Taking Liberties: a righteous plug

OK, so here's the thing - Taking Liberties is a documentary about the state of civil liberties as we come to the end of Blair's tenure. I saw it last night (along with Rachel who's in it), and while I can't be totally objective as I did contribute to the accompanying book, it's dead good. I expect many red-faced Sweeney-grade-shouty arguments to spring from its viewing.



It's released in 12 cinemas, mostly on June 8th. If you fancy seeing it, try and make it to the opening weekend - that way it's more likely they'll get wider distribution, and you will have the unconditional love of a load of dedicated and knackered filmmakers.

You can get the book ere and at Waterstones and all that, but I really recommend going to see the film itself. (And yes, Boris Johnson is in it, but don't let that skew your perspective.)

And the mome raths decided to have an effing beer

Alright, alright, I'm going to have a moment. Because needs must.

Figured out the other day that the junk is actually a cunning makeshift fence to protect the other fence from the dog. Interesting. Dog got stuck in the little corral made by the larger makeshift fence shortly after this revelation, and calls for him to come in were met with soft whines of caged bewilderment. Finally I made out his flapjack-coloured legs in the dark and had to go out in really unsuitable post-bath attire and free him.

Today the individual I shall politely refer to as That Woman Upstairs (hereafter 'TWU', which is kind of nice in that auto-fill-in-the-gaps-with-your-brain way) made a complaint about me, or at least the beast, to the managing agents. Which I appreciated so much more than a simple knock on the door or a note as a prelude to the kind of neighbourly discussion we've enjoyed before. Nothing has that personal touch like a call from the people who collect your rent, while you're trying to finagle a magazine page into a shape it is strenuously resisting. I mean, short of receiving a bunch of slithery rotting stems at my desk, I don't think I could have been any more moved.

The other element of the day that stuck it in and broke it off, removing a slim buffer that might have cushioned the blow of neighbour-betrayal, was the sudden and likely fatal indisposition of the Non-Pod. Alas and afuckinglack. I know it's a crutch. But people need their crutches to get about. This is why there are crutches. Especially when the tube is stuffed with people who make horrid noises with their noses.

On the way home - oh the silence and the shufflings and throat-clearings and inane witterings and tinny headphone seepage of it* - a man attached himself to the single tube door of my carriage as the train moved off from one stop. He didn't look concerned, but I thought he must have his jacket caught, for a long surreal moment of pre-panic. The train picked up speed. Mental images of screams and splattered glass. Then he smirked, and dropped onto the platform, jogging. Idiot.

Yesterday on the tube I saw a man reading The Economist. He was moving his lips as he read. I thought this was brilliant. If I got the tube every day I'd keep some manner of terribly popular blog of ink Polaroids of tube tableaux or some such piffle.

They're small things but they can't half make you feel defeated and crumpled. It was at least cheering to get an email with the rudest subject line I have ever seen in all my born days.

I am currently mainlining or speedballing or meatpasting (n shit) the below. Yeah, I know, but it's so pretty, and Cameron 'Mr Neneh Cherry' McVey produced it so it reminds me of goodness and truth and shamelessly big production that has no place in decent modern society. It's like Goldfrapp and Kate Bush and something else that's probably Natalie Imbruglia. And in the middle, she does a cartwheel, and it kind of makes me want to burst into something like tears.

*See, I have swanky in-ear things that don't leak anything at all, so no 'possible hypocrisy' tag here. Although it is always possible.

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.