MAKIN THE LAW MAKIN THE LAW

tonight i shall mostly be appreciating of...

2009-11-06T14:15:18Z

... the ballet* my deahs

I ironed a clean white T-shirt and everything. I think the last person to use the iron was epicharmus when he was over for Tom's wedding!

*The Rite of Spring!

of kindly ghosts

2009-11-06T01:23:15Z

though i've been back now and then, it's a lifetime since i spent full true friend-time with rob and his semi-random housemates in far shepherds bush -- i remember a nice party at his where i teased cath h abt the ugly guy who was dogging her -- and half a lifetime since i last escaped the crush of carnival in lovely gentle steph's weird-shaped ladbroke grove flat: rob's more than 20 years dead now, and cath got married and steph ended up i know not where -- she fled london for the crusty nomad trail and we lost touch -- so the nice thing about an evening spent at entirely practical friend-time things (helping piratemoggy move house) in that potentially haunted zone is that the lost and the vanished didn't feel needy any more, so much as amused and supportive

update: er obviously this wasn't the ONLY nice thing, bcz i was with piratemoggy and triffidfarmer and friedslice and hoshuteki, which is the definition of nice all round, but yes: ghosts being ghosts, it is nice when they agree with you about the living...

less than a month off 101

2009-11-04T11:08:21Z

RIP Claude LS :'(

a wasp is in love with my hair

2009-11-04T10:14:53Z

arrived in my bedroom as i got up, buzzed intimately round me as i stumbled round grabbing my clothes, vanished as i moved to bathroom to wash and dress -- so i thought i had given it the slip except when i looked in the mirror there it was sitting on my head! would not go out of the window into the cold, preferring to nuzzle me

obviously i am warm and smell nice but TAKE A HINT D00D

it is still probably lurking in the bathroom, my tiny stripy stalker

update: ASLMAD :(

in a sense there is nothing that is not a maggot pie

2009-11-03T20:07:15Z

dad is more than ever on a journey from the quotidian to the slightly strange in conversation: absolutely plain observation of his not very exciting surroundings salted with random dream intrusion, people or things not actually there referred to or addressed... but about his condition he is as direct and lucid and stoically unwoeful as always. when i asked just now how he thought today went he said: "very good indeed, very thorough -- not at all positive though," and this is exactly right; he is frailer, in ways he will not recoup; we have decisions to make about the nature of care and the nature of surgical intrusion which, once made, will be irrevocable, and which if made, must not be made too late... not endgame yet, but the first clear sight of its arriving beginning, i think; the first time i have felt i need to say to elderly friends and relatives they should not put off visiting him

(also -- no one's fault really -- an incredibly tiresome hospital visit: the royal shrewsbury is a good hospital, and a pretty big one; this afternoon, in its vast sweep of car-parks there was absolutely not a sliver of room anywhere -- cars were parked on neighbouring lawns even... i slotted it into a faraway staff car-park and trusted that the disabled badge, which is of course entirely valid, would ward off officious clampers; this meant i had as long a walk as possible to out-patients, and at the end had to leave dad parked in a hallway while i fetched the car round, to bundle him in unceremoniously, in an ambulance bay where i should not have been, except there was literally nowhere else... i steel myself to assume that none of the many disabled parking spaces are filled with the cheekily able helping themselves)

the mere mention of tilly lights his face up: that's nice -- i'm glad he's spent plenty of time with her this year; his current carer -- returning from two years back -- is one of my favourites and his; his oldest local friend, moved away some years ago to be near her grandchildren, is over to visit tomorrow; a tough visit but not a bad one, fingers x-ed

lj enlighten me

2009-11-02T17:46:46Z

who has read steve fuller's book on kuhn and is it any good?

fuller seems a bit of a massive twit based on his online behaviour, even tho he often riles people i quite like seeing riled: i can't work out how much this is my knee jerking basically

i dremt i dremt (legendary world-famous critic retd. dept)

2009-11-02T11:21:55Z

I dremt that PITCHFORK asked me to review a remixed reissue of HORSES by PATTI SMITH.

