Michael Weston King

Last night was ace. Went to see Michael Weston-King with the gilly of the woo. He and the support (Nick Hall) played great sets. I especially enjoyed myself as well, when I noticed "Paul who dresses to the left". MWK played "It will end in tears" and it nearly did, what an emotive song! Gill managed not to embarrass herself by going up and gibbering at him like a 'fangurl twat'(her words!) . Nick Hall was good too - gill was particularly interested to hear him do a song called "the house carpenter" which is a staple of the handsome family. It was a good version as was his cover of Dylan's "John Brown".

Also got chatting to a girl in the loos who has started up an alt folk, alt country americana night at Santiagos called the hee haw sessions, she's trying to get The Handsome Family over in June to play the brudenell social club. Which would be amazing! Me, gilly and Fox are going t try and get to the next hee haw - which is in May.

I've just discovered tonight that a pub apx a mile away(The Owl in Rodley) is running live music/folky nights on friday and saturday and serving food and real ale, I can see me getting down there more often :).

Folk music can be very life affirming.

chicken licken moment

Yup, the earth moved whilst I was watching a programme on Eunuchs.

At first I thought it was my fridge rattling BADLY, then I freaked out and nearly ran outside so nothing could break and fall on my head! I was going to put a comment on the BBC website but realised the 'it's like waking up on the bouncy dancefloor at the Ritz(Manchester) whilst goths are doing a conga dance' was a bit retarded.

That's my earthquake cherry well and truly popped then!

*sigh*

Nite x

Seventh Tree

The new Goldfrapp album isn't out until Monday, but if you are liking a bit of Alison and Will, the full album can be previewed on Myspace ...

http://www.myspace.com/goldfrapp

I'm liking it lots, its less glam rock than Supernature and Black Cherry. It does smack of English folkoid eccentricity and reminds me of the mellower times up Felt Mountain, the first album. Grown-up lullaby's for interesting times. I'm loving how Alisons vocal style is becoming increasingly Kate Bush-ey in some parts and Liz Fraser-ey in other parts.

I started making a list of consonants that were omitted from each Liz's and Alisons vocal style at points then discarded it as too nerdy ;)

I'm also (eBay) bidding on a Goldfrapp ticket for Manchester in June. Fingers crossed :)

Upcoming Shows

( view all )

4 Mar 2008 19:00	Union Chapel	London, London and South East
12 Apr 2008 19:00	Motel Mozaique	Rotterdam
16 Apr 2008 19:00	Casino de Paris	Paris
18 Apr 2008 19:00	Royal Festival Hall	London
21 Jun 2008 20:00	De Le Warr Pavilion	Bexhill-on-Sea, South
22 Jun 2008 20:00	Birmingham Symphony Hall	Birmingham, Midlands
23 Jun 2008 20:00	Bridgewater Hall	Manchester, Northwest
25 Jun 2008 19:00	Royal Albert Hall	London, London and South East
30 Jun 2008 20:00	Glasgow Royal Concert Hall	Glasgow, Scotland
1 Jul 2008 20:00	Sage Gateshead	Gateshead, Northeast

One night without my mental health meds and feeling as lonely and blue as they come. I feel paranoid and disgusting and disgusted too. I got dressed up and made up tonight as I was determined to do something and now I'm just a sobbing mascara-streaked heap. I'm lonely for a reason and this anxiety-ridden boring persona i s i t.

Ride of the ValKyrie

Firstly I have to apologise to people for not keeping up with comments and other peoples blogs, I'm lazy and have had less time what with going back to work and attempting to maintain 'a life' ! Here's hoping you're all well.

TMI...Just had the delight that is a cervical smear, a clear thyroid test and a request for a fasting blood sugar test as my results were borderline(diabetes). I have suddenly developed a stinking cold and am heading for the 8th hour of a nosebleed, so am back to bed in a moment. Had a bit of a bizarre conversation about my pubes with nurse whilst spread eagled. P'raps I startled her by having the Kojak cunt hair do! I guess possibly the only vaguely appropriate time to discuss cunny outside of childbirth. We swapped razor stories. I love it when they say 'just relax'... you're about to shove a cold metal duck up me and scrape my fucking cervix, how's the fucks's that related to relaxing?!


Wendyhouse was a ball, I wore Viking horns, and it looks like I'm paying for the hedonism, right now! Took along networm and stripey who both seemed to have a great night and lots of Mutate dancing. was great to see Noddy, Pippin, gillywoo , jettblackuk , sturmed, Kinga, blondelass ( ;-) ),big_daz, Trish, Andy Mac, sarah_orange, Phono Rich, and Linzi oh and some people young enough to be my children! Oh and the horn(s) suited glennkenobi.

Had a bit of a ball at home with some laughing gas also...

Am going back to Whitby Golf Weekend in April, have sorted a cottage with Mike and Linzi YAY!

Here's Beth Ditto and Jarvis Cocker performing 'Temptation'

Whip My Roman Sex Gods

You want the true Valentine's Day? Forget roses and candy, sweetheart, and kneel before the Lupercalia

By Mark Morford

Friday, February 14, 2003

Hot pagan sex and lustful gods and ancient wolf goddesses and potential marriage and more sex and more than a little crazed giddy divine animal blood sacrifice.

