One last time before Africa

I leave for Africa later today for two months, but before I do I'm going to leave you with one last post. I'm going to copy Logan Josh and a post he did a while back. Basically I went to my blog's home page and clicked on the 'next blog' link at the top to find out what Blogs are being paired to mine... I tired it three times and the results are frightening...

If you're not wearing a teal headband, what's the point really? I think this was inspired by Julie's sexy 80's high school tennis pic. Anyhow, this was done straight up in Photoshoppe, but who the hell cares??? I'll keep drawing until our new Xbox 360 arrives later this week. . . As per this recent run of figure drawings. . . Robert Conrad.

From: http://milesinada.blogspot.com/

“Change of plans,” Bolan snapped. “Follow me.”

The Executioner turned and raced with the hostage
toward a line of vehicles. A shot rang out behind
them, followed instantly by a dozen volleys.

Turning, Bolan raked the compound with a long
burst from his Steyr AUG. Mandy fumbled with her
pistol, getting off several shots, yelping as a round
stung her palm.

Reaching the motor pool, Bolan chose a jeep at
random, slid behind the wheel and gunned its
engine into snarling life as Mandy scrambled into
the shotgun seat.

“Hang on!” he said, flooring the gas pedal,
barreling through the middle of the camp to reach
the access road—and freedom.

From:  http://readgoldeagle.blogspot.com/

So I still have my two teddy bears from my childhood, Big Ted and Little Ted, and since we had G they've been in his room. The other week we changed out some furniture and Big Ted moved to our dresser during the rearranging. Today, G was extra fussy at nap time so Tammy put him in our bed with her. She was downstairs when he woke up crying. When he calmed down enough to use words he wouldn't move off the bed and kept saying, "Bad bear get me!" and pointing at Big Ted. I'm a bit crushed, as that bear had to be next to me every night for me to go to sleep when I was a child. I blame Toy Story 3 with the evil bear for this... Now I have to convince G that this one is a good bear...

From: http://jtdalton.blogspot.com/

I dispair of humanity, I really do. To cheer myself up I'm going to post a load of pictures of Japanese girls:

And what could be more beautiful than that lot? Well, this:

Suit you sir?

I hate clothes shopping. I hate it more than I hate you, which is saying something. It fills me with fear, just the thought of having to go shopping for more ill fitting, badly made clobber. I can't understand how some people revel in it. It appears to be a hobby for most people, spending hours trawling through shopping mauls looking for that perfect party dress or t-shirt with a Japanese baseball team's emblazoned across the chest. Most of the slavering cunts that wear this kind of shit wouldn't even be able to point to Japan on a map, I'll guarantee most of the mindless shitbags don't even know Japan exists or if it does that baseball is the most popular sport there (mainly through American occupation after the Second World War (who says you never learn anything from the shit I dribble out?)): 'Do you like my new t-shirt, it's got loads of Chinese writing all over it. It says Hanshin Tigers, they must be a footy team or summat...'

Goallllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes these are kind of bottom feeders that spend their free time clothes shopping. I, on the other hand, am able to breathe without having to think about it, so I hate clothes shopping with a passion. Don't get me wrong, I like buying trinkets, I like looking in record or book shops, I can browse like the best in these places, but clothing leaves me cold. Even the shops themselves frighten the bejesus out of me. They are all full of flashing lights and loud banging music, enough to disorientate you so you'll end up buying any old shit in a techno induced miasma. I hate looking at the rows and rows of similar looking clothes trying to find a difference between the ghastly fashion items that are on display. And every shop, nay every line of clothing, seems to have it's own take on sizes. What is espoused as large in one place is medium in another. I don't spend my time taking measurements of my chest, waist, inside leg or arm pit length, so I have no idea how S, M, L, XL, XXL, ELEPHANT, match up to my present body shape. It would be nice to be able to grab a couple of medium shirts and know that they will be the same fucking size when you get them home. This happened to me the other day. Two shirts, both labeled as Medium, both completely different sizes. I had tried them on in the fitting rooms before buying them, thankfully, but it just goes to show that you can't trust clothes shops as far as you can throw them, which wouldn't be very far given the vast size of most of them.

Alright, you got me, this has nothing to do with the content and I'm just using it as an excuse to fill this post with pictures of beautiful Japanese girls, but at least she's wearing clothes. What more do you want?

