Is There Anybody Out There?

Okay, I gotta know, is anybody reading this blog apart from friends? If you are drop me an email and tell me what you think.

the George W. Bush Top 40

and we're not talking pop music here. Steve Perry, of BushWars fame, has compiled a list of the top 40 items of bullshit shat out of George's mouth. Another link shamelessly stolen from Dr Menlo, this time from his American Samzidat blog. Ah, second hand linkage....

Beware the Newspeak

Language is a major tool of manipulation and propaganda. The words chosen by the zombifying mass-media to describe the enemy of the month produce negative connotations in the minds of sheep-like masses. One man's terrorist (guess which man I'm talking about) is anothers Freedom Fighter. Here's a handy list of definitions to help to cut a path through the bullshit, the link comes courtesy of Dr Menlo, who makes some interesting points concerning the article on his blog.

Can Poetry Matter?

I found this very inciteful essay by Dana Gioia, whoever he is, some literary critic it would seem. It's america-centric, but what he says rings true for the British poetry scene too, at least, as far as I'm concerned. I first got involved with the Cardiff poetry scene a couple of years ago, after joining a now defunct writers group called 'vicious circle'. Here, I befriended Matt Dalby and Sacha Karaulov. I learnt some important lessons at that group, one of which being that most so-called poets write shite, sentimental shite at that, or cheap wordsworth knockoffs, or rhymey crap (nothing wrong with rhyming in poetry, I hasten to add, but if done badly it makes you cringe). Since then I have had a healthy contempt for anyone calling themselves a poet, until proven otherwise (for example, by reading their work and discovering that they really are a poet).

*** Anecdote ***

Last year I attended a poetry event put on by The Red Poets Society, a group of marxist "poets" (they have no official site, the link is to one of the members personal homepage) to launch the latest issue of their magazine - what followed was a diluge of self-congratulatory "poetry" that filled me up with loathing, bored me to tears, and inspired me to pen a piece right on the spot in protest, which i performed open mic at the end, read in a slow bored drawl. This one instance did much to reinforce my belief that anybody calling themselves a poet is an inbred (not actually inbred, read the Dana Gioia article and you'll know what I mean) wanker lacking in talent. You can find the piece in question below.

Dana Gioia Online - Can Poetry Matter?

+ today is tuesday +

I got up
ate cocopops
watched the moomins.
I had an epithany
it wasn't very good.

I went into town.

Met God on a street corner
we went to a pub to talk.
"I'm so misunderstood!"
I smile and nod.
I gave him my last £5 and went to the park.

The marxists were out, trying to indoctrinate anonymous masses
I sat under a tree and counted blades of grass.

then I went home
then I ate
then I slept.

(c) Adam Cheshire, 2002

singing in the rain

I'm all filled up with love and horniness and caffiene. Met Jade in the library, she was revising for her driving theory test. I flicked through a book on cult fiction while I waited for her to finish the little self-test she was doing then we went to find somewhere to have coffee/tea. It was raining, desperate rain, filling people up with irritation and anger, me included. We missioned around looking for somewhere, with me getting more and more annoyed with humanity. Some townie started on me, the ol' dirty mosher routine that I've heard so many times before. I wanted to headbutt the cunt, throw him up against a store window and cave his skull in with my fist, but didn't. I gave him a look and he just said "Oh, don't look at me like that, I'll fuck you up." - I nearly snapped right then but showed quite remarkable self-control. If Jade hadn't of been there to ground me...

We decided to go to this canteen called "Baker's Oven" - because it would be cheaper than a coffee-house. We got there and then she realised she didn't have any money... We would have to go to the bank. Then, all of a sudden she spotted Sion gliding towards us, in that way he does. He'd been to the job-centre to make an appointment for signing on for job seekers allowance. It's about time, he's been broke for so long he's starting to lose his mind. I asked him if he cared to join us but he was on a mission from god or something, going to some career advice place about getting his novel published. We said goodbye, did a funky little handshake thing, and off he glided again.

We're such fucking hipsters, it's kinda pathetic.

Jade devised an action plan, she's good at that. We would head up to Queen Street (zoomable pannable map of Cardiff City Centre) where she could go to the bank, then go to the Madisons Coffeehouse which was upstairs in the Capital Centre, the dark and dingy one. Perfect. She had a pot of earl grey and I had a large double-shot latte. We saw our friend PJ there, we hadn't really seen him for like 4 months, he just hadn't been around the usual haunts. We talked about books and fashion and relationships. I gave him the low-down on our near split up. It was all cool. He was there to see his boyfriend who worked there, but he couldn't talk to him right then because of the influx of customers. The customers went, and PJ gave us permission to leave - the funny fucker.