All followed by some nice light whippings administered by nearly naked grinning boy-men, casual flagellations by goat-skin, some joyful thrashing in the name of fertility and purity and, you know, sex. Ahh, Valentine's Day.

The original, that is. Before it was called Valentine's Day, back when it was called Lupercalia, a big Roman festival in honor of the fertility god Lupercus, before the ever-scowlin' church got a hold of this ancient and rather odd and blood-pumped Roman lust-fest, co-opted it and de-sexed it stripped it of its more salacious and admittedly libertine joys, as the church is so tragically wont to do.

Because as everyone knows, the church is nothing if not all about rigid joyless dogma and romantic abstinence and mountains of little chalky candy hearts. Mmm, sanctimoniousness.

Tried to convert it into a mildly consecrated (read: bland, not naked) day, the church did, "Christianize" that naughty pagan fest, and failing that because no way are you gonna trump ancient sex and lust with uptight chastity and faux-purity, they tossed in Saint Valentine to the mix, invented some nice legend, tried to turn this most funky of pagan holidays into an homage to saccharine romantic love and cherry nougat chocolates and Hallmark schmalz. Did they succeed? Sort of.

Basically, it went something like this: In ancient Rome, on the 15th of February, in an altar called the Luperci sacred to the god Lupercus, in a cave in which the she-wolf goddess nursed founding twins Romulus and Remus, Luperci priests gathered and sacrificed goats and young dogs, the former for strength, the latter for purification and in honor of their strong sexual instinct and because it was a fertility diety and this is just what you did if you were a happy pagan citizen a couple thousand years ago.

Some hunky boys of noble birth were then led to the shrine, where the priests would dab their foreheads with a sword dipped in the animal blood, after which our baffled youths were apparently obliged to break out into a shout of purifying laughter because that's what the rite called for and no one is quite sure why and, well, wouldn't you?

Then, a feast. Meat. Wine galore. Followed by the slicing of goat skins into pieces, some of which the priests cut into strips and dipped in the blood and then handed to the boys, who would take off and run through the streets, gently touching or lashing crops and bystanders -- especially women -- with the skins along the way to inspire fertility and harvest and because hey, half-naked laughing boys wielding bloody goat skins ‚- what's not to love?

Actually, the women eagerly stepped forward to be so stroked, believing that such a blessing rendered them fertile (even if they were sterile), and procured them ease in childbearing, and made them look all gothy and cool and sexy.

"This act of running about with thongs of goat-skin was a symbolic purification of land and men," says one rather dry, scholarly website on the topic. "For the words by which this act is designated are februare and lustrare, and the goat-skin itself was called februum, the month in which it occurred Februarius, and the god himself Februus." So, you know, there you go. February. Purity and lust and sex and gods. Really, what else do you need?

Then came the sex lottery. Oh yes. Say it like you mean it. Pretty much only have to say the words, "sex lottery," and already you're like, damn, count me in, sure beats dinner and a movie.

And all the young lasses in the city would place their names in a large urn, and the city's eligible bachelors would choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman, oftening resulting in marriage. You know, sort of like the Mormons. Only with actual sex. And booze. And without the creepy undergarments.

But if there's one thing the sexless butt-clenched church really hates, it's sex lotteries. And free thinking. And good porn. Condoms. Margarita enemas. Literature. But especially sex lotteries. Go figure.

So along comes Pope Gelasius around 486 A.D. and declares, let's say, oh, February 14 to be dedicated to a saint, and we'll call him Saint Valentine, who might or might not be an actual martyr whose true history is murky at best, given how church records show at least four martyrs with the name Valentinus, whoops, oh well.

And of course, they outlawed the yummy sex lotto, the church did, changed the names in the urn from lusty single women to the names of pious saints to be emulated, whee what fun, and jammed their new holiday right up against the February 15 date of Lupercalia.

Which also had the added bonus of stomping all over the normal February 14 day of honoring Juno (Roman Goddess-A festival said to be of Juno Februata or Juno Februa, who presented an aspect of the Roman Lupercalia as a festival of a "Juno Februata", under the heading of February 14:), and focused it all on the makeshift Valentine, and voila, here we are: Hallmark cards and candy hearts and poisoned Ecuadorian rose workers. In a nutshell.

But of course, the modern V-Day isn't all bad. And this is not to say we should necessarily return to the old ways, a little bloodletting and lashing and animal sacrifice and random sex lotteries. Except for maybe the Mormons.

Because everyone knowns that right under the cheap veneer of Valentine's Day mega-marketing and hollow churchly romance is yet another delicious excuse to have more sex and indulge in fleshly pleasures and lick chocolate syrup off your lover's tailbone. Hopefully.

In other words, the church both succeeded in their hostile takeover, and failed miserably. Sure Valentine's Day is all romance and sentiment and Malaysian-made stuffed teddy bears on the outside, but it's all raw oysters and sly spankings and salacious romps and whipped-creamed nipples and soft divine bedroom cooing, inside.

