Abba to E to Mental Mania

I AM LISTENING TO ABBA. Proof positive if any was required that I am in recovery from SEVERE MENTAL BREAKDOWN. I found Mamma Mia down Morrisons for a few quid. The lurid red heart on the cover made me buy it as a FUCK YOU to sneery supermarket staff, so I made sure I went through the slow isle where a surly person serves you, not self service as I usually do.

The sneery looks make such purchases so much more worthwhile (shame I didn't get one). Same as when I pick up cig ends from the bus stop. It's always better when somebody's watching disapprovingly. One time one Jamaican man had the cheek to inform me "that's disgusting" NOT AS DISGUSTING AS THE EXTORTIONATE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT TAX I shot back. He shut his mouth then. He looked like a Labour voter. Sad.

I'm voting Tory next time as long as they lower taxes for the rich. I want to be rich and I want to pay low taxes so I'm voting for whoever lowers them most for Proper People. High taxes for the poor don't bother me at all. We already have them. It's called the Council Tax. The one I'm being sued for not paying. The one my solicitor wants me "severely mentally impaired" for. Now that I'm a hallucinating paranoid mood swing nutter on antipsychotics I might go for it. Unless I'm depressed again, in which case I don't believe I exist, so I don't bother engaging with forms of any description. Mainly because my depressed self believes it's natural and right that I should live on the streets anyhow. And that the answer for just about everything is a flat-fronted commuter train whooshing into London. (Trains going into go faster than out of. Flat fronts are best for maximum fatal head injuries. I was researching this issue that day when the BASTARD DRIVER actually read my mind and knew I wanted to jump. He waved arms at me! I know I've said this before but honestly how did he know??? I wasn't exactly hanging off the end of the platform.

I was blaring out this Mamma Mia movie when Naomi the Nuttery Club lady rang up re my antipsychotic problems. She said "ooh what's that music" I said "do you like Abba?" she said yeah. I said well you can borrow it on Thursday but she's already got it.

I have to say it's a HELL of a lot better than I thought it would be. I LOATHE that Dancing Queen song. The only Abba tunes I really like are Money Money Money (of course) and Take a Chance on Me. And Chickadee Chickadoo whatever it's called. I never actually VIEWED most of the film. Just smoked fags and looked at blogs. I keep forgetting to comment so y'all probably think I'm dead rude, ignoring y'all. I'm not ignoring y'all. I'm just plain rude!

Now it's blasting out at 2 in the morning with German dialogue. I love German dialogue. Double value on all my DVDs. I now have a good 16, purchased in the course of a week. Tomorrow I get Burton/Taylor in Cleopatra. I know it's crap, but I like her look and I Like the scenery. Main reason I watch films: bright colours, nice scenery, nice actresses.

I know I should be gay because I like Madonna and like musicals but seriously do you know what you have to do to be gay? Wear TUCKED IN TEESHIRTS, cut your hair REALLY SHORT. Snogging boys I've done just for the shock value but they're not as nice as girls let's face it women ain't called the Fairer Sex for nothing. So I'm plain old metrosexual. I feel desperately disappointed in this [I meant being straight is boring, but it's not boring, I was just being provocative]. Also gay clubs are FAR too sexual for my taste. I've been to a couple of gay-mixed nights, but didn't really like them. When I was a clubber my Big Thing To Do was go to Trade Club... but it never happened.

Trade Club was THEE best club in London. It ran from about 4am to 4pm Sundays. Heavy heavy banging hypnotic E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E music. Ie absolutely fantastic. But I never went. I went Sunny Side Up instead, which ran from about midday Sunday till around 9pm, meaning you could spend Friday and Saturday night actually having a sleep cycle, then go clubbing Sunday afternoon and be daisy-fresh (well as fresh as anyone on an E comedown can be)... by Monday. E comedown doesn't really hit you till 3 days later hence Friday night high: Tuesday blues. About half the people at Sunnies as they called it were spacefaced nutters who'd been going all weekend and had probably had twelve pills each by this time.