Jade said there was a sale on at Barkers. Jade has this thing about wanting to dress me up. It could have something to do with my total lack of regard for that kind of thing, I dress down to the point of absurdity most of time, all my clothes are too big (I've lost a lot of weight in the past year), and torn in places, coming apart at the seams... It's my look! The scruffy, grungy, messy, utilarian, mis-matched look. Also, I haven't actually brought myself any new clothes for at least over a year and the last time I got any new clothes was christmas. It does make me smile and glow inside, the fact that she cares so much, she has good fashion sense and I could do alot worse in a shopping partner. In the end we brought a black-orange horizontal-stripey jumper, and a cool white shirt with thin vertical stripes - the jumper was £10, the shirt £5 - not bad at all. Then she said I couldn't have them 'till my birthday, the tease. We browsed various shops for a while but then she had to go home. I waited with her for her bus, kissing her neck, and generally making a nusance of myself. Then I walked home in the rain singing to myself.

3am, press return

I have to write this post. I have just finished reading 'after the quake' by Haruki Murakami and I just have to say it is breath-taking. Murakami has such a simple elegant prose style, such imaginative grasp of narrative form. He is my new favourite author of the moment. I don't know anything about him, apart from the hyperbole that appears on the front and back covers, the highest praises, which are all completely deserved, but that will change. I shall write a long post, with lots of links, concerning him and his work. I shall compile a hypertext dossier on him, and put it all here. I have to write this reminder now because else I may forget. Forgetting is the most natural thing in the world to me, like breathing. Thoughts and memories get lost and displaced amongst the galactic swirl of conciousness that is my mind.

Now, I'm off to eat toast, smoke stale tobacco and hopefully sleep.

Sunday's Child is fucked on crack...

Just killing time before my girlfriend finishes work and I can call her. Things between us are a little unstable at the moment... okay, I'm a little unstable at the moment. We nearly split up on wednesday, and even though we reconciled on friday I've still got this sadness lurking inside of me. Yesterday, went to see my friend Sion, who is (or was) in a much worse state. I won't go into it because it's not my place to blog another person's misery, i'll leave that to him for when he finally gets his blog going. We drank cheap whisky from a paper perscription bag. We took vast quantities of codiene-paracetamol tablets, just to numb the pain a little, to distract us from all the sadness and heartbreak we were both feeling. I thought about how this must look from the outside, pictured people being all sympathetic. We don't want sympathy, we don't want to be felt sorry for, we're just trying to deal with the shit life throws, in our own little drug-soaked way.

Been over at Warren Ellis's blog, the one that isn't die puny humans, his more writerly blog. It seems to me he wants a revolution in the comic book industry, which is cool. He is also calling for young blood. Warren, if your reading this, I just want you to know that I'm young, crazy and just waiting for someone older, wiser and slightly less unhinged to take me under their wing. I've only ever developed one comic idea, and that never went anywhere (because my friends are lazy - and so am I), but it was good and freaky and I'm sure you would of liked it. I don't eat much, and I can sleep pretty much anywhere. If you could find it in your heart to take me on as your apprentice then I'll let you steal all my good ideas.

The Merriam-Webster word of the day is 'luftmensch', which is an impractical contemplative person having no definite business or income. Fuck, sounds like half the people I know!

"Are you someone who always seems to have your head in the clouds?(yup) Do you have trouble getting down to the lowly business of earning a living? (Fuck yeah) If so, you may deserve to be labeled a luftmensch!"

Thanks Merriam-Webster, I feel so much better about myself now.

join the cult...

Before there were script-kiddies, before there was the world wide web, before VBscript email trojans, Hell, before there was microsoft, there was the Cult Of The Dead Cow. Uberhaxx0rs and freethinkers the lot of them, established in 1984, they've been going for a while. Their main site is here.

well, duh.

Just did a search on google for SpankThePlanet, to see how things are shaping up. Considering I started this blog under a week ago I think I'm doing pretty well. Okay, so I only get one mention, over here, but still that's better than nothing. I never realised there was a spanktheplanet.com. If you go there it redirects you to ukfetish.info. It's a kink website, which is cool, and provides news and information to the uk fetish community. At least I know who to talk to if I ever want to buy the domain.

The American Goverment is sick.

