soundtracktotodaysentryisthoughtforms

In which we take another of our occasional peeks into Mr. Fish's out-tray and see what he has to say to the universe…

Dear Citizens Of The USA:

May I wish you a happy "We-Got-Rid-Of-England" day.

I hope you will join me in also wishing for we Scots [including those of us in exile] to be able to celebrate a day just like this somewhere in the very near future.¹

Yours independently,

Dear Bloke Next Door:

I'm glad you've seen fit to take advantage of the sunny afternoon to get all your power tools out and use them all at once. I'm only surprised you've that many arms.

Did you ever see "Home Improvement" starring Tim Notfunny? You know, that show which despite its seemingly innocuous content turned out to be all about Mr Allen using carpentry to try and make up for what he couldn't do with his dick?

Or maybe the constant vibration is the "Anal Intruder" you need to get it up.²

Either way, you see where this letter's going, and you can probably work out from it what I think of the din.

Yours Keep-The-Sodding-Noise-Down-Illy,

Dear Butterfly:

It was lovely to bump into you today, and to be able to talk despite what was a very difficult break-up for us both.

I do sincerely mean it when I say that I'm glad that you're looking and doing well, and I have never wished you anything but happiness for yourself.

It is, however, just damn typical that on the occasion I do bump into you for the first time in some weeks, you happen to be wearing my favourite red shoes of yours…

Yours fetishistically,

shoenotes:
1 This is not small-minded nationalism, but more - as the singer Fish once put it - kind of "hey, Dad, I'm grown-up now, you've got to let go."
2 A reference to the film "Top Secret". Unfortunately I couldn't find a clip of this bit; just go rent the movie instead. It's worth it.
3 Dear PC: Please don't crash on me again five seconds before I'm due to hit "publish". Or you'll find out why I was the psychiatric hospital staff team's star right-wingback….

I'm told that at Jim Henson's funeral service, a still Kermit was sat somewhere with a little tag around his neck: "I've lost my voice".

I'm nowhere near dying, thank Gawd/ess/es/whoever, but I've lost my blog voice.

It'll be back soon.

soundtracktotodaysentryismetamorphysesphasevi

Happy Birthday, Max!

Sorry I've not time to write much more, as somehow I've been roped into acting as minder/taxi-driver for half the kids of [insert name of small town here] at J.'s youngest's eighth birthday party.

Welcome to the Third Circle of Hell.*

Happy Þjóðhátíðardagurinn [national day of Iceland]!

As a kid, the concept of Iceland fascinated me. I'd never been there, and nobody taught me much about it; it just happened to somehow lodge its way into my consciousness. I remember, in my weekly trips to the library as a kid, always sneaking out of the children's books section and somehow ending up in 400-Languages taking a look at an ancient copy of "Teach Yourself Icelandic". [Not that I remember anything I learnt from it.] Over the years this waned and I forgot about it.

Then the Sugarcubes and Björk came along, and suddenly Iceland wasn't just about fish and volcanoes, but seemed like a great place to be.

my favourite Bjork video

Useful Icelandic Phrase: Farðu í rassgat helvítis píka þín [note: probably not useful in front of your Icelandic mother-in-law.]

Some Icelandic Wildlife:

The Icelandic Puffin

The Icelandic Musk Ox

The Icelandic Norman Tebbit [rare]

Today's Big Question: What place has fascinated you ever since you were a kid?

People change.

Up until last night, I hadn't heard Bathory - 'Under The Sign Of The Black Mark' in fifteen years, and now
I remember why.

Twenty years ago, at the height of the brief reign of "thrash" before Trent Reznor came along and completely changed what defines "metal", I was a semi-permanent fixture at the Marquee and other dingy dungeons in London, seeing every band of the genre that happened to be playing.

And I looked the part too: the other day I found my old denim jacket with the badges [some taken from my original "kutte"].

Click for bigness. Bonus points for identifying all the bands therein.

As I remember it, everyone on the scene was in complete denial that none of us knew how to sew and had to get our mothers to put the badges on.

Some bands successfully survived the years which followed [Overkill], some didn't [Reanimator], and some truly sucked big dog balls [Sodom]. I've still got all the tapes/CDs/mp3s, but it's pretty rare that they get heard.

The highlight from these times, though, was probably Halloween of 1989, when Swedish doom-metal masters Candlemass played at the Marquee.

This was the night I decided to do my first ever stage-dive.

Except that nobody caught me.

I spent the night under observation for concussion in Charing Cross Hospital.

So, today's Big Question: what's at the back of your wardrobe that you'll never wear again but can't ever throw out?

soundtracktotodaysentryisanimaltesting

torpidity

Noun. The property of being torpid [unmoving, dormant or hibernating; lazy, lethargic or apathetic].

Hypotheses for reasons behind torpidity:

1. The subject has reached a point of introspective inaction, wherein the major tasks of life are being carried out whilst the extraneous ones - all the little things that make life "fun" - have been cleared away. This hypothesis is related to several others;

2. The subject's inability to write his blog entry called "Three Months Post Butterfly" may be taken as evidence that the healing process from those events are still ongoing and therefore not ready yet to be expressed. One would expect that such processes would be taking up a lot of "brain time" and minimizing the amount of head-RAM available for other tasks. [The analogy between brain and PC stops there, however; although both have "virtual memory" - basically writing things down - for humans the act of writing down requires energy and space in itself.]

3. The subject's counselling is at a crucial stage, perhaps the crux of the matter; whilst details are sketchy, it seems that the work he is putting into this may pay off - the price of a semi-hermitage present for a rosier future being one he's prepared to stump up for if it gets results.

4. Summer and Euro2008 have arrived; whilst the former brings a natural laziness, the latter only applies to fanatical followers of the game. [Dunno. I'm not that fanatic; certainly not enough to enjoy the dulldullDULL Romania v France no-score-draw earlier.]

5. The subject has overloaded himself with "media" and is spending far too much time in front of the DVD player / PC / with a good book to catch up. [True, up to a point. I'm currently in the middle of "Persepolis" and have just finished Jeanette Winterson's "Lighthousekeeping" - Maria - and sometime this week will get dragged along by my hairdresser to the Sex and the City movie, which I'll probably enjoy even though I'll protest I won't.]

6. The subject was sent a small rubber duck as a late birthday present by his friend Emma.

Conclusions:

You think I can be arsed to write a conclusion?