Trancy hard house: what I went there for

The other half were like me: people who appreciated a sleep cycle. The press often compared Sunny Side up to Trade because it was thee most banging hardhouse club I ever went to. But Sunnies was a normal straight club. I never liked gay clubs as I say even though most are actually mixed I didn't like the sexualized vibe. Clubbing is about being free and expressing who you are. When I was persuaded into a gay club, I stood out like a sore thumb with my long hair and non-tucked-in teeshirts and no belt. Let alone one with a huge buckle.

Maybe I should play about with y'all and do a protesting too much thing so y'all think I AM gay. Well I'm hardly out of touch with my feminine side am I.

Everything I tried just led to the usual situation in my personal life. Me in bed. On my own. Crying my heart out because I felt broken, empty, abused, confused and very lonely.

That was the end effect of Ecstasy too. Though I ADORED that drug, because it's not just a high, it's transcendently high. Cloud 9, 10, 11... going up up UP!

Everybody's happy. Everybody's smiley. Everybody free. Everybody E.

Then the E wears off and they become the miserable gits they are in real life. And after the after after after party, no matter what adventures happened between then and then I always ended up in my own bed, eventually (never brought anyone back to mine: ALWAYS went to theirs. I had a thing about other people's beds, other people's showers... much more exciting)... after all this I ended up in bed, alone and crying. Wondering why I had said what I said (E makes me ULTRA frank, to the point of friendship-damage)... why I had done what I'd done. Usually it was just me being a tit, dancing on the stage but on a comedown this feels ridiculously over the top)... most of all I felt let down and lied to. Badly lied to. So I curled up in bed, crying again.

I had been to wonderland. A paradise so high I wasn't even dancing with people, I was dancing with fractals, dancing along a rainbow. I didn't just find the pot of gold at that rainbow's end, I picked it up and showered in stardust.

And then I came down down down and reality was just too much to take.

The last few times a kind of trip kicked in as the E-rush wore off. My books were dancing on the shelves. Everything was pink, blue, pastel coloured dots. Maggots in my contact lens case. I had to put the lenses in with the writhing maggots, telling myself they weren't really there. Telling myself this did nothing to diminish the hallucination. Then I took downers to sleep. I couldn't tolerate the cannabis most people toked to come down. I was on Valium (bought on the street, of course). Then I switched to heroin ~ far naughtier.

The fact that my friends disapproved only made it more attractive. I thought they were really uptight, snorting weak coke, thinking they were it. I scored heroin via dealers I met through the local homeless (my true home crowd: they never judged me, always accepted me. Only true acceptance I ever got was from the crustie junkies. My true crowd. Not the shoplifters or the prozzies. The crusties. And nearly ALL are dead now. The only people who "got" me. All dead. I'm one of very few left. So I took this heroin in secret. Because it was forbidden. Because it worked for me. Because unlike that coke, even the dealer's personal... it was crap. Washed crack cocaine: THAT worked. Heroin worked. In the end I switched drugs totally.

Raving and clubbing burns you out in a way not even crack does. Taking eight ecstasy in a night really does hammer brains and body. I was never into multi-pilling. I did 1.5 say at midnight, so by one I was flying. By two this dose was peaking and it was time for my second dose: one more pill. By three am I felt fantastic. by four everything was going full blast. Most clubs chuck out at six, so my 2.5 pills were coasting down luxuriously from six to eight.

Usually I went to someone or other's house, but was home by eleven when a couple of blue Valium pushed me down enough to get three or four hour's sleep. I never slept dirty. Always showered first. Showering on ecstasy is like that "dancing naked in the rain" song. Showering on ketamine is like showering in a spray of diamonds. Mushrooms added extra sparkle when I wanted it. Those were my holy trinity: ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine. Ketamine was attractive because though I couldn't tolerate spliff, ketamine was OK to me. And lots of people were scared of it, which only increased its appeal (have you noticed I can be a contrary person?)

I genuinely loved the K trip. It's quiet and sparse. Very sparse compared to acid, which is sensory overload. On ketamine you float through outer space. One time I flew through the thorax of a gigantic metalic insect each rib clang-clang-clanging as I thrummed past it. The vibrations of ketamine (you literally feel a low-pitched vibration) were to me AUM, sacred syllable of the universe.

These drugs were my religion.

