07.02.2007: why when i start work must i also start worrying about my finances and my future? isn't it supposed to be the other way around? now i'm looking at last years expenditure and wondering how i ever managed it, i'm looking at my income and i'm thinking it's never going to last. how i got lucky and now i must be screwed. all this i'm looking at under strip lights and a thick cloud of doubt. a magic straight line that rotated 90 degress to show its true nature - the vicious circle.

true, last week i wasn't doing anything that could be constituted as living my life to its fullest. i wasn't churning the sea or ripping up mountains. i wasn't missing in the danger zones of lost cities or shredding infront of thousands. i wasn't screaming with excitment, every nerve ending buzzing, muscles twitching, an explosion of lights and colours behind my eyes. my fingertips on fire. i wasn't breaking your heart and sailing off into the sunset, chased by bats and lesser demons hungry for my soul. nor was i embraced in the forgotten substance that used to be called real life. i sure wasn't defeating the bad guys and saving the entire planet. i wasn't even outside very much.

maybe i need this to remind me what i was running from. no, to remind me what i was running to. unfortunately that doesn't help me get there.

06.02.2007: photos from the other day:

dark what? i can't really be bothered to add any interesting comments to these, but you could always check my flickr account. it's not hard to find. because when i look at them they just make me cold.

best gig ever, dillinger escape plan. i wish i was in that band.

all is well. keep it rosey. don't slip on the slush.

05.02.2007: so, just incase anyone thinks i'm "selling out", i thought i'd update my previous funds graph. the following graph demonstrates i didn't get a new job for the money:

it's not bad considering i did less than two weeks worth of work last year. where the zero hides (and where my debt begins) is unimportant, but if you're interested in scale then it goes up and down about 1000GBP, that's the price of starting again in a new country.

what's bugging me is that i noticed a weird amount of money coming into my acount last valentines day from "butcher p & k brighton re". what the hell was that for? who even is that? i feel like i've forgotten something really important. i just hope it wasn't anything dodgy (of course i can't remember doing anything dodgy) that i just admitted to publicly. if you have an inkling as to who or what that might be then please let me know, as random a request as that is.

my horrible prediction though, and what i desperately want to prove false, is this trend of my funds not particularly going anywhere will continue despite my new income. such is the power of capital. (and if you think the huge drops of 800 quid count as 'going somewhere' then it's just a matter of bad timing, all was carefully balanced with foresight).

but if it's not for the money, why have i got myself a job? interesting question. all shall be revealed..


elsewhere, and as crass as the new google image 'look and feel' is, i've finally done well out of an update. about time too, since i optimised for it over six months ago and was just about to take all that crap down. it's still picked odd images to rank (please don't go looking at me "optimisation", it's well lame), but at least i actually have images ranking now. i'm presuming they put preference over 'mature' images over younger ones. the pictures with good rankings have never ranked before so it's not based on popularity, and they're not the pictures i've had hotlinked to death either.

as for listing my pictures under other people's URls (those fucking myspace hotlinkers), i have no idea because i can't be arsed to investigate it. the user interface makes it too hard to bother. hey google, hiding the problem does not make it go away.


the snow has started to squeak

04.02.2007: yesterday was cold. cold like this country's supposed to be. cold like i have no idea how the homeless people survive. cold like i presume many of them don't.

we took the worst of it down at nathan phillips square trying to enjoy wintercity, a festival to celebrate the freezing. a group of city officials are clearly having a laugh at the public's expense, dragging them all out in -22c windchill to watch hour long gigs and circus performances. i'll be brutally honest, it was all very disappointing. the ice gallery, 'paintings below zero' by gordon halloran, was pretty and everything, especially when photographed, but was rather bland in person. it was also slightly pretentious and hypocritical when it's supposed to be exploring the issues of climate change, so lets fill a tent full of giant freezers? to be fair they're probably completely unnecessary and not even turned on. but nevermind.

the 'extreme' theatre was from the italian group kitonb, again looking beautiful in pictures but dull in the cold reality. when your standing still in weather like this the last thing you want is to be bored by a five minute abstract video projection, then by five minutes of metallic tubes, then by ten minutes of whatever the fuck it was. apparently a crane was involved but we had to leave. my marrow was starting to freeze.

all night i was plagued by nostalgic dreams. picture me walking along imaginary streets in birmingham, looking for book and record shops that i've dreamt about before but never existed. desperately trying to reclaim lost time and memories. it's all just metaphorical. it's all just places i can never return to, and not only because they've been knocked down and strip mall'd, but because we're different people now. mentally and physically. everything has changed. you can never go home? as the photo the other day demonstrated, my childhood bedroom now only exists in dreams as well. none of this matters to me really, except when my dreams tell me otherwise, then it's completely out of control. it's not like i woke up crying or gasping for air. it's not like last time.

fuck, that was starting to sound really pretentious.

and now we're making borscht for supped, because we didn't get one of grilly's jokes and we can't be having that.the cooking is going well, only i can't work out if it's supposed to be served hot or cold. i guess we'll have it warmish with a dollop of sour cream. excellent.

update: it was indeed cracking, cheers grilly

03.02.2007: in the elevator i'm repeating to myself over and over, "i made the right decision, i made the right decision". and i'm only talking about my choice of chocolate egg confectionary.

weather like this reminds me of nuclear fallout. a memory from the future. the world's debris tumbling slowly to earth. it's cold and it's lonely and you're locked outside. everything's white with a slick and shiny sheen to it. the snow by the side of road like black lumps of coal - the polar opposite of streetlamps, our one beautiful contribution to nature's winter. as well as making snow beautiful as it falls through the dusk, it's also a nice way of making snow orange. nicer than the two alternatives at least. siberia's smelly orange snow scares the shit out of me. as does frozen puke. although i know which one i'd rather eat.

sometimes i feel we just can't get anything right. even the more agreeable comments on the bbc news' to act or not? made me angry.

but what i wrote yesterday but decided to cut out because i was just being an ass:

i've often been accused of using strong language, but you were all wrong. apparently strong language is word combinations such as "very likely". don't get me wrong, this is all very important, and official documents aren't the place for "fucking fucked", but still. likely? i'm very likely to eat dinner. pigs are not very likely to fly.

doom patrol, go. and you're right, pan's labyrinth was brilliant.

02.02.2007: it takes me two days and five minutes before i'm in tears. crying over my cubed pumpkin.

it's pathetic how quickly i crumble. how important i hold my personal freedom, nevermind whether i'm using it or not.

maybe before i had no friends, spent most of the day on my own. surrounded by strangers. but now i just feel lonely. complete and utter nothing.

i don't know what i want but i knew all along this was not it. what have i done?

i feel like i'm lying to everybody. and i feel terrible.

the saddest scene i've had to witness. me trying and failing to mash pumpkin. the masher slips and slides across the bottom of the pan. i can't even focus. who am i even making dinner for? i know it wont be ready in time before i have to leave.

01.02.2007: actually i'm not a commuter. i was just trying to be dramatic. so it goes.

but i am now a happy and tactical owner of a metropass, which saves me a disappointingly small amount of money. wouldn't you think the price of the monthly pass for febuary would be reduced? at least i'm saved the pain of needing change every morning, although it's no real consolation when dealing with the pain of getting across the width of the subway train between sherborne and younge. a small matter of two meters during normal hours, but at half eight it's something different entirely.

i'm being sensible about this, but doesn't stop me from feeling like cattle. yes, plural.

31.01.2007: and then all of a sudden the landlord appears, out of nowhere. you would think he's come to apologise about the plumbing, but he thinks that's all been dealt with. the bathroom tells a different story. but it's not this story. this one involves the landlord explaining how the electricity is going to be cut tomorrow because our bills haven't been paid.

by now you must love the landlord. you love him as much as he deserves.

"but what bill?" we all cry in unison. we haven't recieved any, and wasn't it up to them to sort out the hydro? sure it was. so what happened and how is this our fault? i called toronto hydro this morning (and if you're confused why electricity is called "hydro" here you're being perfectly reasonable) and it turns out our landlord emailed them on november 18th saying that we'd moved in on august 1st and they think we are the new tenants. spot the three crucial mistakes. the email was sent 79 days after we'd moved in and claimed we'd moved in a month earlier than we actually had. the doubt as to whether those were the names of the new tenants also explains why a bill wasn't sent. turns it out a bill was sent, but to our landlord, obviously. so what has this to do with us? i have no idea, but the woman assured me there was no reason to think our power would be cut.

so why is it still raining in our bathroom?

and then all of a sudden i'm a commuter.

