Evolution
Prize for the funniest thing I’ve heard anyone say for… oh, months (at least) goes to Rob Churm. It is kind of geeky I suppose but I almost pissed myself laughing.
We were watching top evolutionary biologist and all round clever Richard Dawkins on Channel 4’s Root Of All Evil explaining to people who might not have realised it yet that all religion is nothing more than an absurd delusion. And a good program it was too. Anyway…
During one sequence there was footage of some chimpanzees doing chimpanzee things in that kind of half human, half comedy way that primates behave. We were laughing at the main chimp which was covered in bald patches for no apparent reason, when Rob turned round and said:
Monkeys are MS Dos… humans are Windows 2000.
It doesn’t look very funny now that I read it but at the time I almost fell off my seat. Maybe you have to be watching a chimp when you think about it.
Jan 16, 2006 at 22:00 Filed Under: Blog Comment
It’s Your Lucky Day
Happy Friday the 13th. Enjoy it while it lasts, they don’t come around that often.
Jan 13, 2006 at 21:58 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Old Age
Today is my Dad’s birthday. Happy birthday old man!
He just turned 61. Which brings up the time honoured subject of age maths. Because I am 30. The more mathematically gifted will have it all worked out, but if, like me, numbers are to you what salt is to a slug, I’ll explain.
When I was 10, my dad was 40. So I was exactly a quarter of his age. For the last 6 months, I was 30 while he was 60. So I was exactly half his age. And, of course, if I make it to 60, and the old boy is still on the go- he’ll be 90… and I’ll be two thirds of his age.
This obviously means nothing because age maths, apart from not being an orthodox branch of mathematics (ask Stephen Hawking if you don’t believe me) is also thoroughly pointless in every other way. But still.
Jan 4, 2006 at 17:11 Filed Under: Blog Comment
The Year In Review
Hello new years day. I am very hung-over and it’s okay because so is the rest of the world. I was round at Lorna and Neil’s place lat night and then went over to the party at Nick’s. I ended up drinking etc. right through the night.
Bang goes another year.
Time for another round up of Burning Salad errata. Here are a few things that I didn’t post about at the time…
1. The moustache. Experimental facial hair that it was, I kind of liked it. So did some other people who said, Oh I like the moustache. And then when it was gone, Aw, you look good without the moustache, I never really liked it. My girlfriend was not one of these people. She hated it all along. All in all it had something like a three month run on my ugly mug. Ex-moustache, I salute thee.
2. Walking dogs. I have been walking a couple of dogs for a wee while now. My contempt for the canine is absolute. Dogs, I hate you.
3. Man buys machete. It’s true. I saw a man buying a machete. He did it really casually like he was buying a houseplant or something.
4. Pop Star Porn. In order to protect the innocent (and guilty) I’ll have to be a tad circuitous about this one… I found a magazine that belonged to a friend that had pictures of naked ladies in it. So I cut up some pictures of some people in a popular band and pasted them in said magazine in a semi-ambient fashion. Then I replaced the magazine and forgot all about it. The resulting psychological shock came a few months later.
5. Punching Pigeons. On Glasgow’s Buchanan Street you have to go down a slight slope at the top. In certain weather conditions at a certain time of day, you can find yourself walking straight into the sun as it reflects off of a lot of wet Starbucksy surfaces. There are often a lot of pigeons there too. Often they take off and fly up the street at head height- or at least my head height. On more than one occasion I’ve had to duck very quickly at the last minute to avoid what would have almost certainly been a pigeon in the face. Anyway, all of the above happened to me one day apart from the ducking part. I was in a bad mood and without thinking about it I ducked to the side and went for the airborne pest. And I caught it with a short jab at close range. The bird flapped a bit and flew away and a few people stared as if I had just spat on an old lady. I didn’t care though because it was a good shot and I had just fulfilled a long standing ambition.
Anyway, here are the full versions of the above nonsense. Remember there’s some porn here, just in case you’re at work (and you don’t work in the porn industry)…
That Moustache
DOGS
I’ve never been a dog person. Despite their unwavering obedience, loyalty and fascination with sticks, dogs are, as a species, running off into the distance of my affection for animals.
