Pop will eat Itself.

A fine band. A very politically active band, but this clip is brilliantly surreal. The late late show, was the Irish equivalent of Wogan, so to have him segue from being lovely and chatty with his respectable guests, cut to the audience of Blue rinses clapping politely, And then huge chunking riffs sent from before the dawn of time shatter their eardrums as Clint et al sing their anti-fascist song.

Genius!

(The action starts at about 1:10)

American Central

My old mate Warren's just made his first post from the heart of America on Notfussed .

The American election intrigues me in ways it probably shouldn't.

Anyway take a look.

Weekend!

Had a superb weekend DAAAAWNNNNN SAWWWWWFFFFF. Drove down on the Saturday morning after beating my own record time for packing (13.5 minutes for a weekend trip). Met up with part of the family for a pre Sunday party shindig, a family warm-up if you will. Wez and my sister (The legends) arrived along with My brother and Amanda (The American heart of our little family) Wheeling in the cutest thing that ever drew breath.

It's true. I'm pleased to announce that we can call off the search for the cutest baby of all time. You might think you're in contention with your awards, medals and or Nappy/Diaper advert babies, but this is a kid whose sheer physical presence bends space-time around him until you are helpless in his thrall of gorgeousness.

Full credit to Phil and Amanda not only have they brought up a serious cutesy-pie, he's also probably the best behaved baby I've ever met! (Actually at 10months old is he officially a toddler now? I'm so unsure of my infant chronology.) He was surrounded by gurgling adults and it didn't even phase him at all. He was playing laughing just cruising along quite happily as if he renders a room of hardened adults to Jelly every day, which I suppose he must do

It is so ALL about Jack.

So after a superb meal of curry and two puds (Well it would be rude not to,) at Chris and Judy's we headed to the hotel at about 10PM to find a Salsa club in full swing.

Banish from your thoughts men with goatees hanging around bowls of serious tomato-based dip, debating the merits of scotch bonnet over jalapeño peppers. This was the dancing club at the end of the midlife crisis rainbow. About forty or fifty overweight, over-forty's throwing themselves around the room with the grace and abandon of a tap-dancing Walrus. We secured a table in the bar as far away from the clattering Hippopotami as possible and re-mortgaged the house to pay for a round of drinks. (£3.50 a pint? Is this how they're cracking down on binge drinking? Making it impossible to have more than two pints without having a second income?)

However after a few more rounds of overpriced bitter we were feeling a bit more well disposed to the dancers, especially when they shared their buffet with us. I say shared, I mean "Rob and Wez went on a ninja buffet run and snarfed butties and some crisps for the group."

Sleep came easy that night, then up for a Herculean breakfast and off to the village hall where we celebrated my Great Aunt Rita's 80th birthday. It was lovely to see branches of the family I don't get to see very often including various Cousins and uncles and my Godmother.

My Gran had three kids, my mum and two uncles, and when we were growing up all the kids of the three siblings used to hang out quite a bit, It was very rare for us not to spend a week or so in a year together. Now we're all grown up (physically if not mentally in my case) we don't get to do it that often. So it was great to catch up with everyone and meet George, my Cousin once removed I think. He's the son of my cousin so whatever that makes him. George is also gorgeous, possibly the second cutest baby in the world, He's certainly the UK title holder.(Two cute babies, one extended family? I have a feeling the next baby will have to be a munter, just to even out the averages.)

So with the festivities over it was back the hotel and the incredibly pricey bar and a few rounds of three card brag before heading back up the country to Wales.

A superb weekend all told and one I'm going to remember for a very long time!

beached

Spent yesterday on a beach with old mates celebrating the life of one taken too soon. Many cans of beer were hoisted in his honour which, frankly he would have enjoyed. Adios Keith.

Keith Hannon RIP

Believe it or not its now been two years since we lost Keith. The plan is as ever to go the beach and down a few drinks in his honour. I no longer work at the same place but I have actually stayed friends with a lot of the people I used to work with there. Its a very rare thing especially for me, we'll see how long it lasts I suppose. I play football with the lads every tuesday so that helps to keep some continuity there.

One of the joys of Flexi-working is I was abel to take yesterday afternoon off and do all the little jobs that had been driving me mad. we're away this weekend and I just wanted to get everything done ahead of schedule so I wasn't worrying about it whilst we're away DAAWN SOUFFF!

Its my Great Aunt Ritas birthday on sat and we're all heading down to the south of England to get the whole family together, We were fed up of only seeing people for funerals so we organized a big nosh up for a birthday party instead. 67 of my close family will be there which is a good turn out. Also my first opportunity to meet my American Nephew Jack! I'm so proud and happy for my brother and Amanda, They're so good together that I just know they're going to raise him right . Of Course I reserve the right to spoil him rotten on his trips over here!!