29.01.2007: "it's monday morning and i have no idea what to do with my day. i neglected to plan", what i wrote this morning before realising that actually i did have the next two consecutive trades of 'the invisibles'. somehow i'd got mixed up and thought there was a missing one in the middle. so that was my day sorted. i also decided it'd be a good day to go in search of the best hot chocolate in toronto. but, and only if you believe now magazine, that's to be found right on the other side of town, and most unfortunately in a bistro that doesn't open until 5pm. of course i only found that out after i'd walked through the cold to get there.

i drowned my sorrow in a burrito and a couple of decadent drinks in a delightful cafe on queens west. somewhere with the perfect number of sofas and a name with something to do with books. west of spadina is definately one of my favourite areas, and if we ever move that's where i want to go.

so i didn't get my 'best hot chocolate of toronto', but it's the adventure that's important, not the treasure. unless the treasure happens to be something particularly awesome and the so-called adventure is not the hollywood yarn you were hoping for. maybe it was a crap walk down the street. or maybe it was a three week ride in the back of a dodgy truck, shared with a scabby pig and too many empty beer bottles. actually that sounds too fun, you better be tied up to the pig. with diarrhoea. you both have diarrhoea. as does the driver of the truck, who listens to non-stop celine dion whilst singing along 1.62 octaves too low. and the road is real bumpy, if it even is a road, you can't tell because you're blindfolded. no scratch that, you're just blind, from the smell of pig. and you have peanut butter smeared between your toes and tin foil in your mouth. plus you're on mushrooms, which will explain the diarrhoea. who the fuck even are you? the treasure better be pretty good.

meanwhile, on the other side of the atlantic in a different corner of laurence's psyche:

ex-psyche, perhaps.

28.01.2007: halfway through a minutes silence (or in this case five) i wake up. in a minutes silence you're supposed to be thinking about something, some people who died or whatever, but really i never do. i just drift off in the quiet, wandering through whatever gap it's opened up. it's too serene to not take it in and suck it up. a congregation of people and not one of them talking, just the sound of their slow breathing and the snow gently falling inbetween. the cars slide through the slush in the distance and not a single one of them honks. the city buzzes somewhere in the distance, pushed a whole block back. and the police stay silent too, rocking sideways in their big boots. they're only here to protect the embassy, but at least they shut the fuck up.

and when it ends it wasn't long enough. no one really wants to speak, they want to cling to the peaceful silence as long as possible. and the warmth in numbers.

we're outside the american embassy again, for what it's worth (probably very little). it's a polite crowd of people apparently angry at guantanamo bay. we're on the wrong side of the street and no one's packing heat. it's not what indignant people look like, not in my great dissent fantasy, the one where we write a press release titled "why we set the president's house ablaze". but we're here and it's better than nothing. the people decked out in orange boiler suits walking around a tiny cage with black bags on their heads are especially cool, but cool is potentially the most inappropriate word i could use. fuck it.

to celebrate our victory (for how could america not listen to this 100+ strong crowd?) we went to the artful dodger, a fine english pub just north of the amnesty international office. i had half a guiness and just over half an apple crumble, both excellent, infront of the fire. a fantastic lunch.

last night a layer of ice settled over the snow, it may be normal around here but it's completely novel to me.i take every detour across every lawn and crunch my way through it. breaking up every clean area of snow. it cracks into pieces and flies everywhere. i should feel guilty for ruining it for the kids, but they can do it when they're my age too. well, if it's still snowing in canada then, and it isn't looking hopeful.

sometime around midnight i'm trying to sculpt a thin ice sheet into a heart, but it just keeps breaking in two. so i figure maybe if i eat the notch out it'll work, it'll melt instead of crack right? but no such luck. all i get is a mouth full of snow and another broken heart. at least it wasn't yellow. or orange.

26.01.2007: it's all good until the wind blows. then the cold cuts through every layer your wearing. mostly i'm okay, i'm thermaled up. but there's only so many things you can wrap around your head. i figure all those people without hats or scarves, after five minutes they probably can't feel their face anymore, so what's the difference? it's biting. when you breathe in the cold burns the inside of your nose. but on the corner of jarvis and church two school kids are joking around, one's wearing shorts and the other no more than a white shirt. they look happy enough. on yonge someone passes us in a kilt. it makes you wonder. and then an indian girl wearing sandals without socks, slipping around on the ice.

unfortunately, both times i passed the manulife building i forgot to look up at the temperature. i suspect my unconcious just doesn't want to know.

i sought refuge in a coffee shop. it was pleasant enough. they called my croissant a 'danish' (it was clearly a croissant) and were playing some nice spanish music. at least they were until the first few jarring chords of 'a certain shade of green', really loud. it was skipped in under two seconds, but where had it come from?

anyway, i've been thinking about my international status, and it's all become quite messy. let me try and explain:

when i moved to denmark i neglected to (didn't realise i had to) tell anyone in england that i'd left. in denmark i got my residence permit no problem (for five or ten years, i can't remember) but then forgot to tell them when i left there. if i go back i'm hoping my residence permit is still valid, i don't see why it shouldn't be. then i did some paid consultancy work, which was officially done whilst in england (you can compare the invoice dates to my flight tickets if you must). so however you look at it, i shouldn't be paying tax to denmark right? but at the IRS they weren't interested because i hadn't lived in the UK for the last six months (it was actually nine). that isn't to say i was living anywhere else, i could have been travelling. and before you accuse me of tax avoidance, which it might technically be (although how when they told me they weren't interested?), it wasn't enough money to put me in a tax bracket anyway. i still wouldn't be paying any.

so then i moved to canada, officially as a visitor, it's all very ambiguous as to what my status (or lack of) is of being a resident. i can stay for six months but am i allowed to rent or buy a house during that time? apparently so. but what if i work? officially i'm on holiday here, and if i'm running my own business back in england then surely i can work for my business. people work on holiday right? there's a grey scale there i'm sure. although, officially officially i might be on holiday from denmark. so am i not a UK resident? if i get a work permit here do i not have to pay tax to the UK? how would they even know anyway?

to make it even more complicated, i could bring up the student loans company, but best not.

so is there a loophole where if you're self employed and work whilst travelling around the world you avoid paying tax? that just doesn't make sense. or do you stop being a UK resident only when you become a resident somewhere else? or do you never stop being a UK resident? or what? the whole thing is confusing. if they want people to pay tax they should make this a whole lot easier. they can start by putting a big decision tree on their website that covers every possibility of living and working situations. or something.

25.01.2007: i've been sitting on a whole bunch of photos for a while. i don't know why, i guess i just haven't felt inspired or some crap like that. anyway, during buy nothing day we met a cat man:

i think 'cat man' might be an offensive term, but nevermind. he trains cats, presumably well enough to not have them mind being walked around busy downtown toronto. apparently he even takes them on his bike, no doubt why his leather jacket was clawed to bits. the last of the three is messy because it was way too dark.

then a couple for people who really hate spiders:

these were from when we were in belgium. i find trying to focus on stuff like that a nightmare, especially when i don't have my glasses (could you built a corrective lens into a camera?). anyway, suitably gruesome. sorry about that, you were kind of warned.

finally, and just to make a point about sitting on photos, these are from the very first week i owned my camera:

i wish the plumber would come, i really do.

24.01.2007: it being so cold out it's hard to imagine the highlight of my day could be icecream. but what if it was pumpkin icecream? and also pear and ginger? and what if i'd been allowed to try all the other flavours as well, including malted vanilla, chocolate&banana and toasted marshmallow. and the thing with that last one, it actually tastes like toasted marshmallow. and it has the consistency too, of that lump that's left behind on the stick after you've sucked the burnt coating off. like that but ever so cold. i'll be going there again, you can't beat proper icecream, as baskin robbins don't seem to have understoof. 31 flavours and none of them real

but what's been bugging me is the girl who served me. i know i recognise her but i can't figure out how. there's a picture in my head and it even includes a wooly hat. i mean, a memory doesn't get more specific that than, which made me wonder if she was in one of my photos (there's no way i'm going through them again). or someone elses even. it's all very curious.

the honest and seemingly obvious thing to do would have been to ask her, but that's something you can't do. if you don't see why not then you'd make a terrible stalker. pretending to recognise someone and getting them to tell you where it might have been from is the number one best way to find out where they often hang out. and that shit hasn't been cool since, oh i dunno, since i got me a real girlfriend.

but joking aside, that was some fucking good icecream.

i felt a little embarrassed when i left, because they apologised incase they'd disturbed me reading my book. of course not, but who goes to icecream parlours to read? a lovely little book though, 'chicago stories' by aaron cometbus (real name?). i actually went sick at the beguiling because of their 40% sale on indie stuff. most of the zines' quality are impossible to ascertain without reading them, but i managed to find about seven that oozed and appealed. my current favourite being 'way off main'.

still enjoying the cold. and not just because it'll make me love the summer more.

