Monday, January 28, 2008

Ross & Angie - music slide-show


(Music: Snow Patrol)

'if i lay here

if i just lay here
would you lie with me and just forget the world?'

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Confessions of a serial digressor



Planet Earth to planet 'My Dear Reader' do you copy?
I repeat do you copy?
Clarification: by 'copy' i do not mean do you reproduce. Of course you copy as in reproduce, although you probably haven't yet. Although, a few little 'My Dear Reader' sprogs may germinate in the not too distant future...but i digress.....
as always...
i always digress...
in-fact digression is my birth right.
do you have a problem with my digressions? do you punk?
if you do, then please honour me with a duel.
i will win. i will beat you.
i will make you scream and squirm and make you wish you had never been born...
(or if you are a clearer minded thinker) that i had never been born...
but i digress

....again.

now, where was i?
yes, do you copy?
...not as in reproduce but as in...
...ah fuck it.
life's too short...
...but i digress...
...as always.
but i also...
procrastinate...
yes, i do.
...do you have a problem with my procrastinations?
do you? do you freakshow?
but...that is for later...
much, much later...
because i procrastinate
but i digress...
again
...as always

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The turd world - (memory byte)

The train didn’t go very fast. We we're ambling along and the engine kept breaking down. All the passengers we’re cursing in Tamil. A Tamil cursing is a treat for the chuckle muscles; a sound like a ripple of diarrhoea. But they had good reason to curse; the delay had thrown a spanner in their plans. But for one passenger; the man with no plan, the delay was an unexpected luxury - an opportune moment to see ‘track-life’ up close and personnel – with a magnifying glass. Train tracks attract colonies of people very much like shit attracts flies. These people (god knows where they come from) then proceed to build pokey little dwellings next to the tracks with ruddy walls and tarpaulin roofs. A whole economy subsists along the track – an economy fueled by the train passengers. When people travel they’re usually flushed with cash and more importantly, they're less frugal then normal. Almost as if travel releases them from some invisible force - we've all experienced it. A behavioural trait exploited by airport departure lounges and the dreaded Duty-Free cash blotters. For the families living along the track this is a blessing and their life-line; an artery.

It got me thinking about grander stuff. Life (you, me, bugs, aliens from Mars) will make a living wherever a living can be got. You can go to the most inhospitable deserts in the world and still find that you are not alone. Someone else got their first; like for example the obstinate weeds with tufts sprouting through a dune crack. There’s life eeking out an existence miles below our feet; feeding off nutrients from the rock surface and powered by the earths geothermal heat. Human life is no different. We're all trying to make a living and there is a living to be made off railway passengers.

I looked out the window and saw the strangest sight - children, girls and boys, the younger one's naked, the older one's wearing loin cloths with stubby noses, we're leaping off the train carriages carrying pitchers of water. On every station they'd rush in and grab water from the sink in the toilet compartment. Then there we’re the people crouched all along the railway line outside. At first I thought they we’re simply squatting and watching the train go by. But then I realized that they we’re shitting. All we’re facing the train, squatting, with their lungi’s covering their privy members, shitting unhurriedly, fouling the tracks. One curious group, a man, a boy and a pig we’re in a row – each shitting in his own way. There we’re some more dignified folk though: one fat man, clearly of professional high-brow stature, was squatted at a greater distance from the train, an umbrella was held up by his manservant and he had a newspaper on his knees – shitting.

There’s something fascinating about public shit holes. In Tibet, they have outdoor communal shit houses like pubs. These are nothing but a row of holes in the ground which you squat over (struggling to hold your balance) whilst your ass is whipped by the icy winds warmed by the Tibetan plateau. The experience is rendered more comic by the fact that you can chat to your neighbour (shit mate), perhaps discussing the price of bread, your favourite brand of toilet paper or the wind-chill factor.

