00:09 14/08/2003 Check this Who coulda thunk of it Who coulda thunk of it. Emo core. Not a bad idea at all. Where else could a welsh guy who looks like your tempestuous younger cousin scream the lines "my heart breaks and spills" in a voice like glen benton with particularly nasty haemherroids? What am i on about? The original version of Juneau (namely the one with the screaming, before the man with the cigar said "i like what youse got boysh, lesh try that one again with the drummersh vocals turned down". And for what? a fucking neutering of a true classic) by Funeral For A Friend (they even swung an elton john reference in there, bless 'em). Here's a song with real balls, and real emotion in manageable bites (meaning none of this "bludgeoning shit that's so popular with the likes of From Autumn To Ashes, and none of the full on pussy indie shit that seems to pass for emo these days - yes Jade Tree, i'm looking at you), it doesn't jade you, it just rocks you to fuck. A song that you can kick some ass to live, and sit and listen to at home. Proper good music for people like me who live in the middle of fucking nowhere. Sure, autumn to ashes are a great live band, but who the hell could sit and listen to an album of that shit? And why the hell would anyone go to see godspeed live when they could sit at home and read a book to it, or smoke a doob, or go through the dictionary counting the number of words that end in the letter e. Ok, so i'm not a huge godspeed fan, but who in the hell wants to go out for a night, pay their money on the door, buy some overprices drinks and effectively listen to Brian Enoesque soundscapes for an hour? Yeah, you're gonna have a rockin night! I remember seeing Mogwai two years ago in leeds and by the end of the gig, people were asleep on the floor. I missed much of the set, there was too much rocking to be done with rocket from the crypt in the next tent, but a friend told me they played about six damn songs! In an hour! No wonder those people were asleep! If you don't like the song you've ten minutes to kill, may aswell catch up on some downtime. But i digress. Funeral For A Friend. I know i've mentioned before how amazed i was at seeing MTV2 playing Cradle Of Filth at one in the afternoon (afternoon? Sorry morning, i get confused you see), and i know they've shifted a little more in line with conventional standards of late, but it has to be said, without MTV2, FFAF would be playing to twenty sweaty guys in iron maiden tshirts in king tut's wah wah hut until they're forty. But give them another year and it'll be the brixton. Madness i tells yeah.

14:51 10/08/2003 Christ Memoirs of a photoshop wage slave. Memoirs of a photoshop wage slave. Just came across this little beauty (roll your mouse over the image to see what i'm really talking about). Isn't it crazy that the images we see every day have been so thoroughly sanitized. This woman is actually quite good looking, though perhaps older than (i imagine) the target audience? So what. Imagine being that woman, you score this big contract, you go for your shoot, you tell all your friends, and then... This apropriation of your image appears in the ads. Unless you're pretty damn self deluded you're gonna be pretty pissed off! What does it say about us that people have to be so mercilessly reworked to be made palatable? I think this kind of thing really fucks people up, not those involved, but those it's aimed at. it gives women an impossible (literally) standard to live up to, and men an image of a woman that is unattainable, because it doesn't exist. But you'll still find people measuring women against this, and ultimately losing out because the girl in the original picture doesn't match up to her photoshopped partner. Last summer i worked for a photographer in long island, mainly photoshopping images fresh from the scanner to correct colors and fix the borders and whatnot. But occasionaly there was a head shot of some client, or a wedding shot that needed to be... Improved. I remember one instance when i spent a week making an entire wedding pary appear as if it hadn't been out on the piss the night before, which it had. Bags under eyes, indiscretionate stares and impolitely placed hands, for a fuckin week. Man. I remember one instance where i actually had to take a woman out of several photos because she had fallen out with the family. How fucked up is that? My boss last summer also had several industry magazines, which dealt with the process of conducting shoots with mainstream persona, such as models, actresses, and the simply famous. One such instance was a beautiful actress by the name of alicia silverstone. The article showed the print that had been chosen as the cover shot, whih had been blown up, and had the art director's pen smeared all over it, marking out wrinkles to be removed, hair color to be changed, a waste tuck here, a breast enlargement there... And what was once a beautiful and natural girl (and i don't mean that in a fat and wrinkly sense) and, basicly, an attainable girl, became an airbrushed pean to perfection, a goddess beyond the realms of mortal man. What the fuck? Why? Who cares if she looks like perfection, she's only trying to sell herself! I dunno, i can't figure out myself where i'm going with this, i think i've rammed my point home. This kinda business furthers an image of women that most don't measure up to, so then i ask, why create this image?

01:09 09/08/2003 Hi there No Title. No Title. Yeah, as per usual i lie. Christ, i wonder if anyone reads this thing anymore. I know i don't. Its weird, you get older and you get outta habits that once seemed so damn important. Like for me, writing's not so much no longer a priority, as no longer an activity. This is probably the first time i've done any writing in over a year. I think i can safely chalk that down to one thing though. Getting paid. Yep, for a year or so there i was doing all my money for the folks over at cash money magazine (or Blast magaine to themselves). Lemmie tell ya, i'm best part of eight months out of their care officially, and i still don't seem to have rid my pores of that grime. You try interviewing Propagandhi with a 50 year old capitalist motherfucker breathing down your neck, see how far you get. In the end, i didn't. Like a monkey in a cheap suit i bought into my own bullshit and all but slicked back my hair like a mini fucking Martin Geko. At some point i think you wake up to yourself and say "fuck this, i didn't start writing so i could get free passes, i didn't start writing so i could have a beer with some poxy fuckin band, i did it cos i wanted to say 'fuck you, your record stinks' and shove that pile of shit straight back in their faces". Cos let's face a few home truths here, 99% of albums that come out today reek of bullshit. And don't buy into the punk rock party line of "oh those majors sell all these albums with one good songs and eleven stinkers" cos y'know what? They do it too. How many times have you shelled out for some album on the basis of a compilation track and found it to be one great song and eleven stinkers? Ever get the feeling you've been cheated. Not to say i'm taking a stand for the majors here. It's one in the morning, i've had three hours sleep in about three days, so i'm gonna ramble and if you don't like it, go search for weapons of mass destruction on google. Now i'd love to sit here and say (type?) that i'm gonna fix up this site and get me a dot com and do a fancy design and all that shit i've been promising for about two years, but the fact is, i can't promise it. Too much on my plate, not enough in my pocket, and those two shits i gave about this site flew off in the wind quite some time ago. Does that mean this place is dead? No, it means i'm not making promises i can't keep anymore. I'm hoping i get off my arse and do something creative some time soon, but my guitar's missing a string, my pen's out of ink, and i can't paint for shit. So for now, it all stays upstairs, but maybe, and again, i'm hoping, i'll so something, and get this site back to what it was (what it was? The fuck was that?). But for now, i'm making no damn promises.