um-ber-ella...ella...ella...

It's funny.
Being ill makes me lose my normally carefree and easy going approach to city dwelling.
Here are some bad thoughts:

So, what is it about cities, man? We've had cities for a long time…we've had cities for a long time. We've had crowded streets for a long time, we've had busy, busy places for a long time – and I'll tell you what else we've had for a long time and that's UMBRELLAS! Umbrellas. What is with umbrellas? What is with women carrying umbrellas? I'm going to be sexist… I'm making sexist remarks now – but I'm not, I'm talking about my eyes, talking about protecting my eyes…
Women walking down city streets with umbrellas completely oblivious to what's around them, absolutely oblivious.
Taking people out. Blinding innocent people. No spatial awareness whatsoever.
Should be outlawed, man.
Nowhere in town is that far away, I've been caught out in the rain before – everyone has – and it's not that bad! You get there in the end. You get there, you take your coat off and you're still pretty dry. It's not that important to stay completely dry, and even if it is there's lots of other ways to stay dry that don't involve poking my eyes out while you walk down the road.
Get a hat. You like shopping so much, go out and buy a hat.
Should be illegal.
"Oh, but I need to have my umbrella 'cause it protects my haircut."
I beg your pardon? What on earth are you talking about? No one's haircut is that good – London is a terrible place to get a haircut. I mean, I'm a mildly well travelled person…I've been to a lot of places, all the places you've been to, all the places where other privileged white people that buy Coldplay albums and who "wouldn't have the car if it wasn't for the baby" hang out…and by far the worst place for hair is London. Look around you. No offence but your haircut is rubbish. They all are. The next time you're out look around you – a sea of terrible, boring, drab haircuts. English hairdressers are the worst hairdressers in the world. In the world. Barbers? Hmm, they're ok, but hairdressers?
So…no one's hair in London is that good. No one's haircut is that important, is that stylee that it deserves preserving at the expense of my eyes, or other people's eyes.
Oh, and being punched in the balls as well, what's that about? We've had city streets, we've had overcrowding, we've had high population densities for hundreds of years, thousands of years. We've had metropolitanisation for thousands of years and still you get these women walking around completely oblivious, in their own little bubble, swinging their arms around. The number of times I've been walking along the pavement minding my own business and I get walloped in the nuts by some girl with no spatial awareness.
Now, my balls are nothing special – well I think that they're pretty damn special, in fact they're amazing, they're the best balls that there are, they're truly astounding balls – but they're not big, they're not a liability, they're not going to get in anyone's way, they're just a normal pair of balls tucked in discretely underneath my penis, in between my legs, wrapped up in some nice stretchy, clingy, slightly more expensive than george at asda…black…shiny…boxer…shorts…but I digress…yes, you know…I've had trouble finding them myself in the past, sometimes when you're having a little rummage they're not always where you expect them to be, are they? Nevertheless, these complete strangers, complete strangers who aren't even looking seem to just…whack, five knuckles right in the…unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
Control yourselves.
Think.
Be aware.
There's always someone – no matter how important you are, no matter how much of a great day you're having, no matter how pleased you are with yourself as you go off to meet some "friend" for "coffee" – there's someone more important than you coming up behind you in a hurry and they're going to be overtaking you and they really don't need to have their bollocks crushed by you and your selfish attitude to life.
Grow up.
Stop pretending to be that self obsessed horse-faced cow off of "Sex in the City" with your big umbrella and your loud voice and your swinging arm and look around you.
Be a part of the world around you.
Engage.
Live.
Enjoy.


And get out of my way.



