Under Mars' Red Sky

Fucking London!

I went to London this weekend to this year's I'll Be Your Mirror featuring Melvins, Sleep, Wolves in the Throne Room and SLAYER. This was the only line-up that would be able to draw me to that rat infested sewer dump of a city that is our illustrious capital. Thankfully we didn't have to go very far beyond the ring of steel that is the M25 as we were going to the Alexandra Palace. Nathan and I had booked into a pub for the night and young David had booked himself into an apartment somewhere down the road. We stopped off at Trowell Services to indulge ourselves in unbelievably overpriced sandwiches and coffee. At the same time young David called the people who ran the apartments to let them know he'd be there in a few hours and we began the final leg of the journey. This is where London started playing its part in the great farce. First thing was that the hotel Nathan had booked had advertised on-street parking so we pulled up outside, only to be told by the landlord that we should move the car as the parking attendants are particularly pro-active round there. But also, to park elsewhere we had to buy a parking ticket which was not mentioned in the advert. In London for two minutes and already we were haemorrhaging money. Fucking London!

This was not the only thing, after parking the car we were led up to the room, through labyrinthine corridors and up rickety stairs we eventually ended in front of the Thelemic Room 23. It was past four o'clock in the afternoon and the room still hadn't been cleaned. A pile of rubbish was in the corner, shit was in the toilet and the beds were unmade. Fucking London!

At least all we needed to do was get changed and go out to meet Dave who had wandered off to find his lodgings. Funny story this. Dave had called the people who owned his lodgings, as you will recall, three hours or so previously to let them know he was arriving. We bumped into him half way up the road looking despondent. He'd found the office he was supposed to be picking his keys up from only to see that it had been closed for some time. Post was hanging out of the letterbox and the place was boarded up. Ringing the office again he was asked if he would like to go to another property in Camden. No apologies for not letting him know before he arrived that the place had closed down. Having no idea where Camden was, we decided that he could sleep in our room. At least his presence would keep Nathan's wandering hands off me. Anyway, the gig was fucking brilliant, even though a hot-dog set me back £5. Fucking London!

 FUCKING SLAYER!!!!!!!

Final insult was the advertised full English breakfast turned out to be an individual box of Coco-Pops. Fucking London! To finish off the musical weekend, it was Eurovision weekend, Sweden won, but the better acts included the Singing Russian Babushkas, Jedward's Golden Shower and Gary Oldman as Dracula singing for Albania. I spent the night at Lauren's squawking racist abuse at the TV until it was all over for another year. Not the best contest I've seen, but still the musical highlight of the year.

The Daily Mail says NO to the Euro!

As I mentioned in the last post this weekend was the night of nights, the best evening's entertainment all year. Yes folks, it was time again for the Eurovision Song Contest. That gathering of tribes from across Europe, the introduction into your life of countries you never knew existed (Lichtenstein) or were even a part of Europe (America's entry: Israel). It's the best night of the year, not only because you can be legitimately racist about the the cheese eating, garlic smelling, surrender monkeys that parade like retarded peacocks around boulevard cafes on the Champs Elysees, but you can also see the how the political map of Europe stands. Mind you, this part is usually pretty fucking obvious, like when Greece and Cyprus vote each other Douze Points every fucking year, or the Balkans countries voting for each other in order to avert sparking off another assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It's also great because you get to get to dress up as Norway, get really fucking drunk and scream at the beetroot smeared faces of the Moldavians as they pretend to be people. Which is pretty much what I did on Saturday night. Lauren and Steve held a party and after umming and arring all week about it, I decided to go and am glad I did. It was either that or stay in alone, dress up as Norway, get really fucking drunk and scream at the chocolate smeared faces of the Belgians as they pretend to be people.

Another quiet night in...