23.01.2007: i actually had a busier weekend than my post yesterday would lead you to believe. only it's now almost wednesday (fingers crossed) and it's all rather unimportant. but just for the sake of completeness, on saturday i decided to get a bit more daring with my moosewood cookbook and made a rather satisfying transylvanian aubergine casserole. i'm now enlightened with the knowledge of marjoram, you fantastic herb you. and since i had to go somewhere special for that i thought i'd stock up and branch out, now our cupboard smells of cloves and the top of the fridge is becoming danergously crowded with spice jars.

the rest of the night was began at angus's apartment (actually it's technically jason's but nevermind) and ended at the dance cave, or whatever it was called. i don't think anyone was particularly paying attention at that point, apart from the bouncer who wasn't much impressed when i gave him our passports. well how am i supposed to take that shit seriously? the place itself was fairly decent. i should be able to remember more songs than i do. i remember blur. and when i started writing this i could remember another, but now that's gone as well. i've had adam and the ants in my head all day so maybe they played that too. james brown? either way, the experience was very much like that of grilly's, how do people dance in the middle of the dance floor when it's so packed? i used to be able to handle it at the gloucester, where you could just incorporate punches and kicks into your dance, but no longer on student turf.

actually i was having great fun in the middle of the dancefloor just before we left, but that was probably a sign that it was indeed a good time to leave. the exciting story ends without it ever really becoming exciting. sorry about that. at least it was reasonably short.

and if you were wondering how the 'interview' went, the eggs benedict were delicious.

22.01.2007: from one fascinating book to the next, freakonomics has got me hooked already (and it's okay, i hate me more than you do for using language like that). one of steve and steph's first observations is that it wasn't the strong economy, gun control or new police strategies that triggered the gradual decline in crime rates in america after 1995, it was the legalisation of abortion in 1973. in your face jesus!

speaking of which, i finally got around to watching dawkins' 'root of all evil?' documentary. it was mostly just uncomfortable. i honestly think dawkins is a genius, and a good writer, but he's not a good interviewer. i respect his bravery, and the conservations he's having can't be anything other than confrontational given his subject matter, but he looked absolutely terrified when interviewing pastord ted haggard. but then who wouldn't? that guy is seriously fucked up perhaps it's all that meth what done it? or perhaps it's religion? although my bet goes on money. but anyway, i think it's a shame that dawkins often comes across rather patronising and arrogant in the film. as he does in the book, except in the book it's properly backed up and justified. ultimately i'd only recommend watching 'root of all evil?' if you don't have time for his book, and only if you don't know most of this stuff already. i learnt plenty from it, but then i've never been one to read scripture. moving swiftly on..

i was just about to leave the apartment, all dressed up smart like, when i noticed one of my suit buttons was about to come off. (you may make up your own nefarious reason for why i might be wearing a suit in the middle of the day. or night, even, if you so wish). in certain situations this might be disasterous. and for a minute there i felt like noi albinoi in his new suit, attempting to rob the bank but being laughed out, then stealing a car and slipping around on the ice whilst being chased by the police. he simply wanted to escape his remote and isolated town, what was it i want?

at least it wasn't at this moment i realised there was brown water dripping through the air vent and also, rather worryingly, into the light fitting of our bathroom. that had happened last night, only i hadn't got around to fixing it yet. our landlord tries to fob me off with it being melting ice water from the veradana, which might explain why it comes in sudden burst and seems to be associated with the sound of a shower in the bathroom above. does melting snow sound like a shower? and why is it brown? the landlord also tried to convince me that no one had moved in upstairs, which explains why there's the constant sound of footsteps ringing through our apartment. this guy really has no clue. and he thinks a piece of string tied around a hot water pipe might catch fire. maybe he's religious and his god doesn't believe in thermodynamics. or perhaps he's never read fahrenheit 451.

i find it amusing that bradbury reffered to michael moore as a "screwed asshole" and a "horrible human being". i'm not sure how that works, but nevermind.

and how is it exactly that my triple chocolate irish cream muffin is triple chocolate. it has chocolate chips in it but that's about all. i feel mildly ripped off. but only mildly.

20.01.2007: i'd slept badly, half due to my fading cold and half due to disconcertion. i think i'm justified a mild distress at the thought of skiing again. the memories of exhaustion, lack of control and crunching bones are still all too vivid. learning to ski was not fun, but perhaps skiing would be. it was some twisted logic along those lines that made me want to go. or maybe it was getting out of the city into nature, by any means necessary.

an hour and a half north-ish of toronto is an expensive but lovely ski park. for want of better words, like i know anything about this. it's like we've suddenly crossed a barrier where the snow has taken over. this is snow country. downtown may be all white, and that rock hard ice/snow (no need to put stones in your snowballs round here) isn't going anywhere, but out in country it's snowing constantly and the ground's covered in soft fresh snow. it's a completely different experience.

infact we were right in the middle of the snow squall danger zone. but that was okay because none of us knew what a snow squall was, really it was just the perfect weather. the sun periodically came and went. it was still and then it was windy, bringing buckets of snow down from the trees. and it both snowed gently and came down in blizzards. a little bit of everything and all good. the forest was perfectly beautiful, with it's snow dusted rows of beech and pine trees, and without the hum of a hundred thousand cars and electrical appliances.

no moose though.

on my own i'd be skiing along mouth wide open, like a daft child, eating as many snowflakes as would brave my tongue. this is what fresh air does to you, it makes you grateful for amazing things that are otherwise being loathed. because they're just getting in the way

but anyway, we managed a 7km round trip, which breaks my record for distance skied without breaking anything. it also conquers my 'fear' (entirely the wrong word) of skiing. and now i totally love it, if only it was viable on a regular basis. unfortunately distance and cost are both going to make skiing a rare occurrence.

i ruined the post exercise bliss by eating chips. they just made me feel yukky, probably because it was my second chips in as many days. on the way to the beguiling i'd had a sudden and massive craving for chips. and it's fortunate because there's a chippy on bloor (imaginatively called 'chippys') that's not half bad. their mushy peas are surprisingly good considering they're not exactly mushy peas, by any english person's standards. more like mashed pea soup, but great. the music in there was also good, in the way that all the best songs are by bands you don't even recognise, and there's just too many to ask who they all are.

and then we'd been given free tickets to see a film preview at the paramount, which is always good even when the film isn't. which it wasn't. so hurray for free stuff.

18.01.2007: back in school, when i was around 15, i remember a time when 'youth for christ' came to give a talk to my class. i may have mentioned this before, as ten years on it's still infuriating me, but just pretend like it's a brand new story. anyway, to begin they showed us a videoclip from friends, which was enough to put me off before i even knew what their agenda was. ha, trying to blind us with quirky TV that they think we'll all appreciate. well i don't. this guy then attempted to convince us that god exists (funny how i still refuse to capitalise "god", but not "TV" since i've started capitalising acronyms [does tv count as an acronym?]) by 'proving' darwin wrong (don't worry, darwin doesn't get a capital either). the important detail that i've omitted is this was in a biology classroom, that shit was right there on the walls.

so he picked the classic example of the eye, a revelation he'd had on the bus on the way to school one day - if only darwin had taken the bus he might have seen the error of his ways too. the creationists call this "irreducible complexity", how no part of the eye has a use without the others, therefore it can't be created incrementally via the process of natural selection. the speaker (not 'teacher') obviously hadn't read 'climbing mount improbable', where dawkins destroys this very arguement (the chapter on the eye is also available as a slimline 'pocket penguin', so no excuses). obviously i hadn't read it either, but as a biology student with a budding interest in evolution i could clearly see the errors in his arguement. only i lacked the pizzazz (and ability to argue against ignorant blind faith) to get up and shout him down. it's one of my biggest regrets that i didn't. i find it hard to imagine the teachers (mainly biologists present, plus one homosexual christian) being able to justify any punishment for me. ruining his talk might be against freedom of speech, but it's not an asymmetrical right - i have it too.