INCORRECT



INCORRECT



CORRECT

go bananas at the point of sale

I’m having trouble with the whole ‘Looks good so buy it.’ thing.
So, everyone knows that tomatoes don’t taste like tomatoes anymore. They look more like tomatoes than tomatoes ever did, but they don’t taste like them, right? They’re just these big red juicy looking things in the shop that, when you get them home, are pretty watery, waxy and grainy versions of a tomato.
And we all know that you have to go a long way these days to find a banana that tastes of ‘banana’ (being the ones we used to have before the war). You have to go to Asia in fact.
‘As long they buy the freakin’ thing’, right? That’s the thinking, I believe. The tomato and the banana only have to look like a nice juicy tomato or tasty banana while they’re sat on the shelf waiting to be bought. As soon as the store has your money they couldn’t care less whether you enjoy eating the thing or not. Actually that’s not true, the store does want you to come back and buy more tomatoes and bananas in the future. It’s probably more to do with the wholesalers who buy and sell this stuff on sight. I mean they don’t necessarily have to eat it and enjoy it to be impressed enough to come back and buy more. All they need to know is that the guy they sell it on to thinks that they look like tomatoes and bananas. But no, wait, the stores must be culpable too because they do all that stuff with wax and lighting and so on. Yeah.
Have you been to a restaurant lately? It makes me furious when you’re sat at a restaurant table in the year 2008 and the freakin’ thing is wobbling under your elbows. I just can’t believe that here we are, with the internet and with the ability to shoot down rogue satellites travelling at tens of thousands if miles an hour and we can’t make a table that doesn’t wobble. And I’m not being unreasonable here. We’re not talking about some table that your nephew made at school and that you have to cherish for that fact alone, we’re talking about a table in a restaurant. A professional table.
Now I have a strong opinion on this because I work in an industry where appearance is everything. It’s ok to just appear to be what you wish to seem. You don’t need a degree in law in order to appear to an audience as a lawyer. There’s nothing to stop you getting a degree if you want one; if it would make you feel better about yourself while you pretend to be a lawyer – but similarly there’s nothing to stop you eating cigarette butts and drinking vinegar before you go on stage. Whatever it takes, right? But when it comes to being a table in a restaurant that won’t do! Appearing to be a table will not do. You are required to function exactly as the paying customer would expect a table to function, that being a stable platform on which to place your meal (it would be nice if the word ‘table’ came from the word ‘stable’ but instead I think it comes from the word ‘tablet’). As a restaurateur, wouldn’t you take pride in your stuff and want to know that everything you had - glasses, cutlery, napkins – was going to work just right for your customers? You wouldn’t put out forks made of leather, would you? No. So why are we so often seated at tables that can’t keep all their feet on the ground? Look around you, it’s easy to forget how much of our manmade environment has involved the spirit level at some stage of its construction. It could even be used as a criterion for judging the natural world against the artificial. It’s one of the things that we just seem to do wherever we go; level this off, flatten that out. And yet, there we all are watching the wine trying to jump out of the glass as we chase our steaks around the plate. Oops, there goes the little vase with the flower in it. Splat, there’s a big blob of candle wax in my girlfriend’s dessert. And no-one seems to complain. No-one seems to mind.
And the same goes for tomatoes and bananas. These things we’re eating are the hookers of the food world. They offer the semblance of a tomato experience, a banana sensation, but somewhere back there their john’s are counting the money and laughing at the poor suckers who’re going to feel just as empty, just as lonely when they wake up in the morning as they were before they went to the store and were distracted by the lovely shiny, waxy, scented produce on the shelf.
Now I know that some of you out there would prefer a restaurant with prostitutes on wobbly tables but not me. No, when I come off stage having given my heart rending performance as ‘the lawyer’, and I go out to dinner with my agent, give me a nice tart tomato and a tight little Asian banana anytime. On a solid table.

the longest train i ever saw...

So, if you want to know where mrtat’s been all this time have a listen to Joan Baez singing “In the Pines”. Yeah, I know, there’s Bill Monroe doing it and of course Leadbelly but for some reason Joan’s closest to the mark on this one.

here come the man...

are you babenotized?

i don't know...

So, what's the toughest decision you've had to make lately?


Blimey, when I first thought of asking that question I was just goofing around and being silly, but having just spent a few moments thinking about it it's thrown up all sorts of other questions. I mean when I first think about decisions and making decisions I think of things like, 'shall I buy the green shoes or the blue ones?' or, 'shall I go out tonight or stay in and catch up on paperwork?' you know 'either or' decisions; ultimatums; conscious choices; moments when your little journey through life takes you to a fork in the road and you have to choose which way you want to go.

But is that really how decisions are made?

If you look down at your feet now can you remember being in a shoe shop and comparing two pairs of shoes and deciding to go with the pair you've got over some other?

Would you say that the experience of buying a shoe is well served by the journey/road/fork analogy?

Maybe shoe buying is more complicated than that. Maybe it's more like a complex interaction of many different motivations and needs, some conscious, some unconscious - I mean you need some shoes so that your feet don't get mashed up on the street, right? But they have to be the right shoes, don't they? It could be that you need the right trainers to stop your whole damn self getting mashed up on the street, or the right cowboy boots so you can go and get laid at Bob's Country Bunker, or the right shoes to get a job interview…whatever - there could be loads of things that feed into the choice you make. AHA! Choice. There you go…there's a difference, isn't there, between decision and choice? Yes there is…you could, at any moment, decide that you need some new shoes but you couldn't really say that you choose to need some new shoes. You're going to go and choose a pair to buy and wear, sure, but you don't choose to need them, no, you decide that you need them and then you need to choose them.

So there might be a lot more to making decisions than there is to making choices; any one with half a mind could choose a flavour of ice cream for their afternoon treat (blueberry – obviously) but would you let the hungry toddler inside of you decide whether the ice cream man was a nice bloke? No, you'd want to meet him after work and have a drink and ask him those questions about flipping turtles back onto their feet, like in Bladerunner, right?

Oh, I don't know….maybe life just isn't like that.

I know that it isn't for a lot of people.

I know that choice is often a privilege. I think it was Chris Rock who said, 'You won't find many kids with a lactose intolerance in Africa.'

