Where is my mind?

Frank on stage with Placebo in Paris as they cover the Pixies classic - which was also the backdrop for the closing scene in Fight Club.

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind
Where is my mind
Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimmin'

I was swimmin' in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rocks
Except the little fish
But they told me, he swears
Tryin' to talk to me, coy koi.

Where is my mind
Where is my mind
Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimmin'

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind
Where is my mind
Where is my mind

More insidious behaviour

If you thought yesterday's tale of the nazi handbag invasion was ridiculous then brace yourself for today's installment of relgious stupidity from the Middle East.

A British teacher in Sudan has been charged with inciting hatred and insulting religion - and could face 40 lashes, a fine or six months in jail if convicted.

And what heinous deed has she committed to warrant this? Did she vandalise the mosque? Burn a copy of the Qu'ran in front of the local cleric? Get drunk and play poker in the town square?

No, something far far worse than that.

She named a teddy bear Muhammad.

Fear not people of the Sudan, it's safe to go out into the streets of Khartoum again for Gillian Gibbons is safely behind bars and no longer a threat to your national security.

An insidious fascist plot

The fashion chain Zara has withdrawn a handbag from its stores after a "shocked" customer pointed out that the design featured swastikas.

You can just imagine the neo-nazis carrying these things around, can't you? They're just perfect to keep their flick-knives in.

Clearly from their design, these bags have nothing to do with peace-and-love or tree-hugging religions like Buddhism, in which the swastika is also a meaningful symbol. Indeed, swastika comes from the sanskrit word svasti which means well-being.

I'm just glad that Zara managed to thwart this insidious fascist plot before the whole of the UK was overrun with nazi handbags.

Pushing the envelope

I've mentioned before my liking for Lucy Kelleway's weekly column in the FT, where she hilariously pokes fun at management fads and jargon and celebrates the ups and downs of office life.

Her latest column features a company of solicitors called Eversheds which has come up with a list of personality types to embody what it is looking for in its trainee lawyers. Finding the English language inadequate, the company has pushed the linguistic envelope and thought out of the vocabulary square by inventing new words, including:

Knowlivators Knowledgeable motivators
Logithizers Logical empathisers
Proactilopers Proactive developers
Winnowmat Winning diplomat

As Lucy says in her column, this is old hat. Martin Lukes, Kelleway's FT alter-ego columnist and another favourite of mine from the FT, invented these hybrid concepts in 2000 with his leading edge Creovation™, which was 50% creativity, 50% innovation – and 120% bollocks.

Brilliant!

Making a mountain out of a molehill

The British singer who sang the Croatian anthem before England's ill-fated match with Croatia apparently got the words wrong and accidentally sang My penis is a mountain.

And I thought the Croats were laughing at the team put out by Steve McLaren.

The line which singer Tony Henry slipped up on should have been "mila kuda si planina" (You know my dear how we love your mountains). But what he actually sang was "mila kura si planina" which means Dear Penis, you are a Mountain or My Dear, my penis is a mountain.

The hardest job in football

If being manager of England is, as many would have us believe, the hardest job in football then you'd think that possible candidates for the now vacant position would have the right kind of experience and the necessary skillset to guide our now-not-so-golden golden generation back to the path of glory.

Fabio Capello says he's interested in the job. Good. Ok. He's at least won some trophies - unlike the previous incumbent. So what does he say his credentials are?

"I'm the right age."

Oh dear.

Man's best friend

Sounds like some typical lads conversation down the pub at night.

Man 1: Is Selvukmar's new bird fit, like?
Man 2: She's a right dog, she is. Wouldn't touch her with a barge-pole...

So when I saw the Man marries dog headline on the BBC a few days ago it didn't strike me as being particularly out of the ordinary. Why is this one of their most read and most mailed stories, I wondered. Then it hit me.

Man marries dog. Literally.

India's been the source of quite a few From the Planet Gong stories recently, and this one perhaps takes the biscuit - the dog biscuit of course.

P Selvakumar married a female dog, hoping to atone for stoning two other dogs to death. He'd been cursed since the killings, suffering paralysis and a loss of hearing.

