleeped word is a byte-level-book-burning.

Ask not for whom the bleep bleeps. It bleeps for thee. You are affected.

Swearing, taboo-breaking (and the hopelessness of self-censorship) make up a fundamental strand of the UK’s evolving comedic culture - from the “ooh missus” horror of this:

to the busted-damn debacle of this:

to the unbalancing genius of this guy:

And to have some anemic cunt think (for whatever reason) that they have the right to step in with their repressed 1950s ideas of “right and wrong”… to be dictated to by someone who’s not content with repressing their own sexuality but who needs to repress everyone else’s as well… now that I really do find offensive.

When I was a kid, my mate’s dad was a member of the New Zealand Rationalist Society - it took them decades of campaigning and lobbying to free us of the ridiculous blasphemy laws - something that happened all over the globe (hand in hand with the abolition of the death penalty) in civilised countries at about the same time anyway. And now the British government has rolled them back. Now it’s illegal to say things that might offend either imaginary beings, or the self-appointed representatives of imaginary beings. It’s happened in the same aftermath of global panic over “terror” which has been the carte-blanche excuse to undermine civil and human rights across the board.

It’s bullshit and it feels like we’re going backwards.

The Janet Jackson incident (she flashed a nipple) attracted a fine of $550,000 (later appealed). It was later found that 99% of the avalanche of complaints came from a single source.
A conservative activist group concerned with (other people’s) family values.

And so on.

There are certain lines where my liberal live-and-let-live ethos fail(-whale)s and I Stop Tolerating. The measure of civilisation of a society can be gauged upon entering its prisons. For me there’s a bottom line: the anxious face of someone shivering and waiting, naked, hurt, alone and out of site in the corner of a cell somewhere. Although there’s precious little I can do - I do not (can not, will not) tolerate cruelty: no, nor censorship neither.

None of it.

click for big version

This is the last one of these I think. It’s an engraving by Hogarth - it lives on the back wall of the Lamb and Flag pub near the Garrick Club (which once banned Jeremy Paxman who goes Nyeesss and who is my hero etc. “Did you threaten to overrule him” he says. Genius).

Anyway, I’ve been going to see this picture for about the last 20 years or so. It is the most repulsive depiction of drunkenness I have ever seen, and I recognise myself in each and every character. It’s too ugly to look at for long… but it keeps luring me back. I have this phobia about accidentally being transported back in time… and this is an era for which I have a particular horror… but the scary thing is, perhaps, something that I can’t quite catch, but there are fleeting glimpses etc… the essence of what I find frightening about it, I’m gradually pulling towards myself. I am become gout, destroyer of limbs.

It would be funny but it’s not funny. You try to laugh it off or weave stories around it to make it ok… and sometimes it is ok, but if you can’t remember, how do you know? And sometimes it’s definitely, definitely not ok.

So I’m sitting in this restaurant in Brighton using the free wifi and trying to eat this dippy thing with bread that is not fit for purpose, and I feel weak and broken and paranoid. Last night I got drunk (and not even that drunk) for the forty thousandth time and shot my mouth off on various internet things, ranting etc… and although nothing was aimed at anyone in particular I feel awful. I’m sorry.

Back down the years… the first time was like being born again. Now… I don’t know. Something like the opposite, repeated in endlessly in hideous caricature.

Still, tomorrow is tomorrow. I shall be on a plane. Away, away.

See, this is what I was on about before:

I came in last night and there was this massive spider in the bath - I’m arachnophobic… and my hands were shaking so badly as I took the photo that it wound up looking like it’s got about 20 skittery legs. It actually looks more like a spider than an actual spider does. Art you see. Exaggerated reality.

Anyway, I never ever kill them - I persuaded this one to climb into an empty cardboard tube thing, and then I chucked the whole lot out the window. If I fell from that height I would surely die etc, but spiders have a low weight to wind-resistance ratio, so can fall out of airoplanes and be all right. Thank fuck they can’t fly. Doesn’t bear thinking about. I wonder why they can’t fly. There are about a billion species of them and all the other bugs can fly, apart from worms and so on.

Now there’s a conundrum.

Anyway, if I up the contrast it gets even worse:

Damn. That makes me feel extremely uncomfortable.