I took my Norway costume, which seems to be getting added to each passing year. Along with my BIG FUCKING Norwegian flag, this year I had a bear skin. I think they have bears in Norway. Mind you, I also think that everyone in Norway runs around in corpse paint and burns churches down, an image I don't want to spoil by ever going there. So I tipped up at Lauren's draped in a bear skin and flag and proceeded to push as much alcohol into me as humanely possible. Angela had picked up some Romanian engine cleaner as a present for Lauren that we all had a shot of during the Romanian entry. It was fucking lethal, it came in a clear plastic bottle and had a ever so slight yellowish tinge to it. I took my shot and immediately felt as though I'd drunk some alien blood. It burnt a hole straight through my body and down through three floors of the flats. Besides the booze, this year's contest was a doozy, and by doozy, I mean doozy. The Moldovan entrants were great with their tribute to Devo, Lauren reckoned that their heads went all the way to the top of their hats. Which is probably true.

Words, literally, fail me...

Ireland came up trumps for me though, in the form of the fucktard conjoined Irish twins Jedward. They showed up looking like the Legion of Doom. If only they'd started cage fighting with folding chairs, the evening would have been perfect. I think Jedward are a prime example of why Ireland needs another potato famine.

Twats

The Danish contestant brought shame upon the competition by letting loose a stream of foul language that turned the very air blue and would embarrass a sailor.

Ban this filth!

Who won? Who cares? It was one of those former Soviet Block countries that all vote for one another and Russia, just in case the sleeping bear decides to wake up and want their oil reserves back. Whoever it was won't be able to afford a ceremony as lavish as the one thrown out by the Germans. Next years event will be held on a deserted strip of grassland with plastic chairs set up for the audience to sit on in the biting cold while the acts gyrate on nailed together wooden pallets. Whatever, I'll still be doing the same next year, screaming at the TV whilst shitfaced and covered in Norway.

A quick video of the German contestant, Lena, cos she's fit. No other reason. Sue me.

So it was with a heavy hangover and lack of sleep that I gave my final act as a teacher on Sunday. I took my class out to the Leeds Armouries to peer at weapons for the afternoon. I managed to hold the sick down long enough to bluff my way through a  potted history of weaponry in the Great War and then led them in triumphant procession to Pizza Express. Eight years ago when I was straightening a section in Ocean Villa's tea rooms trench and two hundred .303 rounds fell out on me, I never thought that I would one day be teaching this shit for a University. But here I am, after completing eight weeks of lectures and lesson plans, I only have a pile of essays to mark and I've finished my first 'lecturing' job. (the LOLest thing is, I initially misspelled University in that last sentence...)

'Oh God, I hope they don't find me out! At least not before they pay me...'

And a couple of final things. I was going through the student's field note books this afternoon and felt I had to share this page from Myle's book:

And Anna sent me a link for this 'product' to review on  Amazon, so please sit back and enjoy Pledge Manner's take on Pussy Energy Drink:

No Restrepo for the wicked

I haven't really said much about the work I'm doing at the moment. well, I'm back in the warm bosom of the University of York, teaching their first year students which end of a trowel to use and how to draw different kinds of mud to a quasi-scientific level. These skills are the kind they will need when they are deciding which bag of Tesco value frozen sausages they should buy (pork flavour with added sawdust or beef flavour with 50% chicken lips) since they won't be able to afford any other kind of food with the pittance that 'professional' field archaeologists are paid. Most of them have come through the clearing system, which basically means that they wanted to study history but as they didn't get the grades they ended up studying the hand maiden of History, Archaeology. Of the ten in my group only two actually wanted to do archaeology as a degree. One of whom has had the worst attendance of the group. I ask you.

If you're not careful, this is how you'll end up...

