Et Tu, TV? I wrote to Kris yesterday after we'd caught up with the latest episode of Battlestar:

I think Galactica spun off into some bad writing holes this season. Mostly to do with the religion, but some of the stuff back on Caprica was dodgy too. The original Galactica kept the religion bubbling in the background - Lorne Greene's Adama would pull out an old map at the end of an episode and we'd get some angelical music bollocks but before that we had a good thirty minutes of Apollo and Starbuck shooting toasters left right and centre. The new Galactica has painted itself into something of a corner by making the Cylons so bad ass early on. Now the engagements are kept to a minimum because the fleet would get blown to shit and the few toasters we see wandering around in the woods are dispatched far too easily. They need to tighten up the pace, less politics, a LOT less mumbo jumbo and more blowing shit up. I still love the little character moments, but I'm hoping to see the Battlestar Pegasus arrive at the end of this season's finale with Dirk Benedict at the helm as Commander Cain hell bent on dragging the Galactica back into the war. Now that would be good TV.

It's not that I'm all about watching things explode, it's just that this season's slide into hokey religion as we follow President Roslin's grail quest has left less time for the whole point of the show - which to me was never the search for Earth but the Cylon threat. Even Baltar's little self-abuse conversations are getting tired which is why I guess his blonde buddy lost her clothes this week. At least Harvey in Farscape helped to move the plot the fuck on. I feel like I've been treading water all season with these guys. Which is why I've been casting around for something new. I'm not sure that HBO's Rome will fill the gap. It was pitched to me as Deadwood in togas, but that's not quite it. It's the kind of thing that British TV did a lot better with the likes of I Claudius (although I believe this has some BBC money sunk in it), but has that Gladiator vibe going for it. When it's good it's awesome - I quite liked the opening view of battle mechanics (although the assembled hoards looked like underpaid extras in bad wigs) and the later casual slaying of a group of men by two soldiers was very well done. So far Kevin McKidd from Dog Soldiers is the best thing in it. It's a shame that despite all the cock graffiti and fake phallus action on show that it's the poor actresses that have to strip off and shove their cunts in front of the camera. Not that I'm in a particular rush to see Ken Cranham's toga-snake, but there's a definite imbalance going on here. If there's a fault so far (and I've only seen the first episode) it's that the historical setting seems to weigh everything down and constrain the plot in exactly the same way that it doesn't in say Deadwood - still by far the best thing on TV in the last five years. PS [Music: The Hollow Points - The Black Spot]

The bank holiday in a nutshell... Tongues Originally uploaded by sizemore.

[Music: Yaphet Kotto - We Bury Our Dead Alive]

Post Title (required) WTF... The Bank Holiday is already on the horizon. The biggest plus point is that I have a whole extra day with Jessops. The downside is that I have to share it with everyone else. At least the majority of those running Brain-Lite TM will be at the Notting Hill Carnival so that�s a million or so less people to get under foot. Now it�s only the other six million or so that I have to worry about. Where�s the damn bird flu when you need it? I�m blogging with that little Blogger/Word gizmo to see if it actually helps me overlook all the things that are wrong with Word. I bet I have a stack of sixty or so Word Perfect installation disks around here somewhere� So did someone really spend over �200 for a Serenity preview ticket on eBay? I mean it�s good but unless you�re terminal just sit back and wait. And �300 for the Buffy box set? Get a grip people� On edit: Yeah, that works... and MT migration is a step closer. [Music: Bad Astronaut: Acrophobe]

Crumpets and Bunnies... The Serenity thing got picked up by the Buffy hoards which was pretty cool, but also allowed me to stumble across this: Londonist, crumpets and bra sizes all on the same page... awesome. The other big news this weekend was that I found out about this: I've been waiting for this release since I last saw this movie when I was around ten years old... already pre-ordered the fucker and if you are within spitting distance I WILL drag you over to watch it. Now I can focus on finding The Giant Spider Invasion... [Music: Marilyn Manson - Holy Wood]

When there's no more room in the Odeon... We went to the Land of the Dead screening last night complete with George Romero Q&A afterwards. In fact we bumped into George on the way in and I was a little shocked to see how frail he looks. I haven't really followed horror movies much in the last few years so in my mind he was always the stocky lumberjack looking type from back when I was reading Fangoria and watching him being interviewed on the Day of the Dead shoot. Twenty years ago, man. He is however still very funny. And he gave the idiots behind the Resident Evil movies a couple of zingers... He also spoke of the Richard Matheson influence on Night of the Living Dead, Dennis Hopper's nose picking improv and exactly what he thought of remakes... He said he was amused by the fact that when he started his career he was closer to the humans involved whereas now he was closer to the dead. Gotta love that attitude. [Music: Goblin - Volo]

