SPIDERMAN 2 The new trailer for Spiderman 2 doesn't seem to be online yet. I just checked the official site and they only have the diner/kiss/flying car teaser trailer up. I have a crappy pirate copy of the new one. I'm sure the full shiny version will be online in a few days but for the time being check this out. (right click & Save Target As...) Mike is blogging to: The Who

HEROIC OR EVIL? Some guy built himself a real Transformer: Read all about it here. Sadly there is no word yet on whether its an autobot or a decepticon. Mike is blogging to: Jawbreaker

POSTHUMAN SYSTEM #1 This project involves a set of living Giant Madagascan Hissing cockroaches equipped with miniature wireless videocameras on custom-built backpacks. These specialized backpacks are worn by the cockroaches and transmit wireless video to televisions within the gallery space... the lines of distinction between pest, pet, friend and foe are blurred (via The Presurfer)

IF YOU BUILD IT HE WILL COME How to build a computer for almost nothing at all Place the carrot on top of the box - this is used to lure a rabbit into sitting on top of your computer as a case modification (via grayblog) Mike is blogging to: Fugazi

HOLY FUCKING DANCING ROBOTS! Watch em go (via Boing Boing) Mike is blogging to: Fugazi

MORNING IS BROKEN The sun looks like I feel. It hasn't so much risen as crawled somewhere to die. Other cities get the real deal. All London gets is less dark. Mike is blogging to: not enough coffee

ICK Jerry Seinfeld has teamed up with Superman to try and get you into debt. Mike is blogging to: nothing

GOOGLE CRAP This is great. Google are beta testing a personalised version of their software. Instead of filtering out all the crap you don't need you can now filter in your own preferences. The new search facility has a neat little slider gizmo that lets you filter further still. Google Web Alerts is handy too. Enter a search and then Google will email you as often as you like when the results change. Google Local is still only being tested with American options but I'm hoping they'll add some other countries to the features once it goes live. Mike is blogging to: an alarmingly quiet phone

BASTARD MONDAYS Jess just rang to say that she is taking me to a book launch on Saturday. That made me smile because it used to be the other way around. One of the few smiles of the day as I've been editing and re-editing and deleting and starting again and generally having a bad day with the word processor. Plus one of the magazines I was writing for seems to have folded. I'm hoping I have more luck with Tuesday. Mike is blogging to: The Simpsons

FIGHT CLUB Videos of fruit flies squaring off at one another have been put online here. I'll give it a week before some fanboy adds a couple of lightsabers. (via Boing Boing) Mike is blogging to: Zappa

VAMPIRES The BBC has gone all weird for vampires. Worth taking a look though for the Kim Newman and Michael Marshall Smith stories. Everyone knows that vampires are gay and that its werewolves that rock. Mike is blogging to: Minor Threat

PORNSTARS IN DISGUISE Transformer Porn: If you really need to see naked Transformers then look no further: My general standpoint on TF sex is that they're all gender neutral, just with different styling & personality types that sometimes read as female or male to a human audience. Of course, that's hardly any fun from the fanfic point of view, so yes of *course* Tracks is gay, Starscream is bi and Soundwave is straight as a board. Now on with the fun (via Idletype). Mike is blogging to: Black Sabbath

AT THE END OF THE DAY The top ten most irritating phrases in the English language (via Charlotte) Mike is blogging to: nothing

HERE I GO AGAIN Its not only old metal bands that can go back on the road. Serial killers can come out of retirement too. (via Metafilter) Mike is blogging to: noise

GAYMACS UPDATE Apple have been claiming that the G5 is faster tham my Alienware beast. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha And in other geek news, War Rationale: Version 10.0 has been released. Mike is blogging to: Wonka bars

"YOU'RE BILL MURRAY!" Trailer is up for the new Jim Jarmusch movie, Coffee and Cigarettes. The cast list itself is more impressive than most movies made by regular humans. Mike is blogging to: Disturbed

OUCH I think I broke my eyes It must be God punishing me for being trapped in a cycle of defeat and shame. Mike is blogging to: Pauline's pens

