Duracell Minus

This week I has

* talked late

* sat up late

* curtain-twitched

* made hamstrings complain

* not done enough

* learned the child sign language for 'pig', 'tiger', 'sheep' and 'biscuit'

* signed up for a screenwriting seminar

* gone "aaargh" with regards above

* partly because of the £

* interviewed one of favourite bands in a sort of shock last-minute who'd-a-thunk-it scenario

* gone "wheeeeee" with regards above

I can witter about that one now (and don't think I won't) but I'm planning to write it up on here properly and interminably, in a way that no sensible editor would print. Which will be sort of emancipating. They've done that for me before anyway, making me break free from the shackles of supposed creative endeavour that's actually like a prison of the mind, man. When I used to go and see them and jump about and shout and smile, all the other nonsense I was embroiled in that had to do with seeing bands and writing about them and trying to talk to them when they just wanted to go back to bed seemed utterly superfluous.

I suppose I wish I'd had the balls to interview them when I had the chance for one of the mags I used to write for - which I might have linked but there is no trace online of its brief life except mentions of its demise. I might have been able to write about them in the way I wanted to, but then again it would probably have turned out bad. I almost don't want to write about them at all. It spoils it somewhat. I have to start justifying myself - which is hard in this case as they're almost a guilty pleasure - and it's just a lot of bollocks. But yes.

But yes! It's not often you feel like you get the chance to tie up a very long sort of shoelace-thin but trailing loose end like this. I probably couldn't have done it a few years ago. My problem with interviews - well, one of the many - is that I can't bear to come out of them thinking I came across as a knob. It's a pretty sterile environment, these days, and I'm uncomfortable and awkward. The whole 'never meet your heroes' thing implies 'because they'll be crushingly disappointing and boringly human and not like they fell out of the sky at all', but it's so much more likely that you will disappoint them... and they have no expectation of you to start with. You can feel utterly negated by a dismissive glance from someone you admire. I know, I'm too susceptible to the whole myth of it all, but then I always wanted to be. Like a stupithead.

Fortunately, I came out with most of my dignity intact; and as immature as it may be, with the hint of a sense that they could actually have fallen out of the sky still in place too. It wasn't a very good interview, I don't think, but things were said into dictaphone, and although they

* got up and wandered about the room occasionally

* sniggered

* sighed deeply

...somehow it didn't seem personal.

Almost anything you build up to be a big deal is stunningly prosaic when it happens, but I never find that disappointing - it fascinates me how that works, as if your brain dumps a load of calmative chemicals to enable you to deal with it. This thing had spent years deflating in any case, but it was still kind of special. I never thought it'd ever happen, and that always gives you a bit of a celebratory feeling, giving rise to noisy TWU-bothering singing upon getting home. The staggeringly normal feeling of the moments you think will be otherworldly is actually sort of lovely. It's uniquely pleasant after the anxiety that precedes it. I think it's the element of surreality that you get with it. I don't know. But I did sit there and smile like a fool. Part of my pleasedness must have come from the fact that I do care a tiny bit less now if people think I am a fool. A tiny tiny bit. They aren't as important to me as they were, but they were important enough that they'll always have that resonance for me. So... yeah. It was daunting, but they were fine, and I was so relieved I was nearly giddy.

I got them to sign something - I've only ever got one other autograph for myself, because he was such a thoroughly amiable bloke. This - I don't know, I'm strangely unmoved by the thing that's now stuck on the wall by my desk with three absolutely illegible signatures on it, even as it pleases me to look at it. Oh - no I'm not, I am a bit moved. I just thought about what it means, and what it would have meant if I'd had it four years ago. I suppose it is a belated sign-off on a part of my life. A really good part. In parts. A sign of happy times.

They're playing on my birthday, in a venue I've seen them in twice, which is soon going to be turned into offices torn down. Good God. I will need wheeling home.

Once I've transcribed the thing and finished kicking myself for how terrible I sound and the questions I didn't ask, I'll write it up here. I suppose I should try and use it as some sort of line, marking the end of me writing sentences like the previous one, but those sorts of lines tend to be a load of unrealistic arse, like some genetically-modified monster of an ultra-new year resolution. Maybe you're just supposed to come to terms with your own imperfections. Man.

Ugh. What a thought.

Pretty internet

It's a wonder I ever get anything done. Oh wait.


WRINKLE IN THE EYES FROM STRESS!

*

"What is undervalued in the sale pitch of this item (and it's overall sense of delight while you sun-bathe on the car-port covered in at least six of these freshly delivered delights) is the wonderful "SPAK" sound it makes when you throw it to the linoleum."

