Helmut whacker

I pissed myself reading this blog entry. But the Der Spiegel article was delicious.

Interventions, distractions and diversions

WWW (Wozzy's World of Work) has intervened. Rather than enjoying the last night of 'El Topo' at the NFT, I will grab dinner with KK to find out about WBS - good company, decent nosh and some fact finding to save a long drive and a day of my time.

I'll catch 'El Topo' on DVD in the next month or two.

Vranyo

What's more worrying, an environment where censorship is rife, or an environment where self-censorship is de rigeur?

Took 'Doris' to the Early Learning Centre during lunch today. Didn't play with the stock - I may have more luck taking him/her to Ann Summers.

Executive decision

Mindful of the need to produce poems ready for a collection, I must radically and urgently change my approach to editing.

Here's the background. There are around 390 pieces, and a significant minority of them - say up to a third - need editing. In many cases, when I look at the piece, I opt to rewrite rather than edit, sometimes completely changing the topic or theme.

My source document is split into four sections - 'ballads', 'blues', 'spirituals' and 'comedies'. The pieces went into one of these four sections in alphabetical order.

My error was to start at the beginning with 'ballads'. Love poems, as Da Bomb knows, bore me rigid, and it shows in my writing. I can write well about fucked-up love, otherwise I don't get my teeth into it. My strength tends towards the darker, weightier, meatier subject matter, that holds my interest.

Of course, as Da Bomb wrote, 'I think sometimes we do have to be tough on ourselves and exclude certain subject matter - maybe for you it's love! Or maybe it's just the kind of girls you get involved with aren't worthy of a weighty poem!!!'

Maybe it's a bit of both?

There are some good love poems, but a lot of shit ones too, written as rants in response to xyz event. The key thing is that they woudn't - no matter their state - fit in with what the first collection is supposed to be about.

So the decision is to skip editing the ballads for this year, and focus on the 'blues' and 'spirituals' - there is also much less editing required there!

Greetings and salutations to: Kung-Fu daddy Aziz

The spirit of '87

Last night the iPOD Perv, Cistern Kid and myself went to Camberley Theatre to see Black and The Christians - it was pretty damn good. Garry Christian's voice was powerful and soulful, and aside from performing 'Forgotten Town' and 'Hooverville' (as an encore), he did a cover of Gil-Scott Heron's 'The Bottle' - and yes, the Isley Brother's 'Harvest for the World'.

Earlier, while toying with an unappealing meal at Christi's, we debated a) how many people would be attending, and b) what the average age would be. As it turned out, the place was packed and we reckoned we were amongst the younger of the attendees (ol' Cistern reckoned we had merely aged better than everyone else - cheeky).

Tipping a fedora to: Theo & Thunderthighs

Tripping

Ventured into Brakspear country earlier today to check out the HMC. Impressive, if that sorta thing gets your rocks off.

Off to see The Christians in Camberley - no, not a bible study group, but the 80s group famous for 'Forgotten Town' and 'Ideal World'. Could be interesting - its a group many of us at Bracknell college listened to, and that ain't a million miles away from Camberley - will we bump into any faces from the past?

Probably not.

The return to London of 'El Topo'

"I ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs."
- Alejandro Jodorowsky

I can't wait to see it at the NFT. Also coming to DVD in May '007, courtesy of Tartan.


Activity: currently admiring my box of Crayola

So it was

Kurt Vonnegut has died. Here's the link to his classic interview in the Paris Review, '...an interview conducted with himself, by himself.'

Not strategies or tactics...

...but rather objectives.

"Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow". Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: "Do not go fighting with your land armies in China". It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives."

Field Marshal Montgomery

We will never know if that mythical book goes on to mention Afghanistan, Mesopotamia and Persia.

A newly minted put-down

'You're so ugly, that you need to down several pints before you can wank yourself off'

Crossways Inn at Churt, near Farnham, Easter Monday '007

Pen fetish

Yep, I have a problem, and it does concern the right hand. But onto the more expensive problem - I have a lot of very fine pens. I'm not a collector, and do indeed use all my pens. But because they're a little expensive, I tend to be careful as to where I use them.