Having said that, my group are the best for attendance this year out of the whole site (four other groups of ten). But I have habitually had at least one missing each day. She has been missing so consistently that I believe she doesn't even exist. Even the University staff proper have no idea who she is. Maybe she was a phantom name that was invented in order to make the others look good. The rest of the group are your usual students, it's a bit like the Breakfast Club, the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, the criminal, the serial killer, the train driver, the pornographer, high priestess of Satan, the turkey farmer. You know, the usual kind of people. Two of the girls seem to show up either hungover from the night before or still drunk, having got home at about 5am after kissing boys and getting sick down their tops in the Willow. One of them, let's call her Lowrie, was telling me about the Afro-Caribbean Society that she was secretary of when she was at school. The membership was low. It consisted of three people: two blondes and a Jew. These two keep complaining whenever I drop the 'C-Bomb', which is pretty much every other word when they are not working hard enough, which is all the time.

'YOU WORK NOW!'

These are not the only problems I have to deal with, there is another student, let's call this one Myles, who turned up last Monday painted blue. He also goes around singing the Rebbecca Black song 'Friday' until all you want to do it pound his miserable head into the ground. But he's so bloody happy and nice all the time it would be like kicking a puppy. He wrote an article for the official blog that mentioned me. Read it here.

Idiot

Anyway, that's enough of that shit. Tomorrow is the best day in the calender! It's the Eurovision Song Contest! I've been invited to two parties, one in Sheffield and one in Iceland. Can you guess which one I might go to? Well, I would, but I can't afford the plane fair to Reykjavik, so Sheffield will have to do instead. As Norway have already been kicked out at the semi finals it looks like I'll have to back my home from home, Ireland and Jedward:

Finally, I got hold of my old bear skin rug. I think it looks boss in the front room:

Abolish the Rules Made of Stone

Another weekend; another shit load of alcohol consumed. As undoubtedly you know it was the Eurovision Song Contest last Saturday. The highlight of the musical calendar, the shining moment for Europe (and America in it's Israeli guise) to parade the pinnacle of popular troubadours. This is what the year builds up to and each day that passes means it's one day less to the next Eurovision (362 today...). This is the only legitimate time that one can be racist and get away with it. We can all laugh at the beetroot smeared faces of the Moldovan contestants and feel smug about the out of tune Wops and Diego's. Oh what a night! I usually attend a party of some sort (sometimes just drinking heavily whilst shouting at the TV on my own) and this Saturday was no different. Moogdroog was throwing a Eurovision spectacular at her pile and I was cordially invited. But... before I'd even left my house the Ukrainian Butchers forced a third of a bottle of vodka down me. I was literally threatened at knife point to drink the liquor (well, I wasn't, but it adds a dramatic effect to the story), so I arrived already half cut and the show hadn't even started yet. I have very fragmentary memory of what happened after and had to be filled in on the highlights by Dr Clay the next day. He also presented me with a list of people I had to apologise to, including Chris, Moogdroog's American friend who I had accused of being racist because he'd said Asian girls didn't do it for him. I couldn't even remember who had won the contest the next morning so I must have had a few...

And the winner is... I can't fucking remember...

I was awoken at the crack of sparrows on Sunday morning by the aforementioned Butchers having a rather loud and involved conversation in Russian outside my door. So I was tired before I'd even left for Logan Josh's barbecue on Sunday evening. Again, Clay, Moogdroog and I had been cordially invited into the upper echelons of Yorkian Royalty. We arrived with a sky scudded with black clouds menacingly eager to tip it down on us. It, thankfully, didn't rain but the wind howled and threatened to blow the marquee, barbecue and guests into the Ouse. Logan's wife, Cath refused to allow us to go into the house despite the sub-zero temperatures and frostbite that had crept into many of us, she had barred the doors and windows with furniture to impede our egress. Finally, she relented and the 'wusses' were allowed inside, a title to which I readily answered as I strived to regain feeling in my fingers. I was also brow beaten and chastised for wanting to go home to sleep as I had a two hour car journey ahead of me the following night. Josh fed me more beer than a single human can even take and I eventually got to bed two hours after I got up the next morning.

I think it might need some more coals...

The two hour journey in question was in order to go and see Slayer at Nottingham Rock City. I haven't seen Slayer since 1991 on their Seasons in the Abyss tour, so I was really looking forward to the show. Fuck me, I wasn't disappointed. They were top shit alright, even with Tom Araya's recent back surgery. They played through a few new tunes and then explored their old catalogue for the rest of the show. Angel of Death was a classic finisher.