I don’t know about you but for me toilet business is a deeply personnel ‘business’ – in fact if you think about it, it is the most personnel thing we do. Even more personnel then sex – which involves a willing partner. The anthropology of communal shitting is quite fascinating. Perhaps one day in Tibet, whilst straddling a shit hole, I’ll write a paper on the subject.

When I look back to that sultry train cabin though, I remember feeling mildly disconcerted and intimidated by the shit stirrers outside on the tracks all smiling at me; its not pleasant to be smiled at by serial defecators - or maybe they we’re grimacing? Bloody turd world.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Knob World News

Ladies and gentlemen, Knobs and Knobettes, Reverends, Archbishops, Dali-Lamas, Mullahs, cute furry creatures from planet Waxbucket and anybody else reading this that I have missed out…

Greetings fellow Knobbers!

It is with gushing spunks of pleasure that I present to you the latest irreverent news from Knob World:

1) Knob Grater and Knobette Angie have finally decided to embrace the adage that one Knob is better then two – one knob to rule them all and in the darkness bind them – yes, congrats on the wedding guys! – Oh, and less I forget: fantastic pics from their wedding will be posted here shortly.

2) The Oxford English Dictionary has decreed that the term ‘knob’ is in such regular usage that it deserves to be part of the English lexicon. Knob is now an official word and defined by the Oxford Dictionary as follows:

A Knob : Member of the ‘Chartered Knob Club’. The term ‘Knob’ can only be used to describe members of the original Chartered Knob Club of the Cayman Islands that was founded by two revolutionary knobs; Knob Che Lyndon and Knob Che Wasim. The term cannot be used by members of the countless other counterfeit, copy-cat and unofficial knob clubs that have sprung up in the wake of the original club. The others are imposters, charlatans, men of disrepute and questionable parsonage and not real knobs at all but wannabe knobs; a bunch of sad losers who have nothing better to do in their spare time then to plagiarize respectable folk and hard working creative Knobs.

3) For the first time ever the Knob Club will be bestowing annual ‘honorary knob’ status to a member of the human race who exhibits qualities indicative of Knobwiseness or engages in activities that promote the Knob brand. The following names have so far been put forward for this honour: Britney Spears, John Prescott, Grant Mitchell, and Buzz Lightyear.

4) The construction of Knob headquarters (Knob Tower) has finally been completed after much wrangling with the planning authorities, the religious lobby and the Chartered Knitting Club (which is next door). The Chartered Knitting Club has always claimed that we we’re blocking their view. Well, they can cotton-off the cardigan wearing cranberry juice sipping freakshows. Knob Tower is now fully erect. The state of the art building is located in George Town, Cayman Islands and features a ‘Knobamatic 2000’ in the spanking new shiny foyer for knob relief while you wait.

Not surprisingly the building has become a permanent fixture in many itineraries and a popular tourist attraction for single accountant men visiting the Cayman Islands and also features in the latest edition of the bestseller : ‘1,000 things to do before you die’. To commemorate this, our marketing department headed by Mr Wayne-Ker has released a limited edition ‘Nano-Knobamatic’ with diamond encrusted front – sure to be a favourite with bling bling Knobs from Hackney and Stoke Newington.

5) A member of the Knob Club has had their membership revoked due to unknobly behaviour:- the member in question was attempting to raise money for a children’s charity by dressing up in a knob costume – the knob court agreed that he was acting like a total dickhead.

6) Our beloved Master Knob will be venturing on a 6 month extended hippy trip across mountains, deserts, jungles, tundras, citiscapes and through hairy bushes where Knobs have not yet penetrated thus far. The trip will encompass Northern Pakistan, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Madagascar - where the bushes are known to be especially hairy and persistent. Master Knob hopes that the tour will be a wonderful experience, an opportunity to share ideals and ideas, promulgate the knob brand onto the natives, open up new markets for knob products, and not to mention consume foul tasting victuals and smoke a lot of stuff that does funny things to the brain – we all wish that Master Knob emerges relatively unscathed from this ordeal – especially after mud wrestling with the hairy bushes of Madagascar.