And I know that the more you look into the nature of making decisions the more questions you come out with about things like responsibility and free will.

I'm pretty sure it was John Lennon who said, 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.'

I know that, for a lot of people, it really does turn out to be one long climb up a slippery sh*t heap, hoping that the dude above them doesn't fall and take them with him – a long climb where you might just happen to plant flowers and fall in love and get your nose pierced and punch your boss and break your leg and accidentally set fire to things and win awards and build sheds and lose your marbles and stuff, but you probably wouldn't notice any of that. And you probably wouldn't remember deciding to do any of it, would you? When you look back at things you don't see the decision to do things, you just see yourself there doing it, right? 'Oh look, there I am paragliding...oh, haha, that's me brushing my teeth...and there, shouting at the ice cream man.'

I wonder if any of those people, in their last moments, as they slide into a pit filled with other sh*t smeared bodies, look down at the shoes on their feet and think, 'How the hell did they get there?...And what is this cold purple stuff I'm eating?'

Right, as you may have guessed, mrtat has had a few decisions to make lately.

Erm, none of this has helped with any of that in any way – BUT, if you are still here, I am genuinely interested to hear about any decisions you've had to make recently, tough or otherwise…do let me know.

In the meantime, here's another 'there's something sexy going on here' picture...



...it's a bit more obvious this time.

Anna Pology

ok, so maybe throwing stones at dead animals isn't the most edifying of pastimes.
but they weren't big stones.
and it was already dead.

anyways, i don't have to justify myself to you.
who are you to question my morality?
i know the difference between right and wrong.
i learned from the best:

will you go to lunch? go to lunch will you? WILL YOU GO TO LUNCH?

i just spent my lunch break throwing stones at a dead dog in the canal.




just so you know.

now that's what i call service...

i don't care what you say.

there is something incredibly sexy about this picture, and it is not the three guys in their dressing gowns.

how very english...

So, an American friend of mine read an interview with a singer called Josh Groban, who'd just visited the UK, in which he said this:

"When I got back to LA, I kept saying 'bloke.' And p*** b******s when I was angry!"

She asked me if I could tell her what had been blanked out.
This is what I came up with (How'd I do? How'd I do?):

Well...
Assuming that the number of asterisks corresponds to the number of letters in each word...
B******s is almost definitely 'bollocks', which means 'testicles', although it could be 'bastards' which, I guess you already know, means 'illegitimate children'.
'Bollocks' is more likely because it is used as a general exclamation or indicator of frustration whereas 'bastards' seems more directed to a particular group of people.
P*** is slightly harder to decide for. 'Piss' is a strong contender - especially when used together with bollocks. Although I have never heard the two words used on their own, I have frequently heard and used the sequence, 'shit...piss...bollocks' to express displeasure - displeasure so strong that I am willing to subject those around me to a string of the best percussive expletives I can manage just to get my point across. 'Piss', of course, meaning 'urine'.
It could be 'poof', meaning 'homosexual', but that has such a perjorative sense in 'English' English that I doubt he would have used that word in an interview...it's kind of a gay 'n' word.
So, I think that we're dealing with 'piss bollocks' here. I could be wrong. I could be trying to shoehorn my own personal favourites into someone else's mouth - and believe me, i have NEVER tried to get my piss or my bollocks into someone else's mouth before - or I could just have missed something else very obvious, but 'piss bollocks' gets my vote.

I hope this helps.

Love 'n' stuff,

mrtat.


p.s. Interestingly enough (or not) I remember reading recently that if you went back in time to when shakespeare was writing, you would understand very little of the spoken english that you heard. Only a handful of english words have remained unchanged aurally from that time and among them are 'shit', 'piss' and 'bollocks'. Which just goes to show, as does my last post, that THE OLD ONES ARE THE BEST.



...So there you go.
What are friends for, eh?
Oh yeah...
When you were young did you ever fake being ill just to get the day off school and then go in the next day to find out that something really cool had happened while you were away that would never happen again? This happened to me once, and it was a whole English lesson on swearing that I missed.
Shit.

the old ones are the best...

before a long mission, i like to break the tension in the green room with the old 'blowing up a condom with the nose' trick...





...selah.

isn't it?

hello, please...

ok, kids, real blogging will resume shortly.
just got to get this out of my system,

love,

mrtat.

giant space bats...

woah, dude...

sick

man, oh man.
spent the whole of yesterday writhing around in bed, saying, 'oh god!'...and for all the wrong reasons.
i haven't been ill for ages.
think it was food poisoning...or maybe a bit of polonium 210.
i've been e-mailing friends saying 'maybe a bit of polonium 6', but i've just watched the news and realised that it's polonium 210.
easy mistake to make.
i think it's because of those really hot eighties chicks in the 'purple rain' movie called 'apollonia 6'...






and this is apollo 6...



looking as rough as i feel.
hack, bloik.

