How to talk to girls

How to talk to girls. Funny.

Right now

right now, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

Via Matt. I'm watching a David Attenborough programme on the TV. I watch TV with my mouth open, apparently.

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.
5. Add it to the Pool.

Go on! You know you want to. Don't make me the only baggy-eyed frizzy-haired narcissistic freak in blogland...

Freudian slip

One to add to the showreel of embarrassing foot-in-mouth moments which you cannot erase and which replay in your head every so often:

Me to cute man sitting next to me at the wedding, after the main course:
"Would you like to come outside for a quick inter-course cigarette?"



















PS: It was worth the journey. Not too bad, hey?

No really, 12 hours there and back is fine

Right, I'm off to Land's End for the weekend. For another bleeding wedding.

*mutters to self like Muttley*

How to get in my good books

Get me one of these.

Guilt

Work is a bit less stressful this year. You're in your very own place for the first time ever. Yet are you at peace?

No, you clearly are not. If you sit down for 5 seconds, undistracted by work, or a book, or TV, or the internet... a creeping sense of guilt sneaks up on you...

haven't phoned your mum/haven't marked those books yet/spending too much money/haven't started job-hunting/been out of touch with so-and-so/ignored a beggar/not doing enough for the kids/no exercise this week/need to take out recycling/watched Ugly Betty instead of the news/still haven't learned to drive/forgot to email back/political apathy/haven't flossed for a week...

Aargh, guilt. It's such a useless emotion. Why can't I be a fuck-it-all, devil-may-care hedonist? Sometimes I wish I was Catholic and could go to confession and get absolved...

Is it just me? What makes you feel guilty?

The Orphanage

Neuroscience can tell you the what and the how, but not really the why. If they'd hooked us up to sophisticated machines last night, and monitored our heartbeats and our brain activity, they would have seen our fear sensors lit right up, and imagined a fight-or-flight, threat-of-death scenario, whereas in fact we were watching a horror movie voluntarily, for fun.

Still, watching horror whilst cuddled between two of your close friends on a big double bed (with blanket to hide under when it got too much) on a big beautiful Sony screen is the best horror film experience I've ever had. Thanks for that P.

Anyway, the long and the short of it: Laura returns to the orphanage where she grew up, along with her husband and little boy, planning to open it as a home for disabled children, when her little boy starts talking about his 5 imaginary friends, shortly before he disappears... It really is excellently spooky and atmospheric, (set in an old house in Asturias, half the time we we saying things like 'ooh nice stained glass windows' and the other half hiding under the covers.) It turned the screws right the way through, until it came to a truly terrible, ironic ending with a commonsense explanation (still leaving it vague enough to give you chills.) One of those films you keep thinking about, teasing out the twists and turns of the story after you've watched it. 5 spine-chills out of 5.

The short review:

Don't go into the cellar!

Horns

Horns, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

Wholly out of inspiration. Bereft of ideas. Washed up and burnt out. So I'm posting this old photo, one of my very favourites I've ever taken.

London Town, you've got to love it.

This be the verse

A poem for Em (who doesn't like poetry.)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin. The miserable old git.

There are many things I like about this - the fact that it opens sounding just like a conversation in a pub, but at the same time is in perfect poetic iambic pentameter; the fact that there's not a redundant word in the whole thing; the breath-takingly pessimistic conclusion; the fact that it leaves you going, 'yes, but...' and thinking on it...

Anybody have any other poems they'd recommend for people who don't like poetry?

Work socks

Work socks, originally uploaded by Slaminsky.

Spin

£357, 705.

The combined total of the salaries advertised in today's paper for the 12 members of staff vital to the vital Communications Team of the vital Government department known as Ofsted.

'engaging with external stakeholders... informing the public about our work... enhancing our brand.'

All totally vital.

Ah, how we love expressions like 'stakeholders' and 'enhancing our brand'. Worth £357, 705 alone, I'm sure you'll agree.

Now remind me that bit about there not being enough money to bring our wages in line with inflation, again...?

Doing it standing up

So there I was walking around Columbia Road, on a beautiful sunny autumn day, contemplating buying some sunflowers (3 bunches a fiiiiiiver!) when suddenly, my back went TWANG! and I couldn't move. What could it be? I haven't been lifting heavy objects...

Then I remembered all those hours sitting at the computer in a posture which would give an osteopath nightmares, bent double as though I'm doing an imitation of a pretzel, on a foldaway chair which isn't really fit for purpose.... could be that had something to do with the sudden CHRONIC INTENSE MIDDLE BACK PAIN? Struggled home and spent the rest of the beautiful sunny day flat out on the bed, whimpering at the slightest move. Now I am blogging standing up.

You do it to yourself, and that's why it really hurts.

Turn back time

Here is a picture of the 30s clock I bought from the fantastic Dog & Wardrobe in Broadway Market (a great shop with fabulous and quite surprisingly affordable stuff - Flickr site here.)

I was trepidatious about it working (it's electric and the wiring ancient) but plugged it in and wound it as instructed. That was at 5.25, and as you can see the hands have definitely moved. Moved backwards.

Org********n

Further to my last post, I was thinking about how much I hate the word organized. Organisation is a skill privileged beyond all reason - is it the best thing you can possibly be, organized? Every job I've had, every boring numpty lowpaid admin type piece of shit job, has required it. Organized is what we'd call a low level skill. If your job demands it of you, they think of you as an Oompa Loompa, toiling in the salt-mines. It doesn't really ask much of you, just that you keep other people's lives running smoothly. So I'm not organized, so sue me. I'm not organized! For years I've been claiming I am it in job interviews, but now I declare myself free of the tyranny of the organized.