+ THIS IS A STRONG STOMACH ADVISEMENT. THERE ARE LINKS TO IMAGES IN THIS POST THAT SOME READERS MIGHT FIND QUITE QUITE UPSETTING +

Picked up the guardian today and what do I see on the front page? Pictures of Saddam Hussain's dead sons, released by the US government. Aparently, they released them to prove to the Iraqi people that they we're dead. Right, not a PR effort, not an attempt to sell more newspapers stateside, not to give those patriotic Americans something to celebrate, to show the Iraqi people that they no longer need live in fear. BULLSHIT. This is hypocracy in action. The American government, and George W. Bush (not neccersarily the same thing) are just sick and wrong.... And fucking EVIL now I come to think of it. It's newspeak in action, baby, It's 1984 come to life. George W. Bush, if your reading this, you better watch your back, bitch, cuz I'm through taking your crap. I'm coming for you, pretzel-boy, and I ain't looking for no prisoner of war, I'm after your head on a stick.

Anyway, you can find the uncropped pictures here at rotten dot com.

Oh yeah, and there's an interesting article here entitled "Image Concious: The fall of CNN, and what it means for the war" concerning the Al Jazeera news network, pictures from which (concerning war casualities) you can see here.

Combining blogging with an ancient chinese literary form called suibi (random jottings) we have The Jade Orchid Studio. There's also occassional haiku too!

more sickness from the blogsphere

"The author is a child abuse/neglect investigator in New York City. Among his past occupations are that of a night shift taxi driver in New York and an openly anti Vietnam War draftee. He shares some interesting fictionalized accounts of a most unusual life of a real New Yorker. "

Image Track

The projectionist is getting lazy,
let slip the image track and
put the exposision in backwards.
Now the audience boo and hiss
This isn't what they paid for
what the hell kind of silver dream is this?
More like metal machine music than hollywood fantasy.
The masses twist and writhe in oversized chairs, black plastic hole where once their beverage sat now thrown in disgust at the canvas through which they escape but backwards
- the picture go into their heads through the eyes flickering at 24 frames per second lulling them into a false sense of security.
The sounds of rioting flickering back and forth overlapping faint ghosts of confused group rage. Fade In with farmyard symphony.
That was all they needed. They took to the aisles and ripped and scratched and bite at all - fabric torn with stuffing like genetically modified snow flakes caught on freon eddies speaker cones punctured adding uncomfortable buzz to scenes of love making laid down with London rush-hour soundtrack fighting for mind time with a hundred directionless voices pulled free of concious thought dragging behind them barely connected nervous system. One poor sap so shaken with delirium tried to throw himself on the mercy of the sacred projection - ran full tilt at the screen, tried to jump into the celluiod flicker his broken body fell to the floor eyes all icarus but empty.

As mob hands pulled door handles sick realisation falls over the now hushed audience
- they'd been locked in.
disturbed faces swing back and forth over a sea of vocalised confusion as conciousness slowlly falls into place once again.

They never noticed the milky smoke pouring into the room untill one by one they began to sputter and choke, grasping at windpipes while eyes bug out in sockets sweeping cascade of pantomime death across the room.
Mothers fall to the floor in death spasm as others follow suit in unspoken acknowledgement of subliminal matriacrchal authority.
Bodies drop in mounds around green-lit exits.

(c) Adam Cheshire, 2003

*psst* *psst*

Aparently, Cheech and Chong are set to reclaim the cinematic bong. The article doesn't mention who they're planning to claim it from, but I would bet my youngest sister that it has something to do with Kevin Smith's semi-fictional miscreants Jay and Silent Bob. Now, I've never seen a cheech and chong film, but I do know that Kevin Smith is one funny motherfucker.

and the award goes to...

This is The dullest blog in the world.
It sure is.

Memory #47239

[15-16/01/02]

Last night, walking home, I saw an empty shell joy-ride car, dumped behind Tescos.
I approached it with wild curiosity, moving around it's white flaking body, peering through empty windows and rummaging through fossils of glass. The windscreen remained almost intact, cracked, icy veins, fractural fractures in a state of semiotic bliss, stripped bare of all worth. I made my way home, regretting that I hadn't taken a souvenir.

Before, earlier, I saw a man bounce off the bonnet of a small truck, in chaotic aerial ballet, before landing on his back. He lay still for moments before struggling to his feet. The driver rushed from his cab, helped him to the side of the road, out of concern, covering his ass. I watched with detached morbid interest, wishing that I had my camera and that the light was better.

Going back further, pacing two and through outside Tescos, smoking last dregs, I watched an old woman pause, pivotal, before falling on her arse spending a single glove, bags of shopping and her purse onto the pavement. I helped her up, again, wishing I had my camera.