NINA HAGEN - Smack Jack

sometimes i like to dress up as a girl who's dressed up like a guy, and go down to the holodeck and just...DANCE.

how to frighten kids...

something old, something new...

well...
s'been a while.
the leaves are turning brown, there's a chill coming in from the north, the evenings are drawing in, the clocks have gone back.
yes folks, it's mrtat's favourite time of year.
get a load of those colours.
get a breath of that air.

custom kitchen deliver ayeeyayeeyays...

So, here I am shadowing a friend at work. This friend has a 'job'. I have been given the chance to see if I would like to be trained up to do this 'job'. I have come in for coupla days/nights to look around, ask questions and figure out if it's the kind of thing I'd like to get involved in to earn some money. To be honest I don't really have much choice. Something's got to give around here if I'm gonna keep my head above water. I've got to do something other than sit round my flat, scratching my arse occasionally and phoning my agent once a week - so it's kind of a given that, if I'm offered the chance to work here, I'm gonna have to take it.
So anyway, I've got all ready to come and do this...I've had a few sessions with my mate at his house so that I know some of the terminology, I've got a few notes and diagrams together...you know, it's kind of a big deal - something that I don't want to fuck up.
And here I am, six hours in, messing around on a computer, surfing the internet, and e-mailing me mates.
That's what people do all day.
Wow.
Obviously, this is no surprise to most people, because most people have 'jobs' in offices and spend most of their time (their boss' time, actually) surfing the internet and e-mailing their friends. But to me it's a bit of a shock. I mean, I was told, before I came here, that one of the most important things not to do here was to fall asleep. Now, it so happens that my friend is 'in charge' this evening and already he's nodded off twice. Dang. Another thing I was told was important was not to turn up late. And lo and behold, one of the staffers has just turned up two hours late (apparently having been to casualty with chest pains...oh yeah) spent an hour online trying to get out of paying a couple parking tickets and then...yup you guessed it..nodded off.
Alright, alright, I won't bitch about trying to get out of paying parking fines. We all would if we could.
Actually, I've devised a really good, nearly foolproof method of not paying parking fines. If you're interested, leave a comment here when you've finished and I'll tell you how you too can take advantage of this legal loophole.
Actually, don't. I'll only send you a message back saying, 'DON'T PARK ON YELLOW LINES, SPASTIC' and that would be shit.
Stupid, smug, smart arsed shit.
Cor, times dragging on a bit.
Fuck this, I'm going to have a kip.

a poem i wrote for the canadian FBI...

just for the record:
i love people and i hate guns.

oh yeah:
work rocks,
school rocks,
life rocks,
what more can i say?

robert palmer

robert palmer...

So...a friend of mine is 'downsizing' his business.
It's ten o'clock on Sunday night and we're clearing out his office.
I remember that it's not so long ago that I helped him move all the stuff in there. He got it all on ebay, very cheap, and now that he doesn't need it anymore, he just wants to get rid of it.
We're loading up the van with all the furniture and the plan is to take it all to the tip tomorrow morning.
Now, I can understand why he wants to do it all on a Sunday night; it's a rented office in a big building so during the week it would just take ages, with all the other people in the corridors and the lifts and stuff...but there is a tiny part of my overactive imagination that thinks, "Maybe he's in a spot of real bother and he needs to do a runner, and on Monday morning all his staff are going to turn up to work and find an empty office."
So anyway, there we are, loading up the van and when we get halfway through, it becomes apparent that it isn't all going to fit in.
Dang.
We stand there and scratch our heads for a minute.
"Well, it all fitted in when we brought it here..."
"Maybe we could leave some of the chairs here; they're nice chairs...no one will mind."
Shit. It all has to be out tonight, there's nowhere to store it except in the van which it doesn't fit into, and we can't just dump it in the street. Shit.
Then we notice another van that has already gone past us a few times and seems to be watching us.
It pulls up and a bloke gets out.
"Excuse me, lads...erm, I couldn't help noticing that you seem to be moving out of that office there and I er...just er...wanted to ask you...erm...none of that stuff's for sale, is it? Only, I'm s'posed to be moving into this office next door and I need a few bits and pieces to deck the place out."
Woah.
Me and my friend look at each other.
My friend's like, "Well...yeah...which bits do you want?"
The bloke's like, "Erm, what have you got in there?"
So we pull a few bits out and show them to him and he looks at them all and ums and ahhs, "Well, I could really do with a couple of those filing cabinets and two chairs...how much do you want for them?"
Ok...my friend's a salesman, right? That's his gig, quite hardcore sales stuff, so I''m expecting him to spring into action here.
"Just make us an offer, mate," he says, "We're going to chuck it all tomorrow anyway, so tell us what's on your mind and we'll work something out."
The bloke ums and ahhs again. A lot. "Hmm, well...I really don't know what any of this stuff's worth...I was going to look into it next week, you know...I wasn't going to buy anything until..."
At this point I VERY NEARLY took matters into my own hands and said, "Give us a hundred quid and you can have the lot."
"A score," says my friend.
"Erm...I'm sorry, I don't know, what's 'a score'?"
"It's twenty quid."
"Well...hmm, like I said, I really don't know what any of this is worth...tell you what: twenty five, is that ok?"
Me and my friend look at each other.
"Yup, that's fine."
Oh, my days.
And then, after we've taken the stuff out and the bloke's about to hand over the money, my friend says, "Look it's all going in the bin tomorrow, feel free to take another filing cabinet, if you want one," meaning, you know, have it, for free.
The bloke goes, "Ok, I tell you what...ummm...ahhh...thirty quid for three cabinets and two chairs."
So, there you go.
When we'd gotten over ourselves and stopped crying with laughter, the rest of the stuff fitted into the van a treat.


