Spam

I just received the most magical piece of Spam. It didn't even have a link in it to some dodgy site. This is all it said:

luger grammatic borderland

piggyback biography piggyback? marcus, minus housewares.
mccall headphone forbidden biography hermetic housewares, luger
skirmish suny duet grammatic impeach.

orin turf.

It was like a gift of freeform poetry into my inbox.

I was also quite drawn to the following which arrived a day or two ago:

Aloha, my gentleman!

I want to tell you some tender words to brighten your day! I am looking for
my second half here. I want our hearts to unite some day.
My heart longs for you. My heart longs to leap at the sound of your voice.
My heart longs to be filled with joy by your smile. My heart longs to see
our love for one another grow as we sit on the couch and we share from the
heart. My heart longs for me to feel the love and desire of your gentle
touch. My heart longs to experience the sensual passion between us. My heart
longs to feel the love and joy of us cuddling and snuggling close. My heart
longs for you!

Me too, oh, me too.

More of this, less knock-off Canadian viagra, please, gods of Spam.

The Ultimate Mix Tape: Update

OK, so here is the tracklist so far. The CD is full now, so anything else that goes on has to be a substitution. It's kind of like a more fun version of Sophie's Choice.

1. Space Oddity - David Bowie
2. Tell Me Why I Don't Like Mondays - Booomtown Rats
3. Alright - Supergrass
4. Park Life - Blur
5. Brown Sugar - The Rolling Stones
6. Babies - Pulp
7. Hanging on the Telephone - Blondie
8. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
9. Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
10. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
11. I Fought The Law - The Clash
12. Step On - Happy Mondays
13. Signed, Sealed, Delivered - Stevie Wonder
14. Surfin' USA - The Beach Boys
15. Mr Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan
16. The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel
17. I'm Only Sleeping - The Beatles
18. Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
19. Teenage Kicks - The Undertones
20. Another Brick In The Wall - Pink Floyd

So tell me, where did I go wrong? Deadline for the final version is this weekend. Remember, no additions, only substitutions, so you've got to tell me what to take out as well as put in...

The Ultimate Mix Tape

It is my oldest nephew's birthday this week. He is turning eleven. I have decided that this is the right age to begin his musical education especially as his younger sisters are obsessed with musicals. I don't think that a boy should have to take his first tentative steps towards puberty with High School Musical, rather than the Clash, as his guide. (I don't think that a girl should have to either, but it is easier for them to get away with.) Therefore as his birthday present I have decided to make him a compilation CD featuring all the key musical influences that he will need to take him through life. (Or would do, were it legal etc etc.)

This is where you come in. What are the indespensible moments of music that no eleven-year-old boy should be without? What, in essence, is the canon? We can get into more esoteric stuff later as he gets older, but right now, what are the bands, the tracks that he needs to know? And is he too young for Leonard Cohen?

Answers in the usual place.

Democracy v Laundry

At the weekend, I spent some time with a friend whose grandmother recently died in her nineties. Born at the beginning of the 20th century, she was old enough to remember both world wars as well as the historic decision to grant women the vote. But the thing she used to get really animated talking about was the invention of the washing machine. That, according to my friend's grandmother, was the event which really changed her life.

Which got me thinking: if I had to choose between giving up the vote and giving up the washing machine, which would I choose? The answer, I fear, is that I would give up the vote. I hate to say it but there you go. I suppose you could always pay someone to do your laundry for you (or indeed have a wife) - but what if you couldn't? Ultimately I'd hand over all the power in the world to free myself from scrubbing my smalls all the lifelong day.

Cabvision

Anybody else come across the devil's own "entertainment" which is Cabvision? For the fortunate, allow me to describe. You get into the back of a black cab - a cab which, I mght remind you, costs significantly more money than the average minicab. You sit down. And you are immediately greeted by a television screen in the back of the seat in front, which promises you joy, rapture, multiple channels - and, naturally, advertising. Of course, should you not be interested, you can mute it. BUT YOU CANNOT SWITCH IT OFF. It will be there, beaming its images at you, pulling your eye away from the window with its rampant shininess, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Let's clarify a few things. Taxis are a hell of a lot more expensive than tube trains or buses, so you need a pretty good reason to take a cab. Convenience, cleanliness, speed for example. To which I would add: to be able to relax. You cannot relax with this thing on. (Maybe you can ignore a screen if it is in an enclosed space with you, in which case you are a better person than me, or at least one with fewer shiny-shiny magpie issues.) If you have been on the Heathrow Express, or on one of those London buses with an on-board TV, you will know exactly what I mean. They are annoying enough under those circustances, but at least in that case you are on "public" transport. In a cab, I expect to be left alone, chatty cabbies notwithstanding.

And what is Cabvision there for? For my entertainment? Of course not. It's to make money, money at the expense of my discomfort. Let's take a moment to peruse the Cabvision website, shall we?

“Cabvision - an in cab TV system that delivers a captive audience in a mobile environment”.

As an advertiser have you wondered how to efficiently target an ABC1, under 35, affluent audience in London?

