X Ray Specs Bondage Up Yours

I'm young and I like punk. In about six years I estimate that I will have become more moderate and a fan of Daft Punk. When I'm sixty I will live in a castle and listen to Wagner.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Sickly Child

Hard House. Minimal Tech. Dance. I like to appreciate these music forms from afar like a maiden upon a hillock viewing a faraway battle. The maiden wishes she could take part in the event but knows when to admit defeat. You have to be realistic. Sometimes these cunning syncopated rhythms remind her of the darkest alleys and the slimy beings that slither about with their fingerless gloves waiting for the right moment to cut your throat and take your money and shake the answers out of you. Sometimes they make her think of golden dragons and shining knights and honour and kings. But we don't live in a world of honour. We live in a world where only those who shout the loudest win. The truth is shredded from newspaper cuttings and spun into a web of nylon frills. The ribbons tighten round your throat till skin matches the colour of the scarlet silk that you use to hold your apples. Inaccessible in appearance yet not invulnerable. The insects bite. The molluscs are ready to feast on purposefully selected nectar strains. Not for taste but for shape and their ability to swim against the currents shrivelling on the vine. No grapes without wrath. A feigned hatred bred from fear. Where love is out of reach only cynicism. Elle a perdu les sciseurs. Mais dès le début elle ne les avais pas. Ce n'était que de l'espoir. Malfondé.

Eddie Kendricks - Keep on Trucking

I place the helmet on my head and fasten it tight. I am aware that I should be feeling some sort of fear. Some sort of apprehension. I feel nothing save the faceless exhilaration of anonymity. If there is no one to blame then there's no place to direct the gaze of confusion. The growth no longer strangled by haze. The vine entwines itself. Born with a mighty lust for the outside rain, grey and warm with rage. It wants to make you believe that you shouldn't have come that you should turn back and go home. But the sky plays tricks sometimes. Yes. The weather does not share secrets easily. A new sign on the Shepherd's Wheel. It turns once again to face the grit. Merciless stone. Grind that bread. Produce a masterpiece to go into the mouth's of the replete. Spit out the crumbs and feed the crows and peck out the eyeballs of the weak. Transparent film shields the secrets from X-ray vision. Men no longer agog as their curiosity disolves. They feel nothing but a vague feeling of nostalgia at the family that faded, the child that divided. The seer now blind. The master now enslaved. And in that world I found one last priestess of the old world. She had walked a thousand miles from Nordic pales to land's end and she will keep on walking. Her hair not grey but silver her skin not wrinkled but impervious. Her voice not bitter but affirmative. I am proof I have seen, said she. My back wheel skids on the loose grains of truth they don't want me going up there to the shadows that move but why overthrow wisdom for ignorance and mediocrity for nothing for nothing? I push and hug the frame like it's my only friend and we make it to the top. And the rain comes down again; tentatively. No longer certain whose side it should be on. Who is the aggressor and who is the victim and who is the thief indeed? Who told the lie? Who was the spy? Who wrapped it up and placed it inside a cake inside string inside a room inside a machine? I shake off the feeling. It was only out to reveal. Not treasure. Something else. I will stop at that place again and this time I will understand what it meant. This time I won't throw it away. Fly through the valley and shamble home and breathe.

La Rennaissance Africaine

I should really do something. I should be doing something right now. Being the first one to recognise that there are other people in the world who are suffering more than me, I should quit making out that the world is crashing around me everyday. In a way it is, but I can't help the fact that I am jobless and in the middle of an impending house crisis. On the one hand it could be so easily fixed (there are people around this place who might want to move into a dilapidated old house and play scrabble) and on the other it seems like an impossible mountain of doom. Woe is me. There are a few things that I want to do. Of course I want to make my parents proud of course I want to do well. But I'm not a wonder woman, and much as I like the idea of jetting off into the third world to learn what it really means to suffer; to not know where your next meal is coming from; to plant seeds and not know if they will grow; to be thirsty; to be hungry; to never see your work come to fruition; I just don't think I'm built for it. Is there a chance that I will ever find something that I can do? I don't know. I'm good within certain frameworks. I could try teaching in Africa, but I'd have to raise the money myself, at my own pace. Should I work in a pub, or pick fruit? Maybe. Do I want to go there? Or more importantly: do I want to go there by myself? I like the idea of getting somewhere by my own means - on trains and boats, on foot and even bicycles. Is it possible to cycle anywhere? That's the question. Humanitarian Aid. That's what I should aim for. To peacefully resolve difficult situations. No hurt. Just enlightenment. And enough to eat.

Beastie Boys

My cat has learnt how to open and shut draws using his paws. I feel very proud.

Elephant - The White Stripes

Bird Food Achievements today: have consumed an entire pack of Lidl energy bars and a large amount of Ahmad 'Special Blend' (we're out of normal tea as discovered in an unfortunate moment whilst watching Father Ted last night. It was the one where Ted has to explain the difference between 'small' and 'faraway'. I feel for Dougal.)
Anyhow that wasn't the point. The point is: I can't believe it's only taken me 25 years of constant painful interactions between me and various people that I haven't been able to -- for whatever reason -- communicate with on a normal, healthy level (I'm really sorry) to realise that there is another way.
I don't have to be happy all the time. Sometimes I get pissy. And that's when it really is just better that I stay in my cave and consume seeds and green tea. All the while, craning my neck up from my cross-legged floor position at that 'tree of life' picture on my wall and wondering whether or not to buy a frame. It's a very definitive sign of becoming middle class. Ugh.

In Rainbows/Hail to the Thief

What did I do this afternoon whilst I recuperated from a gradually worsening home-made wine bbq hangover? Yes. I had a merrily self indulgent hour of waily Radiohead. I tend to call R'head albums released after Amnesiac 'waily' because somehow they seem to get progressively more so with each album. If that's possible. Congrats for them. It's a talent if I ever saw one.
You know how sometimes you can watch a film over and over, and if it's a real gem it'll never get old. In fact each time you watch it you'll see things that you hadn't done previously. Yeah, that's a good film.
Well I got this from listening to In Rainbows. The audio version I mean. I heard new things. I was left with a completely different impression of some of the songs that I thought I already knew well. I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by 'Weird Fishes' upon downloading it back in 2008. This time I felt really connected to it like I could identify with it completely. It proves how your personal experiences really shape how we perceive lyrics, sounds, poetry and visual art. I guess back then I hadn't undergone the necessary mind-shaping life graft to get the song.
No wonder we are all so prone to misunderstanding one another. I mean, it's really hard to imagine something if you aren't able to contextualise it with your own ideas. It must be the reason that natural splits emerge between different people. Progressive metal-heads like hanging with other progressive metal-heads. It's not that they don't like the other people. It's just that it's a pain in the arse having to explain to the new people what progressive metal is. At least the hard timer metal heads already have some appreciation for it, so it makes it easier all round.
But what if you met an alien who didn't know what love was? How would we describe to the alien the idea of love? Would we talk about the act of love? Kissing hugging and groping and al? Or would we take the more scientific approach and explain in terms of the pairing off of particular beings with particular genes that fit together? It makes me think that some ideas really are too big and mighty to be designated just one word.