this time, hopefully
so i'm searching through some preferences in 'text edit' to see if it really is true that it can't even do things like fucking foot notes. and i find the option speech. what could this be? the option comes up start speaking. i click, and it's starts reading my fucking piece. now i'm sure that everyone else with a mac knows this and that i'm the last person. but this is the most insane thing i have ever heard in my life. some bizarro computer woman reading my piece with strange rhythm and intonation. do people know about this? i mean what the fuck? fuck!
hadn't been out in the old town for weeks, but went last night for one drink. as i bought it i saw her through the window heading towards the bar. shit. it's her, what the fuck am i going to do? she enters with a flow of people and i lose her. was it her? it has been a long time. then i look up and she sees me. her eyes go huge and her mouth is dropped. it is her wow-i-really-thought-i-was-never-fucking-going-to-see-her-again-shit look. she makes her way over and we greet. i go straight for it.
listen, i think i left a hoody...
really? no.
yeah, really, you sure you haven't seen it?
it's just that it suits me so well, you know, and at my place in winter it's really fucking cold.
later on, as i'm leaving, i make one last effort.
...so there's no chance of me getting that hoody back?
i don't think so hey, it's really nice.
motherfucker.
yesterday, when i went to the shops, i saw ten volumes of freud, tied up neatly with twine, thrown on the ground, in the rain, at the side of the recycling bin. i guess they went for a walk in the park.
this is an image that i took over easter in valencia. i wanted to put this phrase over it for ages. i thought i was gonna used scanned text. in the end i just wrote it in photoshop, and i think i kind of like it like this.
by the way, check out this basque street press. everything is printed twice, once in basque, once in (often quirky) english. nothing in spanish. i was gonna send copies of it to the vertigo kids cos it's kind of cool and has at times some really sweet design elements. but then today i realised it was gonna cost me possibly more than ten euros to send it. and i don't love those kids that much. check out especially the 'eroticism for the basque country' shoot. go basque peasant wear and ski-mask fetishism. addy is www.thebalde.net. (let's not pretend i was ever gonna be fucked making that a hyperlink.
la carpa was one of the most all-consuming social events i've seen. ostensibly it was run by my uni. but everyone was going to la carpa. there were no options. the queue top get in was terrifying. we got rejected because we had drinks. so we went outside to drink them in the street. a bunch of drunken dicks came and pissed on my bag. they claimed they hadn't seen it. oops, sorry man. really, sorry. later on we got inside but then penny hit the wall. hours were lost playing nurse. eventually we went back to the carpa and ran into my flatmates. we did nothing. we got a lift home. i had a lovely night.
here is an insight into how joel's brain works: packing for london, i thought, it might be cold over there. i'll take some extra clothes. i pulled out my fat black vest i bought in barcelona and hadn't used since winter started. should i take this? yes, i decided. and i swear, the reason i took the vest was because i could imagine roots manuva wearing it. and who's more london than roots manuva?
the trip was annoyingly long. getting to santander to get to london to get to the centre to get to brixton, where ads lives. brixton charmed me in an instant. every time wee walked past the tube station the work skunk came at us. it was spoken. it was eaten. they bit down on up violently and coolly breathed out the essence of it. like a drag on a cigarette. skunk?.
we went to see kid koala. i left my prepaid ticket with my passport at adam's place. fantastic! i lied to the woman on the picking-up-tickets window, said they never arrived, showed her my credit card and made earnest faces. she let me in. the line up was wack. the first band was called faust. i was really disturbed for a while. and old hippy guy on guitar, with a few other muscians playing kind of trippy atmospheric rock and stuff. that is until he started doing some spoken word over the second or third song in french. you know what, they're french canadian! that explains everything. so from that point on i was sort of cool with it. then kid koala cam on, told us that the airline had lost almost all his records and that he had spent the day searching for new stuff instead of sleeping. the search was fruitful. he started with a tribute to louis armstrong, threw in moon river at one stage, death metal, rage against the machine, outkast, one of the jazzy tracks off 'some of my best friends are djs' as well as a brand new track that he's just done that the airline didn't lose. i was content like a baby who'd just passed wind. the next band was more atmospheric rock, explosions in the sky. there was kind of not much point in them playing more than one song. they were like watching the ocean ebb in an out. but with more, borderline false, emotion. they were good at times but also really annoyed me at times. and i was getting tired. then came four tet, to round off the bizarre line-up. he was ultra-electronica kind of interesting but strange to be watching. i started enjoying the music but was way too tired. eventually we left half way through his set to catch the last tube.
next day was spent wandering, taking photos, checking out the tate modern. i have nothing really to say about that. it was enjoyable.
the next was market day. i bought magic fingerless gloves and a headband thing. i watched the camden punks sit on a bridge getting drunk. charging a quid for a photo. welcome to the spectacle indeed. we ate indian and saw charlie and the chocolate factory. and i think i'd have to say that i kind of enjoyed the disturbingness of it.
then it was home. the trip went quite smoothly. we arrived in the evening and my creative suite is now installed. everything is just peachy.
so paris is burning. the right wants to send the army to the suburbs. makes sense i guess. i'm always one to say why pretend about these things. while you're at it, make arnold schwarzenegger president of the us. having an articulate, barable figure in institutions like that just serves to mask the whole shebang. admit the war.
the news over here the other day was saying: it looks as if these images are from a country at war. 'it looks as if'. of course the wars are continuous, but they usually don't burst into flames in the suburbs. we like to keep them in the middle east, at the border fences at night time, in the detention centres. baxter, guantanamo bay, etc.
one thing's for certain. as they're saying on the news, it's all about immigration. i mean, same thing happened in australia right? you get a catastrophic, murderous wave of ethnic immigration, 220-odd years later, riots in redfurn. you do the math.
so yesterday we went to eat chestnuts (aka conkers according to the deflandre family french/english picture dictionary) and take 'autumn photos': posed spontaneous moments with red leaves. i took photos so as to avoid the posing. later on we saw jazz in a cavernous, wombish, basque bar.
thursday i go to london for the weekend. it will include: kid koala, postcards, letters, markets, galleries, subcontinental food, and perhaps another one or two tidbits. über-exciting.
today my blog received its 3000th visit. 2700 were from me. (my estimation).
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