FUCK LIKE A GIRL Another google anomaly. Do a search for "Bush's foreign Friends" (with the quotes) and check out the 1st result. Click into it for a rundown. (found via The Presurfer) and Corran had this: And I found a link to this shirt: over on Evan's site. Mike is blogging to: The League of Gentlemen

YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP You can see a battleship sink live right here. It's due to go down in just under an hour. The full story is here. The fact that the explosives are being detonated by a kid who won a competition after drawing a sea monster makes the whole thing that much cooler. The BBC also have cameras on board if you want to see it sink from inside. Mike is blogging to: Suicidal Tendencies

FUCKING HELL I actually enjoyed Dawn of the Dead. I mean I really enjoyed it. Go see it and then we can talk about it. and someone only went and made Judge Dredd's gun: A hand gun that speaks several languages, broadcasts the conversation to the police, fires lethal and non-lethal bullets and is activated only by the grip of the registered owner (found via Warren) Mike is blogging to: TV babble

GIVE THESE MOVIES A HOME When our hero takes out a group of enforcement officials with cool, vicious precision to save a puppy, you know you�re in for something special CHUD has a list of 100 underloved movies. Apart from the occasional dog they are pretty much on the mark. I think I have copies of about 75 of them and after reading the article I'm going DVD shopping this weekend. Mike is blogging to: Iggy Pop - Motor Inn

RAMPAGE While Warren has been blogging about Japanese GIANT ROBOTS rampaging at long last: Johnny has been saying goodbye to friends and enemies over on the Punk Planet forums. Among the bloodshed and burning wreckage he had this to say: SIZEMORE AND JESSTER; Now when I was just joined up here, I came across the Englander schweinhund known as SIZEMORE pretty early on in the piece. He was the one talking inappropriately about kidnapping schoolgirls and locking them in his toolshed. I appreciated this. Sizemore always made me laugh, he was just such a vicious bastard, and would never let a good argument lie. He also had very good taste in films. Then down the track a bit, his girlfriend joined up, Jesster. I thought at first he must have her in the cellar under lock and key, and be feeding her Hallucinogens. Two more different people I could not imagine. Jesster was very much a Political beast, and was one of those people you could imagine tying themselves to an Amazonian Tree. Whereas Sizemore would try and release a form of the Bubonic Plague over the rainforest to see if he could get some good snapshots. Yet they complemented each other, strangely enough. The awful knock-down-shit-slingin' match that Sizemore and John and others got involved in was pretty hard to watch at times. Though sometimes it was downright hilarious. I can't help but feel the board lost some good things when those people left, some objectivity perhaps. But you can't change the past. And there's no point in yearning for "good old days"(something, well a discussion theme, on this board that Mike and I have fumed over for many hours since; give it up folks). I finally got the pleasure of meeting these guys recently. I'm off to live with them soon. We're going to build a spaceship. And it's going to be beautiful. This is for you Johnny: The Guardian had an interesting, if a little obvious, piece on the way that these kinds of boards frequently melt down. Elsewhere.... Holy Batman TV Show Phrases (found via grayblog). Naturally, my faves are "Holy Caffeine" and "Holy Hardest metal in the world". And a really good reason why you should always tip the pizza delivery guy: "once while delivering pizza as i was walking up to the door i noticed that the persons light was on inside their car, i was perpared to tell them about it when knocking on the door, but when they only gave me a $2.00 tip for $30.00 worth of food i kept my mouth shut. when leaving i felt a little bad so i checked the car door and found it was unlocked, but instead of turning the light out, i stole the girls purse, keeping the $170 and throwing the rest [keys, cell, creditcards, checkbook] into a dumpster." (found on grouphug.us) Other stuff: The original photo of Duncan can be found here. Noam Chomsky has a blog! Download all you can from Banned Music and keep going back. The Illegal Art compilation is fantastic. And Frank has been telling forever about this site but I only just got around to checking it out. Maybe I need to add a Paypal link so you guys can buy stuff for me. Mike is blogging to: stuff you won't find in HMV