Who died? Quit emailing me. I'm still not saying much. [Music: Nothing Cool - What A Wonderful World]

Other bits and pieces... Yes I have the Google Talk thing. I understand how much better it is than MSN etc but it still has the one failing that Messenger had. It allows people to talk to you. Have they any idea how distracting that is. It is interesting to watch the people on my buddy list - like 277 of the fuckers and I have no idea who most of them are - slowly connect themselves. I sent a single invite out yesterday to test the service, but that's it. If you can't download the most talked about app on the net right now on your own then you don't have thumbs. I'll keep it running this morning and see how long I can take the IMs before I kill it. Other things you can quit sending me is this link to the Tom Sizemore sexcapades. Yes I've seen the trailer and I agree it looks interesting because fucking aside I like to hear Tom run his mouth off and there seems to be plenty of that. It's still at the send us money phase, but give it a couple of weeks and Tom's arse will be as freely distributed as Paris Hilton's. Now isn't that a fun thought this early in the morning. ... Hey, did I mention I spoke to Joss Whedon last night? [Music: Death Sentence (Canada) : Not a Pretty Sight]

Serenity... Just got back from the Serenity screening. Jess got interviewed by a nerd. Not good nerds like you folk... the squelchy kind. I guess I'll get around to mentioning the movie a little tomorrow. I will tell you what the best bit was... It was when Joss Whedon and Summer Glau turned up in person at the end of the movie for a Q&A session. I did ask the first question, but I can't spill all of the answer because it's spoilerific. You'll still hate me for this though... Mike: Do you find it easy killing off cast members? Joss Whedon: Have you ever seen my stuff? Even I didn't expect so many funerals... [Music: off]

And we're back in 5 4 3... Among other things I fell into USA by John Dos Passos - not quite as satisfying as Martin Eden, but it's a monster that I've been meaning to break the spine of for a while now. After this I'll need something dumb to read. With explosions. Sharon & the kids should be back in Israel by now. Yesterday and a portion of today is putting the house back together. Alkaline Trio were great and Friday was Zodiac Mindwarp. Probably have some photos to put up at some point... Email is a mess - the problem with going offline for a couple of days is that things get a tad disorganised. I also found that some real mail got dumped by a rogue filter which explains why I thought a few people had been very quiet recently. I'll get around to that this afternoon. I didn't have a drop of coffee yesterday... ack. Now I'm half asleep but back on the caffeine drip. Tonight I think Xandrija is coming over - tomorrow we see Serenity. Ha. Raindance stuff is on the boil, there's also an Asian Film Fest on the horizon and I scored tickets for a Samurai movie being shown in the Japanese Embassy(!). Busy busy. More later... my eyes need prodding. [Music: Killdozer & Alice Donut - Party Machine]

Link dump... Nightwatch and Land of the Dead reviews. Watched Mail Order Wife last night - not quite fucked up enough to be laugh out loud funny and after Capturing The Friedmans mockumentaries really need to up their game. Worth a look though. This got picked up by Robot Wisdom. Alk 3 tonight... haven't been to the Astoria in ages. Should be a good night. If I can drag Jess away from the Strip Generator and her turtles... [Music: off]

Not Andre the Giant then.... My fellow Londonists are genuinely confused by the fact that I have no idea who Andre 3000 is. Even now that I've googled the fucker I'm still no surer. I remember this doing the rounds a year or so ago but it never really occurred to me that it was a REAL song. Not anything people would spend money on anyway. Does this mean all that funny B3TA shit comes from real bad music too? Not that Gay Bar one... you're kidding right? Outkast just slipped me by I'm afraid (along with probably thousands of other 'popular' things). I'm now being told that this song was around for a year or so. That may be, but it didn't surface in the places that I go. I have a vague recollection of a video that DC Mike's daughter got excited over when I was in the States, but she was like nine years old... do people my age actually share a demographic with tweenies when it comes to musical taste? Scary. I don't listen to the radio (American talk radio occasionally, but I guess that doesn't count). I download around 90% of the TV that I watch. Unless a song is played on News 24 I'm just not going to hear it. I don't shop in places that play shitty music and If I get dragged into one I usually have headphones on. When I go around to other people's houses they tend to play the kind of music I like. I don't know why it's so baffling that I can live off the radar as far as 'popular anything' goes. I'm aware of Paris Hilton, Big Brother, Ant & Dec but only barely. I have no idea what's number one in the UK charts and haven't cared about that kind of thing since I was about 12. I don't watch soap operas and have no idea who any of the people are on the covers of UK magazines unless they crop up in movies. If this Andre chap makes more movies I suppose I'll start to recognise him. Let's hope not. I still don't understand who he is. Is he Outkast? Is that a band? Does anyone but me remember Bill Hicks talking about Jimi Hendrix cleaving Debbie Gibson in half with his buzz-saw dick? Who listens to this shit? It's even more depressing when people think I SHOULD have heard this... Go read a fucking book that isn't about wizards or in the Borders Top Ten and then listen to The Melvins - get hooked on Takashi Miike movies and Curb Your Experience. Get into some good shit and then tell me you have time to worry about some guy who was named after a washing machine. [Music: Alkaline Trio - I Lied My Face Off EP]