When I was too young to know any better I used to pester my parents incessantly to get a dog… ‘Get a dog’, I would say…
To which they would reply ‘No’, before explaining that dogs grow into big animals (also known as dogs) and that these big dogs would constantly hassle you for a variety of annoying dog reasons and if you ignored them this would somehow turn them into bad dogs and this was a bad thing. And what’s more, they pointed out, this would go on for years before they finally died.
It was only much later in adult life that I came to realise the benefits of never having fostered any sort of affection for the canine. They are easily the dirtiest, most annoying creatures currently in circulation. Now, I realise that this sentiment will probably single handedly alienate me from the nation’s legions of dog lovers, pet shop owners and werewolves- but I should point out right now that it is not without its foundation in experience. I am, as it happens, a dog walker. Yes, you read that right.
Every morning at around eleven o’clock, it is my duty to exercise a pair of remarkably enthusiastic yet deeply stupid black labradors. And the walk in the park is… well, not exactly a walk in the park, as they say…
Apparently bees are able to see ultra violet light which allows them to navigate by following patterns in the sky imperceptible to the human eye, and accounts for their seemingly erratic, yet somehow graceful, movement through the air. Dogs would appear to have a similar, albeit infinitely less poetic, ability. Regarding their senses, that is- thank god the bastards can’t fly.
As is well known, it is the dog’s sense of smell that sets him apart from his fellow mammals. Again, not in the respect that other animals don’t have an incredibly well honed sense of smell… it’s just that dogs are the only ones that seem to be obsessed by using it to sniff out their own species’ shit. And, like moronic bees who have kind of missed the point, they use this ability to navigate. (At least they don’t try to make honey). Walking a dog in the park is, to all intents and purposes, a giant connect-the-dots of faeces. Walking two at once is some kind of dog-shit pinball.
And so, every day I go from turd to turd as my unruly charges indulge their fixation. Often the doggie-dung has been at least partially reclaimed by the elements. (More often than not, the rain has done its best to rid the world of yet another animal crap). But they will not be deterred. They root around and sniff and dig, and then suddenly stop; Somehow having decided that it is high time they were on their way to the next canine poop.
On the way they seize the opportunity to hone their secondary skill set- namely the act of pissing. (Piss on the trees; piss on the bins; piss on each other; piss on stationary children, tramps, ducks… and when you run out of piss, go looking for more dumps until you can piss again).
And then in that small window of dog activity that doesn’t somehow revolve around what they can squeeze out of their bodies, they get to decide what actually goes in. And the consensus seems to be that anything smaller than their own heads is ideal… plastic bags, small branches, bubble gum, bike tyres, tinfoil, books…
Who knows, maybe it’s just because I’m a cat person. But I don’t really buy into that whole Cats v Dogs thing. I’ve got a sneaking feeling that my indifference for the dog and his foolish ways would remain intact supposing I was an owl person. Or a crab lover. Or a moth fanatic.
MACHETE
I saw a man buy a machete today.
There is a small shop in Glasgow famous for it’s somewhat ‘eclectic’ range of merchandise. Despite being billed as ‘Music and Electrics’, the stock consists of an array of musical equipment (of varying quality), (non-essential) electrical goods… and offensive weapons of all kinds. It really has to be seen to be believed… second-hand accordion… .22 rifle… metal detector… 8-inch serrated sheath knife… bass amp… 3-kilo crossbow… and so on. It’s like some kind of relic from a bygone surrealist age when people would cheerily kill each other with hunting knives on a matter of principle and play banjo over the corpse.
Although I am not a fan of violence unless it is being committed by paid professionals, I do own a small pen knife that I use, controversially by Glaswegian standards, for its traditional purpose of sharpening pencils. Unfortunately, despite expert workmanship worthy of the Swiss army, it had started falling to bits and so I found myself in the guns-and-guitars shop.
It’s always amusing. One day I’m going to raise the stakes and walk straight in, go right up to the counter and say, ‘Yes, I need a hand grenade please’. And then in the inevitable pregnant pause, ‘Maybe two’.
And so, there I was waiting for assistance in purchasing a replacement pen knife. And I was fully mentally rehearsed… “It only has to fit in my pocket, not up my sleeve – It really is for sharpening pencils, so no, a ninja throwing star won’t work – I’ve already got a second-hand metal detector, thanks”. Then the man came out from the back-shop and just walked past with an unidentified package under his arm. It was not the shape of musical equipment.
