About a girl with a black Volvo PV, about pucks and fucks…

Making sweet chilli sauce. Its reducing right now, and the whole house smells delicious.
Fun weekend. Helped my drunk boss (the king of inuendo) break into his flat over the pub Saturday night. When he got the window open he looked back down at me through his legs; “Hayden … How’d you get your leg over?”. Having made it back downstairs, he enlightened one of the Poles as to the wonder of the phenomenon that is the chip butty (“This is culture!”).
Sunday morning was exceptionally quiet. Opened at 11.30am and by 1.30pm I’d served one small glass of Merlot. C’est tout! Managed to clear a space above the glass shelves so I could catch a Norman Wisdom movie on mute whilst leaning against the bottle fridge. Had time also to finally finish ‘Popular Music’ by Mikael Niemi. Its about the taste of a boy’s kiss (amongst other things) and its really quite wonderful. Many a time have I received strange looks from people on public transport because of my snorting and giggling at Mr Niemi’s descriptions of the trials and tribulations of a boy growing up in Sweden.

“And even singing was deemed to be unmanly, in Pajala at least, assuming you were sober. Even worse was doing it in English, a language much too lacking in chewability for hard Finnish jaws, so sloppy that only little girls could get top marks in it – sluggish double Dutch, tremulous and damp, invented by mud-sloshing coastal beings who’ve never needed to struggle, never frozen nor starved. A language for idlers, grass-eaters, couch potatoes, so lacking in resilience that their tongues slop around their mouths like sliced off foreskins.”
[Popular Music]

Nice wax job.

My French Class on Wednesday nights is populated with weirdos. David is a hairy overweight child trapped in a man’s body who interrupts the teacher to say things like; “I might be going to Luxemburg this year” or comes in late and says; “Sorry I’m late. I was sleeping. Look! I cut my self shaving … Arrrgh!”. When there’s a break, he plays Knock Down Ginger on the classroom next door. No joke. Gloria is either a man trapped in a woman’s body, or a woman trapped in a man’s. Her hands are bigger than mine and she talks in a really weird hyped up RP accent even though she’s German (or somethin’). Ali has ADHD and never turns up, probably because he’s still fiddling with something at the bus stop.

Oh, and my screenprinting class is better. There’s a “practicing witch” (AND she’s American!) and an Indian lady who sees angels and/or faces IN EVERYTHING. Is it because this course is in the borough of Hounslow and not Richmond? I printed the sky for the red bus pic I’m making for my lil’ nephew. It rocks, so all is going well so far.
Afterwards I came out to see it was snowing (finally) and the bastard bus driver just drove on right past me and this girl at the stop. Grr. I came home to see Desperate Housewives (I like the idea that housewives have “enemies”) and then an advert for a programme about a guy who was in a coma for 19yrs. He blinked and missed half of his life. Blinking. Wow.

Last night I had a Polish girl’s night in. Fosters and syrop de framboise (apparently its big in Poland) and Candyman, My Little Eye, Pact With The Devil and Signs. I came home to find Dr. Gunter von Hagens dissecting a vagina infront of my mum. He took the whole hairy thing out on a table. On TV. It was rather horrid. There’s a bit where this hot woman (or ‘anatomical artist’) paints internal organs onto naked people. Tonight she was painting the sex organs onto a lady. I turned to my mum and pointed out the impressive wax job on the model. If only I could find aftershave balm that was that effective.

Oh and guys, as you suspected, your cat hates you. [http://www.mycathatesyou.com/cats/2003/11/125]

Can you guess what name these are anagrams of?

I fart handsome hymen
my thin fearsome hand
My hoe harmed infants
Ashamed, fit, horny men
Ashamed if hymen torn

Thanks Pete.

“Stringy fucker. I could have ‘im.”

I look like Sylvester Stallone. Half my mouth is totally numb after all the anaesthetic the dentist had to pump into me to finally (after 5 drilling attempts) get the damn tooth numb. Had Japanese noodles last night and saw Closer. Its darkly comic. But the last 10 minutes are agony.
Hey kids, how was the blackout? Theres a couple of mucho coolo pictures here [http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/archives/photos_cityscape/050124_1004.shtml].
The billboard in the second pic down absolutely rocks.

“Why there is no perfect place, yes I know this is true
I’m just learning how to smile
That’s not easy to do”
[Everclear]

These are not my laws.

Peep Show is the best programme on tv. Based on last nights episode.
Last night was successfully distracting. Thank you Maria. Lecture by artist Cornelia Parker @ UCL (and got to see the tower where they filmed part of Ghostbusters 2! It’s also where Hitler planned to have his seat of power if he ever made it over here). My faves were the backs of Turners, the suit jacket shot through with pearls fired from a shotgun, and microscopic photos of chalk marks on Einstein’s blackboard that looked like snapshots of the universe. Then a gathering in a flat behind Tottenham Court Road. Donkey Konga is the best game ever. And £500,000 flats in central London are far too small.
Thinking of paying £120 to get my CV professionally written by these fellas [http://www.thefullercv.com] coz I ain’t getting nowhere with the one I’ve got, mainly coz its 3 pages long (plus reference) and it sucks. And theres sooo many creative sector jobs in The Guardian this week I’m gonna apply for.

Cliche, cheese and schmultz. Oh my!