i think it's terrible that the school let them preach this anti-education at us, especially in a biology classroom. trying to convince us that god exists is okay in one respect (er, the free speech one), but not by telling us that what we've been taught in school is lies.

the reason i've mentioned this now is because i'm currently reading 'the god delusion', also by richard dawkins. if i'd had a copy of it in my bag that day i would have metaphorically smashed his face into many irreducible pieces with its hardbacked edge. metaphorically, right.

so if religion and science are incompatible, which both sides (us vs them) seem to be argueing, why are they both taught in school? and to clarify what i'm thinking, i do think that we should be taught about religion in school, in a pluralistic accepting-of-others kind of way. in the same way that we're taught about the dinosaurs and hitler, this is how it was, rather than this is how it should be. this is what people believe, rather than what is. save that shit for sunday school, when all the cool kids are out in the fields enjoying the world like they should be, and smoking and drinking and fingering each other.

okay, now i'm talking rubbish. have two photos:

the first photo is from the coach and is exactly 666 pixels wide. stick that in your pipe. the second photo is a 'modernisation' of the statue of henrietta edwards (one of the famous five who asked the supreme court "are women persons?"). i'd like to think she'd still be drinking tea today, but probably not.

16.01.2007: during ben and mim's visit to toronto we obviously had to go up the cn tower, only i never got around to writing about it or uploading my photos. so here they are, and it's worth mentioning that the first three photos compare the view between the main observation floor and the 'skypod', which you have to pay an extra 10 dollars for, or something obscene. you decide if it's worth it:

if you come all this way you may as well go the last 100m right? the sixth photo is the view down through the glass floor (either that or from when i was hanging underneath the big white tyre, i can't remember). the other photos are fairly self-explanatory. it's a good view from up there, but a view of what? how ugly we make the world without even trying?

the weirdest (read "most disturbing") thing about the whole experience is the security screening. they have machines dragged straight off the set of star trek. called the sentinel ionscan (contrabrand detection portal) and it blasts you with its arsenal of air jets. they check for chemicals used in bomb making but also drugs (apparently they're startign to use them at airports), so if you paid by credit card they have your name and face (the machines photograph you) along with a record of any drugs you've been in contact with recently, whether it was you taking them or not. it's times like these when you start worrying about data protection.

anyway, the reason i've been going through my photos (as mentioned yesterday) is i've decided to get test prints of all my favourites. until recently i hadn't realised 6x4 prints were relatively cheap. it's got me all excited. unfortunately, as soon as you want a bigger print it counts as an enlargement and costs you a small fortune. it's only four times the paper and ink so why should it cost over 30 times more? anyway, if for any reason you've wanted a print of one my photos, and providing it's also one i want a print of, i'll be uploading full-size versions to my flickr account sometime soon (which you can find easily enough, just search for it). if you do print any of my photos i'd like to request you let me know.

we were sitting in a coffee shop in church village (toronto gay area) looking through them when a guy behind me commented "hmmm nice" at this photo of jolle. it was just a little funny. but julie couldn't drink her hot chocolate because it was too sweet so i had to finish it as well as mine and now i feel sick.

other things we've been doing include looking at houses for julie's parents, which is great fun, pretending to be able to afford such stupid large properties. it really is a completely different experience to student house hunting. we've also had guests over for dinner, quite the scene, and been out for breakfast at the cute rainbow place i've wanted to go since the summer. we've also discovered another supermarket just around the corner (if you're willing to brave the st.james town "ghetto in a park") which is always good for variety.

that all makes me sound rather boring. nevermind then.

15.01.2007: "shnch shnch shnch", the sound of me walking through the snow. and slush. i'd got all the way back to within a minute of my house without putting a foot into it. but such is the joy of the winter, you have to take the cold and wet with it, or nothing.

if only they'd let the snow settle, rather than sweeping it away and spraying salt and unsettlingly blue liquid on it. it'd cover everything and the world would be instantly transported to an infinitely more beautiful place. there'd be no more roads and no more cars, just mysterious mounds of white and endless snow fights.

although, i was always one of those kids who'd put stones in their snowballs.

what makes me most happy today are all the black squirrels still squandering (completely wrong word but at least it sounds right) around and across the whiteness what's become of the park. like they're completely oblivious to the icy cold, or perhaps they ignore it because they now how fantastic they look against it.

what makes me sad today is looking through my photos of copenhagen. it's the feeling of being there that i miss, but i can't put my finger on what that is. what it's composed of. it wont be summoned and forced into words. it seems it's only pictures that can really contain it. but whatever, ultimately it makes me sad and that's all anyone needs to know.

what else you need to know is that this time next year i'll be thinking exactly the same about now. me reclining on the sofa, all comfy and cosy and other words beginning with 'c'. the first thin layer of snow coating everything out of the window and bjork quietly filling the kitchen. christmas tree lights wrapping around the room and me waiting for my girlfriend to return so i can cook a tasty and exotic dinner. the gentle hum from my computer (cat replacement) and the tempting pages of my new favourite book.

my memories often make the best of any situation. it just sprinkles with magic until all is sparkling. whatever it takes to upset me the most when i start to get nostalgic.

13.01.2007: as promised, a brief but diverse voyage through my ancient and telling collection of roughbooks. i have about ten of these that date from around 1991 to 1997. they're full of random bits of work that had no place in my regular school exercise books, but mostly they're full of whatever crap i could get away with. i stand by my claim that a kid's roughbook collection will tell you more about them and their group of friends than their parents or teachers ever could. although mostly it'll just tell you what bands they like.

from my first roughbook, circa the 6th year, "my hopes and aspirations":

i have few hopes, but my biggest ambition is to travel around the world by bicycle. i enjoy cycling and seeing new places so this would be ideal. however i have many years before this is possible. i will have to pass my 12+ and go to university so i can get a good job to earn money. to do this i must work hard at this school so i go to lawrence sheriff where i am more likely to go to college or university. once i have enough money i will fly to alaska and cycle down america to mexico, where i will travel by plane to the east of australia (victoria). by boat i will then travel up through the south china sea to china. then i will cycle up through asia and across to holland. then i will get a boat back to england. on my journey i will also stop at several islands in the pacific ocean, like the fiji islands, tokelau islands and the tonga islands. when i arrive home my next ambition is to write a book about my journey. i will call it "me, my bike and the world". i will get my book published and it will hopefully become a bestseller. i will become a famous book writer and publish some of the world's most famous novels. at the same time i will become a famous bike rider and win the tour de france and the great ameircan bike race, i hope.

you see how even at that early an age it was already ingrained in me how i needed to work hard at school, go to university, and then get a job. fortunately for me at the time it'd yet been planted in my mind that working was the final goal and ultimate decider wheather your life was successful or not. my imaginative mind could still see beyond that trick, and it's lucky too, else it would have been a terrible essay. had i written the essay a few years later the ending might have gone, "when i leave university i will focus on my career and get a nine to five job for the benefit of my bank and the economy. i'll be given regular meaningless promotions to convince me to stay and the acquisition of a mortgage and credit card will bind me to my income. i will marry a woman from within my own class and culture and we'll create many copies of ourselves to propagate our society and ideals. when i die i will have many full savings accounts, with each pound to my name representing part of an hours work i wasted instead of living my life's true ambitions". the teacher would have given me an A* and a pat on the head. "that's the ticket, boy".

it's funny how through the rest of school i hated writing, and only ten years later did i actually start enjoying it again. for the entire time of high school i barely travelled at all. look at me now. i think it's interesting how these ideas have laid dormant under a blanket of sludge about what your life is supposed to look like. but moving swiftly on..

a few books later i'm entering the troubled 'teen years'. i found this at the top of one page, "hello people, i'm in german. am i playing doom? if i was dunn would have shotgun shells through her brain. yeah. blood splattered walls and schools of death. wicked". just below it is a doodle of someone with a chainsaw ripping through their belly. i've smudged their black inked eyes upwards and red biro spills from his guts. and what if a teacher saw this kind of thing these days? in america it'd probably be enough to get you expelled.

if you keep turning there's a page filled with 26 people being hanged. technically it's 26 and a half. "he decapitated all my dolls". there's badly tessellating swastikas side-by-side with some terrifyingly violent anti-racist remarks. then i've written "dunn" with each letter made up from the words "bitch". i justified this because she called someone a "lazy arab". and it's me who would get in trouble for it?

elsewhere, someone with a stake through their eye. drawings of people pointing guns in their own face, "i'll kill me". later on it says "cos they have a brief second between the sound of the blast and the burning of their skin". there's plenty of real blood in there too, but now all crusty and brown.

in another book i'd written a girl's name 353 times throughout it. it wasn't even her real name. then i've written "feed the tree" (a belly song) below a fractal branching tree. i quite liked that. the next page has a red ink blood splatter looking far too impressive. and then one of the most depressing things, "at the top left of the front page it says 'once upon a time'. it shows sadness. past. how good it was to be a child. where guilt was shit and experience meant nothing. what you wanted was tiny things. sweets, plastic stuff. now look at our lives. love is fucking huge and i don't get it. not at all".

a year later and i'm writing things like "if i carve your name across my chest and kill myself you'll regret saying that". and "we have no freedom. we only have what we believe in".

but all in all i think i turned out okay. didn't i?