FUCKING SLAYER!!!!!!!!!!!

No Way! Norway!

On Friday I called back to Rotherham from York to go and see Electric Wizard in Manchester. You work out the logistics for this journey yourself... They, Electric Wizard were great and the first band Xela was a noise core thingy. Basically some guy with a load of distortion pedals and feedback. Now, I find this kind of stuff quite interesting, but I'm never sure what power it has when 'performed' live. I like the 'band' Tenhornedbeast, but I wouldn't want to listen to his stuff in a room surrounded by other beardies stroking their chins and saying things like 'Hmmm, I like how he changed the pitch ever so slightly there...' I think this kind of thing should stay in the house. The journey there and back was dominated by myself and Carl having a two hour discussion on why he shouldn't believe everything he reads and sees on the Internet to do with the vast Global Conspiracy Theory of the New World Order. I love Carl to bits but he falls hook line and sinker for anything that stands against modern society. I was kind of playing Devil's advocate and winding him up, but when I suggested he get an allotment to grow his own food so the government couldn't poison him with 'toxins', he dismissed it out of hand saying it would get trashed by the local scumbags. I told him to get one in a nicer area which he dismissed because he would have to walk half an hour to reach. I don't know why that is such a problem for him it's not like he does anything else all day except smoke dope and watch documentaries on the Bilderburg Group.

Fight the New World Order, get an allotment!

After being woken up at some ungodly hour on Saturday morning by my parents setting off fireworks, by the sounds of it. I dragged myself out for the traumatic experience of getting a hair cut. I hate haircuts; I never know what I want or what looks good on my head, it's like a fashion blind spot for me. I'm not the most fashion conscience anyway so this is like a minefield. But what I really hate is that I have to take my glasses off whilst the barber goes at me. I am as blind as a mole so all I can do is sit there with my eyes spinning in their sockets trying to focus on something and hope to God they are doing a good job. There was once a traumatic experience in York when I asked for 'a little off the back and sides' and ended up with a massive pudding bowl that ran all around my head. I looked like the Beatles when they were playing clubs in Hamburg. In this instance I paid for the butchery, ran down to Argos, bought a set of clippers and ran to Ross' place and asked him to shave it all off, eliminating the horror. I usually shave it all off but I've been growing it back since Christ's Mass and it needed treating properly, so I had to suffer the humiliation of asking the very nice lady to do 'what she could with it'. In the event is was quick, cheap and looks better than I could have done it myself.

I knew I should have been worried when I saw this boy coming out of the Barbers before me...

Now, onto the event of the year, the culmination of the Musical calender, the brightest stars of instrumentation that Europe has to offer... The Eurovision Song Contest! Lauren threw a party in honour of it. It was excellent, there was a whole bunch of us there and loads of food and booze, just like a good Eurovision party should be! I love Eurovision night so much as it is the only night you can be incredibly racist and get away with it. I mean what other night can you spend the evening screaming 'Cheese eating surrender monkeys' at the French contestant or laughing at the Moldavian gypsies with their loud 1980's clothes and beetroot juice smeared faces. It's not every day you get to shout 'who won the fucking war?' at the German entry or pour scorn on a whole host of wops, dagos, bog trotters, commies, grease balls, ice monkeys or babuskas without repercussion. The funniest thing I heard all night was when the British entrant was performing, Jaime texted me with 'this jade's got hair'. In the event, I always support Norway, it's that whole Black Metal thing. They have done me proud over the years and this year was no exception. We all chucked some cash into a pot and picked a country, who's ever country came top got the pot. It just so happens this year Norway won, so I scooped myself a tasty £35! Which was all quickly spent in the Corporation after the party...

There were no wars in the Middle East this year, so even Jemini could have scored more than Nil Points in this years Eurovision...