So I went to the wedding. And despite all my dire predictions I actually enjoyed myself. Don't think I embarrassed myself, though I did accidentally give my Dad a vision from hell - c 9am appearing at the door of my room wearing only a pair of pants, last night's shirt and a tie knotted somewhere around my shoulder, hair by Crazy Meg of Bedlam, Hell.

Yesterday I had the WORST HANGOVER OF ALL TIME. Still, if you will stay up till 6am drinking single malt what can you expect . . . ack. Seriously thought I was going to die last night, and am still feeling a bit ack.

Never again.

Beautiful venue tho, albeit in the middle of nowhere. Literally.

So I finally got caught up on series one of Veronica Mars which you can only get on Region 1 at the moment.

Some things I'll never understand. You have the best show that's appeared in years and does the BBC pick it up - No. How about C4. Nope. Sky, even? Keep guessing. No Veronica Mars was consigned to Living. Now Living actually has some good shows. OK, it has Veronica Mars and The L Word, but those are both pretty much cream of the crop US wise at the moment, so all power to them, but it's still a shame. Put it this way, while most people who have cable will have Living it's not exactly the kind of channel people rush to programme into their favourites list. In fact I have more reach standing on my roof frisbeeing cardboard head shots of Percy Daggs III off it than Living do.

But what can you do.

Anyhoo, I LUrve Veronica Mars - sure didn't see that series finale coming. Naturally due to the retarded nature of things around here this is still only available in Region 1 but trust me - it's worth it. In fact it's worth buying a multi region DVD player (should you be in the 0.001% of people wo haven't done this already) just to watch this programme.

In fact I'm kinda wondering what is going on with the PTB and their purchasing policies. As far as I can see they majors in this market (BBC & C4) and the minors (ITV & Five) seem to be following a policy of only purchasing what's *popular* rather than making a subjective decision based on their own opinions and buying what's good. So we end up with Lost, 24 (again) and Gray's Anatomy (which is actually wuote good) whilst V.Mars, The L Word and Dead Again (before it got cancelled anyway) are sentenced to the televisual equivalent of Paperboys 11.

Which kinda seems like missing a trick. Nobody knows why some shows just take off and some don't. Look at Dawson's - a non stop fiesta of nausea indusing shite and it was the most popular thing ever. Now given that as a rule 'buzz' does not travel particularly well from one country to another it seems odd to take a shit show which for some unaccountable reason has 'buzz' and spend a fortune recreating it for the UK market, when you could buy a much cheaper show, promote it properly and it'll create it's own buzz. That way people get to watch good shows which cost the networks over here less instead of expensive horse manure.

I just don't understand. And if that's the last time I write that sentence I'll be surprised.

So my doom draws ever closer. What can I say . . . in Serbian there's a word that's used when your relatives force you to eat too much because it's an insult to refuse food. It tanslates as 'Food Terror' It's a pity there isn't a word for Wedding Terror. Ho hum.

Anyway, just cooked a lunch that is so incredibly hot the leftovers are making my eyes water from 4 feet away :-

1 x bunch spring onions
3 x garlic cloves
1 x juice of a lime
1 x golf ball sized piece of fresh HOT ginger, finely chopped
2 x handful prawns
1 x Scotch Bonnet chile

My God . . . .

Anyway, you certainly wouldn't want to eat that lot and then perform an act of great intimacy. Scorchio.

I'm so depressed I can hardly even summon the energy to blog. Not only did I get turned down for a job after and hour and 40 minute interview, they even had the gall to write this :-

Thank you very much for coming in to meet the team here at XXX. As much as
we enjoyed meeting you and thought that you are a capable candidate with
good experience in Taxonomy, we did feel that your strength lies in a more
hands on role and as such we did not feel that you were quite right for our
Taxonomy Manager position which requires a mix of hands on and
managerial/strategic skills.

I suppose they're entitled to their view but I'd be more willing to accept it if they'd actually asked me anything managerial/strategic. 100 minutes of detailed technical questions to which of course I knew more answers than they'd ever even heard of. Cunts. And as for that line 'good experience in Taxonomy' I've forgotten more about taxonomy than those twats will ever know. Actually I don't know why I blanked out their name. Feel free to send them something offensive here.

As you can see I don't take rejection well. And speaking of which - it's not just me, I have scientifically proved this by having recently been rejected on a truly Olympian scale.

That's it I am officially going to die alone and be eaten by Alsations. You can only keep kidding yourself that everything's going to work out in the end for so long before you just have to accept that it's most likely not going to. And even worse than that I'm going to my cousin's wedding next week. That may not sound terrible, but it is. First up, I HATE weddings. The whole cheesy queasy repetitive obnoxious bullshit makes me sick to my stomach, and here's one where I won't even know anyone. Except my fucking family. Holy Christ.

