Friday, March 31, 2006

News Flash!

LONDON TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM STRUCK BY MULTIPLE GAYINGS.

Londoners woke up on Friday to find their beloved red phone boxes had been painted pink overnight. The phone boxes have been fagged up all over central London, although the worst of the damage was concentrated in the Soho area, known as a hotbed of resurgent gay extremism. Londoners were unable to use the phoneboxes for hours, as they were abnormally clean and sweet-smelling inside, adorned with overflowing bouquets and pot-pourris masking the usual stench of stale piss. This is thought to be the worst act of gaying in the capital since World War Two when Hitler, leader of the Nancys, fired doodlebum rockets at London.



Following this attack on our heritage, President Bush made this speech in support of the British people.

"Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who attacked the British phone boxes? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated homosexual organizations known as al Gayda. They are the same queers indicted for fagging up our embassies in Amsterdam and San Francisco, and responsible for the buttfucking of the USS Cole.

Al Gayda is to terror what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money; its goal is regaying the world -- and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.

The gayerrists practice a fringe form of Gay extremism that has been rejected by Fag scholars and the vast majority of Fag clerics -- a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Gaydom. This group and its leader -- a person named Ooh my! bin Gayden -- are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Gay Jizz-hard and the Gay Movement of Uzbekistan. There are millions of these gayerrists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of gayerrism. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot sodomy and destruction.

I also want to speak tonight directly to Gays throughout the world. We respect your sexuality. It's practiced freely by many millions of British, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Madonna blaspheme the name of Madonna. (Applause.) The gayerrists are traitors to their own sexuality, trying, in effect, to hijack Gaydom itself. The enemy of America is not our many Gay friends. Our enemy is a radical network of gayerrists, and every government that supports them.  (Applause.)

Our war on gayerrism begins with al Gayda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every gayerrist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.  (Applause.)"

Maintaining the National Collection

What's the difference between a "master" painting hanging in the National Gallery and one you see in a shop window display? How do you assess the value of one over the other?

Well, one way is to ask yourself "When this painting needs a clean, do I have to take it to a professional restorer or can I just give it a quick hoover?"

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Dere woz dis really fit bird, right...

I hate the birds in South London. I think they do the equivalent of dropping their t's or something because I'm always woken up at 5am by the most ugly, unimaginative birdsong possible. It's like someone deliberately squeaking a squeaky hinge on a door, over and over. Just one or two loud, shrill notes over and over and over... TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET. Maybe they've just learned to imitate car alarms. It's lucky that we don't have the right to bear arms in this country because if we did people in Forest Hill would be waking up to the sound of rapid automatic gunfire being sprayed into the trees tomorrow morning.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Cute Misunderstanding

I was hanging out with Luca yesterday afternoon, walking around the DVD section of HMV talking about films at one point and this is an extract from our conversation:

Me: "So when I was in Finland I saw Brokeback Mountain and Syriana. Brokeback Mountain was really good, and so was Syriana but there are whole bits spoken only in Arabic and because the subtitles were in Finnish and Swedish I had no idea what was going on."
Luca: "Oh yeah, but to be honest you'd probably not get it even in English because he's speaking in this weird, drawling Texas accent-- "
Me: "What the fuck? There's no part of Brokeback Mountain that's in Arabic! I'm talking about Syriana."
Luca: "Oh."

Can you imagine Brokeback Mountain (Brokeback Dune) in Arabic?

"I ain't no infidel."
"Me neither."

Friday, March 24, 2006

Photos from Finland

Finland is great! Had a fantastic time with Saara and hope I can go back someday sooner rather than later. The Finnish are probably the nicest people I've met in Europe so far. Fuck Faliraki, go to Finland!


Insane ice formations in Tampere...


It's a Moooooomin! It reduces me to the wobbly-kneed behaviour of a Japanese teen girl screaming "it's so cuuuute!" If it weren't made of cold bronze I'd even press my cheek against it in adoration.


Whereas I would not press my cheek against Harry Potter's face since he might take my eye out with his schnozz. My god the Finnish Harry Potter is a fugly mothafucka, isn't he?


Nesting with the ducks of Tampere.


Fantastic Finnish pendolino trains, clean and run on time, replete with 1960s retro future space chic.


View of passing countryside. The big thaw has started in the cities, but the countryside is still under thick, unblemished snow.


Walking on the frozen sea in the port of Helsinki. The land masses ahead are islands!


Saara on the frozen sea, heart pumping and mucho pissed off after I had successfully faked falling through the ice.


Tired of walking all day, we hired giant turtles to carry us home.


Nesting with the ducks in Tampere was obviously a mistake - in Turku we unwittingly became their leaders for a few minutes.


Always keen to find a new source of renewable energy, Finland stores all its farts here, in the Death Star. With smell to match.


My new favourite Finnish word (I only know about five). I reckon this would translate into French as "frottez le parakeet"


This squirrel wants your nutties!


Nutties!

Twinkle Toes

Just before going to Finland I spent a day in Cambridge, catching up with my few remaining friends there. I felt very proud to be able to walk around knowing this was my university... and even more proud to have captured Naoki's flickering foot phenomenon while he was asleep.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Mamma Mia!

Just when I have forgotten that my mother once said the stupidest thing ever (see Hurricane Bin-Laden post, she comes up with the most infuriating thing ever. Tomorrow I have to show the daughter of the gallery director around London and so over dinner I was discussing with my parents where I should take her. After having suggested that I could take a taxi if it was too cold to walk across Westminster Bridge (in itself a ridiculous thing to come up with), my mother turns to my dad and says "but what if he doesn't know where to tell the taxi driver to go?"

Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck. Sometimes I can only find solace in the things Cartman says.

Friday, March 10, 2006

My predicament

Well, I’ve made it back to London and of course it's promptly started raining again. It doesn’t matter that it’s been completely dry all winter: I'm back - rain starts. I was trying to remain positive about it since I don't actually live here anymore, so there's no need to get depressed by it. But following yesterday's events I can only describe the weather in this country as a curse. A week before I came back I was thinking that Japanese umbrellas must be better made than English ones because they last for months without breaking whereas English ones only last about two weeks. Yesterday I open up my wonderful Japanese umbrella and for the first time, without warning it breaks in my hands, rendered useless… (*Big Sigh*).

Otherwise, things have been okay - it's kind of nice to be back here. I keep discovering unexpected oddities like the uncovered loo seat at home being colder than the covered one in my flat in Tokyo. "Dang, dat sho iz cold on mah ass."

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Mmm, squit me some style.

In 9 and a half hours I'm going to leave the house, take a 15 minute train to another station, change onto another 1 hour train out into the neighbouring prefecture and arrive at Narita Airport. Then I'll go through 2 hours of queuing and scanning, then be on a plane which will fly me half way around the planet in 12 hours. In other words, I can walk out of my front door in Tokyo and be walking in my front door in London in roughly 18 hours. Given that for most of history human beings have had to sail for months in order to get around the globe, I never cease to find contemporary travel amazing.

There are many things I'm looking forward to in London: friends, parks, bread, not standing out for being white, not being asked if I like Japanese food, and English humour. The only downside is having to eat dirty ketchup. Doesn't that just get your goat? Being dirty Westerners we have to eat dirty ketchup, whereas here in Japan they've developed ketchup that's not just clean, but stylish too.

Friday, March 03, 2006

New Work 2006

I've finally finished some new photographs and uploaded them onto my other website, so please take a look. Some of that new work will definitely be featuring in my exhibition in June. Now I'm looking forward to experimenting with video!

Trash the GAP

I wish this were true.