BUSY DAY I seem to have missed Thursday somewhere... Anyway - I've been writing all day and I'm tired. Here's my friend Duncan playing the part of a Star Wars action figure: Its the best I can do on short notice. I promise something a little more wordy tomorrow. Mike is blogging to: The Grey Album

FUCKABUNCHOFAUTOMATION Blogrolling seems to be down again. As soon as they are back up I'll go back to maintaining my little index by hand as those fuckers seem to have fallen apart since Tucows took over. I've been checking out the pages of people who live in my immediate area. Pretty mixed bunch as you'd expect. Swan Street is well worth a look though. Aside from the virtual neighborhood I've also been knocking around the real one. Getting to know the shopkeepers and joining a video shop and all that. We even have the occasional REAL LIFE conversation with the couple who live at the opposite end of the building. It's their dog I mentioned a few days ago. It seems they had the same idea as us to raise a platform on the roof so we can get a 360 degree view of London. We decided to split the costs if we go ahead and draw the plans up. It would be nice to have a higher elevation if the sniper rifle I ordered on ebay ever turns up... Mike is blogging to: not a lot

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE Idiocy kills people. As does the occasional rocket propelled grenade. This article in The Village Voice is supposed to make you feel sorry for the dummies in uniform out in eye-rack but reads like a military version of The Darwin Awards: A staff sergeant is fatally injured when he orders his troops to fire a grenade at the door of a suspected arms market and a piece of shrapnel flies under his helmet and lodges in his head. A sergeant is killed when he falls off a ladder and his M-4 rifle accidentally discharges A private first class who had survived being accidentally shot in the chest by a machine gun while riding in a truck in May shoots himself in the head with a confiscated revolver after loading it with one bullet and reportedly joking about playing Russian roulette. There's an Adam Sandler movie in this somewhere... If I were American I'd feel a whole lot safer knowing these heavilly armed goons were well out of the way. Spending time in Iraq must be like being part of a non stop Laurel & Hardy movie. Just without the cool music and more body parts. And if all those humvees keep falling over how come Schwarzenegger is still safe and sound in his? The world's not fair I tell you. Mike is blogging to:Bernard Herrmann

HOME I just read this on the website of a friend of mine: "How many get to make something bigger and better for the town they grew up in and loved and watched die and work to bring it back and make something of it?" It made me think again of the place I was born and why I feel so resentful towards it. Maybe its simply because I wasn't born in London that I detest that little culture-forsaken shithole. Then again, being born there did me a world of good as it made me want to get out as soon as possible. Maybe being born in London would have resulted in me being just another sad face on the tube. Plans are underway for me to go back there in the next month or so. Let me know if anyone out there wants a pie or a rugby ball bringing back... Mike is blogging to: more soundtrack stuff

A POST ABOUT THE WEATHER The rain rained. That's the opening line from the novel that the movie Get Carter is based on and I think it's the perfect way to start anything. It's raining now of course. London is never that original in its weather. It's nice to be inside on days like this but I think later when Jess rings I'll go and meet her and we'll walk back in the wet and windy stuff. Its one of the benefits of being a couple - getting soaked and then getting dry again is always more fun if you have someone to laugh with. Mike is blogging to: The Brotherhood of the Wolf soundtrack

STARLESS AND BIBLE BLACK I found this over on boingboing: DJ Halfred has remixed Jay-Z's Black Album with Metallica's Black Album, producign a full-length disc he calls "Black on Black." The .torrent file is here I would have loved to have helped annoy Metallica by downloading all their albums but they were all crap after Master of Puppets so there was no point. I'm listening to Black on Black now though and it's a lot of fun. And better still the idiots in Metallica don't get a penny. I love the interweb. Mike is blogging to: the sound of Lars gnashing his teeth