Maybe I'm being too cynical. Perhaps I'll meet the love of my life.

Yeah. Like that's going to happen

I'm looking forward to the Tory party election. Let's face it, the only candidate about whom Labour will be even slightly concerned is Ken Clarke, and it looks like he's for the chop.

It looks, incredibly, like the Tories are going to lurch even further to the right, which is good in making them even more unelectable, but bad in that then allows Labour to do even more of it's crazy shit . . .

Fucking funny anyway . . . someone once said that the Labour Party 1983 manifesto was the longest suicide note in history . . . now look whos talking. We're 8 years into the New Labour revolution, and what are the Tories doing - electing DD.

This is the equivalent of Labour electing, ooh, er, Derek Hatton as leader in 1987.

Morons, your bus is leaving ;-)

Opera

It's been a busy couple of weeks - I've been carbo loading on culture. Weds week went off to the ENO to see The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, and this after going to The Garden to see La Funcella Del West week before. Anyway, it was a hideous train wreck (Bitter Tears that is). Which is a shame because the story is pretty good, but who can take 3 hours of monotone stacatto sung speech and a jingly jangly 'modern' score that at no point showed the slightest sign of actually breaking into a song.

Dinner

Been eating a lot of big grown up dinners lately - went to Fino on Saturday. This place has picked up some bad reviews but I really couldn't fault it. Excellent service, beautiful space, great food, tasty vino, but at £25 quid a bottle you expect something quite palatable. For me the high points were the lamb, the clams, the fillet of beef and the pigs cheeks, which were spectacular. Honourable mentions also to the octopus, the bruscetta and the salted chiles. There was some other stuff I didn't bother eating as well : omelette, salad, that sort of thing and the squid was a bit overcooked but you can't win em all. Overall : excellent.

Last night went to meet Hari for a quick one at the god awful Fire Station, as Waterloo is the most convenient for both of us. After a quick pint standing on a major thoroughfare in the pissing rain which was vaguely reminiscent of a low rent Mega City 1 she suggested we repair round the corner to this little Eastern European place she knows. So we pitch up at bloody Baltic and get stuck into another serious gastronomic and alcoholic experience. Had some fantastic smoked eel with bacon and then some sort of mystery meat claiming to be veal sweetbreads. Don't know what it really was but wasn't much like a gland with the taste and consistency of chicken crossed with blancmange, that's for sure. Couple of beers each, bottle of decent plonk, couple extra glasses, couple of cocktails, espressos, extra fags and it's suddenly £120 of your earth currency units. Still, money well spent, though next time might pick my main course a bit more carefully. Hari was looking particularly charming in her new lace up fuck-me boots, sort of like a cross between a slightly world weary Katy Holmes and HBC in Fight Club. Only hopefully not germinating Tom Cruise's demon seed.

And what's all that about? What's wrong with the woman. It's beyond all sense isn't it? I'm not sure who she should be going out with, YT excluded, but I know she could do a fuck of a lot better than fucking Maverick. Jeeezuz.

Creek

In a bizarre form of self flagellation and in the hope of coming to some understanding about all this I watched Dawson's Creek season one, and what the world already knows was only too clearly demonstrated. Pacey & Joey : funny and cool. Jen : highly slapable, but you'd probably still go there. Dawson : fugly munter who should be terminated with totally unnecessary excessively bloody force immediately. There is no way on this earth that two 'hotties' (ugh) like Jen & Joey would hurl themselves at this self absorbed idiot who has, to quote, got an e.t. doll on his desk. I can only assume that the original writer was in some way trying to re-invent his own adolescence, the way it played out in his head not reality, where girls really do want to go out with sensitive withdrawn wimps instead of muscle bound, hard drinking, dope smoking idiots. Idiots with cars.

Also an award for the silliest diaolgue of all time : episode twelve (The Beauty Contest)

Jen : Why is it that every time I pay you a compliment you act like I'm hitting on you?
Joey : I dunno. It just feels weird I guess. I mean, I know I'm not pretty.

Ahuh.

I realise I'm about 10 years too late to be getting into a strop about Dawson's creek, but, hey, so what. And even though it drives me crazy it really shows up junk like The O.C. for the rather shoddy fare it really is. Still . . . .

I've been watching Hex lately and I've really been enjoying it. OK, it's very derivative, mostly of Buffy but that's not a big problem. Hex is set in an English boarding school and is about the usual girl (Cassie : the ever lovely Christina Cole ) who comes into mysterious poweres etc etc, and despite being as fit as you like is generally derided as a nutcase outcast :


The usual selection of oddballs are here in fairly predictable proportions, but because this is England and meant for an English audiance we can actually say it like it is, so for example everyone drinks, everyone smokes, and everyone has sex, be they good, bad or teacher, which is a lot closer to reality than yer average tv prog. Plus in Roxanne and Leon we have a traditional pair of Queen Bitch and Nasty Rich Kid Psycho who are genuinely mean, vile and threatening :-

This is a fairly standard line from Leon after a spot of opportunistic sexual assault :-

"You want to be careful Cassie. If you don't get a good oiling soon, you'll rust shut."