Currently Listening :
Some Guys Have All the Luck
By Robert Palmer

ass kiss

well...
i may or may not have had to sit through 72 hours of music videos lately.
ok go? kiss my ass.
the only one of any note is beck's 'cell phone's dead'...



...and none of you is as cool as the drummer in that thing.

radio 4

Hmmm,
When I hear news readers talking about the seriousness of the recent nuclear tests in North Korea, I can't help thinking to myself that their capital, Pyongyang, sounds like a ricochet in a spaghetti western.
"Hey, Blondie!"



So why is it that ..a little lad.. can change the history of our great nation?
Well, it's because there will always be sanctimonious c***s like David Blunkett who will try and freeload a political lift to the moral high ground on the backs of their (the little lad's) innocent and unknowing remarks.
I just listened to D.B. himself reading extracts from his own book on bbc radio 4. Shameless self promotion by a bitter twisted 'could have been' nation builder?
No.
Mindless carping and score settling by a saddo who is all too used to the idea that everyday people are there to indulge and pay for the privilege of hearing his opinion.
Anyway, here are some free jokes:

How many casting directors does it take to change a light bulb?
None, they'll just use the same light bulb over and over, even if it's broken.

Why will North Korea and Japan never resolve their differences?
Because neither side can say, 'Sorry'.

Peace, sellah.
And, a moonman bj...


yes, a moonman bj...

hello, please...

me and er

So there's all these dudes on the internet telling you things and making 'information' available. Hmm...interesting.
Were the moon landings faked? Did George W. arrange the 9/11 thing? Are the Baha'is going to unite all world religions? HAVE YOU WON A FREE IPOD?
It's great isn't it? It's all really interesting stuff and really exciting.
And then there's a little questionaire.
I studied psychology at college. I didn't do very well for several reasons - among them; sexual politics (Sexual politics? Sexual politics? If there are two concepts that should never try and be bedfellows they are sex and politics), boring teachers and more sexual politics (dang).
I got an 'F'.
Or was it a 'U'?
Mebbe it was an 'FU'.
Anyways, the way psychology was presented to me was as a scientific endeavour to understand the human mind and the human condition. It seemed that since psychology's beginnings there had a been a huge amount of heavily funded research into things like perception, motivation, behaviour...all that shit, 'mind as machine' shit. And it all seemed very interesting...Loads of guys in labs wiring up dogs and students and getting them to do all sorts of stuff and doing all sorts of stuff to them. And they seemed to be coming up with all sorts of interesting answers...they could tell you why you see invisible white triangles, they could show you how 'bad' people could be if you gave them uniforms, they could even teach monkeys sign language. Cute.
Now, as I said, I didn't do very well in class so my facts might not be rock solid on this next bit;
My view of psychology now is this:
Most of the famous psychological research was funded by the american government in response to things that they saw happening to their soldiers at the hands of the Koreans with their 'brainwashing' techniques. Someone was able to get to their troops, which they had put there at enormous cost to themselves, and completely undermine all their training and preparation without firing any guns. All, apparently, with a few well placed 'fliers' and a sympathetic looking dude behind a desk.
They didn't like that.
They did, however, like the idea that you could manipulate and subvert not just people's wants and desires but their fundamental beliefs, their ideas...and shit. And that seemed, to them, to be worth looking into in great detail.
What did they find out?
Not fucking much.
To my mind the upshot of all that money being spent, all those unnecessary lobotamies, and all those monkeys chatting away in sign language is this:
You can now walk down any street with shops on it and pay about three quid for a coffee.
Yup, that's it.
Starbucks.
Ipods.
Advertising.
That's all you get.
That and maybe a few footnotes in boot camp training manuals (teach them how to fold up their pants BEFORE you give them the gun).
So yeah, there's all this information out there for free. Who puts it there? Why are they being so nice? Well because they love you of course. And they love that three quid that you're hardly going to notice spending.
So next time you fill out some form online (those personality tests are fun, aren't they?) or tell a stranger your email address, don't worry...it's not the beginning of the end, it's not an erosion of your civil liberties to have a store loyalty card. They just want to get to know you, to get to know you so that they can help you. If they know who you are and where you live they can make sure that there's one of those lovely coffee shops right outside your house. Cool, eh?