Got The first draft of Switch three back from The editors. More red ink on the page than black but he said he enjoyed it, I'm just needing to polish it up before its ready for mass consumption.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is highly enjoyable. Its very much switch off the brain and go along for the ride. Some plot points don't make sense, some characters are ill-used and badly drawn, and some of the CGI is a bit overly done. HOWEVER its enormous amounts of fun, Indy has some great lines, the humour is well used and not too OTT and, in the words of the great Warren Ellis, It obeys and enjoys the genre. Its a big summer popcorn action movie, the kind they didn't make anymore.

So as Lincoln said "The kind of person who enjoys this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they enjoy.". (No speechwriters in the early eighteen hundreds.)

Right I'm off to get drunk and remeber a good friend taken from us too soon.

Peace out houseys.

a break.

Had a bit of a mad one in work this week. I did 19.5 hours work on the first two days in to get this payroll out on time. No one has phoned up telling me it was screwed up so I must have got it mostly right. They've got his empowerment thing going on in work now which is actually good. It means I feel personally responsible for something. If any small part of it goes wrong I know its my fault, sounds bad hunh? But it actually works because it makes you super careful. Its actually quite liberating. Also when things go tits up, as they do, the blame isn't handed around. We calmly look at things that go wrong and reassess how we're putting them together. I work for actual people now rather than the corporate automatons at my previous position. its lovely to be able to be human and to make errors without fear of being slung out on my ear. Its through our mistakes that we learn.

However you do get some people who phone in week after week complaining about their pay when they've screwed it up themselves and refuse to do anything about it. You'd think after the third successive month of them mucking it up they'd take notice of what you're telling them, but no. So anyway that was my week mired in work, Listening to the enemy and elbows new albums.

What have you been up to?

doughnut day!

Sorry about the lack of postage. Updating mainly from my mobile and keypads arent ideal for long messages.

Weekend was ace, met up in betws y coed at 9 on sat after a glourious drive through wooded lanes with the morning mist rolling up the valleys from the sea. We picked up some bits and pieces from betws, set up camp in llyn gwynant and headed to Llanrwst to start for snowdon. It took 3.45 hours up and 2.45 down again but it was worth every step! It was a long hard slog and full credit to the gang it was done with the minimum of bitching and complaints. The summit was pretty crowded but when you saw the view youd know why.

Then back to camp for food and a fine bottle of single malt ive been saving. The pyromaniacs two tents over nearly set their tents, the ground and themselves on fire using half a forest and petrol to get it going. It was pure inbred retard theatre.

Then home to a nice dark room onthe sunday to avoid burning to death in the suns rays! And back to work.

Oh and the reason for the title? I brought donughts in for the office as they have to work on my payroll today!

definitions

A good weekend is one where you forget all about work and come in fresh on the monday. A great weekend is one where you wake up on the monday and cant remeber if you actually have a job.

I had a great weekend.

Ferrous Dude

Go watch IronMan. Its superb. If you're a comicbook geek stay until the end, the rest of you can be excused at the credits.

That is all.

Switch -Small Change

I find a lot of stories come from the distillation of several small items or thoughts coming together and mixing in just the right way

Small Change by Tom Waits is one of my favorite of his early songs. He really paints pictures of the underbelly of american city life and that put me in the mood of someone who would do anything to anyone for money

Add in Paris we went into a small bar for a coffee and a quick sit down and there were people their that looked like they spent all day just sat in the same seat watching the horse racing on these tiny TVs and I got thinking who would stay in the same crappy bar all day? there had to be something else going on.

Combine that with the documentary on Sumo I saw a few weeks before and you have this piece.

Its not ace but I've been clearing through some of the writing I've got on this computer and I found this and another piece Id swear I never written. I'm not going to publish that because its basically switch told from a different perspective but some of the details are totally different and I have to keep the continuity pure at least!

Switch - Small Change

Small Change got rained on by his own 38.

His nickname, like everything else about him, was totally inappropriate. He must have weighed four hundred pounds and was fat in that way sports stars go when they've got nothing to force them into the gym every morning.

He was a Sumo wrestler, won a few minor contests but he had little in the way of discipline, no composure and would let his temper get the better of him. Clever opponents would just taunt him into making a mistake.

Just after the biggest win of his burgeoning career he was found in a compromising position with the Dojo owner's daughter. If he'd been a star wrestler it could have been overlooked. Small Change, however was kicked to the curb with a size sixty waistline and few transferable talents.

Beating people up for money is always a skill set needed by a subsection of society and he had both training and experience in this specialised field.

He worked as muscle for a few small time Loan sharks for a while, learning the game before that small brain, insulated by several hundred pounds of blubber, clicked onto a new concept. He bounced Jimmy the Fish out of business, literally, and took up Jimmy's old patch and markers.