This brings me to the fitting rooms. What kind of evil mind came up with these booths of horror? What fevered brain brought forth the monstrosity of the changing rotunda? Stepping into that booth is like a medical inspection from Dr Crippen. After grunting and struggling to get out of your own clothes in a space that is purposely designed to be smaller than the average human form, the massive mirror makes you inspect your own shapeless form in intimate and depressing detail. You stand in front of it, sweat pouring down you and your hair askance, trying to make a vaguely human shape. Then you get to try on the clothes you want to buy. Half of them don't even attempt at being the size they are described as in the label, the other half are too short on the legs and arms or too tight on the neck hole. Again more struggling and grunting ensues all to the ambient noise of knuckle draggers complimenting each other on the garments they are also struggling to get into in the next booth. Brow beaten and disorientated by the whole experience I grab what remains of my dignity and pay for the ill fitting outfits, just to get out of the place asap. I hate clothes shopping...

I've no excuse for this one...

Back from the Underground

I finally left York yesterday, but not before couple of fair-ye-well sessions. The first with Claire, Helen and Cath (and Cath's son and girlfriend, who respectively kept their distance. Actually, it was probably more to do with us cramping their style than anything else...). I was hoping Ray, Claire's other half would have come out, but he told Claire 'tell them, I hate everyone except you.' Fair point, I thought. It was a rather sedate affair held at Oscar's bar. The most notable thing about the place, besides the vast mountain of food that they placed in front of us, was the amount of BEAUTIFUL women in there. Holy crap, if I'd known about that aspect of the place I would have spent my Yorkian evenings propping up their bar and leching for all I was worth. But the amount of food we had got me thinking, remember back in the eighties when everyone was eating Haute Cuisine, which basically translates as: No Food. A plate-full of nothing was served up in every posh restaurant across the country. Mind you, with the amount of coke everyone was doing people had no appetite to eat anyway. But all that has changed, nowadays we are served mountains of grub. It's quite obviously an American influence; back in 2004 when I drove across the States with some chums we would go to a restaurant, buy a starter and because it was so big, eat half of it and take the rest home for breakfast! But it now seems to be a competition to see who can serve the most amount of food. Generally I end up defeated by it an leave loads, which is something I hate doing.

Err... I asked for the small portion...

I digress, as usual. The second food related leaving do was in the company of Mr and Mrs Logan Josh. Again, I was cordially invited to their pile on the outskirts of York. Josh had put his nimble fingers to good use and whipped up a delightful curry. Chock full of roast potatoes. It sounds absurd, but it worked. From what I could work out all he'd done was buy a load of McCain's potato wedges, deep fry them then pour a jar of Tesco Value Curry Sauce over them. But you wouldn't know as it tasted delicious! The evening ended in the usual way a trip to Logan's does, ie: drunken Greco-Roman Wrastlin' while Motorhead DVDs played in the background...

You're hurting my face...

I bid my fair-ye-wells to the Ukrainians and drove back to the bosom of my youth and spent Saturday night in the company of Dave and Linzie, where Dave showed me a new song he was working on for Abwehrschlacht. It sounded fucking great, it's just a slight shame that I'll be off to Afrikakakaka for two months this Saturday, so we won't get to record it. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get over it when I go on Safari to shoot Tigers in their faces and wrastle Penguins.

You're dead, you little motherfucker!

Age of Nero the Hero

These posts have been a bit quiet over this weekend as I have been a bit quiet myself. After last weekend's non-stop drink fuelled orgy that turned ugly and spilled out onto the streets of York, I decided that this weekend wouldn't be a repeat performance. Instead I took shelter and hid from the outside world. This left me in the company of the Ukrainians as they never seem to go anywhere at weekends. In fact they seem to arise at the crack of sparrows every day and make as much noise as humanely possible at stupid o'clock in the morning. I'm sure one of them has a road drill in their room they are using to prospect for oil or mine their way back to the Ukraine. At least that's how it sounds to me at 6.00am... They are either drilling or bellowing into their mobile phones in Russian outside my bedroom door. They speak so loud on them that they could really cut out the phone bills and just shout at their relatives in Kiev. They'd still hear them.

Sergei! I think I can hear Fydor calling! Quickly, go get Babushka!