Early this morning I lay awake, dreaming, savouring this strange new feeling. Was this lucid? I felt in touch with both the dream and reality. In the dream I snapped one of my nails in half, peeling it away from the skin. I panicked, felt frantic, and woke. Later, on a bus heading for the bay, I checked the ends of my fingers for damage, rummaged through the fragmented ghost image, trying to remember more.

(c) Adam Cheshire 2002

all the beautiful people...

die puny humans is great. The sickness of the world for all to see, coming to a screen near you. Based on a true story. All Rights Reserved.

+ additional +

I didn't realise it was Warren Ellis's blog. I just didn't make the connection, between what I had in my head, and what I saw on the screen.
"Oh, you mean that Warren Ellis".

Thread - Bare

I awoke this morning to find them wrapped around each others throats, digging half-moon impressions of hate into intermingled flesh.
Each poisoning the other with spat out histories of missed opportunities and overwhelming regret, laying blame on one another's shoulders until their spines had buckled and snapped under the weight, accusing one another of stealing their dreams and ripping them to shreds.
He said she was a serpent coiled around his neck, sucking the life out of him.
She said he was a greedy and bloated beast who took piece after piece of her soul until there was nothing left but crumbs.
Over breakfast, while I sipped freshly squeezed orange juice and felt each of my tears roll down my cheek and land on the tablecloth,
they continued to tug at the loose threads of their patchwork love while it slowly unravelled with each bitter word and muted scream.
I ate my breakfast while my imagination threw stones at glass houses.

As I dressed for school I could still hear their argument reverberating through the floorboards, even over my music.
I closed my eyes and bit down hard on my tongue until it bled.
When I left the house she had locked herself in the bathroom and was weeping quietly, choking down her tears.
He was in his office within a blizzard of angry paper and broken books.
My tongue was still bleeding.
(c) Adam Cheshire 05/11/01

idea for Reality TV cross-over show.

Tonight on Fox - "When Animals Attack... Women who love too much!"

AnOfficialSpankThePlanetFreakOut...

* This entry has been censored by the tact-police. Go read 'too much coffee man' instead. *

Just come from the shower, washed away all the impurities from the past couple of days. Took me until 4am to drop off last night. Two spliffs later and I decide enough is enough, I pack that third motherfucker full of resin and toke myself to unconciousness. As a result I woke up feeling kinda groggy and this is just started to subside now.

This is a writer's blog, if you hadn't noticed already. I've been writing seriously for 4 years. I'm unpublished, due to the fact that I've never tried to be published, unless you count that highschool poetry competition, which I don't. As such I shall be posting pieces of my work here for your purusal and my own gratification.

This site is very much in a larval stage, everything is subject to change at my whim. I'd like to re-write the template, in order to give the blog a less off-the-shelf feel. I need more room for links, and other content, which I will probably host somewhere outside of blog*spot, but as redesigning this site will require a crash course in Cascade Style Sheets it probably won't happen any time soon. I'm a busy busy man, people, and I only have just over 6 weeks of freedom left - I want to enjoy them.

Dr Menlo's site deserves your attension. His site opened my eyes to the still-trying-to-be-defined possibilites of blogging, and it's a beautiful thing to behold, like a cultural hub awash on the sea of information. It looks cool too, his style a breathe of fresh air. His girlfriend, Pagan Moss, of the Sensual Liberation Army, is also cool. Her blog Peep Show Stories documents her life working in the Sex Industry. Very inciteful. There's nothing more sexy than a woman who is completely comfortable with her sexuality. *meow*

Speaking of sexuality, I simply must mention ...Sweetness Follows - the sexblog of two very kinky canadians. Follow their exploits, marvel at their limberness, gawk at their sheer nerve, and drink in the heady-heavy scent of sex and love, permentantly entangled. What can I say? I like sex. As for love... Well, maybe more on that later.

This guy over here, Julian Dibbel, is also a writer, but he's got credentials. Check out his piece 'After Babel-fish' and open your mind to the possibility of Babel-fish poetry. He likes Ultima Online and talks about it often. I played an Ultima game once, on the Atari ST, a real old one, but could never really get into it.