So soon?

Seems like only yesterday I was watching the trailer for House of Flying Daggers... [Music: Fugazi - 13 Songs]

It's a Southern Records kinda day... Fuck and damn it... [Music: Therapy? - Pleasure Death]

California Vs. The Megalosaurus... I'm reading Jack London's Martin Eden. It's the first time I've picked him up since Call of the Wild and White Fang many years ago and I'm loving every word. It's also making me want to jump on a plane again:

Came a beautiful fall day, warm and languid, palpitant with the hush of the changing season, A California Indian summer day, with hazy sun and wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the slumber of the air. Filmy purple mists, that were not vapors but fabrics woven of color, hid in the recesses of the hills. San Francisco lay like a like a blur of smoke upon her heights. The intervening bay was a dull sheen of molten metal, whereon sailing craft lay motionless or drifted with the lazy tide. Far Tamalpais, barely seen in the silver haze, bulked hugely by the Golden Gate, the latter a pale gold pathway under the westering sun. Beyond, the Pacific, dim and vast, was raising on its sky-line tumbled cloud-masses that swept landward, giving warning of the first blustering breath of winter.

I've also started rereading Bleak House. Dickens is also making me want to jump on a plane:

As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes--gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

I think I'll finish Eden today and then read some more London. Dickens is a winter read. Oh yeah. Fuck. The. Police. [Music: The Descendents - 'Merican EP]

4 8 15 16 23 42 The rest of the UK has suddenly become hooked on Lost. We'll be queuing for bread next. The TV on offer in this backwater is like the bottom shelf of a bad videostore. They'll be getting excited by the Police Academy movies soon... I hear Steve Guttenberg is a great upcoming actor... like Brando but funny. So tempting to tell people to go here. But that would be mean. I posted bad things over on Thee Temple. As punishment the gods just set fire to my bagel. Incoming: Thursday is Alkaline Trio Friday is Zodiac Mindwarp [Music: The Mark Lanegan Band - Here Comes That Weird Chill]

Busted... I was going to sneak in under the radar but a certain Missy let loose her cat bag:

My dear friend Mike from Sizemore.co.uk - who likes quilt making and knitting scary Japanese movies and munkies with rabies - will be joining us here shortly from his Notting Hill residence in London. He's our specialist for Aboriginal languages and he'll be mainly assisting Juju and me with our research on the reasons behind the albino chinchilla baby boom in Papua New Guinea and its dramatic influence on the global biological diversity. Oh, and he'll post pie recipes and knitting patterns.

Mmmmm pies. Just got back in from the cinema with the kids - after much screaming and kicking we had to do the boy film/girl film thing so Jess and Eli went off to see Charlie & The Chocolate Factory while Jacky and I whooped it up with The Fantastic Four. Maybe it was sitting in a room of kids, but it wasn't all that bad. Much better than I expected and thanks to the Torch it was nice to see someone having FUN with being a freak rather than trudging around wrestling inner demons and all that greatpower:greatresponsibilty ratio bullshit. Let's face it... take your average blogger/live journal user and hit them with atomic/gamma whatjamacallits and about a week later they'll be drunk and exposing their super crotch falling out the back of a limo (instead of on Flickr). Someone dump some radioactive spiders on Paris Hilton quick. [Music: off - Playstation: on... more weird Japanese rabbit noise]

This game has not yet been rated... Yeah but I'm guessing it'll be an 18. Maybe it should be rated 32+ as I just ran out of the room screaming. Great great great stuff. I'm not a big gameplayer, but this is quite an experience from the demo. The gun battles are awesome, but as soon you've blown away big men with automatic weapons that damn girl pops up and reduces you to a gibbering mess. Play it through a decent set of headphones with the volume cranked up... man. [Music: The Hollow Points - Bullet Holes in City Walls]