STARS AND DOGS I miss the stars. Growing up well away from the nearest city the stars were always the brightest things in the sky. So much so that I ignored them. They were just part of the backdrop to my late night adventures � smashing windows on newly built housing estates or just generally looking for trouble to fall into. Then I came to London for the first time and I never really noticed the lack of stars. There was more than enough manmade light to keep my eyes busy. Then a few years ago we went back to my hometown for the first time as a couple and one night while walking as far away from my old house as possible Jess told me to look at the stars. I'd never want to move back there but recently I've been trying to think if there is a single thing I miss about that place. As it turns out there are thousands of things I miss but they will still be millions of miles away even if I ever went home for good. Which brings me to Australia. I was always told that America had the biggest sky and I saw a lot of it as we travelled but you really need to go to Australia if you want to be put in your place by nature. Our first night in Perth is full of memories. Waiting for four hours for a taxi that never showed up, drinking beer next to the river as newly weds danced in the background to soul destroying music and just hanging with our new friend who by a strange twist of the internet was also an old friend. And then there was the sky. The stars seem a lot closer and you actually begin to realise that you are standing on an actual planet out in the middle of nothing. Perhaps this is why I found everyone who lives out there to be so laid back. Your own tiny problems, whatever they may be, are dwarfed every single evening. It must be a nice place to live. Here in London we don't have much of a sky anymore and even at night it never really gets dark so the stars don't get much of a chance. But in a way it's nice to miss them because it makes me want to travel more in order to see them from different dots on the globe. Last night I took my coffee outside to the roof but all I saw were lit windows, strobes atop cranes and the odd moving lights of aeroplanes. I did, however, see one thing that made me smile. We have this long thin roof terrace that runs the length of the building that we share with our never-seen neighbours. At the opposite end of the terrace I noticed that a dog was staring at me. I couldn't make out the breed because he was skulking around in the shadows and he had no interest in coming any closer but it's nice to know that he's around. I grew up with dogs so I would have to add them to the list of things I miss. The more I think about my old home town the more I'm glad that I can find the few things that are missing here by simply walking further away from there. Mike is blogging to: The Amps

TOOTHING Give the British some new technology and we will find a way to use if for fucking. Must be the Jame Bond influence. "...and a couple of days later she dared me to meet next to the toilets at the mainline station we were heading to. We met, we fucked and toothing was born." Mike is blogging to: Crappy American Cop Shows

NOTE I'm simplifying the code on the template to make the thing easier to read on the handheld. Now aren't you glad you know that? Mike is blogging to: Godspeed You Black Emperor!

KILL IS LOVE Funky Japanese trailer for Kill Bill vol 2 is here While Casshern seems to all about showing George Lucas and The Wachowski Brothers how they do things in Japan. Mike is blogging to: Kill Bill soundtrack

TELEGRAPH UPDATE I just got a call from the Sunday Telegraph and it seems that the story they interviewed me for on Shelley Jackson's Skin project has just gone to press. It'll be in the April 4th edition, probably in the magazine. I have no idea how much of my interview will be in there but there will be at least one pic of my tattoo. Mikey Sizemore - clawing onto fame one body part at a time. Mike is blogging to: The Misfits

MONDAY I've been back from Tokyo for exactly two weeks now and am just about adjusted to being back in London. Just. The first week went by in a daze of getting to grips with the city again and not having to live out of a backpack. It was so nice to have access to all my stuff again. Not that we didn't have an awful lot of crap with us (and we accumulated enough new crap to fill an extra case) but it was a good feeling to pick up my old battered copy of Blood Meridian again and listen to vinyl for the first time in three months. I've only seen one or two friends so far but am now starting to come out of my cocoon. It helps finally having an angle on what to do with my time. I'm resisting the urge to go back to a bookstore and instead I have a small list of projects to get my teeth into. Some of them pay and some of them don't but at least I'm being creative full time for a little while instead of trying to squirrel away an hour here and an hour there. This morning I just finished the second draft of something I'm hoping will go online in the next couple of weeks and will lead to a regular slot. I'm halfway through some new stuff for Bookslut and have some interview ideas I need to throw at Jessa. I'm waiting on some review copies in the post for an author I already have an interview set up with and I'm hoping to talk to some more writers over the next few months. Jess had a great idea to pull a few of our like minded friends together for a magazine project. I worked up some ideas for that while we were in Mexico and this week I'll finally get around to sending the email out. I've seen some intriguing part time jobs advertised that involve film so I'm going to dust off my CV for those but I'm only applying for the interesting stuff from now on. I just started working on some fiction ideas that I've been carrying around in my notebook for the last three months too. The only thing I've got hanging over me at the moment is the same damn trip to the north that I've had on hold for the last 18 months or more. I'm trying to work out a way to hang with friends while I'm up there and also juggle Jess' obligations and the damn cat at the same time. I may have to put out another call for help in looking after the cat when we finally work some dates out. Enough blathering as I have some strict self imposed word counts to hit. Mike is blogging to: Smashing Pumpkins