The wedding took place at a Hindu temple in Tamil Nadu state. The 'bride', who is called Selvi, wore an orange sari with a flower garland and was fed a bun to celebrate.

I don't get this at all. Does the guy have to consumate this marriage to cure his curse? And how does the dog say "I do"?

Another amazing little fact is that this kind of thing is not uncommon in India. Superstitious people in rural parts of the country sometimes organise weddings to animals in the hope of warding off curses.

They say every dog has its day so let's go back to that pub conversation:

Man 1: So what's Selvukmar's new wife like?
Man 2: She's a right bitch, she is.

The IT Crowd

:-)

North American Scum

LCD Soundsystem - one of the highlights from this year's Summercase festival in Madrid and Barcelona. James Murphy plays everything on the albums and then puts together the band for touring.

Clearly a very talented bloke.

Though not talented enough to do the female vocals on the albums he's still very impressive :-)

A Scotsman and his beer goggles

Beer goggles can turn the most hideous crone into something approaching shagable but Scotsman Robert Stewart has really pushed that particular envelope in this story.

He was caught – whilst under the influence - trying to have sex with a bicycle and has been sentenced to three years probation for his sins.

The story brings a whole new meaning to the idea of shagging the town bike.

Sheriff Colin Miller, who sentenced Stewart, said: "In almost four decades in the law I thought I had come across every perversion known to mankind, but this is a new one on me. I have never heard of a 'cycle-sexualist'."

No shit.

Full story on the BBC

The reincarnation of Vishnu

Lakshmi Tatma's mother Poonam Devi says of her daughter: "She is a miracle, a special blessing from God."

Obviously not that special though, as she goes on to say: "But she is my daughter and she cannot live like this."

The girl was born on the celebration day of the Vishnu, the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity after whom she was named.

It's strange that Vishnu is the goddess of wealth when the parents only earn 50p a day as casual labourers.

Someone's certainly going to make a packet out of her though, as the operation to remove the parastic twin - which has no head - costs £100,000.

The numbers game

Camelot, which runs the lottery in the UK, has been forced to scrap one of its new games because punters couldn't understand it.

It's hardly Mastermind, but the Cool Cash game - launched on Monday - was taken out of shops yesterday after some players failed to grasp whether or not they had won.

To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on the card they'd bought. As the game had a winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing.

However, the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for many and Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6.

Tina Farrell, from Levenshulme (near Manchester), called Camelot after failing to win with several cards: "I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher, not lower, than -8 but I'm not having it."

And who said that standards of education were slipping? Fantastic!

Demented Are Go

Demented Are Go are apparently psychobilly, but they're nothing like the old school psychobilly I know. The double bass is cool though! And they put on a good show at Gruta 77 last night.

They look quite scary up there on stage but when you realise it's just two Welshmen, a Yorkshireman and a German - and you see them after the show, and they're not that tall at all - it kind of takes the sting out their tail.

Still, I'm glad I wasn't anywhere near the front.

On a related note, I noticed that the Demented Are Go drummer didn't have a hi-hat as part of his kit. Instead he spent most of the time using the floor tom or the ride cymbal. Maybe this is a psychobilly thing as I remember in my old band, our drummer Jeremy loved psychobilly music and more or less refused to ever play anything on the hi-hat, which he called "the bitch". Curious.

This the sound of a Deadman's song

My band Deadman played our first concert on Halloween.

At the last minute we were asked to play with the highly experimental (but very cool) Proyecto Moi at La Leyenda - a place I've played at many times before with my old band The Plant She Killed.

We're still polishing some material so we only did a short 25-minute set of 6 songs:

Hating / Looking away / Without me you're nothing / Seropram summer / Out of my head / Hear this

Deadman will be back on stage on 24 November in El Juglar (c/ Lavapies 37), supporting Estereotypo, a britpop band from Santander. Can't wait!

(And I'm glad I resisted the temptation of using the easy title Deadman walking!)

Ring a Ring o' Roses

After last night's Gruta 77 concert farce I submitted a comment on The Posies' MySpace page. My comment was:

"What the fuck happened in Madrid last night? I've seen you guys twice before and felt very let down by last night. Struck me as a lack of respect to all the people who'd paid money to stand around in a packed, smoky venue - and for what?"