Here they are:

• Montblanc Meisterstuck 144 fountain pen (the one with the 'fragile' black resin and gold)
• Montblanc Meisterstuck 163 roller ball (again, black resin and gold)
• Cross Apogee ball-point (in titian red with a lacquer finish)
• Cross Townsend fountain pen (in lustrous chrome)
• Cross Autocross ball-point (in brown leather)
• Faber-Castell Perfect Pencil Idea (not the 'Concept' which is similar but 200 notes more)
• Parker Sonnet ball-points (one in stainless steel, and one in matt black)

I also blagged myself three 'Beijing fakes' last November, all Montblanc copies:

• Montblanc Starwalker rollerball (black resin and platinum, honest) - destroyed mid use
• Montblanc Boheme Citrine ball-point (green leather, twist action with fake diamond)
• Montblanc Starwalker rollerball (black rubber and platinum, hehehe)

Before anybody thinks I have a serious problem, the first of these came in 1996, with the MB's coming in October '001, so it has been over a long stretch.

What do I want next? Apart from Shanghai Hero & Duke pens from China (dead cheap and ace for everyday use), I want a box of 8 Crayola crayons - just like the ones from my infant years.

To order the Chinese pens, I found the dealer websites His Nibs, I Sell Pens and Cute Pens. Although the prices are low, I should be able to obtain them in Shanghai and haggle for a discount, thus avoiding the markup of the North American dealers.

I also found this page dedicated to Moleskine-friendly fountain pens. I also found this, which is even scarier.

Weather report

I am usually spoilt by the weather in the Far East. I say usually. On this trip (I returned to the UK at 5am this morning) the weather turned to shit the moment I landed in Taipei, in stark contrast to the UK weather that improved upon my departure.

So apart from work, what do I have to show for this trip? A respiratory tract infection! At least had a day to myself in HK and rode the Star Ferry between Tsim Sha Tsui and Central a few times.

I wrote a bit but didn't take enough pics. The fever in the first week curtailed any happy snapping for both me & 'Tarquin'.

While in Beijing I picked up the strides and chain mail, and chanced across this particular development near the Kerry Centre:

Note to self: remember to take a trip to Fuzhou Road in Shanghai in a fortnight's time (I have a hankering for some Hero and Duke fountain pens for everyday use)

Checking out: the new LUXE guides for Beijing & Shanghai, fabulous, and alas, fabulously arrogant. Wallpaper's Beijing guide is crackin' too.

Wondering: why so many people on the HK to LHR flight wore khaki slacks, blue shirts/blouses, fleeces and timberland trainers - the uniform of unfit, lard-arsed, remote control fumblin', gym bumbling, Indiana Jones wannabes.

Ron Jeremy on...

...tech. Yep, the veteran porn star on tech (the link is to a 'clean' site on technology). He makes some interesting comments on the usage of technology that chime with mine, but I caution the readers of this blog (yes, both of you) not to make any investment decisions based on his forecast on the future of porn at the end of the article.

A poem

I haven't posted anything here for a while, as I am concentrating on editing the earliest stuff, but I wrote this as a diversion from all that, so here it is...

'1700 and Rising'

Lord, deliver me from bad juju -
the legacy of a shirt infiltrated
by a conspiracy of patches,
with neither the original's end or beginning;
a police-enforced programme of 'relocation' -
from the slums to the breached sewers
leading to collective hyperventilation.

God, if that bullshit is not enough,
the price of mealie-meal keeps going up.
AIDS smacks its lips as it feasts on families,
driving children to beg and solicit their bodies.

In a land where even the millionaires go hungry,
I cannot obtain the fuel to flee
the machinations of
Robert
Gabriel
Mugabe.

From the Ndbele to the Shona we all know it's game over,
but for Jesus Christ's sake!
What difference does my protest make?

The opposition is divided, demonstrations brutally dispersed,
neighbours cowed and the West uninterested,
but what is most shocking,
is that the Old Man rises every morning to direct our destruction,
while his wife Grace, goes out shopping.


Sometimes the ole red leather armchair, and sometimes an aeroplane, 23rd - 31st March '007