POCKET INTERNET I need to get Doc down to London again: Now that I've got my new monitor (which is stupidly huge and about twice as big as my TV) I am very much looking forward to throwing my old, broken one off the roof and filming it exploding in the street below. Love that guy. So Jess has been on jury duty all last week and putting up with all the boredom that that entails. In between shuffling in and out of court she has been nursing the new Clie. The upshot of her time fiddling with Japanese characters is that she worked out all the wireless settings on the thing and we now have it hooked up to the new network. It's very different having the interweb in your pocket. I read half of War of the Worlds last night while reclining on the couch and ignoring the phone. Sweet. Pretty stormy here last night. You really feel it at the top of a building and the cranes that surround us were taking a real battering. Glad to see it didn't deter those chaps who scaled Big Ben yesterday. Going to go for a wander today and then have to type like a bastard to rework a piece I'm doing on zombies that came across as a tad violent in the first draft... Some other stuff on the boil but more about that later. End. Mike is blogging to: News 24

DEAD I hate today. I want to stab it in the ankle with a pencil. I am however looking forward to Shaun of the Dead. I have often wondered how we in the UK would survive without access to guns when the dead rise. Cricket bats and 12'' vinyl. Seems obvious now. Sorry about the crappy Realplayer link but its all I could find. This coupled with the Dawn remake should make for a zombilitious time at the flicks. This evening though I think a slice of Zatoichi is in order. Mike is blogging to: News 24

WHERE'S ROCK HUDSON WHEN YOU NEED HIM? The US Spirit rover on Mars has seen a UFO streak across the Red Planet sky. Astronomers say it could be the first meteor seen from the surface of another world, or a redundant orbiting spacecraft sent to Mars 30 years ago. FULL STORY Mike is blogging to: Big Black

BELLE UNMASKED? It seems that Belle de Jour may have been unmasked by "linguistic fingerprints" she left on the internet... FULL STORY Mike is blogging to: nothing

IGNORE THIS I'm beta testing some new blog reading software. Nothing to see here. Mike is blogging to: stuff

ONE MORE THING I had a productive morning despite the siren call of Columbo. I wrote the first draft of a piece on an issue very close to my heart. It's already in someone else's inbox. If it goes anywhere I'll link it up. Mike is blogging to: Toys You Can Choke On from Pencilneck Records

CHINA NEEDS ME? I got a weird email from someone in China. Like I'm not having enough trouble with Japanese at the moment. The email originated from an the Chinese ISP HiNet via Chunghwa Telecom and contained these pictures: Probably just Chinese spam... Mike is blogging to: Girls Vs Boys

ADDICT Ok. So I'm back on the coffee. In fact about eight hours after I 'quit' I had four cups back to back. Maybe I need a bigger mug. Or a bucket. Fuck it. I read today that my fellow Londoners are miffed over the latest choice of statue to go on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. Apparently the form of a disabled woman - born with no arms - and pregnant is not acceptable. What a bunch of pathetic twats I share this city with. I suppose a statue of another 'war hero' or maybe a footballer would be more pleasing to the eye? Apparently 70% of Evening Standard readers voted against all the proposals saying they would prefer something more traditional... Maybe Thatcher bayoneting an Argentinean baby in the stomach or Queen Victoria suffocating 'darkies' with her mouldy breasts... This is why I am not worried about the "inevitable" terrorist attack on the city. We need thinning out. If anyone from al Quada is reading this then try and avoid the tube and instead blow the fuck out of a football match. Cheers. Mike is blogging to: Sonic Youth