I got a reply a couple of hours later. It said:

"Hey there. This Jon's wife, Michelle. I handle the Posies page when they are on the road.
I spoke to Jon last eve after the show. He explained that the paperwork they had had a different start time than what was advertised on the tickets. So they thought they were only running a few minutes behind schedule when they showed up. Imagine the surprise when it turns out people had been told it was starting hours earlier! He said they felt really terrible about it.
The guys are very professional. I've been watching them play shows for the last 12 years and have never heard of anything like this happening before. They don't have internet access right now, but when they do I will make sure you get a proper response from one of them. I know they are just as dissapointed that it turned out that way. Jon sounded really bummed about it last night. They love Spain. It is one of their favorite places to play. It was simply a really unfortunate administrative error. I'm so sorry for the inconvienence.

xo
Michelle"

Which is nice.

On The Posies MySpace page, comments are regulated. This means that all comments have to be approved by the artist - or the artist's wife in this case - before publication. My comment was not approved but another comment was. It says:

"OK, you were very late last night in Madrid, but the show was grrreat!!"

Now what does this tell you?

Maybe they don't like swearing and never actually wrote a song called Everyone's a fucking liar!

Taking the piss

My wife and I went to see - and I use the term in the broadest of possible senses - The Posies last night in Gruta 77. Jon Auer is a member of the band and we literally saw him.

The evening started well enough - my new band Deadman played the miniset we're going to perform tonight to a small group of spouses, friends and girlfriends. They all seemed to really like it and it makes me feel confident about the future of the band.

Things went downhill from there.

Gruta 77 was sold out for The Posies, who played in a much bigger venue last time I saw them in Madrid (Sala Heineken). There was even a queue of people at the ticket office, waiting for it to sell tickets they didn't have. Looking back on it, maybe all those people had some kind of weird future sight and knew something we didn't at the time.

The doors had opened at 2130 and, after our short performance in the rehearsal rooms upstairs, we went in at 2210 or so. It was packed and smoky but we managed to get drinks from the bar and find a place near the back, in the middle where we had a good view of the stage.

And we started to wait.

And we waited.

And we waited.

And the DJs ran out of stuff they'd prepared to warm the crowd up and just put on the whole of Dolittle. Twice.

It was now 2250

People were starting to get very pissed off when the DJ started speaking over the PA. He explained that the band had disappeared - they'd not gone to the restaurant that had been reserved for them and had gone somewhere else. He apologised, all the time stressing the fact that the delay had nothing to do with the sala. He also said they were on their way back and would be playing soon.

So we waited.

And we waited.

And we waited.

At 2345 the DJ piped up again, telling us that one of the guitarists had arrived and that he said the others were on their way. The crowd were now very pissed off and when Jon Auer came onto the stage to try and placate us and say they'd be playing in 10 minutes tops he got booed off. Gruta 77 offered us our money back and as we had to work today we took it and went home.

I think it's a complete lack of respect towards all the people who'd paid their hard earned cash - €18 a pop - to leave them hot and uncomfortable for over 2 hours without any explanation or any justified reason. Jon Auer tried to say they thought they had to be there at 2300 - but by then it was already 2345 so I don't know where that argument was either coming from or going.

The Posies go on about how much they love Spain but they certainly haven't shown any respect towards all the Spanish people who went to their gig last night.

2130 doors. 2230 band. I could accept some delay, if there was a good reason for it (none of your Guns 'n' Roses style delays, you hear). 2300 would be fine if they'd had a car crash or something. But no. These guys went to fucking dinner. Probably had a few beers. Maybe thought they had to be there a bit later. Probably thought, oh fuck them, they can wait. They're our fans. We're fucking rock 'n' roll stars. We can do what we fucking want.

When we left at 2350 there was a queue at the ticket office - people waiting to get their money back from the overworked girl in the office. It was quite a long queue - about the same as the queue waiting to buy non-existent tickets when we'd arrived.

I hate queues, and I'm quite impatient sometimes, so what did I do? I rehearse at Gruta 77 so I went to the side door of the office and got my money back straight away, thus avoiding having to queue. See, I'm a fucking rock 'n' star too, and I can take the piss in my own little way.

