paint it black

this is the worst tattoo i have ever seen.


this is the best:

face/off

facebook is a weird place. everyone seems to have a different experience of it. i myself spend between 8-23 hours every day focussing my dwindling pupils on the white-background-blue-type nonsense, eager to be informed that emma and ian are constantly flirting with glistening sexual repression. and "clare made a cake but can't seem to do anything right, boo-hoo :(((((("

facebook enters me through my computer, links to my blog and my twitter problem. it's right there in my phone, too (when my piece-of-shit unreliable-as-my-sphincter phone feels like it). basically it's like an airborne infection that you can't avoid, unless you avoid it. i don't avoid it. but i do censor it. because it's really weird otherwise.

the weirdest part of it is the whole 'friend-request' business. recently i've had a fair few new friend requests from people. that's quite nice i suppose. people want to be my friend, i should be thankful. i spent the last 29 years in a mental hole surrounded by imaginary friends, only some of which actually liked me, so it's quite lovely that a bunch of people want to associate with me. thanks.
i just find it a bit weird when i meet people for about 5 minutes, and the next day they try and install themselves on my life, tapping into my news-feed so that they can see what i did earlier that day and when i last took a photo. that's a level of information i'm unwilling to give a stalker, let alone a stranger.

recently i broke a personal rule and added two work-mates to my friend list. i justified this for two reasons.
1: i counter-balanced by deleting friendships with four people. these four people constantly updated their status with dullard information about what celebrity they liked and other pointless drivvel anyway, so it was no loss.
2: my two work-mates seem to take great delight in some of the things i write, which gives my ego an absolutely enormous erection.

i've also known them for quite a while now, and they've regularly seen me in my worst possible physical conditions when i turn up for work stinking of rum-punch and crying. it just saves me from having to talk when they can simply go online and read my innermost thoughts.

i will never put my relationship status on facebook. that is a terrible idea. i did that before, and it only resulted in a couple of failed suicides. if you want to know which sea creature i'm boning, why not contact my mum?
you don't know my mum? yes, that's right... because you don't actually know me.

facebook friends are people who i actually want to be in contact with, are members of my family, or are people i want to bombard with useless information about my life (or abuse). if i don't add you please don't take offense, it's possibly not because i didn't like you, it's probably because i don't remember who you are.

cheery.

robots

i like this

a history of violence

i should write more, i know. what would you do with your lives if you didn't have my amazing words to feast your tiny insignificant eyes upon? and apparently you usually improve the more you write, so potentially i could become the best writer in all of humanity (past, present and future) if i only sat down and wrote for another 20 minutes or so.

oh well.

this guy has already written stuff, so you might as well read that instead.

american werewolf in paris

some people are better at writing than me.

go here to read the words of maddox.

if you can't be bothered to stretch your finger out and press it, here's a section from his article about fashion:

There are very few people who look good in red lipstick, and those people usually juggle for a living. I once met a girl who was able to pull it off, so I let her buy me dinner. Later that night she was making out with my wang, when I realized that all that lipstick was rubbing off. So I evacuated my moan-maker from her face hole, took some silverware for my trouble, and snuck out of her tent.

Red lipstick looks horrible on most women, and all men. The bright crimson hue is an unnatural abomination pushed upon your face by cynical cosmetic industry scientists. I'm sure somewhere in a laboratory, two scientists are high-fiving each other, laughing at all the bullshit new names for shades of red they invent. There have been literally thousands of names for the same color of lipstick over the years, yet there are only about 3 shades of red: red, dark red, light red. Period. And I mean that grammatically, and not menstrually, though the context makes sense now that I think about it. They just make up names as they go along, and you idiots keep buying the same three shades of red over and over again:

the little mermaid - a restaurant review/short tale of morality & deception

thai orchid, clapham high street
from the outside it looks like a perfectly decent place to eat. looking through the window it's tastefully and simply decorated with bare wooden panels and floor. there's a bit of leather here and there. there's a groovy mezzanine level at the back where you'd get to eat if it became really busy. i hope that doesn't happen though, that would be significantly unfair on the good restaurants of the world.
it was pretty cold inside when we first entered, but it was absolutely freezing outside so we stuck with it and carried on with Plan A.

mistake.

"what would you like to drink?" we were asked, almost immediately after sitting down. it was difficult to answer as the wine list was so vague it may as well have just been a list of the dialects of the world.
"could you give us a couple of minutes please?" we answered, taking our coats off. the waiter was a strange chap with limited understanding of personal space. the movement as he left us was a unusual mix of sinister-slinking and a skip.

screw it, we decided to have champagne. we called the odd chap back over; which wasn't difficult as he had stayed within earshot, and had stared at us intently with a curious smile on his face. it was like eagerness, disguised as a sexual predator.
"we'd like a bottle of champagne please."
"yes. red or white?"
"wha..? it's champ... umm.. white please." we glanced at each other, "oh and could we have some tap water?... oh you've gone"
and he had gone. wandered off - it turned out - to find someone more senior who could open a bottle of champagne.
one spillage and a wine-bucket of cold water later and we were at least drinking champagne. from glasses chunky enough you could hammer nails into a supporting wall admittedly, but that could just have been be a design choice to match the rugged hardwood floors and haunting air-temperature.