Bloodhag... Damn. Found these guys over on Bookslut. The music blasts from the library as heads bang, bodies rock, and science fiction novels are thrown from the stage. This isn't your typical heavy metal show. To the members of BloodHag, this is edu-core, or educational hardcore, at its finest. The group plays super short (under two minutes) heavy metal songs detailing the life and work of science fiction authors. The band's webiste is here. The quote is from an article here. The article was written by a fifteen year old. Damn. BloodHag sets typically last under 30 minutes, as the band pauses between songs to talk about their authors and their work. Before urging their audience to pick up a copy of Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," they sing, "Jules and his brother, watching the boats/ Tellin' stories to each other of the places they'd go/ At twenty-thousand leagues meet Captain Nemo." Although they do play at metal and punk-rock venues, they frequently rock out at libraries. Double damn. [Music: off - Jess is introducing the kids to Japanese animation that is not geared up to sell them crappy toys and trading cards]

Night Watch... That wasn't what I expected at all... It was better... [Music: Halifax - Start Back At Start]

Need another reason to love London? How about having a pint outside the Pride of Spitalfields, bemoaning that you ate too much curry and talking about everything BUT Peregrine Falcons when... some guy wanders up who just happens to have a nine month old bird of prey with him. The regulars crowd round with us and when someone asks what happens if you take the hood off this old chap who was probably around at the time of Jack the Ripper says "E'll 'ave your eyes out!" and like a kid at a petting zoo holds onto the dregs of his pint in one hand and softly strokes the Falcon with his other. Great night. And the curry and company was spot on too. PS Did you read the comments? Johnny was punk-rock partying on the set of the new King Kong movie. The mind is once again, boggled. [Music: off]

Pelham. Harold Pelham... Last night we watched this: in the company of Laura, Arran and Corran. Thanks for coming over guys. I hadn't seen this in something like fifteen years but had fond memories. It was partly written by an uncredited Bryan Forbes (who directed The Stepford Wives) and there's a commentary track on the DVD by him and Roger Moore that I'll get to over the weekend with a little luck. It was very cool and twisted and had some exceptional underwear. I'll get around to reviewing it for Londonist at some point as it's got some great locations... can't remember seeing anything filmed in The Monument before. The soundtrack was (sorry Laura) GREAT. At some point I'll have to track it down if only for the recurring theme. Seems to be composed by the same chap who worked on The Medusa Touch and Theatre of Blood... I bet there's a nifty compilation CD out there somewhere... Tonight we are doing the Brick Lane curry thing with this mob: Mmmmm curry. Tomorrow the kids are back with us for the weekend so expect the usual disruption... August is looking a little busy. Just got tickets for Zodiac Mindwarp at the Underworld and Mark Manning has a new book out with Bill Drummond so we're going along to the launch and some kind of event too... busy busy. Not as busy as Suzanne though: She must generate enough Flickr traffic to power a small country. Love the new look by the way, Ms Wurzeltod - the website, not the stockings. Not that there's anything wrong with stockings... Mmmmm... curry. [Music: Greenlight the Bombers - American Executive]

Reviewage... Nipple biting in Unleashed. Land of the Dead to follow sometime after lunch in a few days. Don't want to spill my guts too soon. Tricky not to give to much away too... Itching to write about the I Am Legend comparison though... maybe I should cook something more detailed for here with a big SPOLIERS header rather than simply a quick preview over on Londonist. Then I don't have to wait for the damn thing to open here... maybe. Fuck it. I have some reading to catch up on anyhow. Speaking of which, where the hell is my Cormac McCarthy? This is getting beyond a joke... [Music: The Ducky Boys - Three Chords and the Truth]

Tips for an enjoyable Tuesday evening... Tip number one Watch Unleashed ~ much throat punching and ice cream eating Tip number two Watch Land of the Dead ~ much throat chomping and Asia Argento Tip number three Score tickets for the London preview of Serenity ~ you can't take the sky from me... The Serenity ticket is the hot one. Unless the release dates change anytime soon we get to see that sucker a week or so before it opens in the States and six weeks ahead of the UK release. Numfar! Do the dance of joy! More on Romero and Jet Li tomorrow... NOTE: Damn thing only posted a few minutes ago and I'm already getting email. I have no idea if these dates are set in concrete, but according to the IMDB at least (and you know better than to trust that place for info, right?) Serenity will premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival on the 22nd of August. Jess and I have tickets for the London preview a couple of days later on the 24th. The film opens in the US on the 30th. Then Australia. Then the Netherlands. Then Iceland. And then the UK on the 7th of October. Yep - I agree. That's fucked. The sooner the idiots in charge get around to releasing their shit at the same time the better things will be. Not that it'll stop me from blagging my arse off to get into preview screenings you understand... And let's have a moment of silence for the poor bastards in Norway who have to wait until the 2nd of December to see the damn thing. [Music: off]