He proceeded to walk to the counter where he took a deep breath as casually as possible before pulling back the cover and revealing part of a very large and heavy looking machete. (No doubt all machetes are very large and heavy. Along with sharpness, those are the only features that make a machete a machete and everything else not a machete). He didn’t even get the chance to display it in all its glory because the customer just said, “That’s fine, that’s fine”, as casually as he possibly could. Some money changed hands and that was it, the transaction was complete. Apart from the security check.
The security check completely redefined the whole concept of security. By reducing it to nothing more than a mundane and easily lied-to question. The machete selling man said, ‘Just for security- what’s your name and address?’
Now, I try not to be too fast to judge a person by their appearance (I’ve got a fairly ‘cross the street’ look) but I’ll wager the machete buying man lied about his identity. He did not look like he was on his way to the amazonian jungle and needed the heavy-duty slicing implement to carve his way through the rain forest. He did, however, look like he was on his way to the end of his street with a score to settle and needed it to chop part of a person off.
The man at the counter simply wrote down the dubious information on a piece of paper and bid the nut farewell.
My turn.
‘A knife please’ … ‘Which one?’ … ‘That very small one’ … etc etc.
‘Just for security – Can I ask your name please?’
‘Certainly. Patrick Bateman’.
NAKED LADIES
Okay, before you start going on about my Photoshop skills- these images were cut and pasted the old fashioned way in real life. The purpose was to freak out [someone who shall remain nameless]. And it worked because I forgot all about it until [my anonymous victim] came across (pun intended) my small act of visual trickery a few months later. Also, it’s worth pointing out that it was never done with the intention of posting on the net. And it was done at a time when the slutty musicians in question weren’t yet in the sort of position where they could sue me if they felt like it. But, you know, what the fuck.
Seamless.
Jan 1, 2006 at 18:02 Filed Under: Blog Comment
XBoxing Day
Well, I’m home now. Christmas down south with Trish’s family was definitely more relaxing than I first imagined. Apart from the flies. We did the things the Dutch way- or maybe it’s just Trish’s family’s way, but it involved doing the whole presents thing on Christmas Eve. Present wise, the highlight for me was definitely from The ‘Grid. She gave me a big, squashy parcel that turned out to be the bath towel I left at her apartment when I was in New York at the beginning of the year! I’ve washed it you know, she said. Very amusing I thought; top marks to The ‘Grid. (I should mention that she also got me the Fight Club DVD… which I didn’t leave at her apartment).
Trish made all of her presents this year- and had far more success than I ever remember anyone else who trod the lonely home-made path having. She made me a bag for my laptop from some kind of bomb-proof fabric. And I like it. It’s a far cry from macaroni necklaces that’s for sure.
But it’s good to be home… to another mini-Christmas on Boxing Day. Mum and dad got me socks, aftershave, fifty quid that I’m not allowed to spend on booze and The Dada Almanac. Result!
Dec 26, 2005 at 22:16 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Flies Go Buzz
I’m staying in a very Christmasy gingerbread house. It is very old and thus, mostly falling to bits. And apart from that it is, in fact, so old that it was constructed in the days when people were apparently a maximum of five feet tall. And even if they weren’t, for some reason (money saving scam, religious hysteria) they made all of their doorways that size. I myself am a gangly six feet, four and a half inches tall… and so everything sharp, wooden and metal- the style of choice four hundred years ago- conveniently hovers at throat height.
Another thing that hovers a lot is the flies in our bedroom. Unseasonably mild weather- no doubt the result of western civilisation being more worried about aerosols and fridges than nature etc.- has somehow or other made it possible for a… what’s the collective noun for a lot of flies?… horde(?) of flies to hatch somewhere in the… wooden bits. Their next course of action seems to have been to come buzzing through a hole in the ceiling above our bed and form a small cloud. Seriously, there were about two hundred of the bastards… fat little bluebottles, all over excited about hatching just before Christmas in a dramatic break with bluebottle tradition.