But you need to discard any ideas that I was somehow a fucked up acid casualty. I used E ONLY at parties. One per weekend. Any more was just overdoing it too much, you really do fry your brains on too much E. I knew about E, knew the bad brain damage neurotoxicity publicity so I took it with care. Yeah the last couple of times I took 5, then 8 pills but that was just 2 occasions. Through most of my E-phase I was known as somebody who DIDN'T TAKE IT WHEN I DIDN'T WANT IT. Even though I ALWAYS had it on me at a dance party (only the desperate score in the club where prices are more than double what they should be).

Like most drugs, like an empty glass once you fill what's full, what's as high as can be, you don't get any higher, the full glass overflows, the drug overflows sideways. Instead of Eeeing you're tripping. This is the law of diminishing returns. Didn't Jesus counsel "moderation in all things"? I'm sure he didn't have MDMA in mind, but it's good advice. If you WILL take drugs take this advice and TAKE THE VERY MINIMUM NEEDED TO GET THE EFFECT YOU WANT. Taking more is just wasting money, wasting serotonin, dopamine etc; wasting brain cells.

So that's me and E. Me and raving. I adored it while I did it, but eventually it all got too much and I wanted to do other things. I cleared myself out for several months but the mood swings I'd experienced since my early 20s were worse. I felt like the sea. High tide (me buzzing on nothing) meant a low tide was coming (depression). Heroin squashed my moods into a flat line and I thought I was cured of this cyclothymia. Then it came back ON heroin (ie heroin wasn't working any more). And y'all know what happened lately. Those mood swings were severe even by psychiatrists' standards. I know what mild-moderate-severe mean in the context of bipolar. Now I have bipolar symptoms.

The doctor didn't use that word but he did say when handing over the risperidone script "it should damp down these mood problems". What I experienced was definitely bipolar in that I swing between two opposite extremes. Bipolar disorder is another matter and it must be carefully diagnosed. So I don't know what's wrong. But it would be just like me to be a manic-depressive junkie, wouldn't it?

I've gone past wanting an excuse for inexplicable behaviour and self-neglect and neglect of pretty straightforward responsibilities like filling out council tax benefit forms and sending them off. I got to a point where I was engaging with nothing. It all seemed pointless. I felt like an utter waste of space and a fraud. And I was usually able to put on a convincing front which confused friends and drug workers. It was Mother Hubbs, who says she was on lithium before she dropped it in favour of heroin (both are mood stabilizers) who told me I was bipolar ~ years ago. I thought she was exaggerating. Then I asked her more recently, "do you really think I am?" and she said "you know you are".

I don't know what I "know" but I know I'm up against something pretty formidable. More formidable than any drug I've ever tried. I mean this high I had not very long ago, the one that had me posting rubbish for days on end... that literally did feel better than any drug I've ever experienced. Now I'm down towards normality I'm pissed off, to be frank. Well if you got amazing free highs, wouldn't you want to keep them? It was the agitation, volatility, physical exhaustion to the point of nausea (having forgot to eat), utter inability to focus on anything longer than a few seconds, a total lack of judgement ~ not so much regarding should I or should I not do this, but judging what was or was not right for another person... I honestly had no idea... the utter inability to care for myself, the inability to think of anything without the idea popping open like a flower, every petal exploding with streamers and little ducks dancing down these streamers saying "hello! hello! hello!". Utter distraction. It was this. This mess that I could see I was in, yet didn't really care about. That I was hearing walls, cars, ceilings talk to me. I knew I was going crazy but didn't care. Yet I was angry enough at having been ignored, written off, misdiagnosed that when my druggieworker suggested I see a psychiatrist I agreed wholeheartedly. I knew in my heart I wasn't right. The psychiatrists knew where I was coming from. I wasn't complaining of feeling bad. I was telling them I felt EXTREME. And I was going very very fast. so fast I lost touch with my own thought process repeatedly. If I put food in the oven I didn't know it was in there till the smoke alarm reminded me. Well it's past 3am and I've not slept. Sorry to go on about my mental probs yet again. You must understand this is a big deal to me I have to reach some solution, some serenity, some sanity. If sanity is good then I want it. If it's boring: no thanks. I wasn't bored when I was mad. See I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've messed myself up so bad I don't even know what "ordinary" or "healthy" or "balanced" really are any more.