That first week Small-Change was in charge, ten of Jimmy's long-time non-payees ended up in A & E. They were the lucky ones who found a way to get the money. Unlike the two poor saps who took a ride to the cold metal slab downstairs.

That was the first time I had the pleasure of meeting him. Vice have got the sharking side of things but as soon as pulses slow to a dead stop that's when my boys get called in.

From the coroners report it wasn't hard to work out what had happened.

Having all your ribs crushed and your organs turned to pate can happen if you have a horrific Auto accident, or if a pissed off ex-sumo who you owe money to uses your chest as a trampoline.

Of course we couldn't prove anything, nobody wanted to talk and the word on the street was after that first week of carnage, everybody paid on time. No-one wanted to owe him money for too long. That's where his nickname came from, the whispers were he'd kill you even if you only owed him a few pennies.

Still if you were in a jam, needed some dough up front, no questions asked, he was your man. Every day, in the same reinforced seat, in the same bar, drinking the same cheap whiskey and laughing through his broken yellow teeth.

He was still smiling when we arrived on the scene, black eightball eyes showing the death blood of fatal head trauma. He was spread-eagled on the cheap lino of the barroom floor with six bullet holes. Two in the head and the other four in the enormous gut that flopped around his torso like a half deflated beach ball.

There was just something inherently wrong about his mouth of broken dentistry still smiling after death. Like having a Sick Animal Hospital next to a Vietnamese restaurant.

The gun, his gun, was found a block away. Wiped clean of course, and nobody was surprised when the ballistics matched the six slugs they pulled out of him to the pistols six chambers.

No witnesses, no suspects, no clues. Everyone wanted him dead for some reason and there was no pressure on us to pursue it.

All that was left of him after the coroner had removed the carcass was a gaudy Hawaiian shirt the size of a ships mainsail, covered with blood and whisky.


FIN (With thanks to Tom Waits for the title.)

free album

Free nine inch nails album at NIN.com Thanks Trent!

Week-end

Had a great weekend camping, unlike most other bank holiday weekends this one had some serious sunshine so Em and I through the tent in the back of the car and escaped to the hills for a couple of days. More photos available at flickr on the left there.

We walked part of the snowdon path, found a lovely cafe near Beddgelert, went to the Pen t Gerryd hotel where one of the rooms is decked out like a wooden paneled Bothy/shelter.


Sausage sandwiches for breakfast. How can you argue? It was nice to spend time just the two of us but we're going back next weekend mob-handed. Its a different vibe when there are loads of you as opposed to just a couple. Its a peace and a closeness that I don't think I ever experienced before but I was always searching for it. Sorry I know that sentence doesn't make any sense but it how I feel. I was missing Her even when I didn't know she existed.

How unlucky can one man be?

I'm referring to Mr Eric Pleasants referred to as Hitlers bastard
This is the synopsis on Amazon

"A life-long pacifist, Eric Pleasants was forced to kill in order to survive. From a vagabond life alongside infamous Triple Cross agent Eddie Chapman on occupied Jersey, Pleasants was taken by the Nazis to a series of prison camps in France. The years that followed held a whirlwind of unexpected turns: he lived a life on the run in occupied Paris, was captured and recruited into the British Free Corps of the Waffen-SS, found love with a young German woman, witnessed the bombing of Dresden and attempted to hide from Soviet troops along the sewers of Berlin. When the war ended, Pleasants found himself on the Communist side of the Iron Curtain. By now a strong man in a travelling circus, he was arrested by the KGB on charges of espionage and sentenced to 25 years' slave labour in the notorious camps of Arctic Russia.Only with Stalin's death in 1953 was Pleasants finally released from his unique kind of purgatory, after nearly half a lifetime of peripatetic nightmare. Pleasants died in 1998 in Norfolk at the age of 87"

Can you only imagine? Suffering not only Hitler but Stalin as well and surviving to live and work in Norfolk???


I can see it in my mind. The Royal Legion (norfolk Branch) A group of WWII veterans are gathered around a table swapping stories of how hard they had it in the trenches or the POW camps of the east. One man claims that his experiences fighting through Normandy Belgium was as close to hell on earth as man can experience here. There's a derisive snort from the bar. They turn around to see Eric Pleasants standing there watching them with half a pint of bitter in his hand.

He strides over, slams his drink on the table and levels them with a stare forged in the fires of hades.

"Now let ME tell you a story...."

stuffage.

Had a badminton meal last night, bit more sedate than the other club but nice nonetheless. Good to see one guy whos had some health problems but reckons he'll be back playing soon. Considering hes 75 odd i think thats rather good! Talked crap and ate well which is what im planning to do tonight as well. Although this will be more curry and lager rather than brie and fine wines!