Birds trump spiders, birds trump spiders, birds trump spiders…

Birds will save me, and although birds aren’t automatically my friends (I don’t think) owls are quite close to cats and cats definitely are my friends, especially snow-cats, and this is a snow cat.

Grrrrr….. etc.

These are the worst and best photos I took yesterday

and

Although on reflection I quite like the first one as well, even though it was kindof a bungle. I had that shirt made for me. By a proper tailor. The second one is clickable.

I’ve been taking quite a lot of photos recently, and they’re all blurry. Not sure what to do about that… or even if I should… although it’s kindof annoying in some ways. I don’t want them all to be blurry, even though Monet himself made all his blurry (and his were a lot blurier than mine)

In fact that’s downright scribbly in parts - the man couldn’t paint a straight line to save himself. Mine are not generally a scribbly as that, though it’s often a similar effect… and sometimes the scribbly ones have more of a vibe than the clear ones… like this for example:

which is photo of a band I saw in London the other night - or more accurately, a photo of a bloke watching a band with his fingers in his ears, which for some reason I thought was incredibly funny. The non-scribbly version is technically better, but non-technically worse.

Still, it would be nice to have the choice - like the Vikings… whenever they had a big descision to make they’d make it sober, then get incredibly drunk and make it again - so they had a second opinion. Well my camera is like a permanently drunk Viking, not being able to make a descision about something.

I had a Swedish girlfriend once. Used to call them “Wikings”, which was fairly endearing. I wonder where she is now etc.

PS: I just tampered with the ear-finger one, and now I like it even more than before:

This is a picture of a balloon hiding behind a big plant thing - it’s hiding from the other balloons (who are like, gay balloons) and so on, but they’re too knackered after the weekend to pay it much attention in any case, so it really has nothing to worry about, even if they were going to hassle it, which they so weren’t anyway.

I know that probably sounds a bit repressed and homophobic and whatnot, but it’s not as repressed and homophobic as the balloon hiding behind the plant thing.

Most balloons are gay, and there’s nothing strange or unusual about it. I mean yea, they are made like totally out of rubber (which is a totally different thing)… but you know… have you ever met a straight balloon? Apart from those long thin ones in the shape of bafflingly uncooperative (but cheap) condoms? Well those ones are in denial, and so are you. You’re in denial. Don’t try and deny it. Everyone knows.

There’s nothing to worry about though - even if (like me) you live in Kemptown in Brighton which is like the gayest part of the gayest town in the whole of Europe, and last weekend was gay-pride weekend. You’re seriously flattering yourself if you think you’re going to be hassled by balloons. WTF? They’re balloons!!!, and look at the state of you. You’re even more of a mess than they are, and they’ve been partying all weekend… and they REALLY know how to party, believe you me, especially the helium ones.

Anyway, across the road from the pub is a plant shop called Planted, which was started by Robert Plant after he left Led Zeppelin.

That’s not him in the photo btw, that’s someone else. Doesn’t even look like him, and I should know because I’ve met him. Not that one, the other one. The real one.

The NPG

We just went to the National Portrait gallery, because that’s the sort of bloke we are.

The annual portrait competition was on again (as it was last year, and the year before) and the only one I liked was the one that won second prize, which I liked better than the first prize one on account of the woman looking a bit grumpy. In fact the only one in the whole exhibition that didn’t look a bit grumpy was the one I liked which came second, behind the first, which was too grumpy. What’s the matter with these people? Why do they all look so fucked up?

The one I liked was of a kid who was with his main friend, a pet monkey made out of wool. Both looked, if not cheerful, then at least calm and level-headed, apart from the monkey who looked a bit scatty.

I would (of course) provide photos, but can’t because they ban cameras, being the memetic eugenecists that they are… utterly self-defeating and pointless - dooming thingummy-what-ever-her name was to a life of obscurity because the thought-police have neutered the meme. We saw that Henry Wriothsley again as well… an unneutered meme (that one however) because it’s escaped onto the internet (mainly because of me)… although I would’ve liked to have taken a much bigger picture. I did ask, but they wouldn’t let me. And you know what? The bus on the way there had TEN fucking CCTV cameras on it (I counted them : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. 10!) . Where’s my permission for that then eh? They’re all in it together these people. Control freaks.