*

"That's right. Instead of the London Astoria, we get a hole in the ground. A building site. Fuck all, basically."

*

"I tried to laugh off the fact that I was going to eat a chocolate sandwich - embarrassing, when he was living on miso paste and seaweed. He gave me two-fifths of a smile and started rummaging around in the silverware drawer."

*

"While Vickie danced, J. Howard tried to grab her breasts. Thus began J. Howard's aggressive pursuit of Vickie's affection."

*

Up your hoohaa, America!

*

First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs.

Paedo's out (I have been waiting all my life for a pun such as this)

Whoops. I just got a bit carried away with the labels. I have so many as to render them quite useless. Still, an inability to file is a sign of a creative mind. It is.

I did write a thing about the present prisony fiasco with regards that big old paedo, but I don't want to immediately alienate everyone, even if I'm going to alienate some by not writing about it. I might just find someone I agree with and link to them. Oh bugger it, I'll fillet some bits out.

1) Actually it's not actually illegal to just be a paedophile because it's not illegal to fancy children, only to act upon it, which makes you a paedophile who is a sex offender. I wish the media would stop being so lazy on that point. Actually. It's important.

2) Mumble mumble are people who watch nasty child pron actually dangerous in the most literal sense so if we're talking about only the most dangerous criminals that bloke doesn't necessarily qualify does he mumble murfle I think I left a thing over there and have to go now.

3) If they're worried about what nasty crime will be committed next necessitating the lock-up of people for whom there is no room at the inn, I would bet dosh that it's going to be some manner of severe damage to said blokey, who was clever enough to go on all the telly with his face and say that the judge was just doing his job. Get the police guard off Jade's house post haste, they're lining up with leftover fireworks. (I can't watch BB anymore although I suppose I'll watch Shilpa win tomorrow. It's all too ghastly. Whatever those unpleasant women did, their lives are now going to be ruined, and it's rather disproportionate considering they weren't being any more idiotic than most of the idiots you find who aren't on telly.)

Much as I can barely bear the Indie at the moment (it won't stop until we are all hanging our heads in shame so hard we get whiplash), I had to make a knowing face and say 'uh huh' at its front page today. Scroll down for list of people who've been banged up recently, including the naked rambler and people who've refused to pay taxes or fines for political reasons.

Oh and I was also interested to read this, or attempt to read it. I got through a paragraph and a half and then my entire head started to spontaneously warm and sweat reservoired in my ears. For the love of all that is holy, what is that woman taking? I mean, I thought my prose was a bit florid and hectic and such, but compared to her I am Emily goddam Dickinson.

Fave new world

Blast. I seem to have been gently forced to upgrade. I don't care if it's better, change blows. But really, couldn't they just let me use their old machinery for as long as I liked? It's not like there are health and safety issues. Grump.

The trivialities of the day!

- Dog stole my remaining pain au chocolat from where it nestled on the kitchen worktop, wrapped snugly in plasticy stuff. That beast. He is becoming roly. He is sleek enough to look at, and that narrow collie waist looks almost worrying next to the booming Nottweiler ribs, but when he sits down you can see all his fur sort of ruck up like a carpet. If you had the strength, you could probably lift him by grasping a handful of dogflesh almost anywhere on him. His actual surface area must be vast. Still, it's just a bit of not-unhealthy flab. He has an extraordinarily boring and frugal dry diet, which is why he puts his head in the bin and steals patisserie fare when he can. Ah well. As long as he's not anywhere near Rusty standard (how did those ruminants ever get him back? They will only feed him pies! Stupid country).

- Did I mention that my non-Pod has niftily merged Bjork's 'Greatest' with Take That's 'Greatest'? Well, it has, and it is still amusing.

- What, oh what is the use of Bloc Party? Their music is ugly.

- Why do Bowling For Soup still have a career? Their music is uglier, but at least it knows and sort of acknowledges it's ugly, whereas Bloc Party's music thinks it is beautiful. This, as superbly explained by Stephen Fry, is the worst kind of ugly.

- I was going to put in a link to Fry's brilliantly brilliant 'Room 101' performance featuring the above explanation, but ten minutes of searching through a MOUNTAIN of SHITE on YouTube has yielded nothing. Why do they not make YouTube search better? Why must I wade through a thousand bits of cobbled-together, crappy-stills-set-to-cringey-music-to-no-end-whatsoever bilge before still not finding what I want? Warum?

I would put YouTube into Room 101. I don't care if it enables me to see hilarious things. (I'm not putting links to any hilarious things either. Grump grump grump.)