Having slagged them off, I do have to tell you, they are still some of the nicest people I've met. I just get a little tired whilst when making my dinner I have to answer questions about Crystal Skulls and Carpathian Dragons ('No, they are fakes, mostly made in the 19th century, no the dragons don't exist, it was for a TV show.') or I have to fake complicity when they show me Ukrainian metal detecting sites where the spoils of war graves are displayed. Relics ripped out of the ground with no contextual information. I get tired of being asked to watch YouTube videos of Metallica playing in Moscow (what! Metallica played Moscow! When did that happen? I've NEVER seen that footage a million times since when it was released back in 1991!). Having said all that, they made me dinner on Saturday night, some Kazakhstani dish containing some mystery meat (Johnny told me it was dog, whilst making meowing noises...) and fed me beer. I like them, I help them buy their plane tickets and uninsured cars, but I just wish they'd be a little quieter...

At least on Saturday and Sunday mornings...

This is my last week in York for some time, I'm back up on Heslington East for this week and then a week later I'm off on an African adventure out to Tanzania. I'm off to find the cradle of civilisation, or at least the cot of culture, and to do some big game hunting. I hear they have tigers and penguins and kangaroos and pumas out there, so, I'm going to take my rifle and wipe the smiles off their stupid smug faces. However, this week at Heslington East I am teaching school kids the amazing aspects of archaeology. Of all the University workers I am the only one with a CRB check that covers this job. There you go, there's fuel enough for comments. Whilst on site I was contemplating nipping behind the spoil heap for a piss this afternoon but got too nervous about it. I wasn't sure of the implications of pissing out of sight of, but near kids. It's a fucking minefield, all compounded by the fact the local press had just come on site to take photos (of the kids doing archaeology, not me pissing...). I can imagine the headlines in York's Evening Press: 'Slipped Through The Net! CRB Sicko Exposes Himself To York Kids!' They'd drag me to Clifford's Tower and fire me up brighter than Christmas!

I only wanted a piss!!

I ain't drunk, I'm just drinking...

Apparently according to Alejandro from Facefuck I have been a little slow with my Blog posting of late. Fuck off, it was only three days ago that I last posted. I was going to write a new one last night but tiredness overcame me and I was unable to lift my head, never mind write anything of note. And what brings on this bout of torpidity? Drink, pure and simple, drink. I'm an old man now, I can't drink as much as I could ten years ago and my body tells me that every time I try to drink as much as I did ten years ago. Which is pretty much what I have been doing for the past four days. I'm sure you will recall I spent Friday and Saturday both on the batter. I was going to have a wee rest for myself on Sunday until Vin texted me at about five o'clock to tell me he was engineering sounds at a METAL gig at Stereo. York and Metal are two things that don't always mix so I thought I'd take the very rare chance to check out some of the local bands.

York's attitude to Metal...

The main band Cairngorm, were OK, the lead singer had a fucking amazing growl on her. She just needed to drop the clean vocals and they would be a million times better. The other two support bands were very mediocre, so much so that I can't even recall what they were called. Mind you, I was already against one of them when Vin told me their guitarist had stolen his missus years back. I told him he should mess his guitar sound up as recompense. But he's a professional and refused. So I offered to fill my bottle with piss and sling it at him instead. I digress. The best band by far were the second on the bill, Fortress, total black thrash attack. They were fucking great with their battle armour and spikes. They cleared the room as well, which gave them points in my book. Afterwards Vin invited me to the open mic night at Dusk. It made quite a change, listening to white man's Delta blues. It was like being locked up in a cell in an Alabama prison. Except we could leave when we wanted and wouldn't get raped in the showers. This evening finished at three o'clock when I finally crashed out in my bed, pissed as a newt...

Who's house is this?

With the taste of a dead cat in my mouth the next morning I walked over to King's Manor for the First Year Exhibition of the excavation that I had been supervising on. I was there mainly for the free wine. As I arrived I saw steams of students walking out. I asked why they were leaving and they told me that the wine was disgusting. Fucking trust fund babies. In my student days we would have drunk bleach if it was free. Anyway, after the wine had gone I went along with the remaining students to various pubs, where they all got drunker and drunker and clumsily flirted with one another. This seemed to involve punching one another or bellowing in each others ears. Who said romance was dead, ay? I found myself in the pit of Hell, also known as the Willow Restaurant, the maddest ex-Chinese resteraunt (they lost their food license) in the North of England. Taking my leave, I don't remember how, I ended the night at Alia's house saying goodbye to her for the 67,927th time this week and stumbling into a taxi after twelve hours on the sauce. There was meant to be one final drinking session last night at the end of year King's Manor party, but my body reacted against me and I couldn't even move out of the house.