Here instead is a picture of someone else… snatching the moment… photo-bombing photo-bombing or whatever you call it.

A (soon to be taken over by ugly, mean little American frat-boys) thing for which (in these fast, fleeting moments) I find so funny that on several occasions now I’ve laughed until I literally died, and when I’ve woken up, it’s taken about 15 minutes to work out what happened - same thing as the standinguptoofastthenhyperventilating experiment I did a while back next to a lake.

Whatever.

There’s an escalator that goes up the side of the NPG - and (although it’s quite posh there) it’s one of those ones where the handrail goes faster than the bit that you stand on… so you start off more or less upright, but wind up completely horizontal, being dragged along, holding on with your fingernails etc. The caf at the top is quite good though so it’s worth the extra effort. We saw that John Snow up there once, and he’s much taller than he is in real life, and something of a hero of mine - even though he quite often wears quirky ties. I prefer sober ties - or no tie at all in fact. I do have some fairly pissed shirts though, so perhaps I ought not complain.

(some fact-checking occurs)

Actually, forget about every thing I said above. None of the above is true, apart from the thing about the escalator - The NPG have put all the pictures online, so an unreserved apology there then. This is the one I liked :

The ones with the 2nd and 3rd prizes on them seem to be different from the ones in the actual gallery - but like, what do I know?. Consistency is for insects. Maybe I read the signs wrong. Anyway, the full list is here , but as I was saying, everyone looks a bit… you know, fucked.

Is it the recession?

My favourite one of these (of all time) ever is this :

… which in real life is massive, and she’s beautiful and from Syria : http://www.sarashamma.com and paints excellent pictures of herself. Man, I can’t even take decent photographs of myself. I look like this:

Which is truly frightening, especially if you turn out to be me. It’s like being stuck permanently photo-bombing your own photographs, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The more you try to self-correct, the worse it goes, believe you me.

This was what the future was going to be like back in about 1970.

There will be sexy space chicks wearing shiny purple wigs and sexy space chick outfits with detachable sleeves and whatnot. (why did she put on that outfit if she was just going to take it off again 30 seconds later? It makes no sense). My brother got the boxed set of this TV program - it rocks. Everyone smokes pretty much all the time, and calculators weren’t even thought of yet, so the main dude uses a slide-rule.

It’s a bit like Star-Trek in this respect… there is not one single prediction that actually came true - which is quite a result. To be completely wrong about absolutely everything. What are the odds? I mean what sort of maniac designs a pseudo-military type uniform and includes shiny purple wigs? These people are crackpots.

Here’s a German version which makes it even better than the English one

There’s 3 dimensional chess and they haven’t made the doorways big enough.

And I’ll tell you another thing : This was set in 1980. 1980? I had a digital watch with a calculator in 1980, that’s how cool I was. I don’t have the watch any more, and am (as a direct consequence) significantly less cool than I was, but that’s by the by etc. Whatever. Hey nonny nonny.

This is what 1980 was really like:

This is a Welsh band called Freur - and one of them is playing a stripey broom. They didn’t really have those in the future either - not even now, 28 years later, and to be honest, I’m not really surprised. What were they thinking? Musical Brooms? Hatstand. Freur eventually turned into Underworld who played this:

which has Obi Wan Kenobi in it before he was Alec Guinness… which happened in the 70s as well - several decades before he was younger than he turned out to be several decades later - put that in a bottle and you’ll be a gazillionaire overnight. Anti-aging juice.

That’s how you do it. Make a sequel 20 years after the original, set 20 years before the original. That way you get the future bits right as well. Probably.

Anyway, we had to use slide-rules (and logarithmic tables) at school. I’m one of those technological cusp people. We were forced (even though we knew it was stupid) to use fountain pens… but were the first year to be allowed to use calculators (which we knew weren’t stupid, but were frowned upon by teachers because they were probably just a fad). My year narrowly avoided punch cards. And so it goes.

I have this nagging doubt that my generation will be the first to see actual anti-aging juice (or a convergeance of technologies that amount to the same thing), but I’ll miss it on account of having gone out on too many drunken benders.