Naturally I gave it a mark so high that Scott Plagenhoef's less famous and possibly imaginary brother DALE convened a conference to see if this number even existed. The conference was to be held, as naturally, at the house I grew up in, viz the Queen Anne mansion turned Field Centre PRESTON MONTFORD HALL, where mum and dad had a tiny little flat till I was 12. When I got there no one except Dale had turned up, so we waited out by the long high wall that in the old days separated the little kitchen garden from the bins, leaning on the back gate gazing over the field as it dips undulates and rises towards the steep high riverbank. If you walk to the skyline you can look down at the Severn snaking fatly through Shropshire. My surely inaccurate memory tells me that in one of the years of great cold -- 1963? -- the entire flood plain froze, to the horizon, and all Shropshire came out to skate on it.

The last bit wasn't in the dream, but came into my head the moment I woke.

the wrekin heaves

2009-11-01T15:18:59Z

mmph am feelin a bit under the weather -- may just be lack of sleep, may have got a chill driving up here from london, may be self-loathing after after the shamefully poor attempts at comedy writing i just delivered a friend for her xmas work do.. at least she won't ask again!

on wenlock edge! ect ect

2009-11-01T11:38:45Z

it is very windy indeed here in shropshire

update: a-a-and powercut! probbly a tree down somewhere.... soon the bull will get out*
update update: ok power back, that was quick

*there's already a local bridge out because a lorry ran through the parapet

circumspect witch

2009-10-31T20:57:39Z

a faraway planet underwater

2009-10-31T18:43:40Z

i am home with my dad for five days -- he's asleep at the moment, and all i can hear in the world is his TV on quiet, the carer's TV on quieter, wind in the trees if i open the window (except then shut it as it is COLD) and this keyboard clicking

tomorrow i will probably read to him; not tonight as i'm tired from driving -- i have a lot of admin to sort out, most paperwork to do with him; some to do with me

even with this -- pimping off a neighbour's broadband for the moment, so someone must be linked to the world nearby -- it feels like all life is very far away

update: oops i forgot to link this: "the ultimate faux pas in friendship"

saturn rising

2009-10-29T13:07:26Z

it is quiet today, no?

i am a tiny pirate

2009-10-27T20:22:07Z

as a reward for saving my own hard disc -- using disk utility, i am a tiny corsair! -- and still being locked out of my own broadband i have gone back to piggybacking off some other poor fellow's hard-earned whatever

libertalia now!

the things you discover on flickr

2009-10-26T17:19:59Z

"Ewan-M is the only person who has photos or videos of you"

:D

structure looms and the aether twinkles

2009-10-26T15:26:26Z

OMG

country boy at heart

2009-10-24T13:54:09Z

sitting here reading the internet and chilling, i suddenly realised the sound outside i was half-listening to without identifying, was somehow incredibly comforting: not a city sound at all, but the sound of late autumn and early winter

viz someone sawing wood: smallish bits of wood clonking onto one another

obviously sawng is a sound you can easily hear in the city, indoors in certian places, or near a building site -- but heard outside it hugely reminds me of my youth in the countryside, where people lived near or in woods or tree-filled gardens they had to manage, and warmed their houses with wood fires, and that meant gathering bits of fallen tree after autumn gales, and tidying them into neatly burnable stacks

i doubt that's what's going on outside, i can't crane enough to see who is sawing what

javier, for it is he

2009-10-23T23:07:32Z

sleep in lieu

2009-10-21T09:50:14Z

bah my stupid body is treating all the excellent bedrest i had during the ill as subtractible from future zzz-worths, truly it is the HR of personhood >:(

wtf: why is my living room abuzz with ugly fat FLIES this morning? maybe the central heating woke em up :\ it's like somethin out of that horror story where the kid fashions a worshippable image of BEEZLEBUBBE out of lickorish allsorts... anyway lucky i guess it is at the START of my two-day xtreme if belated springclean tho i am a bit fearful what i am going to uncover under the futon frame...

caps FOCK

2009-10-20T16:17:43Z

er hullo my witchy darlings i haf an QUERY

imagine you are working in B.Gates's WORD on a MAC and you have a f-big slab of ALL CAPS you wish to turn into proper sentence case w/o rekeying each letter. I vaguely recall someone saying you can c&p it into some other easily available application and do it there -- BUT WHAT?

yr pal the rubbish dalek

new kinds of fun

2009-10-20T11:04:45Z

meeting yr gorgeous bumptious nibling (and her mom) in the fancy new playground* right outside yr house -- first time for them -- on a crisp autumn morning, and watching a group of elderly people (possibly eastern european) come and gather unidentified** fallen fruit in plastic bags

*better i think than the london fields pg -- doctrah b sez that "risk and adventure" is being factored back into playground design somewhat, which suits mistress t!lly fine as she is her mother's fearless reckless daughter when it comes to tottering along in high narrow places
**by us, i assume the harvesters knew what they were at -- they looked like tiny pears, crab pears if you will

de quincy had opium...