Taxi for one!

And finally. I posted John's Satnav back to him on Tuesday at about two o'clock. I texted him to let him know that I had and to tell me when it arrived. He thanked me in the reply and I asked him if it had arrived yet. The conversation then went as follows:

He: No, I'm stood at the front window waiting for it. I saw a parcelforce van go past but he didn't stop. He might have just got lost, I'll tell you if he comes back

Me: Keep me updated, I'm gasping to know what's happeneing.

He: I saw a black man outside on the street! You have no idea how rare that is here. He looked lost too. Still no parcel.

Me: Fucking Post Wankers, I sent it two hours ago, what are they playing at?

Then I heard nothing until 11:54pm when I got the following text:

He: I don't think he's coming today. I might go to bed in a bit.

Me: Hmmm, I'm not sure you should. There may have been a crash on the motorway that delayed the van. Give it a couple more hours.

At 07:44 the next morning I receive this:

He: I'm really tired. It must have been a bad accident because he still isn't here yet.

Then at 10:28 the final text comes through:

He: OMG it finally came, the man looked okay I don't think the accident was all that bad, I'm going to sleep now, thanks alex.

You really can't make this shit up.

China is here, Mr Burton

Since being back from France I regained my pre-Gallic state of unemployment, despite begging Nick down the phone for a job even just sweeping his office, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears. I really should have gone and signed on again last week, but shoulda, coulda, woulda and hindsight is always 20/20 vision. What ever that means. So I've been filling my time by doing very little in an effort not to spend too much money until I work for York Uni again in a week. I went out on Friday afternoon and met up with Moogdroog for a pub lunch and a film. She's been given time off from her PhD cos she'd written a chapter or something. Actually I have no idea what she'd done as when anyone starts telling me about their PhD my eyes glaze over and I start thinking about Tiger Tanks or the Battle of the Somme. The film we went to see was the new Woody Allen film: Whatever Works. It's hilarious and has Larry David in it, which alone is good enough reason to see it. It's like an extended episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which, you don't need to be told, is the best comedy show ever written (well most of it is improvised, so it's not so much written as ad libbed, but that's all just semantics, you pedantic wankers). The film is a repackaged 1970's script and it does show in a couple of it's dated situations (the bohemian three way relationship and the Southern gun nut turning out gay), but Larry is in fine form, especially when calling the kids to whom he teaches chess 'Inch worms and Cretins'.

That evening was also spent in the company of Moogdroog along with Claire, Helen and a bunch of others I didn't know for Alia's leaving do. About the third of several such leaving dos. Good God, that girl just doesn't know how to say goodbye. She still hasn't left York, either... Town was pretty quiet what with the upcoming England versus Germany game, all the knuckle draggers are saving their money for when we get knocked out of the World Cup finally (Despite not caring about football or the World Cup one little bit, Fidor insists on telling me the scores whenever England play. I'm not sure what part 'I don't care' or 'I'm just not interested mate' he doesn't understand but his steadfastness in keeping me up to date in the latest scores would be quite endearing if it were nothing to do with football...). It was a rather sedate affair, all be told, and I sloped off to bed a little after midnight. I was awoken before the sparrows fart on Saturday morning by the butchers having a rather loud and protracted conversations in Russian outside my window.

So long, farewell, would you ever fuck off?