HELLBOY Ain't It Cool News has what I believe is the first review of the Hellboy movie Mike is blogging to: Le Tigre dance remix

CLICKY I added a pile of links to the Splurge page. Some good stuff in there... Also pruned the blogroll. Mike is blogging to: Toenut

SNAP I finally finished with the selected trip photos. I even stuck the bastards up in their own blog. You can take a look here: Snap But there are a lot of photos. If you have a slow PC you may want to use your imagination... Mike is blogging to: Quatermass

A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND More worm Mike is blogging to: nothing

TALK IS CHEAP I am home for most of today and will be on MSN Messenger. Look for either sizemore or deadshed if you need to get a hold of me... Mike is blogging to: noisy mix CDs

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST I saw the Mel Gibson movie when I was in Australia but was unimpressed. Afterwards as we sat in a coffee shop I made these notes: THINGS I NOTICED WHILE WATCHING MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST 01 It's a man's life in the Roman army 02 Christ was not as cool as William Wallace 03 Or Max Rockatansky 04 All that crap lying around after the crucifixion would make a packet on eBay 05 The film ends with the perfect set up for a sequel -CHRIST II: THE REVENGE 06 People in cinemas don't like it if you laugh out loud at crucifixions 07 Judas didn't lose control of his bowels when he hung himself 08 Judas didn't get an erection when he hung himself 09 Barabbas would make a fine Pirate King 10 More pirates would have helped move the movie along 11 Jewish people are weird 12 Catholic people are weird 13 It would make a great reality tv show 14 JC had more flashbacks than Jerry Garcia 15 Pontius Pilot was cool 16 Not enough people name their kids JUDAS anymore 17 Marilyn Manson would have made a better Satan 18 Marilyn Manson would have made a better soundtrack 19 The scene in which JC invented tall tables and chairs was unnecessary 20 The Roman centurions could have been replaced with the crew of Ground Force: "We've got a cross to put up. I'm thinking MDF..." 21 Being a disciple sucks 22 Being the Son of God sucks 23 Breaking knee caps with hammers is a little like having to ring a bell at the fairground 24 It was better than Big Fish 25 Always stand well back after spearing a corpse 26 Worse things happen to pigs EVERY SINGLE DAY 27 Eye pecking always makes for movie magic 28 Hairy demonic children are people too 29 Life of Brian was funnier 30 Christ had a Neo complex 31 I should call this blog The Blog of The Mike 32 Just because a story is really old doesn't mean that it is any good 33 It was still better than going to Church Mike is blogging to: noisy mix CDs

IN OTHER NEWS I am off the coffee. I moved off the real stuff a while back and have been trying to cut down on my intake of the instant crap too yesterday I had way too much caffeine. Way too much. I finished banging on the keyboard around 2am and then spent a good hour trying to stop my arms from flailing around me under the covers. Jess slept through it all but it was ugly. I think my brain turned off around 4am but I was still all giddy and shit this morning when I woke up. So fuck it. I'll start drinking smoothies or something. My last (and best) vice is finally over and done with. If you see me drinking coffee slap it the fuck out of my hand. Thanks Mike is blogging to: more of the same