12.01.2007: after three weeks sleeping very much alone, being able to hold your girlfriend all night is the best thing ever.

and around here, everything seems new and exciting again. blame the weather if you want, it's absolutely beautiful. it's bright sunshine and crisp air and complete rock and roll.


it's early afternoon when i approach the comic shop, excited but full of dread. i've been clean for three weeks, not a single purchase, not even at dave's comics. and now i'm throwing myself at the beast. the dollars in my wallet have been carefully weighted, christmas money and rent all considered, i beg myself not to be foolish. inside, walking around, everything is comfortably familiar. i feel safe between these books, i've wanted them for weeks and i know i can hold out longer. they can remain on the shelves and i'm happy for them. in the end it's only the new phonogram, the reprint of big questions #6 and the winter edition of mome that forced me to break my consumption silence. it was bound to happen. i'm just grateful that christmas is a quiet time in comic industry.

my computer survived the journey (unfortunately, else i could have bought a new macbook) and this morning i've even managed to get it online. far too much hassle though. now i'm going to thrash it as hard as possible. all holiday i've been using a mac, and only touching a PC to try and fix it. i've got very much used to the loveliness of the apple. i'm finally ready to convert.

just as soon as i've broken my current laptop. smash

09.01.2007: the state of the street is our car windscreen in pieces. one of neighbour's car too, a right nasty smash in the same top right corner as ours. it took til midday before either of us had noticed. this kind of senseless vandalism really pisses me off. crime, not vandalism. now if some kid is stealing then at least there's a reason. but smashing someone's car window is pointless, it's like the opposite of a victimless crime, it's a lose-lose situation. if they'd left a message saying why it had been smashed i wouldn't be so annoyed. this is the same reason why consumer democracy doesn't work. well, one of them.

but anyway, we have the whole thing on film. five of them, two girls and three boys, running up the street waving a hammer. we know exactly who they are, they're up and down here all the time causing trouble. the thing is, the footage is worthless as it can't be used in court. it's all to do with the data protection act. if you film someone committing a crime on your own property then it's all good, but if it's on the street it doesn't count for shit. how does that make any sense? i hate surveillance, but i'd prefer it to be in the hands of the many than the police.

the whole episode was mostly annoying because we only noticed the damage after we'd loaded the car with stuff for the tip - two black bags (only) a shelving unit, a load of cardboard, a transformers tent and big ted. thing is, i never realised big ted was as old as me. he was bought when i was born and rode to the hospital everyday in the front seat of the car. good ol' big ted in my old postman pat jumper. now he's sitting on the shelf with the other 'unwanted' teddies down the tip. if you get sentimental just think of the unfortunate hole in his crotch and all the dirty things i might have done with it.

the only other thing i've found that's made me at all sentimental was my small collection of 10th birthday cards. i was in blackpool with my nan and roy. i still have the telegram my parents sent me in the morning. why did i keep that stuff? i don't know.

moving swiftly on, under normal circumstances i'd fucking never bring up big brother, but hearing leo sayer compare it to abu ghraib and guantanamo bay made me want to spit blood. saying fuck a lot and being rude is fine, it's even almost entertaining, but saying something that absurd is beyond reason. he also played the 'celebrity' card, which waivers all human rights. a celebrity is not a person, a celebrity is a fucked up construct that's given undeserved power through abstract and meaningless channels. i hate "celebrity". i'm not saying i hate celebrities, they're just people, but when someone plays at being celebrity they lose everything that makes them human.

all of the above is purely my own opinion and shouldn't be taken as fact. apart from the part about celebrities being scum.

tomorrow i'm flying back to toronto, so if you wanted to see me (and there are many people i wanted to see but didn't) you've unfortunately missed me. let's sort it out properly next time.

08.01.2007: my project for the new year has been cleaning out my bedroom. although "gutting" would be a more fitting word. it's the last room in my parents' house they haven't decorated and it's barely changed since i was 12. some of it's been the same since i was 6. it's just become fuller and more unorganised as i've travelled around and accumulated crap. my room is like an elephant's graveyard, all my stuff goes there to be rest and be forgotten. now it has to be completely emptied.

it's always been a sore point with me. throwing it all away. but these days i'm far less sentimental and i've been making efforts to break the materialism binding curse. so i've got no qualms in ripping my memories from the walls. you just have to be careful to not take it too far, as some things are worth remembering, and without these little triggers - a cobolds playing card, a plastic robot, a teddy with one eye, a never delivered christmas card - it's like the past never happened.

late at night, lying there in my degenerating childhood, my room crumbling and dissolving into the ether, i half worry how this might effect who i am. i worry that as the treasure trove of me is disgarded i'll throw myself out with it. when the task is finally completed i'll suddenly wake up with no personality.

it could be an interesting improvement. although rather ridiculous. for that i apologise.

the one thing that's shocked me, although it should come as no surprise, is the sheer quantity of stuff i've managed to consume. all the time i'm coming across another box full of CDs, another stash of videos, further boxes of miscellaneous tapes. when you see it all laid out, everything you've wasted your money on in the last 15 years (and estimating how much that actually is) it's horrifying. all the videos that'll never be watched again. all those CDs that have been ripped and forgotten. collecting dust and a bad smell. the quantity of CDs makes me sick. what was i thinking? and where did all that money come from anyway? how did my parents not suspect i was stealing money from their purse when i was coming back from birmingham every saturday with an arm full of vinyl? i blame ben's bad influence. i'm sure it was him what got me onto that filthy shit.

the dirty consumer of my teenage past has long been exorcised. or do i believe everything i tell myself? all i'm hoping is that one day i don't feel the same about my books as i feel about my CDs today. the music industry is dead, rip, long live the writer/publisher. the question is whether i see my CDs as excess baggage and wasted money because i've changed or because music had changed. the mp3 revolution has crushed hard-copy music - it's experience is almost identical, all that's missing is the sleeve notes and the brief joy of handling vinyl. the click of the stylus touching down. the shitty picture on the CD. etc. can this happen to books? i say no, but you say what you want.

i think it's also that my music "library" is totally unmanageable in its physical form. a pile of CDs is ugly, but a row of books increases its beauty with its size. and i'm still saying this after reconstructing several bookshelves and carrying the whole lot upstairs. i can't help it, i love my books. we all need one vice.

my other interesting find was all my old letters, almost exclusively from people i've long lost contact with. the main two were charlotte/saffron from the netherlands and katie hopcraft from australia. i have two return addresses for keeti, hopefully one of which is her parents house, but i have nothing for charlotte because she was living in a squat in amsterdam. not even a last name on paper. ten years ago did i even know what a squat was? she was clearly cooler than i realised. actually i think i did. she was hardcore vegan too. then there were letters from people i'd completely forgotten about. a girl named spacegirl (can you see a pattern emerging?) had sent me four letters, and somewhere i found a half written letter which i presume was supposed to be for her. that's how that ended then. there were also several letters from unknown people, you'd have thought they'd at least have signed their names.

what really fascinated me about the letters though was how they commented on things i'd written. and about how i'd written. and fascination soon turns to frustration when i have no way to read what i'd written. i want to know what i'd wrote about the attractive girl on the train station, the thunder storms over my house, the person who said they loved me. i want to read what i was like. apart from my poor memory i've no record of my 'self' from back then. it'd be like talking to a younger version of me. maybe i'd get back those crucial parts of me that i've lost. my over angsty yet truly free teenage years. or perhaps it's best what time lets us forget.

all in all i'm just sad that i've lost these friends. their letters are great, how did i let it happen?

but back to the cleaning, i hope it's a cathartic process. like losing an anchor to my childhood. because moving on and growing is always good. although when i was younger i never did like change. i was upset when we had an extra digit added to our phone number or i broke a favourite cup. but i think i've finally conquered it. most of what i'm looking at is just a memory of sentimentality, rather than sentimentality itself. yes it's a teddy, but what does it really mean to me now?

little.