Look, it's no big deal...you don't want it to happen? Don't buy the coffee.
Tell you what, come round mine, I'm just about to make some.
It's only two quid.
If you have two you can have them for three quid.
Oh, do you like cakes? I've got some really nice ones here.
They're four quid.
Tell you what, why don't you take this empty book away with you and every time you come back and have two more coffees I'll put a little tick in the book and when you come back with all seven hundred pages filled up with little ticks I'll give you another coffee for free! Or two more for one quid. Or two more and a slice of cake for three quid.
Washoe, over there, will take care of your order. When she does this with her hands [gestures] that means, 'Your coffee is ready'.
Help yourself to milk and sugar.

thanks for the add...

nothing new here, kids...
i'm just gonna bitch about the advertising on myspace for a while....

So there's a little advert for the 'AA' that pops up on my profile.
Great.
It says something about 'having a friend' in the AA.
Cute...like it...I see what they've done there...'Friend'...yeah...very now, very myspace, very web2.0...
Now, you may not know this but me and the AA go way back. WAY back.
When you've got a carbon footprint as big as mine and you're doing it all in old volkswagens and busted up vans you're gonna need the right people on your side, right? I've been hanging out with those cats since the day I got my licence, two days after my seventeenth birthday. Yeah...we used to meet up and party quite a lot; sometimes in my front garden, sometimes up in the city after a crazy night out. In fact, as I look back over my younger days it seems as though, at most of the major goodtime life events I can recall, there was always a big yellow truck pulled up by my orange bug with a grease monkey hanging out the back of it. Yup, come rain or shine, there was always a big friendly pair of hands, all wrapped up in reflective clothing, that knew exactly what to do to get things moving and put a smile on everyone's face.
Ahhh, good times...
good people...

...good friends.
You know, the kind of folks who are always welcome in your house.
"Would you like a cup of tea? You must be freezing."
And, "You got here fast, were you close by?"
And of course, "Tell you what, why don't you wait here and play with the dog and flirt with my girlfriend while I go and put the kettle on?"
All that stuff.
Friend stuff.
Side by side.
Hand in hand.
Like the time they diddled me out of £400.
Like the times they pretended they didn't know me.
Like the time they left me stranded in Scotland in the middle of the night and I had to set my mum on them.
Yup, true friends.
Actually, really, yes...just like real friends.

Oh yeah, and there's some loan people up there as well.
Listen, don't go to these people.
You want money?
I can get you money.
We can work this out...you and me.
Here, take this...go and get yourself something nice. Go have a good time and come and see mrtat in a week.
You look after me...I'll look after you.
Now bend over.



mrtat.


p.s. that mum thing really worked a treat. if you look closely at the next patrol guy you have, you might just see her big black carbon footprint stamped on his reflective yellow AAss.

muck and bullets...

Woah, I feel as though I've spent the last few days in the middle of a freezing forest, surrounded by mud and rough cloth and oily metal - where Nature's music of wind and rain and birdsong, and the footfalls of the hooved horses, play alongside man's chorus of hammer blows, shovels digging, boots trudging, locks locking, fires burning and bullets flying.
But, I haven't. I've been painting fences in the sunshine, catching trains, watching tv and eating hot, delicious, nutritious food.
Yup, it really seeped into me, that Bielski book.

Currently reading :
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest
By Peter Duffy

me me me me me...

So, I helped an ex-girlfriend move some of her mum's stuff around the other day and we found an old exercise book of mine. It had an unfinished story in it, which I must have written when I was nine or ten.
It was all I could do - while wallowing in the pit of self obsession - to type it up and put it on here for you.
I did not change a single word.
Here goes...




Chris and the Slime

Chris was a talented boy, talented at being boring. He only had one friend he could trust and that was his shadow.
His mum wasn't the most energetic person in the world, but at least she didn't lock herself up all day doing housework.
His dad was a teacher in a secondary school in Sheen. He was a lot of fun but strict at times, and as for his brother well he was a bit of a nerd.
Oh! He had a sister too! She was a maniac, every time she saw food she'd start screaming and shouting.
Chris lived in Kingston at the time but a few months after the event I'm going to tell about, he moved far away.
It was a normal Tuesday in school, and at break Chris and I went to visit our imaginary universe. We climbed into Herpes, our time machine and started pushing the buttons.
Chris was a little older than me but we were both ten. He was about the same height as me with blondish hair, specs and a large mouth like mine. He wore shorts sometimes but I was stuck in trousers because of my skinny white hairy legs.
"She's done it," called Chris.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"I dunno," he replied, "I just pushed all the buttons."
"Including the purple one?"
"All of em!" he snapped.
"Great."
"Wha's up?"
"Ev'rything. We've landed in dimension 13, the nightmare."
You see, our imaginary universe is where all peoples dreams go, the nice ones go to dimension 57, and the nightmares to 13.
I reached for the arms cupboard in Herpes and pulled out two armoured suits, four miniature laser cannons and six throwing daggers. There was only one way out of dimension 13, and that was fighting, you had to fight your way to dimension 57, call the time machine and go from there.
After arming ourselves, we clambered out of Herpes and looked around. All was dark for a while, but then a screaming, beaming light came whizzing past. We both jumped straight out of our skins.
We carried on through the void, searching for traps and all sorts. I then remembered I had a torch in my helmet next to the fan. I turned it on and suddenly the air was filled with screams and shouts and other inhuman noises. Very slowly, we crept through the ground cocoa beans which the strange light sprinkled.
Chris told me that he'd seen the beans somewhere before.
"Where?" I inquired.
"Oh, just on a plant I found last night."
A few minutes later I noticed the blank landscape was slowly turning into a dense forest of death. There were creatures ready to kill behind literally every corner, growling and spitting at each other.