- Isn't it sort of nice that Big Brovaz have another (not terrible) song out when everyone had chalked them up as an example of how evil record companies build up young naive types and then destroy them?

- I have been watching too much of the music television.

- But I am allowed! since I did write 47,121 words. 6,000 or so of them went in a second in a meeting the other day, and I didn't bat an eyelid. That is how mature I am. Naturally I put laxatives in everyone's coffee because the ruthless purge of those innocent words needed to be marked in some way, and it seemed as good a way as any.

All that's left now is some tinkering and filling-in and stuff. I kind of want to do it again. It's sort of hard to let go of. There is still so much to say. And it all needs to be said by me.

- Word of the day is 'jejune'. It's almost onomatopaeic, in that when you say it sounds like a sneer, and thus beautifully true to its meaning in its sound.

- After months of languishing in the kind of hip hoppily baggy jeans I would previously have hesitated to wear while decorating, I have today at last purchased some tight items for my legs which make me feel sort of human again. And they were nine pounds and look like I paid ooh at least 15.99 for them. Yes! And some grey trousery things which look lovely from the rear but like they're crying out for the subtle bulk of male genitalia at the front. But that's what you get on the high street. Obviously they haven't heard about all the oestrogen in the water. Etc.

- I can't go into all the reasons 'Creep' is terrible right now, but I will do at some point, because it needs to be said. It is so very poor. I hate it when people make bad horror films because the genre gets enough grief as it is. And it makes me squirm when I get the feeling that the makers of a bad horror film have made it thinking "yeah, put this and this in and have this happen, that'll be scary", when in fact scaring an audience is an awesomely subtle and meaningful psychological undertaking which requires love and care and intelligence and so shut up with your awful heap of crap that should have got laughed out of the office where they decide what horror films should be allowed to be made.

Note: there are seven films called 'Creep' on IMDB. Not that you can infer anything from that.

- Oh look, now I have to put labels on. I feel vaguely uncomfortable. It seems rather a vain thing to do. (Like blogging isn't. Oh yes, I'll take this family-sized package of vanity, but woah! easy on the tiny toddler dish of vanity there, slick.) I mean, is anyone really going to come here and feverishly look up everything my dog has ever done? I suppose the nice people who come here when I actually write something relatively serious deserve the chance to filter out the rest of the tripe. Guys, this is for you.

Black holes, not revelations

I was just about to email someone I vaguely know to point out that there's an amusing typo on a relatively important bit of his website. But then I thought - no one cares. I've thought this before but have usually swatted it aside as heresy or at least something unhelpful. Of course this being two hours into New Year's Eve, my sense of acceptance of the essential pointlessness of what I mostly do for a living may be false. You always look for things that point to stuff being Different in The Future at this pestilent time of year. There's probably a gene for it. A gene with a timer.

Anyway - I don't know, perhaps I should just crack down on my tendency to point out people's oopsies to them thinking they'll be grateful, and then work on the flinch I get whenever I see the twitching corpse of what could, in the right hands, have been a sentence. Especially since I am very far from perfect on that score myself. In any case, it's just not sexy. Maybe good English just needs its own Nigella, but I'd need a few years, some hair dye, some elocution lessons, bigger hips, and to sleep with several BBC Four commissioners (the ones that could still manage or appreciate it).

So there's a late night revelation. Other recent ones include:

1) It is physically impossible to tire of that Scott Matthews song with the video with all the beds.

2) 'Stranger in Moscow' is the last good song Michael Jackson will ever record, but it is still better than ooh, so much other stuff.

3) It's very handy to have Film 4+1 as well as Film 4 and a remote control handset, but it tends to result in watching the same film in an absolutely batshit order.

4) 'Spirited Away' is really very amazing but the ending is rubbish.

5) Cheese shops and delicatessens and the like have yet to reach this end of the tube line. Nearest thing is a posh sausage shop but that only sells posh sausage. However, this is bound to change. This place is going to be the new Stoke effing Newington and I'm going to be outclassed and outpriced before too long.

6) It's wonderful to really feel committed to a belief that you've wavered on and picked to bits for years before settling on one side. Even if it's ultimately depressing to hold the belief. This I realised today when I heard with some shock about Saddam's execution. No personal sympathy for the guy well obviously well of course, but you can't just have some new category of Eeeeevil that justifies officially offing someone. It's not the mark of a good democracy. At least that's one thing we no longer do here. Though you might not think so from Margaret Beckett's mealy-mouthing about him being brought to account, but er cough we still don't really kind of support that sort of thing, but then it is Iraqis' business and we don't want to interfere with their fragile emergent democracy, even if... yes. Cough.