I'm a fucking ARTIST. (Unacknowledged, but nevertheless.) Did Picasso conquer the world because he kept his paintbrushes in a nice straight line? Did Mozart move people with his symphonies because he filed his music correctly? I don't belong in this verkakte, cockermamie job where I am asked to be ORGANISED. I need to be free to follow my wild, bohemian, artistic creative impulses, and make shitloads of money to piss about and have a nice time, like Damien Hirst. (Listening to him on Radio 4 was hilarious. He refused to say he felt bad about making obscene amounts of money, and why should he?)

PS

I note with interest that we have not yet been sucked into a black hole...

My nemesis

Was reading Simon Gray's The Year of the Jouncer, and this passage got me thinking.

They say that everyone in the world has a doppelgänger - if so, isn't it equally possible that everyone in the world has an exact opposite, that to meet up with him or her would result in a double death, as a single death is said to be the result when doppelgängers meet?

Mine:

Blonde. Slim. Sporty. Brilliant at maths. Efficient. Organized. Calm. Successful. Rich. Extrovert. Confident. Optimistic. Contented.

God, I absolutely hate her, and she's fictional.

Anyway, how about you?

Retirement

If you stopped blogging, would you delete everything or leave it hanging around in cyberspace for the random passing visitor?

(I'm not thinking about it, I'm just curious about those that have fallen by the wayside.)

Play on, playette

We were talking about how much we hated, HATED, R&B. Not R&B of Aretha and Stevie Wonder, not R&B of Motown and Atlantic, but the modern, over-produced, slick, bland aural wallpaper that they seem to play on rotation in every clothes shop. Bleeeurgh...

But it got me thinking about the few modern R&B tracks I do like, so here they all are, squished into one handy Mix Tape for your listening pleasure. To be listened to whilst wearing very tight hotpants and a push-up bustier.

My glorious back catalogue of Mixtapes still available. Stick them on your mp3 player! Jog around the park to them/sweeten your tube journey/sing along in the car...

Original Slaminsky Mix Tape
Dirty Mix Tape
Eighties Haircut Mix Tape
Hip Hop Mix Tape
Guitars Mix Tape
Coming In From The Cold Mix Tape
Bubblegum Mix Tape
Sisters Mix Tape
Guilty Pleasures Mix Tape
New Wave Mix Tape
Handbag Mix Tape
Noisy Mix Tape
Goth Mix Tape

Butch men

Right, I'm going to confront the owner of the barking dogs. I'm going to flutter my eyelashes, bite my lip and tell him that I'm losing sleep and turning into a nervous wreck because of the noise. I'm going to press into his hand a sheaf of papers on options which I've carefully researched - a collar, taking them for long walks, the Dog Whisperer (a trainer based in Essex.)

(If all that fails, I'm going to get onto the HA and they can ASBO the fucker.)

Now I'm totally capable of looking after myself but wish I could bring a big butch man with me, not to say anything, just to lurk in the background to pass on a subliminal 'Don't mess with her', territorial message. I'm running through all the blokes I know, but they are all gentle, non-threatening aesthetic types, with arms that you could snap like twiglets. I want someone who looks like Arnie in Terminator. Do you know anyone I could borrow who exudes menace without uttering a word? If so, send them my way.

Wish me luck...

I ♥ Jesus



A nice scarf for LC, seen in a market in Waterloo.

Breeders

I saw the Breeders, and not only that, but for FREE, yes that's right for FREE, in Rough Trade.

Was late coming from work and in need of a) a wee b) a cigarette and c) some food, in that order - I nearly skipped it waiting forty five minutes in the cold to get in, but am so glad I didn't. They were so GOOD. They played all their tunes of old - Cannonball, One Divine Hammer, Driving All Night, No Aloha, not just the new one they're promoting, indulged in sisterly banter -
Kim Deal: "We're going to harmonise on this one. Kelly's been angry with me all day."
Kelly Deal: "I'm not angry.[pause] I'm just disappointed."

(Sorry I cannot show you pictures, though I'm sure they'll be all over Flickr tomorrow. I could feel my hand inching for my camera but I was 2 feet away from Kim Deal, directly in front of her, and felt somehow self-conscious, there is something sad about a 30 *cough* something woman with a little compact camera, holding it up like a teenager watching her first boy band. And it would have been minus 10 groovy points in front of all the black-framed-glasses wearing hipsters, I reckon.)

Kim Deal is my heroine. There she stands, in her black t-shirt and jeans, playing guitar, more sexy and womanly than a lorryload of Pussycat Dolls. It's great when your heroes don't disappoint you.

Hey ho for British Gas Homecare 400

If I was a cleverer blogger, I'd spin an amusing tale around the trials I've had with British Gas Homecare 400. The short version: current state of play is that they have fixed my toilet. Fixed it so that water is gushing out from a pipe. And left it like that, necessitating a day off work just as term starts for another engineer visit. How pleased my boss is with me after a 5 week holiday. So it will suffice to say:

CUNTS CUNTS CUNTS CUNTS CUNTS. And CUNTS.

Don't get an agreement with British Gas, that's all I'm telling you.

It's September

Summer's over. Back to work.

I hate work.