That's as far as I got.
What a poof.
We also found a video of my old band, 'feedback' from 1991. Haven't watched that yet because my vcr blew up.

bootiful

"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?" - Jean Kerr

'ousework...

One o y'all already knows this, but here goes...

A coupla days ago I noticed a pretty crummy smell in my study. My study is next to my kitchen so I, kind of logically, assumed that there was something going bad in my bin. I took the rubbish out, cleaned up the dishes and went off out for the night.
Surprise surprise, when I came home there was the funky smell. Dang.
Next up, I get a call from my girlfriend over in Canadia saying that a coupla her friends are coming to London for a coupla days and can I put them up? 'Hey, no problem, honey.'
Yeah, yeah. No problem, just a freaky smell that I can't figure out that, to a stranger, really makes it seem like I can't look after myself (yup, by now it's turned into one of THOSE smells). But hey, I'll just tidy the joint up and stick some candles around the place...we'll be fine.
Uh-uh. Halfway through the job my vacuum cleaner explodes in a cloud of "now you're really screwed, oh, and by the way, change the bag more often so that it's not full of crap the next time I decide to blow up on you," dust. Sheesh.
So then, I go into the bathroom to wash my face and hands and the light switch falls apart!
Time to call the landlady...
She's like, 'Oh, that's too bad. I just had a professional cleaner in the flat upstairs,' turns out that when my upstairs neighbours moved out recently they just unplugged their three fridge freezers, full of food and ice, and left them unattended in the room above my study. Since then a little flow of stinky food water has been trying to find a way into my flat through the corner of the ceiling right above my head as I write this. 'And I can't get a contractor to come and fix the light till next Monday.' I know, I know, I could fix the light myself but you don't know my landlady, we've had big fights about me playing with the electrics in this place. It's like I have to let her know in writing when I wanna charge my mobile phone.
So anyways. I'm not the most houseproud european guy you're gonna meet, but I haven't had any guests staying for quite a while and I wanted the place to be nice for them - especially as they are Canadian chick friends of my girlfiend...can you imagine?...
'Hey, chiquitas, d'yer have a good time in London?'
'Oh yeah, eh?'
'How's mrtat?'
'Oh, he's doing fine, eh?'
'And how was the place?'
'Yeah, you know, it was ok, eh? There was kind of a funny smell in there...and a big pile of dust on the floor...and we had to bathe in the dark...but yeah, eh?'.
Yeah....think I might just leave some keys out for them and piss off for the weekend...let 'em do London by themselves and then come back and call up my girl....
'Hey! Your damn friends! My place is all f@£$ed up!'
Bah!

kulcha...

Prom 47
Up in the gallery with Shostaf*****gkovich and bit of Schnittke.
'Nuff said.

reet narky

i can get reet narky sometimes.
here is a letter i wrote on behalf of my friend when he got a parking ticket one morning:


Re: Penalty Charge Notice no. 52754

Dear Sir/Madam,


I am writing to appeal against the issuing of Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) No. 52754.
I understand that the laws governing the issuance of penalty charge notices for parking offences give out that for a notice to be issued;

a) any given vehicle must be left unattended at the time that it comes to the attention of the traffic warden in question,

and that;

b) the vehicle must be seen to remain unattended by that warden for a period of at least 4 minutes before a PCN can be issued,

and that;

c) during these four minutes the issuing warden may fill out the notice which is to be placed on the vehicle but may not place it on the vehicle until the end of this period.

I do not believe that these procedures were followed in the issung of PCN No. 52754.
At the time that PCN No. 52754 was placed on vehicle AWB 24 I was descending a flight of stairs in Comeragh Road having just spoken to traffic warden VII 83 from a second floor window. The conversation that we had had went like this:

Myself: Excuse me, you're not giving me a ticket are you?

Warden: Yes. I'm writing it out now.

Myself: Please wait a moment. I'm just going to come down and move the vehicle.

Warden: You've got two minutes.