I think justice is like freedom or perfection or any other absolute ideal - something you can and should strive for but can never completely achieve. And are a bit batshit if you genuinely believe it's possible. People tend to get very hoity-toity about justice having been done in the event of an execution - the absoluteness of it seems to appeal to that desperate need for closure that we can probably blame Oprah for creating in all of us, or possibly 'Friends'. But the equation just doesn't make sense to me. Above all, lofty as it sounds to me, I don't think it is our place to mete out death as a punishment. Ever. I don't think there is any higher power whose place it is to do it, except perhaps the ghost of Darwin. Who is a bit like Jacob Marley but maybe with, like, little bones hanging off his jacket or something. The Darwinator. That guy. But just because there isn't a higher power doesn't mean we should act in lieu of one.

Obviously many people who do believe in a higher power condone the death penalty, which is odd because you'd think they'd let God kill 'em all and let er, God sort it out. But He seems to be good at delegating when it comes to that sort of thing.

Incidentally - when the Iraqi Prime Minister said that Saddam faced his death "like all tyrants", did he mean that as some kind of backhanded compliment? Bloke went to the gallows if not defiantly, then at least with a certain obstinate demeanour from what I've seen. I suppose most tyrants don't go to their deaths blubbing for mama and begging forgiveness, but then to many people that sort of stubborn scowling thing would be taken as admirable dignity. As befits, y'know, a martyr. So... that's not really what you want from your tyrant's death, is it?

It'll be interesting to see how many people are actually sacrificed to the dead tyrant, and if it'll really be recognised as such, and how many people will insist that it's got nothing to do with Saddam's execution - or if it has any connection, well, it was worth it, because the fucker had to die. As if he actually had to. As if he hadn't already been neutralised, but like the mad Russian blond guy said in Die Hard, "I don't wan neutral, I wan dead." (He's dead too, that bloke. Ho hum.) And as if he didn't have so much more to be held to account for.

I think they just couldn't bear the thought of another eight trials for other atrocities. There may not have been enough lawyers in Iraq to get through it. Buggers were getting assassinated as fast as they could glean the salient details of the case.

7) Power cuts like the one our street experienced earlier this evening really need to last longer than ten minutes for that full childish glee effect to descend. But I did meet my new neighbour after we both stuck our heads out of sundry apertures in our respective dwellings, waving torches around.

8) It's a uniquely awkward situation when one estranged member of your family (presumably) gives another your mobile number. Erk.

9) I know Steve Irwin did remarkable and genuine and lasting good things for animals overall, but I still can't watch footage of him poking snakes in the eye and bellowing "COR HE'S REALLY ANGRY" without throwing things at the telly. Sorry.

Ding dong mmkay

Because it is my first time being tagged, and because it's Rachel, I'll do it now before I realise it's a rotten old racket that should be slain (by Chicken Yoghurt).

Rabbit Strike's Best Seven Stuff Of 2006 Things

1) Having a proper actual foreeen holiday for the first time in years and years.

2) That counts twice cos it was also a dead fantastic holiday.

3) Getting a nice magaziney gig and a radio gig to make up for two lost.

4) Getting finagled into doing some of a book. (It will be a good thing once I finish fretting about it.)

5) Staying actual proper friends with an ex.

6) Smashing birthday with lots of drinking and silliness.

7) Um... people, who are great. And dog.

That was actually a bit of a struggle, shamefully. I want to make a list of 14 horrible or crapulent or generally a bit lame things about this year now (why isn't Torchwood better? Why? It deserves a list of its own - and I'm afraid I shall watch the much-puffed finale but that's only because I am a glutton for punishment, and for John Barrowman) but! that's not the spirit. I am looking forward to the new year. Without too much of that glutinous optimism that never bears fruit, or if it does it's kind of bashed leaky fruit that you wouldn't really want unless you were making jam.

Yes! I should say something about the lovely warm response to my witterings here which were catapulted into some sort of blogospheric attention when I used them for good and not for annoying self-centredness, but that might be annoyingly self-centred. Oh well. Call that number 8) just to bugger things up.

Now I suppose I'm obliged to inflict this on seven others, but I'll buck the trend by only bothering Paul, Abby, Salvadore and JonnyB.

Perhaps it's easier to make a list of Seven Things That Were Good By Default.

1) Not having an actual flea infestation after all. Just a few fleas. Which have fled.

2) Not despising short hair too much and managing to disguise badness of pre-short hair with sexy hat.

