i'm gooding you bid-day

it has come to my attention that someone from my past is a regular reader of this 'ere blog.
tish, if you happen to read this:
hello!
hope you are well and good and content and all sorts of nice and lovely things. i hear on the grapevine you're doing rather well for yourself, so that's spiffing.

whenever i correct people on saying 'could of' instead of 'could have' i always think of you. and i've yet to encounter a girl who can do a better irish accent. remember that thing you, mead and i did on the internet? that was funny. disturbing, but funny. imagine the filth there would be on the web world wide if there weren't any internet angels spreading the good word...! uh-huh.

maybe i'll see you sometime when gaffertape goes all charity on us.
that'll be dandy.

anyway, there... g'bye now. x

i'm back, and bigger than before

i'm lucky. i happen to know a small proportion of some of the greatest people on the planet. very surprising to me is this group of people includes a sub-section of teenagers; kids that i choose to call my friends. (this is a big deal for someone who is almost completely predjudiced against this age group). within this select group i know people who improve the world around them on a daily basis.
they do this both effortlessly and unconsciously. most of them do it completely obliviously. a lot of them will never accept the fact that they are anything more than just another person in a long queue of persons.
but this is not true.
i'm not going to get all embarrassing and point out specific individuals, that would be wrong. but the above photo includes at least 3 of them.
and there are more besides.

i'm in a particularly heightened mood at the moment. yep, beneath this tired, tectonic exterior you will find me content that this is the best i've been.
it's nice, it is.

and it means i get to dress as a wrestler.

left to right: uncle mead, s'mad, aunt mead, little miss raunch, red, troubadour, shoelace, don-juan, urban cowboy

i'm lagging, jet-wise

New york hath happened...
crazy 3-hour transfer bus to hotel on times square because the driver's radio didn't work so he didn't know where he was going.
But,.. a room on 39th floor overlooking the neon lights of Times Square. Which itself is a bit of a sight to be beheld. Literally it's as bright as day, 24 hours a day. Not great for global warming admittedly, but quite pretty.
Drank cocktails til 6am english time woke up to applause... so...
went downstairs and was suddenly on TV - ABC's Good Morning America - shouting for the Wolverines cause i was wearing blue. (a football team, I guess)
did some shopping went on a tour Of NBC studios (all the best stuff comes out of NBC)
watched Saturday Night Live with Ludacris presenting.
ate and drank at 'cafe wha?' - some Wine and live Salsa and
Will Ferrell was there... uh-huh

> saw a guy punch a taxi and shout "hey I'm walkin' here!" (my Back to the Future moment)
> saw an old guy dancing like a demon on skates
> saw a girl destroy a mouse
> saw ben folds live at the hammerstein ballrooms on West 34th & 8th.
> saw a grounded aircraft carrier
> saw the new James bond film (bob-shat)


walked the length of central park bought an ipod from the coolest apple store in the world ate at Applebees - all food in america tastes like it's been processed, reprocessed and then put through some sort of process.

Went up the empire state building of course.





Ate at Bubba Gumps (got all the questions right on their Forrest Gump quiz despite being filled with margharitas)

went to the museum of sex and had my eyes both willingly opened and forcably shut.














met Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli from Heroes I am a geek and comfortable with it.

became a solo barfly in a hispanic bar, everyone eyed me up and talked in hushed spanish tones

got the hotel limousine back to JFK airport driven by a man who i shall name Captain Speedy.

Ash Atalla producer of The Office was on my flight
and I sat next to Megan Dodds from Spooks and Not Going Out

slept a little.
spent a lot.
drank a little.
ate a lot.
ache and smile all over.
New York is fucking insane.

And I landed at 6:30 this morning and came straight to work so now i'm sleepy tired like a little baby girl. Will never commute 4000 miles again.

i'm a helluva town

i'm going to new york new york tomorrow.

i'm not going for the original reason any more.

i feel better about myself.

i'm predicting some future

so, i reckon niki sanders is a supervillain

i'm offering this to you, as a friend

this is mainly for the troubadour's benefit

i'm a bit taken aback to be honest

i had an odd thing today. it was an experience of regret and sadness. if i hadn't been so busy and it hadn't have been in such an open environment i think it would've really caught me off guard. as it happens it sort of went unnoticed for a while until i had a chance to recollect it.

i was chatting to one of the security guards at work today. now, when i say security guards i'm sure you immediately think of a large rock-structure of a man in a bomber jacket with a menacing stare in his eye. well, thats not the sort of thing we've got in my building. to be honest, if i described our security team as 'dad's army' i think i'd be doing them a favour. a few of them have teeth missing, but not from being hard-ass and having a few fights under their belts... generally it's because that's what happens when you reach a certain age. bless them.

but this isn't the point of my entry. as i say, i was chatting to one of them, an old scottish guy called (amusingly) harry potter. at the moment we've got a conference in of the international maritime organisation who basically are the people who decide the laws of shipping around the world. somewhat dull i'm sure you'll guess, except the main focus of this particular conference is to decide what to start doing with old ships when they die. currently a lot of them are grounded on the shores of india and sri-lanka and the like; and left to rot... not the very best of environmentally sound disposal methods.

so me 'n harry were chatting about the environment and that a bit and he turned to me and said in one of those heartbreakingly tender voices that only the scottish can do, "i'm reaching the end of my life, and you're just starting yours. i'm really sorry about the state my generation is leaving this world in, it never occurred to us the damage we were doing."

there was that slightly strange moment that you always get when the older generation nonchalantly refers to their morbidity; a weird mix of respect and vulnerability. the moment hung there for a beat, then he got a call on his radio and had to wander off to check a stair-lift or something.

retrospectively it was a pretty touching moment. there was a really tangible aura of apology; regret that he couldn't do enough with the years he had left... but a real hope that it wasn't too late.

i think there's a certain cross section of society, specifically my generation that think it's not their fault the world is a bit messy, so why should they do anything about it. i can sort of see their point, it's like being handed a jigsaw with some pieces missing and being expected to enjoy finishing it. unfortunately, that's our charge and there's nowt we can do about it except try and make some new pieces. it's that or we'll be pretty empty handed when the next lot of kids look up at you hoping for a puzzle.

i promise my next post will be more funny than this one.

i'm a human vector diagram

this internet thing... y'know how people say things 'bout the modern world and how science and technological advances are sterilizing our society and breaking down the personal/social interaction that developed us as human beings and advanced our race, and stuff like that?

y'know how people say that sort of thing?

don't they (rhetorical).

well it's a pile of tassocks. not one to advertise particular incarnations of the media, i've got a 'space' on a well-known web site. through it i've met some people that under any other circumstances than the security of t'internet i may not have even considered as an aquaintance.

it equalises us you see. i'm lucky enough to be in contact with some spectacularly interesting people, people that grace utterly different social circles. over there and beyond. our paths would never have crossed except for the web wide world. and one of them is really hot. i mean, to a ridiculous level. and it's thouroughly pleasant to make their aquaintance.


hello you.

i'm all about the b&w birdies

i just saw these folks


like a 3-mile-thick wall of orchestral noise
like standing in a wind tunnel filled with penguins
like oscillating tone with a horn section
like spacing out inside a jet engine
like wrestling a folk-dancing grizzly bear
like, y'know, stuff

and, yes... the double bass player is wonderful