If you like:

1. sexy furious rock'n'roll, go see White Witches next time they play, as they are a bit bloody good. They are particularly fun when former members of Pink Grease heckle them or a mad old drunk tries to dry-hump Rory.


2. Neil Gaiman and/or Tim Burton and/or puppetry and/or the theeyatar and/or tragedy and/or gallows humour (quite literally...), go see Lilly Through the Dark in Covent Garden, 2 - 19 December. I saw this play twice last year and it moved me to tears both times. Alright I'm a cranky old thing so that doesn't mean much, but it's really very good.
3. cheese, then well by all means eat chese! I dunno, do I have to tell y'all everything?

Exploded iPhones kinda look better than new ones, don't they?



Like it's made of marble or something.

My MP, Lynne Featherstone, has sent me a faux-handwritten leaflet asking me - I paraphrase - to vote Lib-Dem in the European Elections because of Baby Peter and Haringey Council's exposure to Landsbanki. It seems aimed at 10-year olds judging on the style, with a PS and a PPS. Anyway, more than the general silliness, it is the howler "the result of hard work by I" that makes me want to eat my ballot card...

And the thing is, I absolutely hate the general foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria currently gripping the country. I would genuinely like to know what the Lib-Dems, and indeed Labour and the Tories have been up to in the European Parliament. But have any of them bothered to let me know? Have they f....

The Guardian's latest freebie-that-doesn't-cost-much-to-make is a series of supplements with profiles of all the countries in the world. I've been browsing them in the Tube and it's actually mildly interesting. It certainly reminds you that although humankind is divided among many faiths and hues and customs and styles of everything, there are still a few things that we all have in common. The main one is unquestionably really really shitty and lame national anthems. You'd think all of humanity together does not have a shred of poetry in its collective soul. All of them without exception seem to be a combination of the following three elements:

- the father/motherland is supercool and prosperous and glorious and prosperous and glorious!
- God likes US best. Suck it foreigners!
- Actually while we're on the subject of neighbours, let's kick the living shit out of them. (With help from God and because our mother/fatherland is glorious.)

MEGAFAIL.

And on Saturday I went to Glasgow, where neil_scott andfemme_letale, straight from their honeymoon, showed me around for the afternoon. And you know what I did? I took photos, that's what.

( Roofs, self-abuse, ruins, sickness, tombs and carcasses. )

There follows a massive Edinburgh slide-show - pure touristy stuff.

( He's frozen to the screen )

I am back from a week of sight-seeing, photography, comedy, tragedy, gothiquery, climbing, falling, drinking and erm, listening to Ultravox in the rain, because, you know, it felt right at the time. I meant to blog my way through this (hence my previous post) but this proved impractical and now I can't be bothered to retrace my steps in order, so instead I will post my pictures in another entry, and in this one mention:

Some shows I really liked:

• Are You Ready For This? Never heard of Australian comic singer Tim Minchin before (I don't really follow comedy habitually), but he won me over within seconds. His songs are so funny and clever it's not real, plus the guy is quite simply a star. He is what Russell Brand is in his wildest dreams. At one moment, to illustrate the point that his wife shares his sense of humour, he recalls a fantastically inappropriate exchange they had about their toddler daughter. A couple of days after seeing his show, curiously, I am queuing for something else inside the Pleasance Dome when out of the blue Minchin turns up with his daughter in his arms to speak to the person ahead of me. I find that I simply cannot look at the poor child!
• Lilly Through the Dark, a none-more-Goth tale of grief and death, mixing actors and puppets from a small troop called The River People. I was a bit worried it might be cheesy, in a Tim Burton sort of way, but instead this play had me sobbing in several places. Very, very good.
• The Tell-Tale Heart. The only event I saw that was part of the actual Festival rather than sthe Fringe, this adaptation of the Poe short story was seriously over the top but very enjoyable. Added fright for me: my seat neighbours were extremely ancient and I genuinely feared a heart attack from either of them at the most shocking moments. (The production plays a lot on extreme silence/noise contrast).
• The Fringe's ticketing system. You'll laugh, you'll cry. Actually I am just making a cheap topical joke here, just like the pros – everything worked just fine for me.
• The Feast of the Ants. A pretty baffling yet very enjoyable Japanese play. The kimonoed lady who gave me the flyer looked me in the eyes and said with the sort of broad smile you give a slow child “it is very easy to understand”. She sussed me out with a single glance, didn't she? Well she also lied and I struggled with the play hugely despite many lines being translated. Nonetheless it was very funny and also moving in parts. (To clarify, I followed the plot, but I had difficulties "getting" it, as in figuring out whether events were meant to by symbolic or not etc...)
• Ginger and Black. This "musical storytellers" duet does deadpan antisocial creepiness to perfection. I respect that.
• Stolen Secrets, a play by a chap called Fin Kennedy and performed by East London schoolgirls. I had heard of this somehow and forgotten about it, but the company happened to be staying in the same building as us and were, as you might imagine, quite loud. Given the shoestring budget (it is basically like a school play) and inexperienced actresses, it was surprisingly effective and moving.
• Mark Allen's Pet Project. Mark Allen stalks furries so you don't have to and has the footage to prove it. I told him it would be really funny if furries block-booked one of his shows and turned up in costume - he seemed unconvinced that this would be funny.
• 1000 Years of German Humour. Wehn & Kuhnle make Wagner funny and play Winds of Change on cowbells, plus you get a voucher for a discount at the local sausage hut. Can't say fairer than that in German - I barely speak any German.