After this exchange I came down into Comeragh Road to find the warden walking away from vehicle AWB 24 which had PCN No. 52754 on its window.
Let me assure you that even on my worst day it doesn't take me more than 45 seconds to get my beautiful white ass and the tight rubbery bum tube it surrounds down a couple of flights of stairs. I can get from the second floor to street level really fast. I do this sort of thing all the time, yeah?...running up and downstairs, yeah, do it all the time. I used to work in a hotel, yeah?...used to be a room service guy. Part of my job was going up and down stairs for ages, taking people their soup and shit, right? And when I looked after my gran when she was ill and that, I was going up and down with pots of vomit mixed with blood and all sorts.
So what I'm saying is, I know damn well it didn't take me no fuckin' two minutes to get down there and see your pussy little queer traffic warden walking off with his smug self and my fuckin' car sat there with your cunt-arsed ticket on it.
Let me tell you this, right?...You lot better watch yourselves going near snazzy little green Rovers from now on, yeah?...The next time any of you cunts come any where near my fuckin' car, you better keep your eyes peeled 'cos you might miss the angry little white kid coming after you wreckin' shit man, ripping up the stones to get to you.
You got a tongue, yeah? You and your mates got tongues yeah? Why don't you use them to go and lick your mothers' fannies?


I ain't paying no fine.





Dominic Bond.




i got a wasp sting on my neck today n'all.
damn.

reet ponce:

I can be a reet ponce sometimes.
Here is a letter I wrote to a bloke who runs an independent cinema in Toronto.
It looks like I'm trying to kiss his ass so that he'll like me. I'm not. It's just, every now and now and then I really want people to think I'm clever...


Dear _____,
I'm writing becuase I really enjoyed coming to the cineforum today to
watch 'Truimph of the Will'.
I think that what you are doing at the forum is a great thing that
should be done a lot more in cities the world over. I know that there
is nothing like it in London, where I am from (or maybe there is - if
you know anything, please let me know). But, hey...you've heard all
this before....
Rearding your talk before the film;
I wonder if you have seen the new 'Superman Returns' movie. I don't
imagine that it is particularly up your street but when you spoke
about the christian imagery in Riefenstahl's film I remembered the
last 30 minutes of Singer's - it's basically the Easter story but with
a flying Jesus wrapped in the american flag. You've got everything -
the ascension (however it's spelled), the empty tomb...he even assumes
a crucifix pose several times while he's flying about the place...hmm.
While watching 'Truimph of the Will' I was struck by how familiar a
lot of the footage was. The footage, not the imagery. I felt a bit
cheated by every documentary film I have seen about the Nazis and the
war. None of their creators had, it seemed, gone very far outside of
this film to find any evidence of 'how silly those crazy Germans
were'.
As I mentioned above, I really enjoyed my afternoon at the forum
but I would like to make two suggestions to you about showing black
and white films in the space that you have.
I strongly urge you to try watching 'Triumph of the Will' with the
colour disabled on your projector or dvd machine. I find that when
watching black and white dvds projected on to a large screen the
colour articles that are present, particularly in fast moving
action sequences, become much more evident and can be distracting to
the eye, leaving you with blue and green edges on the moving white
sections. Of course, disabling the colour altogether does mean that you
lose some of the warming brown tones that come through from the reds
in the video, but I do think that 'Truimph of the Will' would benefit
from being 'crisped up' a bit. It comes down to personal
preference...give it a go though.
Also, I think that lowering the mid range or boosting the bass and
treble frequencies in the sound would help to deal with the frequently
pushed and sibilant sound that is found on older films. On modern
equipment this sound can be very harsh to the ear and lead to 'aural
fatigue' but is quickly checked with a little knob twiddling.
I know that 'Triumph of the Will' is not meant to be an easy ride. I'm
not trying to get you to create a multiplex feel in your forum. I hope
these suggestions are helpful.

Thanks again for a great afternoon. I wish I had more time in Tronnow
so I could visit you more - I wonder if you will be showing any of your
apparently complete collection of early 'Superman' animations soon.
Someone's gotta put that Singer kid right.

Best wishes,

mrtat.


...blimey; Superman and Riefenstahl...colour articles and aural fatigue...
I can be a reet ponce sometimes...

overheard...

a canadian gardener said this:
"You fat f***in' raccoon asshole!"

a fat girl in a chocolate shop said this:
"I don't think I'm allergic to nuts but once I ate a walnut straight from the shell and my whole tongue swelled up, like this..."

a smart ass little posh kid said this:
"I know how to spell 'banana' but I don't know when to stop."

in under siege, when gary busey is freaking out he grabs a sailor and says this:

"You have done a good job up to now, but you are about to be relieved of doody!"

hello, please...

Well hello there. Welcome to my blog.
I hope you enjoy it.
I have started blogging because there are a few things I would like to say.
Now I have to say them. Now you have a place to read them.
These things will be being said and being read very soon....