I need a Speak and Spell machine. Perhaps then I can phone home. Maybe somebody will rescue me. I'm lonely here. Nobody seems to understand where I have been. I went to wonderful places more beautiful than you can imagine. And I was tripping on my own natural Higher Power. No drugs. If you honestly do still think I'm on drugs then do yourself a favour and stop reading this blog, because you're totally missing my point.

Well this has gone on long enough. From Abba to Ecstasy to me being a nutter. What's new. Take it easy people. Sorry if this is a mess. I'm not editing, else I'll get uptight and won't want it to go. All I'm doing to this is spellchecking, paragraphing it out then BAM! It's yours to skim or pore over or have a good laugh at.

Take care, lots of love

xx

PS I can just tell someone is going to read this and assume I only took heroin to be "naughty" I had many motivations. Its deadliness was a big one. The fact it made me FEEL BETTER was what kept me taking heroin. "Self-medication" as the nurse who never medicated me (did she think heroin was a good thing?) used to spout...

The flakes on the spoon are ketamine, cooked down from medical ketamine for injection into dried ketamine salts, which are snorted up the nose. Ketamine is NOT horse tranquillizer. It's a dissociative agent used for emergency anaesthesia and pain relief where more diamorphine is not appropriate. IF YOU HEAVILY ABUSE KETAMINE WITH HEROIN AND HAVE A BAD ACCIDENT, DOCTORS MAY HAVE GREAT DIFFICULTY ADMINISTERING ADEQUATE PAIN RELIEF... YET ANOTHER REASON TO GO EASY!


MAMMA MIA MOVIE: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME



ABBA: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME
fully original version
don't anna frid and agnetha look a bit like men in drag?...??



MAMA MIA MOVIE: RED NOSE DAY SPOOF



This tune is the kind of stuff I used to go E-E-Eing to. Without the tacky voiceover. And less cheesy eurotrance. More hardhouse with trance on top. Or hard Goa (late 90s Return to the Source type clubs were my favourite parties; tranced-up hardhouse was my favourite music)
shall i add a few more dance musical terms just to confuse you more if you're not into this shit? hardcore-jungle-tekno, drum & bass, speed garage, grime, deep house, trip-hop, amyl house, psy-trance, gabba, acid techno! There ya have it!!

Just another Anic Monday

ANIC SHAMANIC. NO PANIC. NOT MANIC.

I slept for hours and hours till 3am then answered Buggalugz'z commment. Buggalugz has hammies. Robohammies, like I used to until they died and went into a cardboard box.

I slept for hours and hours got up 10:41 can't tell how many hours as kept waking up when it was dark, raving in my sleep, waking up again, feeling like I was on an adventure holiday, acheing all over wondering if I'd fallen off a horse, gone skiiing where did I get all these aches and pains? What have I been doing. Oh yeah I'm "ill" people who are "sick" lie in bed so that's what I did lay in my huge hammynest.

Then I got up fully engergized so energized I couldn't keep still at the pharmacy, had to walk half a mile and come back because Methadone Bird was being slow slow. Where did I go? Alcohol shop. Then I went home. Washed me. O yeah that was before the methadone. I did the hot moving bowl of water by the door thing. Space by the door. Slow slow careful wash of entire body head to toes. I know it's not as good as showering but there is no bath and a bath gets you clean when you lie there an hour and towel down all that skin comes off. Never happens in a shower. Showers make me so bright red from all the scrubbing then it hurts. Prefer a bath, me. So I washed, did that, then DOWN THE NEEDLE EXCHANGE with one black sack full of crapparse tiny sinbins and another bag with a tower-block shaped yellow one. No-one paying attention. One pharmacist talking crap about grams and drams someone else taking a shelf apart. Spare me. I left them at the till and vanished. So done that. Needles gone. Wahay!!!

I saw Valium Marilyn as she's intent upon obtaining Valium, I said I only wanted zopiclone. I am prescribed zopiclone. Zopiclone makes me sleep. I don't WANT to abuse drugs, why the hell should i?

I felt better today than any other day. Finally I am at a level. Although my head WAS bingbongtingtonging I was able to play with it and not get sucked into it, the way it does when foot is on the accelerator: instead of wind in the hair it's into a sound-vortex. Ultra-intense. Now I'm flying high and clear. Way better than before. My body is sore but I don't care for a body.

I gotta clean something up for someone else. Doing it in my own time, not out of time. Wednesday is a big day. Wednesday I'm going away to a psycho doctor and a psycho headshrinking thing. That's my big day. Tomorrow is Clean Day.

And I'm fine. I don't want to come down down down I will only frown frown frown and be a total waste of space. Waste of time. Why don't the government kill addicts and mentally ill people? They could save a fortune in taxes? I'd vote for myself to be killed. Never mind generalizations, I'm talking about me here. I'd vote for that. Would have voted for it over methadone, any day of the week. Less EXTENDED TORMENT involved. Ah! But they want us alive and suffering, so we do ourselves. That's probably it. I'm glad the Tories are in, at least I can call them Tory Bastards, even though I HATE LABOUR MORE and would NEVER IN A ZILLION YEARS VOTE LIBDEM. I hate all politicians. I'm the archetypal floating voter. Too central. Love saying "Tory BASTARDS" not voting. If forced to I vote green (who I loathe, when I look at their jealous, sour policies whether or not they're out for saving the planets they hate people who want to be Rich and Behind High Walls (only point I can see of being rich: cut yourself off from the world). So that's my views on politics. Be rich. Pay low taxes. Give money to charity. Choose your own charity and do not be taxed. And have an NHS that is the national health service, free for all.

{If I were actually tied down and forced to vote I'd give 3 Xs before I voted green, green is a v distant "if I absolutely have to" choice politicians deserve... lots of things I won't mention here... They SHOULD INSTITUTE THE UNIVERSAL PRESCRIPITON OF INJECTABLE DIAMORPHINE TO ADDICTS for one thing...}

That's it bye!!

Music comes later.

Illustrated: tiny furry robo (roborovski) hammy; tired yawning tiger; psychedelic psycho-tiger ~ this one forgot its methadone and the pharmacy's pretending to be closed. Note the missing bottom right tooth.

Britain goes to the polls....

FINALLY I'M IN AN ELECTIONAL MOOD... and that's a good thing because...
IT'S GENERAL ELECTION DAY TODAY!... Polling stations opened early this morning and close at 10 o'clock tonight, after which votes are counted. A new prime minister (or the return of the old one) should be announced by the early hours of tomorrow morning. If David Cameron wins, he will drive to Buckingham Palace where he will ask the Queen for permission to set up a new Government. He will be installed in 10 Downing Street and the new Government will be up and running by tomorrow.

If Gordon Brown gets in again (no comment) ~ obviously not a lot changes.

But the result may well be a hung parliament, with no one party in absolute control... in which case I'm not entirely sure what happens. I think it means we'll have Gordon Brown as prime minister, but a watered-down coalition with Liberal Democrats having a say in everything, which will be interesting...

CONSERVATIVE FINAL MESSAGE
This is a paid advert on Youtube today ...
David Cameron is Eton and Oxford educated... a bit of a posh boy but the housewives loved him... (till they saw Nick Clegg: see below)



LIBERAL DEMOCRATS
theoretically central; in today's climate the most left-wing of the big three. I like Nick Clegg, but not his policies of taxing the rich (I wanna be rich!) or scrapping Britain's nukes ~ which would only lose us a place at the world's top table...



LABOUR
ruling party's "road ahead" election broadcast



UKIP (no chance of getting in, but will accrue lots of protest votes; right of centre; wants Britain out of European Union)



GREEN PARTY (another good protest vote ~ as this points out, no matter who gets in tomorrow, nothing will change...)



and I nearly forgot! (you can tell how high on my priorities this lot are...)
BNP British National Party ~ anti-immigration and the like
This audio broadcast was refused airtime by BBC Wales

OK no doggies today I promise you.

I'm TIRED. SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED ... as the saying goes. But not, unfortunately sick and tired enough.

I don't post about my own drugs very much these days because I am bored of it. If I'm bored I'm only going to be boring... so I keep my trap shut and fantasize instead about a more perfect life with a scruffy ro-ro (OK: first and only canine reference over and done with)... I have barely any veins left. My right ankle is swollen like a bowling pin. Yet still the using goes on and on and I'm just bored of it.

I have a tiny bag of gear lurking on the sideboard. There's a crisp £20 lying temptingly on the telly... and yet I've fully decided on doing Sunday drug-free. (Well, on methadone, of course, but no illicit drugs.)

"Just for today" as they say... Not that I have any sort of track record of success. But as the saying goes: if at first you don't succeed ~ try, try TRY AGAIN!

I have been desperately seeking any online resources for learning Japanese that are FREE and of GOOD QUALITY... and haven't really found any. Surely someone, somewhere has put SOMETHING up that's decent...? Oh well.

Seeing as I'm very slowly learning to read and write the language of the rising sun, I thought I'd have a look at the Japanese Bible. I had a hunch that the first word might well be the verb hajimeru, as in "hajemimashite" ~ the basic phrase you say when you meet someone. It literally means something like "let us begin"... hajimeru means to begin and ~ ta-daa! It is indeed the first word of Japanese Genesis 1:1 ("In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"... (The Japanese say hajime-ni "beginning-in", because they're Japanese and mad!))

創世記 1

1 はじめに神は天と地とを創造された。2 地は形なく、むなしく、やみが淵のおもてにあり、神の霊が水のおもてをおおっていた。

3 神は「光あれ」と言われた。すると光があった。4 神はその光を見て、良しとされた。神はその光とやみとを分けられた。5 神は光を昼と名づけ、やみを夜と名づけられた。夕となり、また朝となった。第一日である。

No of course I cannot read every word. But apart from はじめに "in the beginning" (and how hard was THAT to guess!?) I did recognize 光 "light" (let there be 光) and 一日 "the first day". Who knows? At this rate by 2016 I might be able to read the rest of it..!

POOR GORDON BROWN!

The Prime Minister is in trouble... Or at least he was on Thursday. So before this is totally old news, here's the email I sent to Vanessa Feltz the other day ~ she read it on her BBC London radio show!!

For those blessed to be continents away from the British general election, I should explain that Gordon Brown had been out canvassing when his assistant set up a conversation with an old Northern lady who appeared to be a staunch Labour supporter, so with news cameras rolling they had a short chat, only for her to burst into a tirade about Eastern European immigrants and "where did they all come from?" ("well it wasn't China!" said the witty Vanessa)... Once dragged away from this the flustered Prime Minister retreated to his car and, not realizing he was still miked up to Sky News, branded the old woman a "bigot" ~ and all media hell broke loose!


Good Morning Lovely Vanessa (she always calls us "Lovely Listeners")

What a load of rot some of your callers have been spouting this morning!

My feelings towards Gordon Brown have long been exceedingly mixed ~ as much as anything because he appears to have been so loath in the past EVER to admit to being wrong ~ as he has been so many times ~ proclaiming an end to boom bust would be a sterling example. I would have loved to hear him admit he was wrong over that one and apologize profusely...

But what has he done wrong this time?

Let off steam in the privacy of his own car? The Conservatives claim this shows "the real Gordon Brown" ~ well I say, if it does then it's all to the good. All he has done is call a bigot a bigot. What's so wrong about that?

And of course he has to say sorry IF he has caused offence. Had he branded his own comments "offensive", imagine the lovely soundbite that would have made!

PS I just realized I understood an entire Japanese sentence (OK, not a sentence, a clause ~ but I understand it all!!!:
神はその光を見て
~ it means "God saw this light". I cannot transliterate I'm afraid because I only just leared 神 is "God" when I first read this entry this evening and 光 I have long known to mean light ~ look! 光 you can see rays beaming out of the top 光光光... but I cannot for the life of me remember any of its pronunciations (most kanji have at least two very different readings that mean the same thing ~ the original Chinese pronunciation and the native Japanese word ~ It would be like drawing wavy lines and saying they read "water"... but also "aqua" as per the Latin... PPS did you know the EU has recommended (but not made compulsory) LATIN-language ingredients on chemically formulated products (where chemical names are the same across languages) like shanppoos, so instead of reading the majority ingredient as "water" in perfume etc we see "aqua"..! How international...

Cairn/Imaal Terrier, Volcano Chaos, Liberal Democrats to Win!

I MET some Scottish people I know today and they said if I get a doggie I should go for a tiny terrier... like this golden cairn terrier pictured.

I know it's really sad but I still want a dog. Even though I shouldn't really keep one.

My only problem with a small dog would be, I would want to take it walkies everywhere I go, but would be compelled to leave it tied up outside supermarkets, druggieservice appointments etc... where I would be absolutely terrified the poor thing might get STOLEN. Doggieknapping is increasingly common these days. If I could, I would like to train the tiny trotter to curl up contentedly in a backpack with the zip half drawn... but knowing my luck, right in the middle of Morrisons the little swine would get the scent of freshly roast chicken, do a bound over the glass counter and start savaging the legs of the poor Indian gentleman who works there... Ooer!



The other sort of tiny terrier I like, in fact as small dogs go this these, in looks at least, are exactly what I think is cutest, are GLEN OF IMAAL terriers. Look at these tiny trotterdonkies here!



Bear in mind, before y'all accuse me of fickleness, that I said there are THREE types of doggies I like best. 1: large wolf-like dogs (Akitas) 2: medium-sized mop-head dogs (some water dogs, Disney-style mutt dogs) and 3: tiny terriers esp. Glen of Imaal or Cairn type. So there you have it.



And now we're on to the pesky Icelandic volcano that has brought flight chaos to the entire continent of Europe. Today the Royal Navy are cruising to Calais, northern France which if you're from faraway shores I suppose you wouldn't know is the traditional sea-gateway to Britain (via Dover)... where THOUSANDS of British businessmen, tourists, hen-and-stag partiers... etc etc have trekked by hire car, train (the trains are doing great business ~ you cannot get a Eurostar seat Paris-London till Thursday earliest)... one woman on the news even claimed to have spent 2500 Euros to travel in style from southern Spain to Northern France, where she is still stuck for lack of boat space...

This is all due to an enormous, mostly invisible (by the time it gets to British airspace) cloud of volcanic dust. Civil aviation authorities insist this dust could melt inside jet engines causing jumbo jets to fail and crash... and yet British Airways' chief exec, to name just one, claims to have been on an explorotary flight two hours into the Atlantic from London Heathrow in a jumbo jet... and NO DAMAGE AT ALL... which makes me wonder what's ACTUALLY happening.

All I do know is literally 100s of 1000s of people of all nationalities are stuck all over the globe unable to return home. Weddings are having to be cancelled... exams missed. Utter chaos. Not nice.

And all down to one irritable mountain over a thousand miles away!!

Here's some lovely close-ups of the eminently pronouncable Eyjafjallajökull spewing luminous tomato soup everywhere:



This report from Russian State television (in English)





And last but not least, in the current yawnsome general election SOMETHING INTERESTING appears to be happening at last...

Over the decades, British politics has transformed from a staunch class war, with hard left/hard right at it undoing years of one another's work in successive governments to a much more American-style system where the parties vary less on a communist-capitalist basis than a newer (to us) liberal-illiberal axis... People are totally and utterly fed up with New Labour, who amongst other things actually had the cheek to pass laws allowing motorists to be fined for parking violations weeks afterwards, if local councils happen to film the unauthorized parking on CCTV. I don't know why, because I don't even drive, but this really takes the biscuit for me. The relentless harrowing away at civil liberties. The sheer ignorance and folly. I think the librarians at the local library could do a better job of running the exchequer than that lot... Then there's ~ o man I can't even remember the smarmy git's name. Him. Posh Boy's conservative mob. Nobody really likes them. Their popularity was mostly an illusion inspired by protest against the status quo... Now something amazing is happening ... the THIRD PARTY, polyglot Nick Clegg's LIBERAL DEMOCRATS ARE IN THE LEAD! If this happens it will produce the biggest change in the political landscape for generations. It will all be for the worse, of course. But hey, at least it will be DIFFERENT for a CHANGE!

I have to say I do like Nick Clegg far more than Toryboy Smarmypants (still can't remember his name... o yeah DAVID CAMERON, that's him. Gordon Brown I cannot stand, as much because he cannot bear ever to be seen to be wrong, admit a fault or say he is sorry ~ and boy does that man have a lot to apologize for ~ and even though I disagree with many of his policies ~ e.g. "tax the rich". I want to be rich, and I don't wanna pay high taxes! I do hope in a way that they get in (it will have to be a multiparty alliance type govt anyway ~ Britain's first past the post election system, where the party is divided into constituencies, you vote for your local MP (never the leader) ~ the party with the most seats rules... all this will have to change in favour of proportional representation, which leaves the former top two sweating and weak at the knees...

WOW I can't wait for election day. I know the country's going to the dogs, at least it might go to Akitas and Glen of Imaal terriers now rather than pitbulls and staffs... know what I mean..??!?

Sarah Palin's Tea Party Express on Boston Common

Mintis si Sarah Palin. Parang supot na triangulo ang ang inaasahang hatak ng tao ng nag-organized ng Tea Party Express sa Boston Common.  10K ang expected nila dadalo, ngunit tatlong libo lang ang dumating.  Kung babawasin pa ang media, curious George, Tom and Harry, mga kanong uzi at anti-Palin crowd eh baka menos dalawang libo lang ang suma total.  Syempre pa nakasiksik harapan ang mga kampon ni Palin, kaya minabuti ng Pinoy Humor na mag-concentrate na lang sa karatula ng mga asar ke Sarah. O basa na.

A Rivetting Read

I GOT A BOOK out the library and stayed up all night reading it. The author is a kind of friend of a friend of mine... hopefully soon to be Conservative MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire at the next General Election. I have watched her career with interest and wish her all the very best. Louise Bagshawe "the Judith Krantz de nos jours" Her novel Glitz: four ditzy heiresses get in trouble when their evil uncle cuts them off. The resulting fight with Thai prostitute Bai-Ling takes them into all manner of adventures ~~ how I love a good read about rich people who hate each other!

The plot reminds me of another British pop novel that had me rivetted: The Moneymakers by Harry Bingham ~ in that book the owner of a cement mixture (or something unexciting) empire dies and leaves his would-be heirs a challenge: whoever can make the most money in the space of something like five years inherits his £20 million fortune. There was a strong religious undertone in that one, e.g. the baddie's name was James Belial ~ Belial rang a bell... isn't it a demonic name? ... And when they met in a London bar named Apollyon ~ I knew for sure. Apollyon is the name of the Angel of the Abyss in Revelation ... very scary!

I just looked up Belial and it is indeed a demonic name... written up in the Bible as "the sons of the uncircumcized"... but a big character in traditional demonology (where I suspect my knowledge came from)... Wikipedia says Belial is a demonic name mentioned in II Corinthians 6:15 "can Christ and Belial agree?"... but I don't think that's where I know the name from... which is kind of spooky? I've read some weird books in my time... but where on earth would I first come across a name like that?

Well I did have a fascination in the "new age" (ie occultism and the "dark arts" for quite some years... and was drawn to read some quite eerie tomes in years past, that's all I can say on the matter...

Maybe I have sleep deprivation: it's too much cotton-rich socks, or my brains are frazzled... I'd better go and "retire" for now...!



PS Here's a photo of Louise Bagshawe: with looks like that (remember I said she was a friend of a friend ~ I've never met her ~ why on earth her publishers didn't make an inside-cover of that lovely face I've no idea...!

Illustrated: Louise Bagshawe's Glitz; Harry Bingham's The Moneymakers; Belial's mouth propped open in a demonic donkey-derby; The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic "as revealed by Israel Regardie"... which used to be my bedtime reading in one long-lost era... the beautiful Louise Bagshawe...

Ulo ng Bansa

Olrayt boys en girls, pop quiz tayo ngayon kung kilala ninyo ang mga (pang) ulo ng mga bansa sa balat ng Earth. Hindi po nanay ni Conan O'Brien yung isa jan. Ok, walang kopyahan. 50 world leaders ang huhulaan naten dito.