VISIBLE MONSTERS - NOW WITH LESS WIRE Adjusting to life back in London is a slow process. Tackled with a whole host of DIY problems over the weekend I settled for taking all the cupboard doors off and leaving it at that. Jess bought tickets for the likes of WASP and Therapy? and someone else vaguely metallic. And we set up a wireless network in the flat which is a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Having only the laptop for the last three months has been very freeing. When using a desktop machine you tend to build a shrine around it but now I can build up mess from any part of the building. This is a big breakthrough for me. I've been watching the news on and off. Glad that the idiots in Spain got voted out - pity it took 200 dead people to see that through. And this has kept me amused along with the David Soul documentary. Jess has jury service starting tomorrow. I'll be finishing off the blog I set up for all the new photos we took. Maybe I'll link it up this time tomorrow. And at some point I suppose I should start thinking about work again. Blah. Ashdod was the port in Israel that we stayed in a few years ago - also now in the news because of explosions... Being back on the tube today (we went to Camden to fill ourselves on potatoes and carrots) reminded me that the odd explosion on the Northern line wouldn't be a bad thing. I'd hate to get caught in one but if it means modernising the bloody thing it may be worth the risk. And a few less Londoners bunging the place up can only be a good thing... Mike is blogging to: Death Cab for Cutie

DOC SAYS He's not wrong. Mike is blogging to: nothing

"I SAW A GIRL THERE AND SHE ALMOST KNOCKED ME DEAD..." Dave Blood, bass player for The Dead Milkmen, committed suicide on wednesday. There's a tribute up over on deadmilkmen.com Mike is blogging to: nothing

GERRY ANDERSON WAS A LYING BASTARD There's a robot race taking place in the Mojave desert. Now if only they can get the vehicles to turn into giant robots I'd be more convinced that we are living in the 21st Century. I'm still in shock that Space: 1999 lied to me as much as it did when I was a kid. If any youngsters are reading this then I have a warning to you. Don't believe that you'll have real digimon when you grow up. The future is pretty much like 1988 but the music is a lot worse. Don't believe me? Japan seems to be building a really manufactured boy band: We will have robots in the future but they will be very very gay. Mike is blogging to: Senser

SPANISH EYES... AND LEGS... AND ARMS... I woke up to find Spain exploding. What a strange world we live in. Because I had only just woken up I misheard Eta as Peta. That'll teach those meat eating bastards I thought... Mike is blogging to: BBC News 24

CATCH UP Jess is watching Beetlejuice. I never really liked that movie. So we are still relaxing after the trip. Our body clocks are pretty screwy. Thank god for Columbo reruns. Some of the stuff I have been catching up on: The new Dawn of the Dead trailer. Human Cock by my pal Doc. Planning my next read. Getting to grips with the new Clie. Checking out Agata Bogacka: and listening to Led Zeppelin backwards Mike is blogging to: mediocre movies

FACES Warren is doing another 'The Internet is Made out of People' thing over on Die Puny Humans. I'm in the mix somewhere. I guess some of you have faces too... World Wide Wednesday Mike is blogging to: old CDs

I'M COMING THROUGH YOUR WINDOW... The Eagles of Death Metal have a video that mixes a large moustache with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: Check it out Mike is blogging to: guess

SAN FRANCISCO If you are reading this in the land of the Governator then you need to go here: Thursday, March 11 @ 9pm Thee Parkside, 1600 17th Street at Wisconsin, SF bands (last to first): GREENLIGHT THE BOMBERS - http://www.greenlightthebombers.com "You know who we are or maybe not... some rollerblading hacker might have put you on our mailing list." BUSINESS MACHINES (LA) - http://www.thebusinessmachines.com "they'll literally fire back your existence in your scarred and weathered face via two-minute, four-chord bursts of unbridled 'n' jagged, blues-tinged rock fury." -thebusinessmachines.com BOSS MARTIANS (Seattle) - http://www.bossmartians.com "Boss Martians - "Making the Rounds" -- This sounds like THE SUPERSUCKERS and ELVIS COSTELLO collaborating." -MaximumRockandRoll PORCH - http://www.porchnoise.com "If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, Go see Porch, and not only because Porch is made up of musicians from bands like Samiam, Primus, Today Is The Day and most recently Sausage." -VividZine Bastards the lot of you. On thursday I'm staying in all day while some fucker with a spanner rips me off while fixing the bloody washing machine. So glad to be back in the UK Mike is blogging to: PWEI