Cabvision offers advertisers the opportunity to target circa 1.4 million captive ABC1 consumers predominantly under 35 yrs (per month) in London via a mobile TV medium.

Cabvision is a "Total Taxi marketing solution".

Solution to what? Solution to the problem that right now, all around the world, there are people spending seconds, even minutes, not being sold to? Disaster!

And "captive", That's a word they like a lot. Captive, as in can't get out. As in imprisoned. As in has no choice. Advertisers would beam their messages directly into our brains if they could get away with it. "All that time wasted while consumers sleep - now, infiltrate their nights with DreamVision!"

Cabvision is demonic, yet another step on the ever-encroaching march to fill every second of our lives, every possible movement of our eyeballs, with marketing. I am voting with my feet. From now on, if the cab has Cabvision, I do not get in.

Hair today...

...and hair tomorrow. My hairdresser persuaded me to keep it long. He did say he'd cut it off for me if I absolutely insisted but he'd make me sign a disclaimer first.

Can't you at least mention your reading?

(said Lilalia).

Readings are strange. People always ask me if they "went well". It's very hard to tell. You read out loud, people listen, sometimes they ask a few questions and then they go away. It's almost impossible to tell whether they enjoyed it or not. Much easier to guage, say, a bookgroup appearance, because then you get into a proper dialogue with the audience, and then you can tell if they're lively and responsive or bored or angry or whatever else. (I do get angry audiences, because of the god thing.) This is even more true at Bestival where the lights were shining right in my eyes so I couldn't even see the audience and it was impossible to tell whether there was anyone there at all. So I know you'd like me to report back about my readings but there's almost nothing to say. I read extracts of chapters five and six, and the "hand relief" bit got the loudest laugh. The fact that there was a laugh at all is a very good thing, as it means there was someone there enjoying it - so if you came, and you laughed (or even if you didn't), thank you! And thanks also to the nice folk from Bookends in Christchurch who were selling my book on the day - and to the nice man who bought one...

Confession

I totally cheated at the festival. I didn't camp. Instead I stayed at my parents' weekend place which turned out to be a convenient 20 minute drive from the festival site, and which also, even more conveniently, had beds and proper loos and showers and everything. Being a performer meant that I could drive in and out of the festival site every day without queueing and park backstage, avail myself of the free tea, coffee and bottled water, and have famous people walk past me from time to time (Billy Bragg! Suzanne Vega's bass player, who looked like a short fat Ben Stiller! One of the Flaming Lips' Roadies! Etc!) Aside from that it wasn't very rock and roll. No crack. There was a small bowl of fun-sized chocolate bars though. I had two miniature Milky Ways and a tiny bag of Skittles. (Note to our American Readers: what we call Milky Way is what you call Three Musketeers. What you call Milky Way is our Mars Bar. If you have Mars Bars I don't know what they are.)

Despite the bed and the good hygiene, I still seem to be ridiculously tired, although that might have more to do with all the additional work travel I'm doing at the moment (today: research trip to Cheltenham; next up: reading at Blackwells Oxford, Thursday 6.30pm) because if I stay in London for more than 48 hours in a row the wind might change and I'll be stuck this way. So I was going to tell you all about everything, but I'm too tired, and I want to go to bed, and tomorrow I'm at yoga in the morning and then I have to catch up on all the work I'm missing because I keep going out of London for all of these events and -

You know what? Here's the Flaming Lips.

I know I've got a festival to tell you about

but something more important came up. Namely, should I get this haircut?


Answers on a postcard, or, if you must be literal, in the comments, preferably by Thursday, when I have my hairdresser's appointment.

For those need a reminder, this is what I look like at the moment:


(with a bit of airbrushing, courtesy of Ms Scannell.)

Happy Campers!

I'm reading at a festival this weekend. You can tell by how the clouds are gathering, it's growing cold and threatening rain. Apparently there are sunny festivals sometimes. I have never witnessed such a thing. The very first festival I went to was Reading Festival in 19ahemahem (bad enough I had to admit to the 19) and it rained so much that I fell into a bog on my way back to my tent one night and had to be pulled out by kindly passers by. I was encased in mud up to my chest and the only thing I had to clean myself off with was a packet of Wet Wipes. My clothes were so filthy and wet that on the last day I had to walk around in my pyjamas. I thought that was bad. A few years ago at Glastonbury I woke up at five in the morning to find it raining on my face through a tent that was not built to withstand monsoon. By noon half the site was underwater. On that occasion I had to resort to walking around wearing only a bikini and a bin liner, and there was such a rabid queue for the welly stand that the police were brought in to control the crowd. But hey, as long as the music is good and the drinks are cheap, who cares.

Anyway, if you too are anxiously scanning the long-range weather forecast for Lulworth Castle because you are heading to Camp Bestival, well then meet me in the intimidatingly-named Laughter tent at 5pm on Friday where I will be reading out loud from my book, assuming the pages are not so sodden that they have degenerated into one great soggy mass only suitable for making a mishappen bowl with, in which case join me in the Laughter tent at 5pm on Friday for an impromptu class in papier mache.

See you there, bring your own brolly. I'll be reporting back next week.