Finally, some random obervations:

• Charity shops in Edinburgh, to my great delight, have kilts in the windows.
• The Fringe really is an overwhelmingly big event The number of shows on at any moment is simply ridiculous, with most venues putting on shows throughout the afternoon and evening with minimal time for setting up in between. Also the biggest venues have about one dozen rooms in them. On the plus side, almost everything is within walking distance of everything else.
• 97.45% of comedians wear blue jeans. This lot are even more fond of dressing down and samey than indie bands. However the only comedian I saw who wore suit trousers split them massively on stage and had to have a audience member sew them back together then and there (this was not planned) so perhaps there is a reason for this eh?
• Edinburgh's bar staff can, by and large, not see me. At all. I appear not to register on whatever segment of the colour spectrum they are sensitive to. I was on a couple of occasions sorely tempted to jump over and help myself.
• I didn't manage or forgot to eat some of the food I bought a week ago, so I traveled back on the train with half a camembert in my bag, thereby recreating one of the best-loved (by me) scenes from Three Men in a Boat.
• Ever felt grateful to get back to London's weather? It feels quite weird.
• I appear to have taken precisely 180 photos in 5 days. This is getting borderline compulsive.

Thank you to diamond_geyser my temporary landlady and all-around fixer/guide/advisor, curiousbadger, my vice-guide (yes there is a hyphen here) and advisor, and drasticsturgeon my non-executive acting deputy director of guidance and counselling. And to their friend Brendan who picked me up from the station. Extra special hat-tip to the lady sat on the same bench as us as we ate at the station and waited for someone else to turn up, for getting me in the mood for Edinburgh by having a boxing match on her own. Yes.

I bet you didn't know this is how they are recruited...

(Advert from Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, absolutely genuine.)

One of the few reasons that I like living in Wood Green is the proximity of Alexandra Park, where I go for runs and walks and fireworks. I particularly love the Palace - I've seen Franz Ferdinand, the Darkness and Arcade Fire there - and am slightly alarmed by the uncertainty over its future

Much as I find it pleasing to the eye though - in spite of the burnt down areas - I always thought there was a slightly sinister undertone to it. Which didn't stop me from making icons like this one. In the past I have speculated that this is because it reminds me of the Gloom Keep level in Quake. ( See for yourself. )

However, this chap has worked it out in full. Well I never... Much food for thought next time I picnic there!

Where I am confused is that it also appears the Nephilim are involved in this somehow. How come they're playing in Shepherd's Bush instead then then then?

How random: I was awoken this morning by boy scouts and girl guides having a parade up my street, playing whistles and what I can only describe as portable xylophones. Now I know what Drumcree feels!

1) watch this video from the Onion from a few weeks back. (I don't like to embed videos.)

2) read this article from yesterday.

One of the questioners asked about the theory that has circulated in the Middle East and elsewhere that Israel was behind the 2001 suicide airplane hijackings against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Al-Zawahri accused Hezbollah's Al-Manar television of starting the rumor. "The purpose of this lie is clear — (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it," he said.