Everything coasts along and flows beautifully, then it stops. Then you panic, and you’re not you. And you say stoopid stuff. And then you wonder if you’ve really messed it up. And you wish you’d never said any of it, coz someone knows how you are. The sort of guy you are, without you having to write any of that. None of it was required. Overcompensation. You’ve become another of those lame guys. Or at least you seem to be. Even though you’re not. But talking about it all the time kinda suggests you are. There is no digging you outta this hole. I should have coasted from the first signs of trouble. Coasted til Autumn and let it flow. But no. Infact I just asked ‘new fling?’. I can see people’s faces. “Uh oh. I figured this guy was cooler than that. Bunnyboiler”. Way to go mate. Dorkus Malorkus. Sucka. Lame.

I feel like I just left those 5 or 6 phone messages a.k.a the guy in ‘Swingers’. Hell, I feel like I’ve been leaving those messages for the last 6 weeks and I sound more rediculous every time.

20,000 Irish fans can’t be wrong.

So on Friday I felt like poo, but Saturday came with mucho distractions, namely in the form of 20,000 Munster fans who all seemed to descend on the pub at once. I couldn’t actually open the door to get in (for all the people squeezed in there) to work so I had to go round the back and so was late. Unfortunately I had to throw out the crazy guy who mumbles to himself and keeps us all highly amused with his verbal diarrhea (who the Poles call Mr Bean). Not because he was doing anything wrong, particularly, but because he’d managed to wind up the guy next to him at the bar so much that he shouted “Fuck you mister I’m gonna burn your fucking eye out” and then proceeded to try this with a cigarette. I figured it was easier to throw out the mumbling guy rather than the guy wielding the cigarette. As old crazy left he told me that all English people are boring and he hoped that I rot in hell.
Here’s a link I know Aynsley’ll appreciate [http://www.angryalien.com] Jaws, anyone?

“In 2004, the greater mass of Canadians have grown up on junk food, high tech and massive bombardment by US media. Add to this every Canadian’s ongoing relationship with both nature and distance, and what we find evolving is a complex set of unexpected and loaded images and icons. These visual “secret handshakes” [Cheez Wizz?] can function on surface and profoundly deep levels. They’re both amusing and reassuring and are meant to include rather than exclude [Cheez Wizz?].”
[Douglas Coupland]
From his exhibition at Canada House, Trafalgar Square. The exhibition featured piles of ‘Canadian Stuff’. Like Cheez Wizz.

Dans le sens contraire des aguilles d’une montre.

The French say; “Dans le sens des aguilles d’une montre” when they want to say; “clockwise”. It’s a very drawn out way of saying a very simple thing. I have a habit of drawing things out longer than I should do. Especially when I put my thoughts and feelings down on paper. I’m trying to get out of it. Seems Aynsley and I have split up ‘for the moment’. I lived in Toronto for seven months before meeting her. Now I can’t think of anytime I’ve been in Canada without thinking of her. Weird. Being physically separated for so long means shes been in my mind. The hard part now is getting her out of it. The politician David Blunkett once said that if you can see, you can concentrate on something you’re looking at, to the point of forgetting what’s on your mind. Being blind, he’s imprisoned in his mind. He can’t escape his thoughts. I’m in the same boat at the moment. I’ll need time to sort it out. I hope whatever we’re both looking for we each find by the time I get to Toronto.
I figure I’ve walked to and from Richmond over a thousand times in my life and yet I have NEVER seen the river this high. It took me ages to walk home because the water had covered the road/path on either side of the river between Richmond and Isleworth, and about a quarter of Old Deer Park. The ducks and geese were like, what the!? And darting through the water all over where the path and road would normally be. Hungry for new experiences I guess. Although I can’t imagine any sensation more exhilarating and eternally fascinating than flying. But then I’ve never flown. And I can’t imagine it. Perhaps its rather dull.
Heard a guy on the radio today say that 160,000 people have been killed by that tsunami, and that in the world this number die of starvation alone each week.

You’ve gotta hope that there’s someone for you. Strange as you are.
Who can cope with the things that you do. Without trying too hard…
…Its the end of the things, that you know. Here we go.
[John Brion - Here We Go]

Like a movie from the beginning.

Ok.
You know that bit in the film “Labyrinth” where Sarah’s at the masked ball and all of a sudden the glass walls smash and all the panicked guests, chairs and objects in the room get sucked up into an inky black abyss?
That just happened to me.

Billy Connolly goes to Intacto, and meets Barbwire.

On his tour of New Zealand, Billy Connolly is told that the kiwi bird sleeps for twenty hours a day (the rest of the time it spends foraging … for bargains?). On an earlier trip to a zoo Billy observed that Baboons spend a lot of their time masturbating. He therefore came to the following conclusion; if there is such a thing as re-incarnation, the best thing to come back as would be a creature that is half kiwi and half baboon. It would sleep for 20hrs a day and spend the remaining 4 masturbating.
Saw the film ‘Intacto’ the other night. ‘The Cooler’ with W.H.Macy copies the opening scene almost exactly. It’s a film about wrestling with personal feelings of guilt and regret whilst trying to come to terms with tragedy. How do you define luck? Lucky are those with a clean conscience, it would seem. And they are nowhere to be seen. We all find our own forms of therapy. I’m not sure mine would take the form of taking part in a race through a wood, blindfolded and with my hands tied behind my back, though. I liked it. It was cold. Sorta like ‘The Sweet Hereafter’.
‘Barbwire’ on the other hand was quite, quite different. I watched the opening with my nan. When I commented on the lack of material covering Pam Anderson’s breasts my gran said; “That’s to draw attention away from her bum”. Then told me, if my greatgrandma was watching, she’d have said that Anderson’s dress was less a “get up, more a go-to-bed”! Classic.
I showed Beata at work a photo of Aynsley today. She said; “wow, very pretty Canadian girl”. And I said yea. Yea she is. Then I walked home.