07.01.2007: david miliband is clearly a complete prick. the giveaway is this quote from him in the sunday times, "i would not want to say that 96% of our farm produce is inferior because it's not organic". i think sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, like putting labels on cigarette packets that say "smoking causes cancer". but instead he claims that there's no conclusive evidence that organic food has nutritional benefits over non-organic, he calls it a "lifestyle choice". true or not it completely ignores the point of organic produce, that you don't use chemicals to grow it - chemicals that are unnecessary and harmful, to both people and the environment. so what the fuck is our environment secretary going on about? like i said, he's clearly a complete prick.

oh, and there's also animal welfare to consider, which is generally improved under organic conditions, but since anyone who eats meat obviously doesn't give two shits about animal welfare it's not a point worth raising.

actually, the only interesting article that i've read that's (although only vaguely) 'anti-organic' was about poorer farmers being unable to compete because they simply can't afford to produce their food organically. i think this highlights one of the big problems with global trade. but now i've written that i'm going to have to shy away from it because it scares me. and it was ages ago that i read that article and i've probably got it all wrong.

on a more positive note we visited environ's eco-house in leicester yesterday, which is a fun little project that's been running since 1989 (although i think it was closed for a while just before 2000). it's not built out of old tyres (so i presume it's not as cool as the earthship) but it's still pretty good. they use solar power to their heat water (not so hot in the winter), have photovoltaic panels and a windturbine (i'm not convinced) to generate electricity and they reuse a lot of their water. they've got some pretty groovy irrigation schemes going on in the garden and a 5000litre water tank underground. the most interesting part is that the house uses air conditioning with a heat exchanger. none of the windows will open, exactly like the forestry building at the university of toronto, and they claim that this reduces energy while still keeping the air fresh and the temperature balanced. i don't understand how it can possibly work, but i'd like to think they know more about it than me.

you should be scared when you don't recognise your own fingers amongst a sea of lego.

06.01.2007: the rain slashes the carriage window. in every droplet the scenery flipped as it rushes past. another poor man's indra's net. everywhere you look everything is reflected right back at you. it's a perfect british gray morning. a perfect one to feel utterly soulless in.

i'm off on adventures and loving every sleep deprived minute. dare i swig from my concealed bottle of rum so soon after my greasy spooned egg on toast with beans? in the cafe a guy sat in the corner staring at me the whole time. if i really wanted to be bukowski i'd have gone over and smashed a whiskey bottle across his face. except he'd never waste good whiskey. he'd probably just have pretended it was a woman and raped him. of course i'm talking rubbish. you would too if you were me.

reading was delightful and oxford has been beautiful. as if the rain didn't even exist. like the trench-foot i'll get if i'm not careful. on the train station my damp feet begin to feel the cold and it makes my heart sink into them. now it's just me and a straight and lonely railway track. i can barely keep my eyes open.

in reading we sat around drinking and listening to music. also playing metal and with mobius strips, which martin somehow managed to break. raging disbelief. you don't fuck with odd dimensional objects like that. turns out he doesn't have the power to manipulate things in other dimensions, he just has the power to be unable to count to two (you cut a mobius lengthways and you don't get two, you get one which is longer than thinner, only it now has two sides not one). after the silliness we headed to a cold and empty nightclub. the same one we went before when me and martin drank everyone's abandoned drinks and i was fantastically sick in his dingy trainspotting-esque bathroom. this time i was more sensible. dancing to the cure. trying to trick his friends into saying they were communists ("do you believe in equality? so you're a commie then?"). we stayed until closing time, a measly half two. if even that. for the best.

in oxford me and aimee dance through the pit rivers museum, between glass cases of shrunken heads and along corridors of morbid effigies. clearly not for kids, but they love it. the sickos. we drink tea and hot chocolate and catch up. after not long it's like i never left. it was a good but brief five hours wandering around oxford. and i do love pitt rivers, despite the fact that he was pillaging scum.

so now i feel like i've made peace with this country. all we need to do is remove all the people from it.

05.01.2007: it's been three hours since my injections and my jaw and cheek is beginning to feel normal again. that's why i made the mistake of trying to eat my sandwich. nothing in my mouth makes sense. the chewing motions just don't seem to work out. my tongue is all fat in my mouth. it'd be great to feel like this all over. but anyway, it took me from rugby to coventry to get through half a sandwich. i have to hold my hand over my mouth so people can't see me trying to chew. that's the price you pay for not going the dentist often enough. actually, the price you pay is nearer 300 quid.

while i'm lying in the dentist's chair, my shoulder blades seizing up and me desperately wanting to swallow, all i'm thinking about is how the halogen bulbs above me look like indra's net. each of them reflects the same identical pain. but it's not so bad. not like the driller in the labyrinth or total recall. it's just the sound vibrating through my head. through my skull and down my aching spine. and then what you're asking is how you're supposed to wash your mouth out when you don't seem to have one. at least i dribbled into the bowl instead of my lap.

my worst fear is needing to sneeze, head tilted back and staring into the bright lights. it would have been awful. a drill through the cheek. or worse. then after this i see the hygienist for a hi-tech toothbrushing. all very decadent. it even tastes like mint, the exact opposite of the anesthetic.

but if i can't drink how do i get drunk? i guess i can always do it the russian way. martin will like that. which reminds me, i'm on the way to reading. and it's a good job my nan gave me an extra 20 quid because my ticket was 35. also the train is late by 20 minutes. i think a refund of a pound a minute would be fair.

a guy sitting behind me is on his phone asking if they have any imodium in the cupboard at home. brilliant. the poor guy.

04.01.2007: in the end the half-plan came together rather well, despite jen playing yoko and ben playing dead (did you really spend new years on your own being ill?). if you only wanted the short version of my year ender then you better go play guitar shred show and never return.

the man on the train will tell you that you can cut your journey up, but not over midnight. this ruins grilly's fantastic plan of getting a return ticket to somewhere far away and stopping off at all the towns along the way. he was polite and apologetic to the man though, which is always the best strategy when faced with the possibility of having to buy another 20 quid ticket - you only argue that it doesn't say shit on the ticket after he's bought the machine out. i'd also argue that stopping overnight in rugby is punishment enough. and it's amazing how many times you be told "i'll let you off this time". ignorance should never be an excuse for anything, but then it wasn't me who privatised the railways. or decided to increase fares to combat over-crowding. there's a hundred cogs missing in this country, and they all seem to belong to the heads and hearts of the people running it.

anyway, as it turns out stopping over in rugby was a fantastic idea. we drank many a leffe (at almost 7% i was mildly disturbed we munched through 16 bottles, even with martin's help) and played trivial pursuit, poker and heroquest late into the early morning (expect photos on grilly's blog soon). i wasn't in bed until 6am. at around 12 my need for oatcakes out weighed my need for sleep and i got up. my next favourite moment was sitting on platform 2 of rugby train station being soothed by the white noise of the rain. where's the irn bru when you really need it?

by the time we reached london (ealing at least) it was dark. what happened? was i sleeping? at grilly's flat we watched his housemate play zelda and then found a small quiet room in a large noisey pub for either one or two beers. probably one. then we played monkey ball until 2am before realising bed was a much better option. i couldn't sleep past 8am though, so i woke up and read my book for a few pages before passing out on the sofa. at least i didn't play monkey ball. at least not until after breakfast. then pizza. then we bought a guide to london and i realised i'd never visited the british museum. infact i'd never even noticed that it's right opposite gosh, which is my most frequented shop in london.

the british museum is amazing though, for the building itself if nothing else. the roof joining the circular library and the surrounding bulidings is daunting with uncomfortable perspectives. it's proper grandeur rock and roll. the only problem is there's too much to see. we walked around randomly and barely covered any of it. my highlights would be the library (spending far too long working out how you get up there, before realising many of the bookshelves are doors), the durga statue made from reed pith, and the rosetta stone. of course. then more rain came, and the start of our new years. we met corey and ross in the lobby and trudged through the wet london streets, going from closed vege restaurant to closed vegan cafe to open vege falafel house.