"would you like to order?" the far away smile had returned.
"yes please. how many fish-cakes do you get in a starter?"
"i don't know... five or six i think." he gazed at us. it was uncomfortable.
"okay, could we get one of those between us please?"
"yes." he smirked and wandered off again. we didn't really converse with him about food any further, although he did remain a claustrophobic presence in our lives for the rest of the evening.

a couple of minutes later the more senior member of staff who'd opened our champagne arrived. "would you like to order please?"
"oh, i thought we'd already started that." i said, because we did. but this chap had a notepad, and a slightly less threatening demeanor.

the 'fish'-cakes arrived within a minute or two (never a great sign). freshly deep-fried from the packet from whence they were squeezed, they sat there in an oily substance we could only hope was oil. i describe them as 'fish'-cakes because there was minimal evidence of any real fish. in fact, on slicing them open some of them contained a gristly substance that could only be realised as 'cheap nasty meat.' this was not great for the vegetarian i was spending the evening with. we were either eating very bad fishcakes that had been padded out with low quality chicken bits, or we were the first humans to taste the flesh of a mermaid.
neither was preferable.

at this point the prices on the menu went from "very reasonable" to "highly suspicious," and had we not had a bucket of cold water and a bottle of champagne (resting on the table next to us) would have walked out there and then.

my companion had a pad thai for mains. although her report suggested that you'd get a better pad thai from wagamama's. which is a japanese restaurant.
i wanted a nasi goreng, and according to the ingredients on the menu that's basically what i was getting. albeit with a different, more unique-to-this-restaurant name. at this point the staff seemed very distinctly not-from-anywhere-near-thailand, at all.

the mains were as good as to be expected at this stage. not terrible though. i mean, not great, but not supernaturally evil or life-threatening. admittedly i didn't touch the mussels, which didn't seem to have been cleaned and most certainly had a vague greenish tinge. all food was delivered by the strange creature who'd ignored our request for water, and had to be reminded twice before eventually delivering it with what he probably considered, a flourish.

some vastly over-cooked squid and a distinct lack of some promised ingredients later (no fried egg, no.... um.. vegetables - luckily we'd ordered side dishes) and we were ready to leave. as in, we were still ready to leave from that time earlier when it became evident that this was going to be shite. still, freedom was imminent and the fresh, biting winter air was beckoning to us as it whistled past the road-works outside.

creepy-smiling-weirdo was back.
"could we split the bill half-and-half please? on each of these cards?" i asked.
"could you pay for everything and she can pay you back?" he responded, signaling my companion with the side of his head.
...
"no."

as we were leaving (thankful for the timing) a stench began emanating from the general direction of the back of the restaurant. it could have been the kitchen or the toilets. i wouldn't want to put money on which one; but just before we left, my cohort - rather bravely i thought - decided she needed to pay a brief visit to the latter. on returning she had a unrecognisable expression on her face.
"i don't want to talk about it," she said as we left.
"fair enough," i replied, feeling very british. and how british we were to soldier on through what was - by far - the worst meal out i've ever had (and i've had a McChicken sandwich from macdonalds.. which have less chicken in them than the fishcakes).

i implore you, do not go to thai orchid on clapham high street. not unless you're the sort of person that enjoys having your wallet raped and your tongue beaten up.

hideous.

battle of britain

do you like comedy? you should come to this show. it might well be very funny. i'm in it and everything. but there are also some very talented improvisers too, so you should at least get a chortle on your chops at some point during the evening.

if you don't, you are a heartless swine and i demand your demise.

here is a link to the facebook page: the facebook page

fight club

i've never had a fight. never ever. some would say it's because i am so charming no-one would ever want to punch me.
some would say my intellect is so great that i could see the potential violence approaching from such a distance, and i can easily avoid it. sometimes from as far away as 24 hours.
some would say it's because if you lay down and allow someone to pummel seven shades of fecal matter out of you, it's not called 'fighting' it's called 'being a pussy'.

a man looked at me funny once, but i gave him my iPod and five-hundred pounds and that seemed to calm him down. he looked a little confused at first, but then gathered up his blanket, punnet of strawberries and penguin classics copy of bonjour tristesse and ran off to catch a tram. phew! disaster averted. i left the park with my dignity intact (bar a tiny urine stain on my trousers).

and then there was that time when louisa whitehead put a bit of lettuce on my head when we were on the school bus. that could've turned really nasty (she was built like a cage-fighter), but luckily my sobbing and mewling sounds were enough to make her say she was "getting off at the next stop anyway."

if i were in a fight, i reckon there's only one way it would go. obviously i would kick their arse. i'd destroy their bones, mangle their face and leave them a sad sack of leathery crumble. they would slither home on a lubricant of their own vomit, begging for their mother to come and lick their wounds.

or it would go like this: