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NOVEMBER 2006 

Watch Electra's 'DEEP SIX ' video on YouTube

 Thur 30 Nov 06 -  MGCK Music       As November fades out of the picture..

One glorious California day slips into another....

(Winter didn't really happen.)

Last Night: Finally, to see 'VOLVER'... As the film began, I thought, uh oh.. Almodovar is kidnapping us on a cultural exposé of EspaÑa, but somewhere in the middle, the story flipped on it's own axis and scurried mystically in a completely 'other' wild direction, turning the film into a complete masterpiece.  A cast of GREAT women, great female actresses (Carmen Maura stole it at the end).  The kind of meaty roles women don't get in America. (yeah yeah I know.. I'm here, I'm enjoying the sun, but they've got sunshine in Spain too.)

After that cinematic side-trip, we strolled down Mission past the Yerba Buena Gardens (no, that's not the 'good grass gardens', even though California is also a 'stoner' state!!) to the Open Auction of Photographic Art at CameraWorks (all one word, like MySPace and YouTube.) In a minute I saw a photograph I wanted, entitled, 'Brooklyn'.  Not what you'd expect, a mysterious garden path overhung with wisteria that reminded me of home in New York.

And back to the California Stoner theme, this review for 'TENACIOUS D: THE PICK OF DESTINY':
"Jack Black and Kyle Gass take audiences on a strange trip through the origin of Tenacious D and their quest for a magic guitar pick that will make them jam like Van Halen.  The movie is passable entertainment for sober audience-goers, but comic gold for anyone who is currently stoned, has been stoned in the past or spends a lot of time around stoned people.  This is the film that 'Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed' should have been. Rated R 93 minutes."  R Hartlaub

Wed 29 Nov 06 -  MGCK Music       The attack of 'bloggerhea'!!!!...

'Here's looking at ME kid!!!' 

While surfing the net, adrift on a sea of mindless, pointless weblogs (evvybody's got a weblog.  Guilty as charged!!!); another SF Chronicle journalist made another startling discovery: This is no longer the 'ME' generation.  This is the LK AT ME!!! generation; from YouTube, to MySpace.  It's all about ME, Me looking at Me, you looking at me.. us looking at me.. them looking at.. uh.. .ME!!  Andy Warhol was right. 

And with that sobering thought under my belt... I set about reviewing my position in this cultural sea.. of 'ME'. and discovered.. 

I WANT TO BREAK FREE!!!!

I Want To Break Free?'!! 28 November 2006

On a tour of duty to a local music venue (The Rockit Room), eyeing up the local talent and looking for a possible gig, I was assailed by a concept: I'm finding music and art confining.

My mind is wandering constantly to 'how freeing life would be' without that Vulcan blacksmith's hammer and anvil around my neck. As the 'Texan' once said, (pre-coitus), 'We're all being pounded on the anvil of The Lord.' [What an incredibly sexy night, in memory and de facto: He was one-quarter Cherokee, black hair, blue eyes, 6'3"!  His real name was 'Dan' but his 'Native American Name' should have been 'Five Orgasm Giver' - What a man what a man what a mighty fine man.. etc] But there's something about music and art and the constant self-POUNDING of the senses, looking for inspiration, looking for feelings, looking for outlets, looking for those who will 'look at me!!!' It's a never-ending treadmill of create, produce, make it and get it out there and tell people about it, whether they want to hear about it or not.  A never ending treadmill. 

I got a message on MySpace from my 'Acute' friend Stephen. He was alone in the studio saying, 'is there anybody out there? Won't somebody talk to ME??.'.. Now it looked to me like Stephen's life could get no more crowded (without the aid of a SONY 5-album deal!). 36,000 hits to the MySpace, successful gigs in London; women all over the UK saying, 'I can't wait 'til you're back in town'. What else could an unsigned young male musician be wanting? More attention? A 5-album deal?? But his sad hungry questing little cry got to me. Unless you're always out there pounding your message out on that hollow anvil to that hollow crowd, nobody knows you exist. The conundrum of the artist. You have to be eternally 'on tour' and on display, or nobody knows you. Especially these days when there are SO MANY FRICKIN' 'ARTISTS' out and about. Artists artists everywhere and not the time to think.

So, I'm hankering after changing my life (again!). Always fickle where my craft was concerned. Always conflicted. Always looking for the door. My sister says, 'so change your life'. Is it that easy? Do you just get on a fine horse and ride. The mountains beckon and the soul is restless. Will that be enough? Will I want more? Or will I find myself, back again, 5 years down the line, knocking on the stage door?

Anyway.... the contracts for the TWELFTH NIGHT 'VOICES in THE NIGHT' album are signed, witnessed, sealed and sent.

Mon 27 Nov 06 -  MGCK Music       We're not ALL airheads ya know...

I'm know I'm adding to the PR exercise by just mentioning her name, but as 'She Who Shall Not Be Named (after the glorious French city)' made a highly-paid public appearance in a department store in SF this week past;  one journalist has 'had enough' and summed up our cultural ills through the prism that is 'Paris':

""Now, despite her fame and good fortune, for most sentient adults, Hilton personifies the decadence of our cultural moment.  With her nightclub brawls, her endless sexcapades, her vapid interviews, her rodent-like dog and her lack of, ostensible talent, she reeks of every vice ever ascribed to our poor country.  She has become a synonym for American materialism, bad manners, greed, 'like' and 'whatever' Valley Girl inarticulateness, parochialism, arrogance, promiscuity, anti-feminism, exposed roots and navels, entitlement, cell-phone addiction, anorexia and bulimia, predilection for gas-guzzling private transportation, pornified womanhood, exhibitionism, narcissism - you name it.""

Sounds about right.  But I don't have a cell-phone addiction.. I've got a WiFi addiction.

Sat/Sun 25- 26 Nov 06 -  MGCK Music       Music in the air?? 

This weekend in SF.. a number of bands and solo artists played who seem to be everywhere at once on this planet at any given time.  Cat Power @ The Fillmore (for $30 a ticket), who seems a regular yearly touring fixture of the Edinburgh Liquid Rooms (for £7 a ticket) The rest, Black Label Society, And You Will  Know Us By The Trail of The Dead, The Lemonheads, etc.. maybe they're just in the press all the time, or in London.. but I see their names a lot.  Some are friends on MySpace.. just shows ya.  You don't have to know A-N-Y-B-O-D-Y to have friends.

So there's a plethora of gig places to go to and almost too many bands to even imagine seeing.  Some of the names that caught my eye over the weekend: Love X Nowhere, Live Human, Hans Grusel, The Fucking Ocean, Two Ton Boa, Grey Daturas, Little Bitches, The Black Spoons, Passion Killers, Pedalspeed, The Disco Biscuits, Stung, The Pine Box Boys, Aphrodesia, Les Nubians, Closet Musicians Workshop, Ride the Blinds, The Ask Dr Hall Show, (and from Scotland, must be, kinda obviously) Four Good Men (members of Simple Minds and Big Country - though which members, we don't know).  See you don't even have to leave home.  On Sunday afternoon, on my way to the supermarket, I walked past a bar on California and some band was playing a wacky racket.  They sounded LOUD and GOOD.  I almost went in, but the duty of getting dinner pre-empted that desire.

Anyway.. looks like 'winter' might be just around the corner.. a suspiciously wintry sky above the patio at dawn this morning.

followed so far, by a grey day of rain!

Fri 24 Nov 06 -  MGCK Music       On the 'not so sunny' side of the street...

A REAL PROPER GOOD OLD-FASHIONED SCRAP!

Headline in the 'San Francisco Chronicle':
THANKSGIVING DAY SHOOTOUT LEAVES 3 KILLED, 2 IN CUSTODY: Man dives from window to escape gunfire after holiday gathering turns violent: 

"The hail of gunfire and the heavy police response sparked near panic in the sprawling Keller Plaza apartment complex...  There were 9 people including a child in the third floor apartment at 5231 Telegraph Avenue...  One man and two women were killed and another man wounded in the gunfire.  Another man suffered a broken back when he leaped from the third floor window to escape the bullets."

(I'm wondering, of the three dead, one wounded, one with a broken back and two in custody.. .who's looking after the 'child', unless he's one of those taken into custody!!  Americans are wrapped tight.  Very very tight.  Keep your eyes averted and be very polite!)

Thurs 23 Nov 06 -  MGCK Music       "...Winter's different in California.."

Ocean Beach, San Francisco, Thanksgiving Day 2006

strolling down Van Ness Avenue, past City Hall and the Opera and Symphony Houses

Is that an extinct California grizzly bear in their logo... ?

Dawn on the patio with hummingbirds and the sun- kissed gold cupola of the City Hall.
(all photos © ME Nov 2006)

Tues 21 Nov 06 -  MGCK Music       "Sunshine came softly...."

A ray of light.... through the fog.  Received 3 signed copies of the contracts for the Twelfth Night album 'VOICES IN THE NIGHT'...  so yes, I will sign them, keep one, send the others... and in a couple of months the world will get a chance to hear the three songs that have lain buried for 20+ years: 'Cunning Man', 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' and ' Abacus'.  So alongside the smooth California sunshine, we have something to smile about. I hear the weather is absa-lutely ripping hell in Northern Britain.

Sat/Sun 18-19 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "Real life in Reel time...."

LAST NIGHT @ The Film Arts Foundation Open Showing: The 'DEEP SIX' video (which, by the way, looked STUNNING on the big screen, seated in a proper viewing auditorium), seemed to leave the 'film-makers' a little uneasy, maybe I was misreading them, perhaps the word is 'perplexed'.. i.e., independent film-makers don't DO music videos.. they...uhhh...DO FILM!!!! 

Of the other ten short films shown, 2 things caught my attention: 

1) 'Selling Songs of Leyte': a film by El Africa, that won The New York International Independent Film and Video Festival Short Film Award 2004 (Hey! I won their Music Festival, Alternative Rock Female Vocalist Award in 2003!) 'Sellling Songs of Leyte', was a no-voiceover documentary filmed entirely in a market square in a tiny town on a tiny Phillipine island.  The market vendors sing about their wares and sing (it's a tradition) as they count money and give change.  The twist in the piece was one charmingly greasy fellow, who we at first took to be a vendor, but who actually makes his pocket money by strolling around crooning Frank Sinatra favourites over the shoulders of the other peddlers, while they're trying to keep track of goods and moneys exchanged.  He disrupts them so badly with his Vegas tunes, they pay him to leave them alone!!!!  It was a cute twist after a gruellingly vivid visual symphony on life at the hard end of the stick.

2) 'BROKEN': a film by Bill Golliher about a man in the conflicted throes of an attention-riveting suicide attempt.  It  was a BRILLIANT piece until the director went a few frames too far (by about 3 minutes).  The film should have ended smack-bang after the scene where the guy takes the shotgun out of his mouth and blows the bad-news droning television to pieces.  

SUNDAY: Saw the new James Bond in the new/old 'Casino Royale'.  I love Daniel Craig and have done so since he played the killer priest in 'Elizabeth', so, it was a true win-win film thrill.  And in pure viewing pleasure, eye-candy terms (what a BODY HE'S GOT! and, more profoundly, what a superb actor he is), beat hell out of 'Selling Songs of Leyte' and 'Broken'.

Other things about life in Sunny Cal... Apparently nobody has a shred of patience: They've started shooting each other over the newly launched I-Box.  Christmas being too long a stretch.  And the weather?? it's 'hot'.. well for Northern California in November.  Pure t-shirt weather and glorious sunshine.  I'm not complaining.

Fri 17 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "Overheard on the journey"..."

(and, by the looks of it, the last!)

Not a gratuitous statement, but a study of american mating ritual.  I have never 'dated', preferring to simply get married, but it seems to be the norm in the land of my birth.  Then again, I wasn't born in Atlanta, Georgia!!...where this plane has landed and we've gone through the almost hysterical 'Homeland Security' rigamarole of passports out, shoes off, nothing to declare and a mad rush to pick up luggage, drop luggage off again and get onto the connecting flight for the west. All this done to an Orwellian sing-song over the public address system reminding us of our country's colour-to-terror rating.  Today was 'amber'.  I felt sorry and ashamed for the 'visitors' from other lands who had to surrender both their finger print and iris scan to the Patriot Act.  It's a spooky '1984' we're living in.

While in the departure lounge, waiting for our flight to be called (the necessary pilots still caught in another plane in another weather system over Philadelphia) and simultaneously being forewarned there would be no meal service on the journey to San Francisco, I had the pleasure to sit next to Bob Watson, an ex NY Yankee who could not hide his 1996 World Series pennant ring (nor did he want to.  The diamonds on that thing would have Paris Hilton crawling naked through muck puddles to kiss it.) I told him the story of the night in '96 when the Yankees played that fateful final game. I  had just come back from London (attempting a failed patch up with my exxing husband - you win some.. lose the rest) and was sitting in a condominium block in San Fran (full of ex-pat New Yorkers) and when the Yankees slammed that last inning, the place erupted from top floor to bottom. 

  Another thing I noticed as a lapsed american about america.. in that tiny screen on the seat back in front of me, all the people in the music videos look alike.  All the women. I can't tell the difference between a blonde Cristina Aguilera, a blond Paris Hilton or a blond Ashley Simpson.  I kid you not.  Without the earphones in, I didn't know whose video I was watching.  (Beyonce Knowles is the one with the big ass, bigger thighs and a shade darker hair!) Apparently on speaking to my indi-video-making comrade 'ALAVALA' there is a 'formula' video (we knew that - but here they write books about it) a formula face (we know that and here people get their plastic surgeons to copy it) and a formula for acceptance to air on MTV.  That's news, but you could probably guess.  You've got to have specific lighting, specific slick editing, specific this, specific expensive specifics...

Other stories on the 20-hours (with weather delays - tornado in South Carolina!) from hell.. i.e. a day and night spent in air travel.  My heart goes out to touring bands, but I guess most go the bus route.. lucky fuckers.. I would have killed for a bus ride somewhere over the Rockies.  One of the american dating ritual 'anomalies' that crossed my consciousness on this strange voyage came in tandem with another great overheard line: "Oh, I get it... moral ambiguity, the hallmark of 20th Century American fiction."  Well.. that ambiguity and, perchance, that fiction, was cracking on apace in the seat in front of me, for the 6 gruelling 'dinner-less' hours from Atlanta to SFO.  I swear they were fucking.  But the odd thing is not the 'fucking' bit, but what she told the stewardess on boarding: When questioned about putting TWO big wheely bags in the overhead bin, she said, 'I'm waiting for my brother!', and the guy in the window seat was her uncle!!!!  

So, the 'brother' arrived, a little drunk, and after making two security sweeps up and down the aisle to make sure nobody he or she knew was on the plane, climbed into the middle seat and started nuzzling his "sister's" neck.  I thought this was odd, but we were still in the deep south.  Upon takeoff they got into the full swing of the thing and she and he went at it, hammer and tongs all across the great breadth of the great U. S of A, while the 'uncle' slept in the windowseat!!...  I must describe the other anomaly; their mismatched physicality:  She, a plain-faced, remarkably  roly-poly 'where does the arse start?' kind of gal and He, a remarkably tall, well-formed George Clooney look alike.  Her airborne adventuring gives hope to big girls everywhere!!  Which reminds me of the first leg of my journey.. the flight across the Atlantic to Atlanta.  My travelling companion (seat right) was a mastodon of an English-Scottish woman (you know the type) with fore-arms you could mount a sail on.   I battled with her fleshy mass all the way across the northern skies. Which leads  me to ask: What is it with fat people?  They think they're entitled to all the cream cakes and all the space.  Fasting (for at least 3 months) should be mandatory for ALL individuals over a certain height to weight ratio, before issuing them a boarding card.  We're already trapped up there.. too many people too close for comfort.  Last thing you need is a fat bastard hogging your spare few centimetres.  And my final word to women out there, who read 'HEAT' and 'CRAP' and 'TOSSER': PLEEEEEEEEEZZZ!!!.. don't let yourself go.  Just because a couple of flip-side ex-anorexic D-list celebrities grace the cover of these magazines, displaying the new trend in spreading ass and midriff; stuffing their gobs with pork-pies and swilling lager and Babychams... please.. don't let yourself go. It's ugly and it's f*ckin' unpleasant for the rest of us - wrestling for an arm-rest, being crushed by some gorgon's lolling snoring head on my shoulder.

I guess I've made my point.  Travelling is icky.  Fat people take note.

One saving grace (after all the travails) of arrival in San Francisco: TONIGHT: DEEP SIX VIDEO being shown at Film Arts Foundation Open Screening. 7pm

Thurs 16 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "Nothing lost in TRANSITION."

Sitting in Edinburgh airport.. [they want to charge me for using their Wifi (Kapitalistiki shitskis!!!!)].. and waving BYE BYE to the beautiful cold dark north.

Heading South By Southwest.  See you all on the other side, (the sunny side) . 

bye

Tues 14 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music      "Salt Lake City RAWKS!"

If you happen to be in Salt Lake City (That's UTAH to U-all) tonight! My friend, Don Hollister, head of Direct Hit Productions and manager of SINDOLOR has a hand in this event too...  

Mon 13 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "Nothing lost in translation."

LAST NIGHT saw 'THE DEPARTED'.   If Scorcese doesn't get an Oscar for directing this film, then.. I don't know.. the Academy's fixed.  Each and every performance was A-MA-ZING!!!! Storyline borrowed from the Hong Kong thriller, 'Infernal Affairs', Scorcese's adaptation made the cultural cross-over look easy.  Nothing was lost in translation.  Great flick.

After that, my industrialist Kapitalistiku Ultimu brother-in-law treated us to nouvelle cuisine at The Smokestack in Leith.  In all... it was an absa-f*ckin-lute-ly wonderful weekend.  Makes me sad to say good-bye to them as they wing their way back to their mountaintop aerie in Espana and makes me sad to be leaving wonderful, beautiful Scotland, but I know the deepest, darkest parts of winter here, just get to me, so..  gotta go.

And Gaz Death's page... as ever.. alive and kicking... earwigmusic93-1996.moonfruit.com

Sun 12 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "Idle Assets"

On a drive yesterday across Rannoch Moor, through the ever-brooding Glencoe and down winding lanes to the port of Oban (where we had a delicious venison casserole at the sometimes dodgy, but this time ok Caledonian Hotel), my all-powerful, all-seeing, Das Kapitalistiku Ultimu brother-in-law, taught me a new phrase and reduced my entire lifetime spent seeking fun-money, music, love, endless summers, and sunsets, down to a two-word sound-byte: 'idle assets'.   For those of you who aren't sure what that means, it refers to all the stuff you've got that's NOT making you MONEY!!  That can be a field behind your house that your kids like to play in, but really should be sold off to developers so you can take that 'fluid' asset and invest it more wisely... It can be the time you spend on art, music, love, writing poetry...a horse you like to ride, which could be making you a buck racing or pulling a plow:  you name it.  If it's something that could be earning you money in another use (i.e. your time and your pets!!) and you're not 'using' it, then it's an 'idle asset'.  In that context, your kids are idle assets.  They should be up a chimney or working in the Satanic mills getting their little fingers chopped off or (if they're pretty) modelling in Vogue Bambini.  I learned a lot yesterday about the language of the industrialist and the global forces pressuring us all to be little 'Kapitalists' and 'use' every asset up - ultimately making the other guys richer and richer and richer and richer.... .

So, OK... I'm coming to DESPISE the Kapitalists (and I've always BEEN ONE!!!!!).  In our marvelous capitalist system, there's always got to be a fall guy, some poor schmuck out there somewhere in a global market.. working for absolutely NUTHIN'  to keep it all going round at the top end, to keep the other schmucks like Abramovich in yachts, Cristal and leggy runway gals...The irony of the rise of the oligarchs.  Anyway... they'll die like every other dog and I like my idle assets.. too late to apologise.. but where do we want it to go from here??

I visited FIFI J's FriendSpace today and she has this wonderful quote up there, it goes something like this:

"I hope I leave this earth as I came into it - small, bald, wrinkly, half blind, toothless and absolutely no idea how it all happened. I also hope that I embrace the afterlife as a child, and wonder at every new experience. I’m sure it’s not over."

Personally.... I hope I leave this earth in a hail of bullets, or sipping champagne on a glacier... sometime while I'm still pretty... but that's just me.  I really don't want to condemn anyone to years of looking after me in 'old baby' condition.

But if called... Yes,  I would lovingly look after someone else I loved.

Fri  10 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "Dreechit....Nae Meer!" 

I'm sorry kids, but this rainy dark slowly 'colding' weather here and now in this Far Northern State.. .(this is not THE SUNSHINE STATE!!!!) is making me so glad and happy that I'll be heading west next week; following that glorious warm fireball of our sun, in her Apollo chariot across the sky to Calif-or-Ni-A.  There is nothing that makes you want to 'go out' LESS than being hit by a force 10 gale when you step from your doorway into the street.  This general meteorological discomfort is not conducive to getting around, seeing things, meeting, greeting or making new friends and influencing people.  Why I waited all these years to do the smart thing and simply 'go somewhere else' for the winter months.. I don't know.

Anyway.. that's the plan.  Next week it's bye byes-ville.. but the Unoffishal blog will continue... carried forth to a new and shining land in the little seed pod of my laptop, across the tumbling oceans, wheat-kissed plains, Rocky Mountaintops, golden deserts, to the Pacific-licked Land where Arnie is king.

THANKING GOD (whoever he or she or they may be) for some GOOD NEWS: The TWELFTH NIGHT "VOICES IN THE NIGHT" album has been OK'd.. we're all in agreement.  Contracts went out today.

Tonight.... at THE MERCAT, Edinburgh, for those of you with thick skin and HUMONGOUS ANORAKS: MIYAGI & LAZYHAND are going to do their very diverse things.

Wed 8 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "The silver lining..,"

Looks like the democrats did OK in the States yesterday... the sun might be shining through after years of the dark.  We live in hope!  I guess it's cuz we give a shit.

-------------------------------------------------------

In the "100 WAYS TO KILL A HALF HOUR"  If-You-Don't-Give-a-Shit category:

A couple of cute things came to me yesterday from 'Friends' on MySpace.  The 1st was from actor Chris (AKA 'KOWALSKI')   who sent a list of 240 (really bad) movies with the blurb: "SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 movies, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 240 movies on this list. Put your score in header and re-post." (if you've seen THOSE movies, you DEFINITELY have no life, or no brain.) I wrote back that I'd seen maybe 24,000 movies, maybe several times each and in some ways that has been MY LIFE!!!!. It's the New Yorker "Woody Allen Syndrome" or "WAS".

The next message came from LADY ISIS: PATRON SAINT OF THE DAMNED! with the subject line, HONEY THIS MIRROR AIN'T BIG ENOUGH FOR THE TWO OF US:

Choose a band / artist and answer ONLY in titles of their songs:

1. Choose a band/Artist:   
2. Are you male or female: 
3. Describe yourself: 
4. How do some people feel about you: 
5. How do you feel about yourself: 
6. Describe your ex boyfriend / girlfriend: 
7. Describe wanted/current boyfriend / girlfriend/ spouse: 
8. Describe where you want to be: 
9. Describe how you live: 
10. Describe how you love: 
11. What would you ask for if you had just one wish: 
12. Share a few words of Wisdom:

I wrote back to Lady Isis and asked if he could please gently 'tweak' the questions so I could answer them ALL with the song title: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath!

And I didn't get to The Stand last night.. don't ask me why.... I think it was raining.

Tues 7  November: HOPE ETERNAL @ The Stand doors 8pm

Mid term elections in the US.  I've already sent in my absentee ballot.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Sun 5 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "Something to test your belief systems'

In a casual, non-committal fashion, I access a 'personalised horoscope' on a weekly basis.  While listening to my 'week ending 4 November', the horoscopist gave a general reading for the month of November's planetary activity and it's 'likelihoods' for all.  Due to the sudden arrival of a 'new' comet in the sky, the horoscopist predicted 'the death of an elderly head of state', which would effect an enormous change in values held and honoured, and traditions obeyed.  This news kind of sirened in my ear a few days ago and then came back with a bang when I turned on BBC 24-hour news this morning and watched the live (with a 20-minute delay) sentencing to death-by-hanging of Saddam Hussein.. who all the while stood there, defiant as fuck, giving a big, giant FINGER to the running dogs of the american imperialists who were passing judgment on him.  I will not enter the territory here of passing judgment or opinion on Saddam Hussein.  It's a complicated situation.  He's a bad egg, but he shines like a crazy diamond.  He's a creation of the Americans (George Bush Sr, and Rumsfeld made the man), yet they've captured him and handed him over to his 'own people', the ones who didn't like the cut of his jib.  He's like an insanely charismatic Rockstar, gone WAY TOO gruesomely FAR with live executions at Madison Square Garden and buried all his victims in mass graves in Central Park.  (Even Mick Jagger couldn't get away with it).  With his passing a whole lotta change is going to come crashing up or down.  We'll see how the wind blows.  It also makes me wonder on an observation of life and human essence: i.e.

Why are the maniacs, the tyrants, the thrill seekers and power-mongers the ones who look so good for their age??? While the quiet nice little people who lead quiet nice little lives in quiet nice little houses raising nice little kids (maybe not quiet), age badly, becoming increasingly soft, fat, grey and sedentary in front of their collective sedative TV's??? I mean really.... why DO the shitcans, live forever???  Maybe because they ALWAYS desperately GIVE A SHIT! about whatever it is.  The day you no longer give a shit, is the day you no longer have any value and are just taking up space.

Enough of that.. here's another political moment.  A brilliant video clip produced by ALAVALA of Bill Clinton at the Democratic Conference 2006, called 'The 600 Year Old Trick'..   I've read my Machiavelli.  Have you?

and no.. we didn't go to Argyll this weekend.