i can't remember what any of the pubs we went to were called, but the beer was all good. whereas our game of pool was terrible. how many shots at the black do four people need? it's 7pm and we have plenty of time to waste, obviously. at the pub in camden we sat outside until it was too cold and then tried to find our night's party (and off-license). so to jez's, where we were to perform in an espionage game. a little strange but great for socialising, along with the champagne starter. role playing really brings out the worst in some people but that's okay. i just didn't understand how it could have been arranged so that every player had an equal chance of winning without cheating. obviously it was rather easy for the mole to deduce he was the mole. it was easy for me too because he told me. none of this matters when you're mixing bombay sapphire with irnbru. when grilly asks for "rock" music, instead of what sounds like enya, we get nin. i don't think anyone really noticed. not in hindsight anyway.

the actual new year rollover was a non-event. jules provided the countdown and it was a big whatever, except for all the couples in the room who felt obliged to eat each other's faces. we'd almost decided to trek out to primrose hill but were coerced into not going. it would have been great, despite the cold and the wet. although seeing london shoot and explode a million pounds into the sky would have surely pissed me right off. all conversations that were slightly political were frowned upon so it was probably for the best. and not once did i mention saddam hussein. although earlier in the night i had name dropped leigh betts. whatever. it's new years, lighten up.

there was some street fighter 2 but only grilly took it seriously. then we defaced the easyjet billboard out on the road, which people seemed to think was outrageously fun, or something, as they ran out of the party after us. it looked terrible but that's what you get for not taking spray paint to a party. then whiskey, rum, gin, gingerbeer. everyone's boyfriend is a dick. and when i'm offered a truffle i almost say "oh go on, i'll have a cheeky half", but i'm certain the spaced reference would be lost. normally taking truffles at a party at 4am would be a terrible idea.

we left when the front room was turned into a giant slumber party, taking a bottle of rum for the journey, and tried to find our way back across london. we somehow got to euston with little effort, and from there took various tubes and rails to ealing. at 7am it was hard to deduce whether people were finishing off their night or starting their day. the rum was beautiful. the cheese and onion pasty wasn't, nor were the noodles (i told you). by 8am we were in bed and four hours later i was verbally dragging grilly out again. the sun was brilliant (er, literally) and the year was already wasting. before long we were on the train to brighton eating poorly chosen noodles and rice, and we almost made it there before the sun set.

with so little sleep over the last few days i never was going to achieve much in brighton. the lanes were very quiet and half of the christmas lights weren't even working (steph later told me the shops had been forced to pay 300quid each for them, so many had been sabotaged). we walked along the beach, slips of distant sunlight across the water and drizzle in the air. lightning firing across hove's bow. it's an easy place to be nostalgic about, but it's not just the spatial location. living here again now wouldn't be like living there then. not to mention the obvious when i've already written too much.

robin and rachel have a comfy and welcoming apartment and we sat around drinking tea and relaxing. playing rocks. we could have stayed there all night but we had to leave to get dinner (grubbs, as planet india was closed) and to see chris and rifa, always a pleasure. back at robin's we drank wine and ate vanilla popcorn and finally fell asleep. i was sleeping in the hall, much to the cat's amusement. he (mr.4) seemed to greatly enjoy jumping on my ass on various occasions. amongst the fucked up dreams i had (i presume i was catching up on all the dreaming i'd missed) the cat managed to claw its way through my arm and shoulder.

all this time i've been stealing other peoples toothpaste. i apologise. we had breakfast at the dumb waiter and hot chocolate at the end of the lanes cafe. both of which were amazing and deserve paragraphs in their own right. i don't know when it got dark but it was quite soon. i think it happened when rachel went the toilet in the pub. we saw steph for about ten minutes and i forget to tell him all the things i wanted to, then we were back on the train home. slugging wine all the way.

it ends, just like that.

02.01.2007: 2007. if it wasn't for 2012 being in the future this would be a great year for the end of the world. don't mind the mayans, it's all about timewave zero. let the noosphere consume you. it's this what you've got to look forward to.

our universe is actually a very simple fractal generated by a simple process, and it only has binaries in it. Humans can conceive beyond good and evil, and beyond duality, but yet we can't do it. The universe stops you. But in mathetmatical states people can actually go beyond duality. We know it exists; these things are there already, I think. They seem to be; it's just on another level. A five-dimensional consciousness." This five-dimensional consciousness is what inhabits the supercontext that will assimilate mankind. It created spacetime so it could experience growth and can only return to the supercontext when its growth is complete, when humanity recognizes its true nature.

it's not all fun and games though. in the lonely misery of 1am i'm suddenly missing everything and anyone. it tears me across two continents, several countries and many cities. an unknown number of hours ago all i wanted was my bed back home, whatever 'home' means, but now i'm lying here the tiredness is bringing nothing but abstract regret. my mind and body are both exhausted but can't get it together to let me sleep. it's all i need. maybe a sandwich.

so right now isn't the best time to displace my end of year from past to paper.

it's true though. i equally love and hate the feeling of lack of sleep, with its impossible combination of both numbing and exaggerating of emotions. my happiest and most distraught moments of the last few years have all been under this blanket. it's all to be embraced.

28.12.2006: the christmas tradition of getting drunk every night eventually runs out of energy. i think it's on about the 28th. last night we didn't know what to do, alcohol just wasn't enough. drums and guitar would have been good but it was too late. and these kids don't have the bishi bashi skills to keep that entertaining either. i killed martin at go again ('killed' is perhaps taking a little too many liberties) and this time it was a fair win. i'm just trying to make up for my dwindling ability to play connect four. i used to love it but i've lost about 80% of my games. it's the beer i'm sure.

and if you want to follow my movements, i'll be traveling to london on the 30th, brighton on the 1st and then probably back to rugby on the 2nd or 3rd. it's all very simple.

oh bollocks to it, maybe i should just join the circus. i'll start in the kitchens and work my way up. i can shovel animal shit and take the lions out for secret late night walks. work in make-up removal. all the jobs no one wants to do i can put my heart into.

maybe i could just take a pie in the face every night.

27.12.2006: my bedroom is like the crystal maze. except instead of a crystal there's whatever it is you're looking for. if you can find anything in there in under three minutes i'll give you my last shot of absinthe. especially if it's the book i've lost. and i also reserve the right to shout obscenities at you as you rummage around ("to the left! look to the left! no, your other left! come out! quick!", etc). i wont shave my head though. not this time.

now, there's a good new years resolution..

please note that i don't do or believe in new years resolutions. if you want to achieve something they're just an excuse for putting it off, and if you're looking for an excuse to put it off you're never going to do it. of course if you're going to quit drinking (for example) then new years eve is a terrible time.

if i was going to quit drinking then yesterday might have been best. martin came over twice (he went home for dinner, too funny) and we went on a bit of a nostalgia trip. actually it was mostly me, "hey, you want to see my old school rough books?". there's something cathartic about letting someone freely browse your early inner demons. some of my writings and doodles frankly scare me. it's not so much that i was unhinged or trying to be weird. i was just young and sad, for the most part. i had the odd moment of genius, but most of my rough book content was stolen from bands (omg really? lol!). when i get the time i'll fix up some choice cuts. if you're interested and impatient you could always read my diaries from 89 (scroll down).

this was all to a background of 'milkill - the full recordings' (on the back of the cd it will say "moments of beauty and untuned-atonal-rawk side by side like god intended", some shit like that). i get such a kick our of listening to our old minidiscs. where we weren't good, at least we were funny.

we also played go, which i undeservedly won. go is beautiful. like othello, which i've been playing a lot of on the macbook. i'm not so impressed though, i consistently cane the computer on it's hardest setting. i thought apples were supposed to be good, yet it can't even beat me at measly game with an often tiny search tree. brute force my arse.

wait, that sounds wrong.

but anyway. after the wine, whiskey and schnapps, at 5am i was about ready for bed. lying there, each breathe a wave crashing against the shore, the last thing i remember was a painting washing up on the sand.