NEW GADGET We picked up the new Clie in Japan: It's packed with crap that my old Clie didn't have and if you need a PDA then it has to be a Clie. Wi Fi, Bluetooth, still and video camera and a pile of other geek drooling stuff. Although it was about half the price we'd have paid for it here the fucker comes with a Japanese operating system which takes some getting used to. The beauty of a Clie is that a lot of the features are instinctive and I'm already competent with most of the Japanese features. Go too deep into the menus though and you soon become lost. Thank fuck that other braver geeks have gone before me and put a whole host of tutorials online to help get my dumb old western head around Japanese technology... As soon as I'm up to speed I'll update my old Clie site and be bluejacking along with the best of them. Mike is blogging to: One by Dashing Straight

ONE WEEK LATER We're back. I managed to miss out the whole Tokyo slice of the trip. We were too busy running around and being confounded by Japanese culture to worry too much about the interweb but I have added some Tokyo pics to the PILE of photos I need to get up. I think the last lot I FTPed were from San Fran... fuck. So we now have all these PLANS and shit. Before we get to all that though we have culture shock to deal with. It's weird being back in the UK after three months. We both have some crap to sort out too. Jess has jury service and I need to get up North to do the family thing. And we both have three months of mail to get through. Ack. I foresee coffee in my future. Mike is blogging to: London traffic

HOBBES. BUT MEANER I just stumbled across gmtPlus9 - a great blog from Japan which among other wonderful things has links to this guy: Itazuraguma no Guruumi (Gloomy the Vicious Bear). Gloomy is a rather large pink teddy bear with lethal claws and a mean disposition. Wonderful. Mike is blogging to: nothing

MEANWHILE IN ETHIOPIA It seems Duncan is dealing with death threats and postcards from Mexico. At least one of the fuckers got through. I think we are going to try and get out to see Duncan sometime in the next 12 months... This afternoon I think we will try and see the Mad Max Christ movie... Mike is blogging to: surfers and the like

GOLD COAST AND BUTTERED TOAST What a view. We are staying on the 34th floor overlooking the beach and the sea. If you turn left far enough you hit Hawaii. It was gutting to leave Johnny behind though. We did our best to set things in motion in order to get him over to London before the end of the summer and it seems that will happen sooner rather than later. We watched old Charlton Heston movies and Slayer videos and had a grand old time. If you haven't seen Mr Heston trapped in a formica sub with only David Caradine, Ned Beatty and Stacy Keach to help him out then you know NOTHING about cinema. There is a great moment when David Caradine seems to be reenacting the rape scene from Deliverance on poor old Ned in a submersible. Johnny seems to have turned a corner and we couldn't be happier. This guy is too smart to stay in Perth hanging with speedfreaks. As soon as get home we can start preparing for his arrival. I wonder if you need permission to dock a U Boat in the Thames? Now we are in the hands of Frank. As soon as he picked us up at the airport the last couple of years were erased. Frank lived with us for a while after I found out we read the same books and listened to John Zorn. The drive from Brisbane to here passed in a blur of gibbering peppered with a few "Holy fucks!". Frank lives the Hunter S Thompson lifestyle. As soon as his girlfriend arrived he bundled us all into a bedroom and put on a Richard Kern video. His girlfriend, Casey, asked "Is this the 'pigfucker' one?" as we settled down for what passes as entertainment at Castle Frank. Damn, I've missed this guy. We watched one girl sew up another girl's pussy and then went for a meal with his parents... Frank is another pal who has turned his life around. The last time we saw him he was doing coke like Don Simpson and seemed to be in freefall towards a messy end. Maybe it was just London. Now he is drug free and doing weights and wrestling. Singing Black Flag and The Ramones as we sped towards the Gold Coast is already one of the best moments of the trip. Almost as good as watching Johnny lecture his kitchen hands on the importance of submarine warfare. Tomorrow Frank is ditching work to take us back into Brisbane and a tour of the weird places he thinks will appeal to us. Then all too soon we will be on our way to Tokyo. I'll try and post before we leave for there but things are certainly speeding up... Mike is blogging to: nothing