Thurs 2 Nov 2006  -  MGCK Music       "YES.. it was a Perfect Day..."

TODAY was a PERFECT Day... I was certain all was right with the world, (unless you're a junkie, have cancer or love someone who does; are married to an alcoholic, or eak out a globally ignored life in sub-saharan Africa).

So with those distinctions and sad possibilities out of the way, I can say, at least,  it was a perfect day for me.  Contracts sent for final review to the Twelfth Night people and Cyclops Records - a gig secured for Feb at The Half Moon Club Putney (contracts in the post) and G THE SUN G  was BLAZING in a gloriously autumnal sparkle.  A beautiful entry into November.  Still haven't figured out whether this blog will migrate to a MySpace in mid-month or carry on from this page or move over to the US RenegadeRaydio site (possibly all three), as we will be 'leaving.. on a jet plane.. don't know when I'll be back again...' CO² emissions and all... guilt grips me.

and last but not least.. it's another party in Argyll this weekend: (guilt grips me again)  Kenny Brady will be playing @ The Galley in Ardfern along with a bunch of other people in a ceilidh atmosphere.  What's the point of being in Scotland if you don't experience these vibes?

So, yes, it was a perfect day.... 

But Oh Boy TONIGHT!!!

Tonight I watched 'Question Time' and, even before they open their mouths, the first thing you notice about 'the panel' and that Dimbleby whore,  is their teeny tiny small specky bits of glasses perched on their noses.  It looks like a meeting of accountants, OR, the Porridge eating Taliban at a John Knox seminar on how to identify and burn witches!!  Their choice of discussion material was: 

1) 'Are global warming and other ecological disasters something to take note of?  Should the public be asked to 'sacrifice' their lifestyle in light of what are as yet 'unproven' facts?, 

2) 'Are we living in a surveillance society, and, if so, is that a bad thing?'  

3) and what was the last mad topic...hmmm let me think.. ID cards, medical records.. 'this is the modern technological world we live in don't you know??'  Muslims burning British flags, Americans burning British flags.. 'Gaunty' on Talk Sport in the morning.. I'm mixing my metaphors and my Talibany-types are as interchangeable as target silhouettes in an FBI rifle range (if only!!!! where IS the FBI when you really need them???!!!), but what I'm trying to get at, indelicately and as gracelessly as a 3-legged mongrel pirhouetting through a doggy 'Swan Lake' is .. I think.. 

The AUDIENCE is as BAD as the PRESENTERS!!!!!!!!

JM put it succinctly at 5am this morning when he came to bed and we had our normal confab and run down of the previous days events,  He said it more 'perfectly', but it was kinda like this:  

""Everybody wants to be rich, (and/or make more money) and so, everybody wants to comply with whatever rules and regulations they are promised will allow them to achieve that.""

The bland acceptance of constant, invasive 'Surveillance',  ID Cards, more laws and civil restrictions in place, the deferring of obvious reality where climate change and other ecological disasters are concerned.

People out there.. You are ALL FULL of SHITE!!!!! You are a bunch of frightened, desperate, greedy PIGS with your snouts in the trough and eyes in the back of your fat asses thinking someone else wants a piece of your pie.  I wish the FBI (or some other mythological BAD BOY) would put your photos up in the Post Office, track you all down and blow you to smithereens!!!!  YOU ARE THE CRIMINALS!

Welcome to November. 

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So.. You think you know everything????

ONE MILLION WAYS TO DIE without the help of the FBI!!:  http://quinnell.us/society/deviance/death/index.html

Horoscope for November: Haven't decided who the lucky sign is yet.

If you're looking for LAST MONTH's stuff : go to Last month's blog: OCTOBER 06

Still smokin'!!!!

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  BE THERE...... or BE SOMEWHERE ELSE!  If you don't know how.. take lessons on COUNTERCULTURE.

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SPACE: The FINAL FRONTIER! Always an eyeful: The Universe Today

Sites worth a visit and support are: http://www.adbusters.org and Be an 'Antipreneur' - anti-corporate - self-motivated activist: http://adbusters.org/metas/politico/antipreneur/

http://www.indymedia.org.uk

as always www.clearchannelsucks.net  (note: this site WAS closed down in a court battle with the Media Giant who got awarded the rights to the website name.. but it has sprung up again in an Appeal.. gripping stuff..

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