The only problem is that they only made 6 episodes in the first season, and 6 in the second! I mean what the fuck is the point of that! How can you have a season with only 6 episodes. I dunno. Fawlty Towers only had 6 episodes per season, but that was a) A work of comic genius (yawn) and b) The 1970s rather than an enjoyable but totally derivative piece of teen horror fluff.

And it didn't have any totally gratuitous shower and lesbian scenes.

Trust me, you really don't want these two picking you out of the crowd.

Fucking Bollocking Ball Bag Gym. Fucker.

I don't know why I even bother going. I mean it makes no difference anyway. All I'm doing is shedding £55 a month and not the good pounds either.

Lunch today : a quite revolting salad of my own concoction : Cous cous, tomatoes, celery, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pigeon breasts. Sounds good, but trust me, it didn't really work. And I had a Vanilla Coke - diet naturally, but still inherently EVIL.

American Socialists

I was just thinking about why American's keep electing Republicans even though it's so patently not in their own best interests, and realised that Gramsci had his finger on the button 100 years ago. This from Wiki explaining Cultural Hegemony :-

Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture. In other words, the perspective of the ruling class had been absorbed by the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture had indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. Instead of working towards a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs (according to Marxists), workers in "advanced" societies were listening to the rhetoric of nationalist leaders, seeking consumer opportunities and middle-class status, embracing an individualist ethos of success through competition, and/or accepting the guidance of bourgeois religious leaders.

And that pretty much hits the nail on the head as far as I can see. So where does that get us? Absolutely nowhere unfortunately. Let's face it, you can probably be arrested for reading Gramsci in the Red States these days. And that's not a joke. It could come under the heading of 'programme related activity' (bad thoughts). After all, if hanging around by the side of a road looking a bit hairy can get you unlimited detention in Guantanamo Bay who knows what reading a book by a revolutionary socialist (and an Italian to boot) would get you? Death by public stoning perhaps?

Of course it doesn't help that many recent immigrants to the USA only have decadent and corrupt governments to compare the US experience with and so are only too happy to vote for the party that says it's going to leave them alone the most. Of course the way US politics is going at the moment there'll soon be little real difference between Congress and The Democratic Republic of South Backscratcher.

Don't believe me - read up on just where elected representatives are getting their bribes from these days.

Gymocological Anomoly

There are 58 machines in the cardio room at my gym. Only 4 of them are steppers. Today there were 6 people in the room - 3 women on respectively a cycle and two treadmills, and 3 blokes, all of us lined up like ducks in a row on the steppers.

Fortunately that's where the similarity ended. One was about 185 years old and looked like he was about to keel over at any moment, one was a sort of beardy goth metellar type and of course then there was the Noble Panster.

61 storeys and every last one climded listening to C&W : Alisson Krauss, Dolly, The Dixie Chicks, Brad Paisley . . . is there no end to my crimes.

Now that everything is cleaned up my desk seems strangely empty. Because I'm used to being so hemmed in and now I've tidied everything away and moved what's left around I can't touch type properly. You get used to the visual location of the screen and the gubbins around it to know where to place your fingers. When all that changes it takes, well, about as long as it took to type this paragraph to get used to the new set up.

I've been having some sort of Autumn spring clean over the last couple of weeks and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The books, CDs, DVDs, games, pictures and hardware were easy, all the fluffy stuff less so. Everything I don't wear anymore is now safely boxed away to be taken to the charity shop at some point, and everything else is either racked (shirts, jackets, waistcoats, trousers and suits), placed in drawers (socks, underwear) or sitting in clean/non clean piles (t-shirts, jeans, shorts, towels, linen, jumpers).

But don't get me started on ties, belts, gloves, hats, scarves, sock suspenders, spats and combinations. Not to mention knick-knacks, momentos, gee-gaws, souvenirs, tat, rubbish and bibelots. Alright , I made some of those up, but the problem really is what to do with all the miscellaneous stuff. A big pile of towels, 24 books on architecture and 200 CDs : no problem. A pair of wooly mittens, a jar of loose screws and a badge saying "Radio B92 NAD BEOGRADAM" : what the fuck am I meant to do with that??

Life really does reflect taxonomy in this wayl. The gross bulk of stuff is straightforward enough to categorise, but it's all to easy to end up with a huge file / box, just marked 'miscellaneous' if you're not careful.