bugs

i saw 2 mosquitoes on the subway today. it's reaching late autumn and the hovering devils are still about, molesting me and drinking my blood. i have often wondered how many mosquitoes it would take to completely drain my body of liquid, and leave me shriveled like an old flesh coloured jumper on the orange plastic seat.


some please call 9/11

to celebrate the decisive bush victory earlier this month, i decided to finally rent that michael moore movie about him. already, the whole thing felt like a period piece; like a week old newspaper. so many things have happened since then, you need wings to keep above it. i thought the most emotive parts were all the war footage, all the stuff they don't show you about war: the truck piled with bodies, the injured children, the wounded marines screaming for help, the charred US soldiers being strung up on lamppost; it makes me want to smash ridley scott for making black hawk down. any war movie glamourising war or making it somehow more heroic than it is, should immediately be sued by every war veteran for gross misrepresentation and inciting bloody murder. it's a hell of a thing to kill a man.


internal springs

i read skinny dip by carl hiaasen last week. it was an easy read, and a pleasure except for the end. it is driven by the overlapping coils, bouncing you along the convoluted story, that you just need to know what is going to happen next; and as soon as you find out, you are already caught in the next coil and you just need to find out what is going to happen next, then you are caught in the next coil and so on. this is fine until you reach the end, and there hasn't been any real ups or downs, no drama or excitement; just a load of used springs. hiaasen also can't resist name checking everything. blowin in the wind to eminem to goodfellas to fargo to gatorade all get a mention. if i were to write like him it would go like this:

a man is sitting at the desk, typing on his dell keyboard. the intel processor connected him to the internet and the windows explorer program allowed him to surf the news pages. the internal PA system played the latest destiny child single of the bose speakers. the armani suited man asked the waitress for another nescafe, and paid with his american express card. he hardly looked up from the tom hanks article he was reading as the waitress returned his receipt.

and the ending. the bloody ending! wwjd.


once a pun a time

i also saw once upon a time in america last week. it was well shot and that's about it. who the hell are those cheessy kid actors? it was like watching a bad production of bugsy malone. and all that naff dialogue. and robert de niro the rapist. he is our hero: he is our way into this supposedly secret gang world. and james woods plays an actor trying to be james woods. and the frisbee that disappears. and all the women secretly all want it rough. and the garbage truck. and the goddamn running time. and that bloodly music spooned into our ears. and the total lack of chemistry or atmosphere.

editor

i noticed there were a few typos i my last post and a general air of absurdness. to help me curb this, i have gainfully employed an editor to help me separate the moldy peaches from the men from del monte. her name is ellen oparson and she told me she shall help whenever she could. present yourself whenever you can. (Hi everyone. It is Ellen here. I hope I can make this blog more fun and more exciting than ever before. I promise not to edit any of the posts, just make constructive comments. I can't be at hand all the time, so I'll edit when I can. I hope we can all be good friends. By the way, all my posts will in italics, so you will not confuse us. See you around. E.O.)


in fact

i actually used in fact as one of the idioms that she didn't understand. it went a bit like this.

me: it means in fact.
student: in fact? fact?
me: fact means real.
student: real?
me: like true. you know, true and false.
student: ahh true. in true? IN true? (she used one had to mime a very small glass of beer, making a circle with here thumb and forefinger and used the other hand to point into the glass.) in?
me: er... don't worry about it. actually means really, well kind of...
student: ?
me: let's move on to the next part of the lesson.

thanks for your help though. prague is a bit frosty now i hear.


secret chord

i finished the bob dylan book. (You should mention that you mispelt the author's name in the last post. E.O.) I thought it was like one big magazine article on bob. i didn't feel like i was part of the action; there was no drama, even when he was fighting with his infamous stalker and putting dog shit in his trash cans. it has some amazing detail about his life: some of his chat up lines, his many foibles, his apathy and especially his fame. no wonder he's a weirdo eccentric now, with so many people sticking tags on him and following him around. he has to keep moving or they'll catch up and drown him; tear his skin from limb to limb. he found hippies having sex on his bed of his home (the home where he raised his children) and recordings of his answerphone message bootlegged and for sale in the record shops. a shitload of his greenwich village mates ODed or committed suicide because they all wanted to be like dylan; wanted to be the star and the icon, and realising that lightning rarely struck twice, left the stage in the only way they knew how.


i know this room, i've walked this floor

i bought the grateful dead live/dead album. dylan was good friends with jerry garcia. it is like mogwai fighting with doors with mick jagger leaning into the ropes, begging to be tagged.


you don't really care for music

i heard an interview with leonard cohen's father on the radio yesterday. it was around midnight. it went something like this:

"i was walking on the highway when is spotted an old notebook on the dusty road. i picked it up and read the cover. it said ideas for songs by someone called bacon rind. the pages were all curled up on the corner and the front was kinda beat up and worn. it was yellow with age and use. i was in farming country just outside denver. i opened the book to look inside for an address or telephone number so i could return it to it's rightful owner, for i didn't want anyone to lose something that could cost the bread in his belly. the book nearly fell apart as i leafed through and it stopped on page 14 where i read this song:


the prince and the serf

the prince and serf lived together,
the prince and serf didn't like each other,
the flesh like flies and skin like leather.

the prince fought like a rascal,
the serf battled like a knight in armor,
the ground was hard and trees did fall.

the prince soon won the battle,
the serf soon buried in wet cold dirt
over the oil and under the cattle.

the prince prayed in his private church
for the fallen serf, on a leper's perch,
and for more battles, the prince will search.


i put the book back on the road. it wasn't for me. "

it went on, but i fell asleep and didn't wake up until the follow morning.

what is this shit?

i had a dream again. i dreamt a met johnny cash on a factory line making car parts for cadillac. he spoke to me, and said these few words:


"a fool and a jester storm the biggest, most powerful court in the world and convince millions of people that they are the best people to be king. millions of people from all over the land and from far away lands watch a feckless sallow faced fool dance and lament and talk in a thousand riddles that most people think that his is actually a foolish fool and not a wise fool that they've all read about. meanwhile the jester rides his ass and beats his drum and shows everyone that between him and the ass and the dog; the ass has more brains in his long beard than the jester has in his skull.

why couldn't that lanky piece of turd beat the dumbest monkey to fall out of the tree? was it too difficult to disagree? here is a tip on how to beat someone that everyone hates. call him a fucking asshole. tell that world that he is incompetent, that the world is more dangerous with him a the helm. tell the world that the blood runs thicker over his hands that anyone else. a colossal error of judgment? a big fucking mistake that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, the souls of which will return to haunt you for all eternity.

the dog is a brutal ogre of a man. i reckon he must feast every night on the hearts of a thousand innocents and digests them slowly in his infernal bowels. the guard dog must obey it's master: the master makes the rules. but even dick must wake up screaming at the thought of what he's done.

i don't think the public are stupid. they are human and they voted for an idiot. the err is human, to die divine."

i asked johnny if i could play his guitar, but he said no.


down the highway

i have started reading a bob dylan biography called down the highway by howard souness. i just happen. i thought i'd just leaf through some of the photos in the shop, then i found myself paying for it. once at home i thought i'd just read the introduction before i went to sleep. i'm the millennium falcon chasing a lone tie fighter near what seems to be a small moon. i can't escape.

reading about music makes me want to play guitar.


question

a student asked me what "actually" means today. i couldn't answer her without using an idiom which she didn't understand. what the hell does it mean?!


weather

does anyone know what the weather is like in prague these past few days? if you do, please drop me a line in the usual channels. i'd like to know.