Which is exactly as it should be. Which is exactly how we still, without even realizing it, manage to recall our delicious Lupercalia, take a big lick of ye olde pagan ways, regardless of everpresent churchly frowning and 'Be Mine' twittering and chubby Cupid chinz. Deep earthly sex and hoary gods and fertile lust and voluminous feasts of meat and wine? You're soaking in it.

Because it's always good to know where your manufactured holidays really come from. Always healthy to pay homage to the true origins, realize how much calculated deceit has happened along the way. Just like Christmas and Easter and Halloween and any major holiday worth mentioning that the church gutted and renamed and from whose moist tremulous soul they tried to suck the pithy throbbing joy, ya gotta give props to the old gods, throw a karmic kiss to Lupercus and Juno and the she-wolf. Word.

So. Buy those giant red balloons from Safeway. Nab that $29 heart-shaped diamelle necklace from the Shane Company. But don't forget to acknowledge that deep-down, gnawing, sly urge you're doubtlessly harboring to rush out into the streets and wait for the laughing naked boys and get yourself gently lashed with bloody goat skins and then go have sex. Just like the pagan lust-monkey you so wish to be. You go, Lupercus.

Although I wouldn't normally pen myself as a musicals type of person, I found Sweeney Todd thoroughly enjoyable... and it was nice to see someones elses blood spilling for a change! I also had urges to break into song, namley, Grimly Fiendish.

Behold!

Selected highlights from an amusing memo sent to me from a dating site!!!:

"Looking at your profile and reading between the lines you are a very very experienced person. May I tell you where I am and therefore ask you some advice. I am wondering what to do. I have just returned from a two month trip round Africa which I went on to try and descover myself but alll I have found is that I have returned the same person and perhaps what I seek is a different and more spiritual/pagan journey based in Domination/submission. In many ways my ideal would be to meet a Domme pagan witch ho who would be interested in being my pimp and using me to make money for her."

..... frankly I'm speechless (through laughing) I'll bet being a Domme pagan witch ho pimp would be more beguiling than the tedious spinster I am!!!! I ate pancakes and watched tv with my parents tonight, just think I could be pimping out the ass I beat with birch twigs whilst wearing a kaftan(for pagan reality Domme mode)!!!

Bacon butty anyone?

ether-eal

I'm really enjoying The Cider House Rules at the mo, John Irving rocks. I wish my friend hadn't let slip 'that he dies of an ether overdose'! I've still another 200 pages to go!

good vibrations

The sans Amitriptyline is going ok, I've not fallen into the pit of despairing thoughts and self harm, and I'm keeping the moods stable with Risperidone. And I'm sleeping a bit less (well apx 4/5 hrs less a night) :) which was the outcome I was after.I'm going to re-introduce a maintenance dose of Amitrip (10mgs) for the pain associated with haemophilic arthropathy, but as I suspected it was contributing to my sleep problems, negatively.

I feel a world away from last 5th February which was the date of my AV fistula op and overwhelming medical fears that were imminent and the full-blown depressive episode I was mainlining.

My AV fistula (vibrating arm) is one today, I think we'll have pancakes and ketchup (and a shot of Factor VIII) at tea to celebrate!

burger me

swiped off John



take the WHAT BAD BOOK ARE YOU test.




Anyway I've flunked out early, I'm sober as a judge, though that appears a bad anomaly, hard house=felch.

It's a blue, bright blue Saturday

Christ, I drank a litre of voddy last night and had some snow. I cannot remember people leaving or conversations but apparently I didn't pass out and was lucid when they left?!? Apparently I've invited people round tonight, which I have no recollection of?!? This memory hole is officially a bad thing. I'm a fucking waster. I love getting wasted/wreck/smashed, officially I should list it as a hobby: mass chemically induced escapism! Why also do hangovers make one obscenely horny?! Anywhere they'll be here at 8pm so I'd better start clearing up. There may be pills at work ;). *edit* it's worse than I imagined I've commited myself to going to an all-night rave tonight, and offered to cook everyone roast dinner on sunday!


This song summises quite neatly my 2007. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever not miss him.


It's a blue, bright blue Saturday, hey hey
And the pain is starting to slip away, hey hey

I'm in a backless dress on a pastel ward that's shining
Think I wan't you still
But there may be pills at work

Do you really wanna know how I was dancing on the floor?
I was trying to fool you when I'm crawling up the door
And theres a tune at things you say that you don't do
Why don't you ring?

I was feeling lonely, feeling blue
Feeling like I needed you
Like I'm woken up surrounded by me, a & e

It's a blue, bright blue Saturday, hey hey
And the pain is starting to slip away, hey hey

I'm in a backless dress on a pastel ward that's shining
Think I wan't you still
But there may be pills at work

How did I get to accident - emergency?
All I wanted was you to take me out, high
And I was feeling lonely, feeling blue
Feeling like I needed you
Like I hoped you'd call and hoped you'd see me, a & e