It is hoped that the tour will be as successful as his last official knob visit to Knob World in the Andromeda Galaxy; where he seems to have achieved near mythical status thanks in no part to his easy charm, effortless charisma, wry sense of humour and nobs of sex-appeal.

The Knobworld Population Department recently released figures that show that there was a 25% increase in baby birth rates exactly 9 months after Master Knobs visit. The head of the department Professor Haw-nee Scrow-Tums had this to say:

'It is most inexplicable! Either Master Knob gets around (!) or his mere presence has the affect of turning perfectly normal Knobettes into nymphomaniacs. Studies conducted in my lab under controlled conditions have conclusively shown that when knobettes (female Knobs) are exposed to photographs of Master Knob, skin conductivity increases by a whopping 20% - which is evidence of sexual arousal. Most inexplicable!'

7) Finally on a less frivolous note, a major Hollywood film studio has announced that filming will soon commence on the latest superhero flick titled: MightyKnob & MagicBush.
The movie has been billed as a sweeping love story, with epic vistas, huge sound stages, orchestral visions, a Pulitzer prize winning screenplay at its heart, and a huge phallus and bush at its poetic centre.

That is all for now from Knob World. For the latest updates on all things Knob related please visit : http://www.mightyknob&hairybush.com/.

Master Knob.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

It's calling...Stage 1 (Pakistan to Kashgar)


Currently reading - Arthur Rimbaud (A biography)


Decadent 19th century French poet and enfant-terrible who penned some highly arresting and narcotic visual stanzas in his teens only to give it all up and then promptly disappeared. The toast of literary Paris in his teens whose poetry was suffused with vague multi-layered premonitions and innuendos; all written in a style that influenced many and pushed forward the boundaries of poetic license.
Regarded as the first rock star! - Indefatigable, moody, explosive, undecipherable, genius. After 10 years he was finally tracked down living in a hovel within the stinking walls of the ancient city of Harare, Abyssinia (Ethiopia) as a gun-runner for the Ethiopian Emperor, Menelik. By his own accounts he found life in Harare abysmal; bored with the drudgery, the stupidity of the town’s folk and constantly irked by their insolence and thievery; sick of the food and sick of their language.
They too found him peculiar; a white man with no past, who muttered a strange language and wandered the fly blown streets of this outpost from civilization. Contemporary accounts however suggest he learnt the Quran and Arabic and that he was happy living in the shit hole that was Harare and lived rather comfortably too; taking in a local woman as a mistress, dabbling in photography and amassing a small fortune from the gun running. Also, he found time to explore the unknown ‘Ogaden’ region and even submitted a rather prosaic (by his own standards) journal to the Society of Geographers in Paris for publication. An extraordinary tale of an extraordinary life.

‘I is somebody else’ (Rimbaud)

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Coming soon...The Karakoram Highway et al (Pakistan-China-Mongolia-Tibet)

In the footsteps of Marco Polo, Ibn Batutta and the merchants of the Silk Road. From Northern Pakistan's wild Pashtun provinces (where the men are real men, the sheep are real sheep and the women suitably wild and exotic) and across the perilous Karakoram Highway that hugs the arid Himalayan steppes and onwards towards deepest, darkest, China. Thence to Mongolia and Ulan Bator and from whence to the fabled city of Shangri-La in Tibet (if it exists of course). A Journey of high-jinx, courage, majestic vistas, the tyranny of love and festering passions. A story of redemption, spiritual awakening, lots of Tea and the dreaded stomach bug. In search of the answers to the ultimate questions, like: 'What shall I have for dinner tonight?' or 'Am i being ripped off by this scummy hotel?' and 'Does this official want baksheesh?'- A motion picture shot in SLR Dulux® Dream clarity for the ultimate immersive experience.