25.12.2006: when i was younger christmas was the one day i wanted to get up as early as possible. i must have presents now, that kind of thing. and going to bed as early as possible. but the older i got and the less presents i got i realised it's more enjoyable to take it easy and savour the whole present opening process. putting it off is all good. infact, i wouldn't be too opposed to putting it off for a whole year. having said that, it's been a good and simple christmas. all round i think.

but about waking up early, i was woken up this morning at 8am by a gang of carol singers on their way to church, singing one of their damn awful songs at the top of their voices all the way down the street. i didn't want to wake up until christmas dinner (one of the only good things about christmas) was ready. i'm so bah humbug. this year more like stomach bug. i would have been tempted to throw stones at the carol singers (we all know how the christians like a good stoning), but really it was my belly ache that ruined my morning. it woke me up at half five and refusing to let me sleep for two hours. it would have okay but i was too tired to even read while sitting on the toilet.

i wasn't sick, you'll be happy to know. although the first time i went downstairs i wasn't half tempted. you know the feeling though right, when you go hot and cold at the same time and your forehead goes all sweaty and you'd be hanging over the toilet bowl if only you weren't already sitting on it. i'm not someone who's afraid to throw up, it's better out than in and i often take great pleasure in the post-vomit calm, but i just didn't want to ruin christmas. hahaha.

it was the several late night helpings of curry and the bottles of wine what probably done it. maybe the salad. i felt fine when i finally got into bed gone three, having walked all the way to brownsover and back. i'd felt like walking martin home. also like embracing the middle of night quiet and solitude, being serenaded by the birds and throwing berries at the odd passing car. i even wrestled a few plastic bags out of a tree, charlie brown style, and ended up picking up all the litter on the way home. it was futile but it kept my entertained when i ran of the afore mentioned berries.

you'd do better putting the people who drop the litter in plastic bags, but that's not particularly festive.

you'll all burn sooner than you realise, just ask george.

but anyway, i might go and pretend i didn't brake the all important A string on my guitar. or maybe play with this cute little music toy.

i hope you're all having a good time really.

22.12.2006: i've been enjoying the feelings of being a teenager again. mental and physical. there's a special something about sleeping in your childhood bedroom, like it's an ancient place of power. also i get to wrap my duvet around the radiator while i brush my teeth for a comforting warmth i didn't think was possible whilst sleeping without my woman.

i'm currently trying to get used to this mac, it's not easy to rewrite your programming. my windows belief system may be critically flawed but it's iron grip is iron-like. if only i could get textpad and totalcommander for the mac i'd be set. can anyone recommend good mac alternatives? and also one for paint shop pro, one that i can get free (by any means necessary). i've never liked photoshop but maybe it's a good time to convert to that too? i'm thinking about this seriously because my old laptop is dancing drunk and naked along a tightrope above the void and the best non-mac laptop i've looked at is a philips, which wasn't at all nice. after my vaio going wrong in three different places, my sony mp3 player going wrong in two, and my parents sony tv just being rubbish, i think i'm done with sony. even if their laptops are quite sexy.

i've always cringed at ricky gervais, and not just because of david brent, but now i'm not sure if my resent for him is fair. today he went and denounced the belief of god on radio one. fearless. then jo whiley let him set the question for the phone-in quiz, and he decided on "does god exist?". he's obviously been reading dawkins' new book 'the god delusion' (£9.94 from tesco). i can't dislike someone who's so willing to offend the masses in the face of obscenity.

for instance, all of the mirrors in next (the clothes store) are curved to make you look thinner, especially (but not exclusively) the ones in the changing rooms. it's a disgusting practice and it shouldn't be allowed. burn it down and revel in your own body. love your physical self, in the privacy granted by the changing room curtains. just make sure you cover or smash the mirrors first, else they'll completely get the wrong idea. i'm advocating this but don't come crying to me if you get arrested - don't forget they can track you by your dna.

i was there buying a smart coat, btw. my mum wanted to buy it for me and it's been about a decade since i last had a new coat. i agreed that i'd have it aslong as it wasn't made in a sweatshop, but there was no way we could find out. it was made in romania, could be much worse, so i don't know what i think of it at all.

this also is going nowhere.

21.12.2006: my favourite things about waking up at 1pm is i get to eat two dinners and i only have to suffer three hours of daylight.

i love daylight as much as the next non-nocturnal animal, but being up all night i can pretend i'm a superhero (or villian, much cooler - like tie fighter over x-wing). i'd go for a vampire but i hate the goth association. and the vampire association too. fog is also more beautiful in the night than the day, where it's just grey, dirty and crap.

actually it's the air what i like best about england. it's dampness and horror film sensibilities. nobody does it better. when i come home it's the first thing i notice when i step outside of the airport. brilliant. even in toronto, where the weather's comparably miserable, the air's dry like a crap sponge. who would have thought i could get nostalgic over humidity?

but anyway, i was hoping for something a little more dramatic than fog. something like the plane i was supposed to be taking skidding off the runway and bursting into flames. me cheating death. a story to shock and impress. but no, the planes are cancelled and grounded instead. so it's still lucky i came home early, or i'd be spending my hours at toronto airport. wait, didn't i do that anyway?

fog fog fog fog fog. you can't get more articulate than that.


at first bush's last day seems like a good site, but since i'm generally quite hateful it didn't take me long before i changed my mind. i was first suspicious of all the merchandise, is this just someone trying to sell a bunch of mugs and bumper stickers? well that might be fair enough, what i don't like is the pathetic political motivation. if you dislike bush that bad you shouldn't be waiting for him to get old and die. you should be demanding impeachment. you should be demanding equal justice, you should be demanding he's hung. if you want to be poetic let's have him hung side by side with saddam - while we're being barbaric we may as well do it properly. or you could just wait like pathetic creatures as your country is used as toilet paper by your president. waiting is not your only option. or did you let the miami model scare you? it's okay, it scared the shit out of me too.

20.12.2006: lose a nights sleep. lose five hours. or is it gain? more like having them forced on you. it's dark or still light outside and my body has no idea what time it really is. really it's no time. it's good to demonstrate how delicate these taken-for-granted concepts are.

the world is round you know

and the year's only defined by a giant rock spinning around a star. did you know it takes longer for venus to spin 360 than it does for it to go around the sun? like spinning on a dime. meaningless crap. it's easy for me to condescending about how abstract it is, but where would we be without our seasons? it's a question worth asking because it wont be long before we'll have destroyed them as well.

and this coming from me, whilst complaining about jetlag. was it chris martin who sang about being part of the disease? him or that travis bloke. we're all scum. the perfume of corridors. unfamiliarized with isolated activity.

the whiskeys on the plane didn't help. no matter how many the cabin crew were willing to line up on my folded down table, looking bloody ridiculous. awesome food though, as you can expect from air india, and i even found a row of five seats to lie across. none of it put me to sleep.

a funny thing that happened at the airport though. one guy was trying to take a two litre bottle of bright orange washing liquid onto the plane. now why would you even want to take that? security weren't much impressed and they just waved me on.

the peanut butter twix didn't help me sleep either. but i didn't need to admit that to you.

if this doesn't stop here it could go on for hours. waiting for sleep is kind of like this too.

my 'extra' hours, running late into the dead of night, what worse way to waste them than following the offensive trash on the television? consider me a tranquilized ball of rage. and 'trash' is far too nice a word. infact i should have been out rummaging through trash. instead i was watching the mint with milo and yolly. a sickening hypnotic void. the presenters talk constantly to the camera, whatever comes into their non-minds. dullness like it's a talent. at least, guessing from the repetitive wrong answers the callers were giving, i was their only viewer.

anyway, enough crap. i'm here, come get a piece.

18.12.2006: so due to the recent events in copenhagen, this one is dedicated to ungdomshuset. it's funny because i was going to be putting up an atari teenage riot track on radio emo.ware this week anyway.

colour me childish, but outline me in giving a fuck.

don't forget that december 22nd is the day or global mobilization for oaxaca. does anyone know of plans or gatherings outside the mexican embassy in mayfair? or is everyone satisfied with the fake blood they poured over it october? none of the usual channels are reporting anything.

obviously fuck all is happening in toronto, but i'm not going to be here anyway. right now i'm either on my way to england or there already. so let's have a parade.

last night i managed to get out and to a party in st.james. we'd met a friendly couple on the subway last weekend, coming back from ottawa, and they'd invited me along. so that was cool. most of the people there seemed to be from the young communist league, which was interesting, because i've never really considered communism. and i didn't at all enjoy reading the communist manifesto. it was also interesting because i've also wanted to go inside the apartment blocks at the end of our road.

anyway, i don't have time for this right now. i really have to run.