3) LOL.

In the light of LJ's recent sale to a Russian oligarch (yes really!), may I take this opportunity to compliment Comrade Putin on his brilliant and totally legitimate electoral victory? (And Comrade Lugovoi as well of course!)

(Who knew good old LJ was worth $300m? I'm just glad I no longer have a paid account and none of it comes from me.)

London Underground is a right old mess this morning again, with one key line completely shut and several in chaos. Not the first time, not the last time. I've noticed with some amazement this year among my younger acquaintances a tendency to blame the mayor for this. Well excuse me, but no!

Now there are a great number of reasons to dislike Ken Livingstone, starting with his psychologically distressing compulsion to brand everything that moves and many thing that don't with "Mayor of LondON", as if this were some sort of religious office he holds. But the Tube is NOT one of them. In fact the Tube is why he was elected in the first place.

Back in 1999, Livingstone was a half-forgotten has-been and was not even in favour of London having a mayor. The reason he came back from being an obscure backbencher and ended up being elected is because Londoners felt deeply dismayed at the way the government handled the thing, first trying to get a businessman as Labour candidate, then pushing through a doomed and unpopular privatisation of the Underground ahead of the election. The tube was the main issue of the election, and Livingstone was the only candidate who pledged to fight the ghastly project, which incidentally was Gordon Brown, not Tony Blair's baby. No one thought duplicating the failed railway privatisation scheme for the Underground could work except apparently those two twats, whether because of their ideological blinkers or because the construction companies bribed them, I couldn't say. Even many conservative commentators realised that using public financing would be cheaper. Livingstone was expelled from Labour for trying to give voters a choice on this, ran independently (against a visibly uninterested minister forced by Blair to run) and won. But his lengthy legal efforts failed in the end because the stich-up was too tight. He cannot be blamed for this. He's been forced to work with the private consortiums, who pledged to modernise the infrastructure but brought you lager-sponsored buskers instead, and who swallow up fare increases into corporate dividends. [EDIT: Apparently not, even they are bleeding the money away. Metronet shareholders face £750m bill for London Underground failures Talk about a lose-lose deal!] Six years on, if we had a quid pound for every time we heard the dreaded words "signal problems" read by an automated voice, we could all buy a sports car. Every time you're stuck on a crowded platform and the next train is 5 minutes away, it's Gordon Brown's stupid face you want to punch, not Livingstone's.

Heads up for paid account users who don't read the news: Claim a free week on account of last week's blackout.

Spamalot should come on the NHS! The set pieces from Monty Python and the Holy Grail are well tired by now - especially as Tim Curry, wonderful though he is, does not quite match Graham Chapman's wretched bafflement - but it is really the musical spoof element of the show that makes up the bulk of it, and hits the bullseye more often than not.

The landing is full of tat for sale, and the usherette who sells spam sandwiches (*sigh*) told me she was already on her 2nd basket. That, in my opinion, is going a bit too far to get in the spirit of things. The spam sketch and song isn't even in the show!

(Once we're out in the street, I realise I left my scarf under my seat and have to go on my very own QUEST to retrieve it, which involved climbing back all the way up to find the door locked, going back out and into the foyer and being OKd up through walkie-talkies to successive levels. Where's a great big sword when you need one, EH?)

Travelling around a rainy London on a Sunday night is not much fun, but judging by tonight's playback, Luxembourg's debut album is a mighty fine thing indeed.

The line "it's hard to get committed" got sniggers from some quarters, though...

There is something not quite right about Neil Gaiman; someone ought to check that his little finger isn't split or bent. How can a man - a writer! - be so chatty and unshy? His book release appearances are immensely enjoyable, but in a slightly ridiculous way. By now he interviews himself for starters, calling it "a quick FAQ". This is not a Neil Gaiman appearance, it's Neil Gaiman's blog live! It has become a given that everyone in the audience reads it, and several members of the audience actually start their question with a disclaimer that they are behind on their Internets! The questions themselves are anyway more like cues for him to go on and on where his fancy takes him. LAUGH! as he describes the tortuous process by which his stories are written. SHIVER! as he describes a binned Sandman script. BOGGLE! as he answers a question about Penn & Teller by starting in a WW1 Turkish POW camp...

It's all the more enjoyable if you are surrounded by a top squad of elite cacklers.