Hurdy gurdy man

Steve Hillage. This guy really is incredible.

Not only is he an amazing guitarist whose solo work and the stuff he did with 70s psychedelic gods Gong still sounds great to this day, he is also at the forefront of underground dance with System 7, a band he started in the 1990s and which continues today.

Hillage played with The Orb after hearing them mixing his album Rainbow Dome Musick (an ambient piece created for the 1979 Festival for Mind-Body-Spirit, dedicated "to the universal spirit of New Age synthesis", which played continuously in a rainbow dome) in one of their DJ sets and going over to say something along the lines of "hey, that's me, that is!"

But that's not all. Hillage is also heavily involved in world beat music. After producing the 1, 2, 3 Soleils show - and album - with Faudel, Khaled and Rachid Taha he went on to work as co-writer, producer and guitarist with algerian punk-rai star Taha.

Here he's covering Donovan somewhere in Germany.

"I am a cunt"

Whenever I see people with Oriental characters on their t-shirts I always wonder if they've been duped - told that the t-shirt says peace and love in Chinese when really it says I am a cunt.

So it came as no surprise when I read about a guy from Watford who'd been proudly showing off a tattoo he'd had for 26 years thinking it said his name in Chinese. It actually said Coca-Cola.

What a plonker!

Vince Mattingley had asked staff at his favourite restaurant to write his name in Chinese symbols.

But the waiter, who was obviously a bit of a wag, drew the symbols for Coca-Cola. Vince obligingly went off and had that etched onto his chest for life. The spaz. I'd have definitely got a second opinion on that one.

I'm actually quite surprised it took him 26 years to discover the ruse. And that's only because when he recently travelled to Thailand a barman asked him why he had Coca-Cola written on his chest.

Vince said: "I thought it was a joke then I found out that's what it said. The restaurant staff must have had a good laugh about it."

Of course, the expression once bitten, twice shy doesn't apply to Vince and he now plans to get another Oriental tattoo to cover up first one.

"I'm going to go with something Japanese this time."

Maybe this time they really will tattoo I am a cunt on the twat.

In a similar but entirely unrelated story from the UK press, a teenager who thought she had mum tattooed on her back in Chinese letters was horrified to find it really said friend from hell.

Brilliant!

How the fuck she could have believed that I don't know. Friend from hell has one or two more letters in it than mum, I'm sure. Even in Chinese!

Apparently Charlene Williams only found out something was wrong when a passing Chinese woman shouted at her: "Evil, evil, very bad."

Her dad had smelled a rat as well. Says our Charlene: "He joked it said chicken chow mein. It was worse than that." No shit.

At least Charlene's not tempting fate another time - she's now covered the insult with a leaf design tattoo.

Method writing

In all the books I've seen giving advice on how to write fiction, experts always bang on about how you should write what you know. A Mexican guy I read about the other day has taken this advice a little too literally.

Jose Luis Calva, an aspiring horror novelist, has been arrested after police discovered his girlfriend's torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box.

Nearby they found the draft of a novel titled Cannibalistic Instincts.

Flesh found on a plate and frying pan in Calva's apartment corresponded to parts missing from the corpse of his 32-year-old Alejandra Galeana.

It certainly sounds like a case of writing what you know, though Calva claims he only boiled some of his girlfriend's flesh but that he hadn't eaten it.

One witness said Calva was fascinated by witchcraft and explicit and sadistic literature. No shit.

A surviving girlfriend - who was no doubt glad she got out sooner rather than later - told police that Calva was initially charming, winning her trust with poetry. But he soon turned jealous, controlling and obsessive, and once attempted suicide.

Calva was arrested last week but tried to escape when police came for him by swinging down balconies from his upper-floor apartment. Unsurprisingly he fell and is currently being treated in hospital.

I guess that'll give him an escape scene to write in one of his future action novels.

Engrish

Childish giggle of the day from www.engrish.com. Somehow I'd lost touch with this site but my wife reminded me of it on the phone today. I quickly dived back in and it had me howling with infantile glee once more. So thank you, my love, and than you www.engrish.com.