3) Boiler not breaking touch wood touch wood and then thermostat also.

4) Not getting arrested in Parliament Square or anywhere else for that matter.

5) Only having to file one small claim.

6) Being ill or germy only very infrequently and not for long.

7) Only getting one Christmas present that I already had and being able to go "Gah! I already have this" and for present-giver to go "Gah! I knew that would happen" and all to roll eyes and giggle and so none of that awkwardness when you get something you've already got.

That's better.

It's lovely to look at your blog after Christmas and find what people have been typing into search engines to happen upon you. I've had 'over 50 nude women', 'pot sexy russian woman', and my personal favourite to date, 'picture of a one spot fox faced rabbit fish'.

If I'd thought about it I could have written up The Poo Bag Saga, which might have been the new Bathmatwatch, but that is for another day when I haven't got mad post-Christmas crazywork to do. Alas.

Kissy.

Fists with your toes

A new year approaches, and it may or may not see me making something of this wretched thing. There will probably be some brow-creasing over what should be excised according to who might be looking. I will never learn. Never ever. Also, I hate people who blog about blogging even more than I hate people who say "I blogged this" or "I blogged about this" all the damn time. So I'll try and cut that out. Along with biscuits. Oh biscuits.

So, yes, this is the score, as succinctly as you like.

* This is a work of procrastination, since I have an actual book to actually write, for an actual deadline. The deadline is very silly. It makes me laugh. In the meantime I have to hand in some of it the day after tomorrow. This makes me laugh also.

* A fox just strolled through the garden. I love foxes.

* I have Skype now. It is the shizzay, except when it doesn't work and freaks people out because they think someone has phoned them and is just listening.

* I did an awful lot of karaoke the other night at a work Christmas party which was satisfyingly non-glam without being a skanky depressing mess. 'Fairytale of New York', performed with another writer (too many teeth but a fair MacGowan impression), was most successful. The rest I don't want to talk about.

* I don't have enough hair and too much of it is going grey.

* I did all my Christmas shopping in an hour in Camden and was disgustingly pleased with myself. Of course now I dare not look in the bags in case all I bought was crap.

* The other day I went to hand in a form in order to demonstrate in Parliament Square, and found myself involved in an episode of 'Shameless' scripted by Samuel Beckett. This deserves its own post.

Ninja Grapes

Ha! That was diverting. Maybe 50 people in a sort of bijou Strand vault, circulating and talking to one person every three minutes, business cards flying everywhere (alas, not mine - I should get some lovely card and scrawl my own, that would make me look terribly creatif). You had to raise your voice to be heard above all the other enthused bellowing. It was like some mad entrepreneurial aviary.

Three minutes is a mighty long time if the other person is very dull and/or very quiet. This I have learned.

I finally got to eat something, all spent after seven times round, and managed just about to avoid an argument about foxhunting with a girl who was so Barbour it was arresting. She practially had "My family have hunted these lands since the 1700s" graven across her forehead so it wasn't even an assumption when I asked if she had. (Admittedly the whole "Foxes are VERMIN" rant rather gave her away.) But we were too darned civilised and pleasant to tussle over that. I just put a non-expression on my face and tucked into my duck which had been seared on the white-hot metal edge of hypocrisy, why yes. Then some gonk with a website set fire to a napkin with a candle. The flapping-it-about dance didn't really help.

I need a haircut. Moreover I need to do something grubby and honest before I lose touch. But the last time I did that I nearly killed many people for being utter, posing, smoking, credulous, approval-honking fucksticks. I suppose most people are a bit awful, and especially most people who coagulate into social groups of their own accord; maybe that creates its own unsavoury chemical reaction. No one like groups, they're ugly things. Only individuals are precious and lovely. And the relief when you find and clutch them, your hands all soiled with the grot of the rest.

Oh yes, and I did get to see A-ha for four songs. Including that one and that other one. He didn't shrink from the high notes and going by the breathtaking cheekbones and the very moving angles of his amazing face, somewhere in an attic in Oslo there is a really hideous gnarled portrait with snaggleteeth and red eyes. He has a receipt from the devil's own desktop. He'd be exhausting to look at for too long. He's 46 or something and, y'know, hot damn. Apparently in 2000 he beat Bill Withers' record for the longest note held on a record - Bill's was 18 (that one in 'Lovely Day'), Morten's was 20 and a bit. In a song that no one living actually has except me. It's not bad.

I had two glasses of wine and I feel dreadful. I think the two varieties are having some kind of international incident. In my innards. Whither my valiant ninja doctor who cured me of everything last time? He's in Lytham St Annes. Curses.