On Saturday afternoon I met up with Logan Josh and his paddle chums. He was also back from France and bursting with stories of crazy Algerian campsite owners. We spent the afternoon talking about films, music and aeroplanes. Logan was his usual boorish self and he left me after braying and bragging about a Barbecue at his house that was NOT invited to. It seems like the rest of York was going, with only my house having missed out on getting an invitation through the door. Well, I hope he choked on his fucking burger. I already had other plans, I went to meet Vinny down in the Basement, which is not as predatory as it sounds, and I took my leave before calling in at Yummy Chicken, the most inappropriately named take away in York, The food is not 'yummy' by any stretch of the imagination and can hardly be described as chicken either... In the Basement there were three bands on, with a sixties/seventies themed disco afterwards. The first band Russell and the Wolves were by far the best on the bill. Any band that features a girl in a tiger suit playing solos with her high heels and a Elvis lookalike on the other guitar gets my vote. The second band, The Silver Factory were an incredibly lame jangly-shit-pop-Jam-Paul-Weller-wanna-be bunch of pricks. It seemed the only way to get into the band was to have the same haircut as the rest of them. They were the lamest band I've seen for a long time. The guitarist just strummed three chords on his £500 guitar the whole time. He should have saved himself some money and bought the cheapest shit guitar if that's all he was going to do with it. But I guess image was far more important to them than actual music. I don't remember much about the last band except they had come from London. It was probably something to do with the fact I had been drinking for about eight hours solid at that stage and so decided to call it a night. I ended up outside Oki's Mobile Kebab shop eating a chicken burger and listening to some racist cunt telling the guy behind the counter 'you no spit on burgers'. I certainly don't envy those lads having to listen to that shite every Friday and Saturday night, but I still think it would beat having to listen to The Silver Factory again...

Oh, just fuck off!

Brothers and Sisters raise your horns!

I'm back from France and Hellfest, a three day experience of standing in a field shouting at various long haired men with instruments to 'turn it up!'  I was head interpreter as I was able to ask, in French, for directions to the bus stop for Amiens and Dave, Ross and Glynn's level of French ended at telling someone their name and that they were eleven years old. Ah, the Comprehensive School: learning at its best. Armed with this Schoolboy level of the language and more Pot Noodles than even the most hungry student could possibly eat in a lifetime, we braved the Channel Tunnel. During the crossing Dave stared out of the carriage window the whole time trying to see fish and shipwrecks and eventually made some part of a foreign field forever England. It really was; our tents were enclosed on no less than three sides by Brits who had also travelled to bang their fucking heads. The little cunts next door to us kept us up all the first night by shouting French phrases in a shit Death Metal vocal style. So we got our own back the next evening, fortified with wine and Carcass, by shouting the phrase 'Thrash Metal' over and over again for about four hours helped by our French neighbours on the other side. That's the power of music right there, breaking down cultural barriers. All in all it was a great weekend, although it ended up costing me a lot as the price of festival food doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to the cost of food in the real world. A bag of chips from the local chippy would set you back about a pound, at Hellfest a tiny plastic tray with about three frites in the bottom set you back a whopping 2,381 euro. Even with a strong Euro there is a bit of a discrepancy there...

 Fucking Metal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a list of the bands that I enjoyed the mostest of all, Carcass, Immortal, Tankard, Anvil, Marduk, Ulver, Watain, Ihsahn, Kampfar, Negura Bunget, Sigh, Urgehal, Jello Biafra, Dark Funeral, Kyuss, Brant Bjork and the Bros, Mondo Generator, Black Cobra, Slayer, Finntroll, Yawning Man, Discharge and MOTORFUCKING HEAD. But by far the best of the best award goes out to the reformed and almightyly loud GODFLESH. I haven't seen them perform live for twenty years and despite waiting 25 minutes for them to sort out their sound and them having to cut their set short by twenty minutes as a consequence, it was like experiencing a musical glacier. A crushing act of nature, an overwhelming experience like no other. A true Force Majeure. 

Devastator/Mighty Trust Krusher

The final evening was characterised by being kept awake half of the night by that group of 68 year old Jewish Grandmothers whose name I shall not mention's firework display. After wishing that they'd stick their fucking Love Gun up their fucking arses and 'pull the fuckin' trigger until it go click', the following morning at the crack of sparrows the intrepid travellers broke camp in wet and freezing conditions and walked what seemed like miles to the carpark. I was half excepting the Melton Mowbray Mini Pork Pie I'd left in the car over the weekend to have grown limbs and TWOCed the car in a bid for freedom. But thankfully it wasn't to be and Glynn drove us back without stopping (except for the Channel Tunnel) in a ten hour journey that would have tested the patience of even the most patient of patient saints. I arrived back in Rotherham clutching my new Sigh CD and my new Kampfar T-Shirt, tired and half mental from the chip overdose, but happy in my Heavy Metal Heaven!