2009-10-19T15:09:11Z

... we have ADVICE DOG

what can possibly go wrong?

i dremt i dremt (sketchy fragment a bit like the final section of THE LAST BATTLE)

2009-10-19T13:09:31Z

so the FT/Popular massive put on a themed competition to celebrate/explore the full important of its analysis of pop and the world and stuff, and EVERYONE CAME. Everyone meaning all nations, sub-nations, splinter nations, radical oppositions and WHATEVS.

To game the project their way: to turn the map -- as FT/P outlaid it -- into the realisation of the ultimate territory it implied.* Which in my own case -- as a WHATEVS obvs -- means the realisation of the full-on McLaren-Carmodian message-begins-when-the-artwork-ends manufactured chart-prog reality-gaming politico-aesthetico situation-overturning alien tongue-pressure TOTALITY MOVE.

What did this look like, you ask in amazement! It looked like -- paging rechabite! -- an Escalator Over a Hill! A handsome modernist escalator in gleaming black and silver, going over the STIPERSTONES!

Naturally, I started up the escalator, because I wanted to check out what Vietnam were up to. As I ascended, someone from the massive (I think Mr TimTim thebopkids HopkinGreenFrog) yelled up that I should look out, as this was a very important day in Vietnam. And I looked up, and serried ranks of vietninjas, in black silk pyjamas, were riding DOWN the very stairs I was riding UP. Yoijnck, as M.C.Escher** would say!

*Note to those playing the "And did you see Marx-as-a-young-Hegelian clear?" drinking game: consumer powerful snifter here!
**Dr V!ck's second cousin! Trufax! Might be a bit more removed than once but basically trufax!

... and up

2009-10-19T07:22:08Z

i: buffywise i had forgotten how awesome glory is -- best monstah evah, and in fact the ep where b finds out abt dawn is one of the best eps evah
ii: kind of a well duh observation, but i like the way yr body suddenly wakes up knowing it's better... it's like you FEEL WELL, hence the name i guess
iii: autumnal grey hackney before the morning rush starts, quiet, still, pale lights in clapton police station (i can see into it from my bedroom, and thus vice versa i imagine, lucky them eh?)
ADDING:
iv: Farmville! It's Really Lame Tamagotchi for (Really Lame) Grown-ups!! Hurrah :\

sleep all night and part of the day

2009-10-18T02:48:02Z

still not right :(

have ate a little and slept a lot hence perhaps awakeness now, tho there is currently a party nearby where everyone is bellowing drunkenly along to "classics" -- am vaguely hoping that some nearby hoodlum (who has to be up early sun morn) is going to snap soon and make his presence felt, lex-style but with guns: "it is 4 in morning, this music is shit, what are you? pitchfork editorial? heavens i kill you now etc"

it's like, you can't actually fax a pizza...

2009-10-17T10:22:15Z

so, that sequence of sinister miasmatic dreams -- inc.the ones i DIDN'T share w/everyone (just NEVER ASK)*?

turns out they were my poor plaguey body sending ever more frantic and lurid notes to my brain that YES you CAN postpone being actually officially ill till after magazine deadline, by pure act of professional will (and er unconventional self-medication regime)**; but there will be CONSEQUENCES

the notes were being sent the wrong way through the decoder machine -- this was the only thing my poor plaguey body could think of, i guess: i was just setting aside or dosing up all conventional signals and the message had to get through somehow and surely my so-called brain could tell something was amiss from all this unusual activity (which to be fair it did: just not what, complete with harrumphing crossness at being bothered...)

in my defence i am very rarely ill and not good at preparing for it or dealing it; and also i managed to reach home before the very*** worst consequences manifested

*ok here's the silliest/scariest/non-yuckiest: being chased by a member of RAMMSTEIN through a cemetery; this person is dressed in black leather, except for his trousers, which are made of slimy, rotting babyskin****
**effective though, short-term
***JUST NEVER ASK
****so some kind of an award there, for in the area of unclear unpropitious indicators

ok i just slept for 15 hours and am now getting back into bed; i am not actually better yet at all and -- for example -- do not at all feel like eating