Flies tend to get everywhere at the best of times, but let’s face it, en masse they’re pretty easily avoided. What with their tendency to mostly hang around shit, and the dead. I don’t know the best way to describe a small cloud of flies. Imagine one fly multiplied a couple of hundred time… the mid-frequency hum created by their semi-synchronised buzzings; the apparently pointless flight paths; the thought of where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing.
Trish’s uncle Onno is here for Chrimbo too, and he’s a biologist. His theory is that there’s a dead bat somewhere on the premises that could be held to account for the sudden pest invasion. But let’s face it, it’s a bat. The sort of creature that you might expect to be in cahoots with flies and maggots in the first place.
Tonight was the second wave of attack and I dealt with it exactly the same way I dealt with the first one last night. I got up on the bed with the vacuum cleaner, took aim and sucked the bastards up. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. For a start, the architectural reasoning of yore seems to be that all doorways and ceilings should be as low as humanly possible (if not lower) apart from underneath the roof where there should be more than enough room for bats and the like to roost, die and fester whilst remaining conveniently out of reach. And so I had to bounce on the bed in order to suck every last one of the antisocial insects to its Hoover-based death. I wonder what they did in the olde days. Probably ate them.
Dec 23, 2005 at 22:23 Filed Under: Blog Comment
The Ticket That Exploded
We stayed at one of Trish’s friends in Chelsea last night and made it down to the Rough Trade Chrimbo party just in time to miss the 1990s. Oh well. We’ll probably be seeing a lot more of them soon enough, no point in overdoing it.
Then this morning we had enough time to scoot around London for a while. I insisted on going to Riflemaker gallery to see an exhibition of Bill Burroughs‘ visual work. But it was closed. Even though the Time Out listing said it was due to close tomorrow. The Riflemaker man said that that happens all the time- they’re always getting the dates wrong, sorry we’re closed. We were starting to get chatting but he was having none of it and I just wasn’t in the right mood to try and talk him round… look mister, I could give you the first couple of pages of Nova Express off the top of my head right here, right now, in the street- with all the words in the right order. When I told him I was only in London for a few hours, he said, Are you going to be around in a month or so? I said, No. (Is William Burroughs?) And so I had to just peek through the window at an adding machine, some shotgun paintings and what looked like an amazing picture of Kurt Cobain. If only I could have got my hands on a rifle I might have bargained my way in. Maybe next time.
Dec 22, 2005 at 17:48 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Asleep At The Wheel
Yes, I’ve been asleep at the wheel again. Long time, no post. To tell the truth it’s been a cocktail of Xmas panic, boredom and net fatigue.
I have been a bad blogger. I feel like the blog police are going to kick my door down in the night and put me in blog jail.
I went to the Transmission Christmas party which was the last one in the current space before the council ‘help the local arts community’ by fucking everything up and turning the area into some giant cappuccino artplex. But it was a good laugh, not least because I saw Michael Wilkinson destroy part of an art christmas tree.
Then I went up north to Creiff Hydro for The Sunday Herald picture desk festive party which was a good laugh too. Once I drank my hangover away. I got drunk, laughed at acorns and played crazy golf.
And now I’m going down south for Chrimbo with Trish’s family. Which may or may not be a good laugh. But hey, it’s the festive season- and that’s just another pagan booze up with Jesus and fairy lights attached. So who cares.
We’re leaving tomorrow and I’m staying until boxing day; so if I continue to be a bad blogger, have yourselves a very merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Saturnalia or whatever it is that warms your heart and oils the wheels of capitalism for you. Otherwise I’ll post from my phone if anything unseasonally interesting happens.
* The Grid = Trish’s sister Ingrid
Dec 21, 2005 at 0:18 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Back From The Dead
I’m back. Bet you thought I was dead (as someone once said). Well, I’m not. I just took another short holiday from writing everything onto the internet. For the first time ever I’ve used the magic of technology to backpost a bit… although it’s only a few crappy photos.
Glasgow has been grey and most days my studio is too cold to work in for very long.
One recent highlight though was picking up an old M. R. James book for a quid. I checked the inside and found that it was printed in 1955. It’s fifty years old. I was impressed at first, until I realised that it’s made of paper, was printed twenty years before I was born and is in better condition than I am.