Damn TV, you've ruined my imagination, just like you've ruined my ability to -- to, um... uh... oh well.

family unity

Trying to make sense of this;
shambolically stateless home.
united through dysfunction - all broken pieces lie idle in sunshine
swim in tears bled thru frustration.
No ends meets no ends but struggle by slowly. Cover ears and scream foundation to dust.
Trust not in karma to sort you out, send on way, happy smiling peoples;
feel buffeted tides and currents dash brains to bloody porridge. Sell the kids for food.
Buy nike wunderlust on hire/purchase and get by on vapours and fumes of family unity.

from Russia with loathe

There's alot to be said about Sacha Karaulov. Unfortunately, very little of it makes sense. Soaked in alcohol, he produces sick half-human prose from the evil macinations of his twisted mind. He is the uber-bohemian. He is above and beyond classification. He is sitting on the cutting edge fishing for something, something important, but he won't tell us what. He has a thing for Courtney Love. Aparently, he has a book of poetry coming out at some point, but I only have his word for it. Do not trust this man as far as you can throw him. He will blind you with Truth, his truth, scrapped from the bottom of the barrel and brewed overnight in a stew of bleach and absinthe, drained, and served up on a bed of kous-kous - evil kous-kous. Avert your eyes, children, before you go blind.

The Revolution will be Patronised

When the language police finally get their act together and start rounding up offenders Matt Dalby is going to be at the top of their list. With total disregard for the rules of language and grammar he documents his sickness, which reflects our sickness, and shows you the sickening truth, or half-truth, or maybe complete falacy, behind the glistening sheen of popular culture and not so popular culture. He knows where the bodies are buried and he really wants you to come along for the ride. Grab that shovel and start digging. Once an important part of the Cardiff performance-poetry scene (he was the insane genius behind the Happy Demon Poetry Collective), now he's in Manchester and he has his eye on the prize: World Domination. He wants to put poetry on the back of cereal boxes. He wants you to think for yourself. He wants to fuck you up in the process. If I were you I'd get into him whilst he's still got that underground credibility - Goodness knows it can't be long before the literati snap him up and claim him for their own.

The end of A day

Last post for the day. Been thinking alot about the blogging process. For example, the opportunity to revise is almost irrestiable. To go back, delete posts you didn't like or maybe just change them. Should I do this or leave mistakes for the whole world to see? How much thought should I put into a post, or should I just say what you think and feel with no concious editing? As this is a blog with no definate purpose (as yet), an exercise in evolution when applied to ideas, I guess I should just put these questions to the back of brain and just blog. Tommorrow, I start out properly, I let you in on my vague plans, and the SpankThePlanet saga continues. As for tonight, I forsee chatting on msn messanger for a bit, followed by retreat to my room, a spliff, some tunes and possibly more of 'Vurt'.... then sleep, sweet stoned sleep.

See the impatient over-excited monkey! Watch as he spills glee and enthusiasm with every wag of his brain-stem!

I cannot stand it, I thought of another idea for a post and I just have to do it. I tried to control myself, at least wait until i'd finished reading it, but I couldn't, so here it is, the link to the art of blogging over at elearnspace. Haven't had chance to explore the rest of the site yet.

*ponder* *ponder*

Just returning from my room. Smoked a Jay whilst reading the observer and listening to music. Weed and Music belong Together. China is fast becoming a Super Power, but I knew that. There's a baby harvesting-smuggling ring operating in Italy, which throws up some quite interesting ideas for a short story.

Again, I am faced with the problem of what exactly to write here. I spend alot of my time thinking in terms of writing and when faced with a new avenue of expression, as I am now, I find the need to feel for boundaries. Here, I am faced with none unless I choose to instate them myself. I can feel my mind spinning and clicking, like an Analytical Engine. I feel endless possibilities unfolding themselves inside like fractal origami. Despite this, I am struggling to define what SpankThePlanet will be. Right now, I feel the need to experiment. This experimentation will continue untill, if ever, this blog finds it's true form. Woohoo! Unconcious Evolutionary Algorithms in action!

Buffer Overflow....

I've fiddled with the template a bit, changed it, refiddled, still not paticularly happy. Realised I'm gonna have to actually get into HTML if I wanna do a good job of this, which is something I've been putting off for years because it bores me to tears. Maybe now that I have a reason I'll stick with it, maybe not.

I have so much that I want to say that I cannot think of anything to say. Think I'll go smoke a spliff and read the paper, maybe do some writing. Does a blog need a specific focus in order to be coherent? Or can I simply spew forth the contents of my head in no paticular order? I sense a learning curve...

First Post!

So, here we are, I'm taking the plunge. I'm creating my own blog.

I’ve gone from merely being aware of blogging and it's phenomena, to casually reading a few blogs myself, to reading blogs almost obsessively in my spare time (of which there is an over-abundance), to this, the creation of my first blog. I see its future as short and painful (for me, for you, for everyone!)

I hope you enjoy the ride, please keep limbs and heads inside the vehicle, in the eventuality of a crash landing, death is certain.

Talk to you soon.