Wow Bob wow... This just caught my freshly caffeinated eye in the current Sight & Sound: Director David Lynch plans to raise $7 billion to bring about world peace through a foundation dedicated to the spread of transcendental meditation techniques. "Real peace isn't just the absence of war. It is the absence of negativity," he told reporters. The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-based Education and World Peace aims to fund in-school programmes and support research to help alleviate drug abuse, depression and high blood-pressure. I guess it's better than an underwear line. His website now features a link to the Maharishi Open University. I'm glad he's happy and I know nothing about transcendental meditation, but I wonder if we should send Harvey Keitel to go have a quiet word with him... At least it's not that Scientology bollocks... [Music: The Adolescents - OC Confidential]

Damn my eyes... I just saw these headlines over on the BBC: But I read the Middle East one as IKEA set for key talks on Iran. For a moment there I envisioned a story about the Swedish home furnishing retailer selling Iran a series of self-assembly flatpack nuclear plant parts called AT�MSUND or NUKEDAL. Must be time for a coffee refill... [Music: The Adolescents - OC Confidential]

Ashton is a town in Lancashire... Brad is waking up next to the corpse right about now. He hates waking up with a dead body. The worst thing is that there's a moment there when he tries to remember who the girl is and where he met her before the memory comes rushing in like a flying monkey and he realises that her name is George Clooney and that the wet patch between them is George's blood. Quick way to lose an erection. Then again with Brad you never know. Right about now he's sliding out from under the corpse and immediately regretting it. For one thing the movement causes George's broken neck to shift and Brad is suddenly looking into dead eyes. George seems to be weeping but still looks rugged and heroic. At the same time Brad's own head reminds him that George got a damn good punch in and begins to throb in exactly the same way that George's never will again. Gotta feel for them both. Now that he's shrugged off the corpse and is holding his head in his hands, sitting on the edge of the bed and trying to work out what to do next it seems like a good idea to give him a call and pretend to be Steven Soderbergh with a pitch for Ocean's 13. Best Punk'd ever. [Music: Bad Astronaut - Houston: We have a drinking problem]

Swoosh... If you're watching the BBC/NASA feed of the live Space Shuttle re-entry and are frustrated by the long gaps of silence I have a tip. Load up a decent sci fi soundtrack. I'm running with the season one Battlestar: Galactica CD, but something older like The Black Hole would also do the trick. Now the whole thing sounds impressive and you can forget that you're really watching to see if the thing explodes or not. PS Isn't it about time they built something NEW to fling into space... the shuttle is like my uncle's old Robin Reliant held together with tape and rust. Sure it'll still run, but I wouldn't want to try and get up to a hundred on the M25 . [Music: Bear McCreary... not quite as cool a name as WOLF but not a bad effort]

I feel some movies coming on... Just kicked off the new London film thingy over on Londonist. Gotta love the Haur. At some point I DEMAND certain people come over and watch the hell out of a certain Roger Moore movie... We will also need the women folk to be on hand to make eyes at while we eat cigars and smoke brandy while discussing Mr Moore's career in detail. [Music: The Turbo AC's - Fuel For Life]

Bon Voyage to the Satanic Chef... I've burnt myself, cut myself, scalded myself, nearly fallen on my Knife, woken up with my head in an Ashtray, been thrown down Nightclub Stairs, had one tooth removed and cracked another in half, I've pulled out my own stitches while trying not to laugh while the E comes on, I've directed Traffic in a drugsoaked daze, I've cooked for Underworld figures, I've driven a Chevy Bronco, I've nearly died in a Volvo, I've thrown up Blue stuff all over the bathroom floor at work and still not been missed at my post, my Waitresses have handed me pictures of them having sex with their flatmates, Videos of Threesomes, and Whiskeys while I work. I've gotten 2 very nice Tattoos and had one done of my Initial on someone else. I've collected clothes like a Parisian Whore. I've dropped to 75kilos and gone up to 100kilos. I've seen what a Gun is like up close... I've also seen some of the biggest Watermelons ever at the produce markets here... Good luck Johnny. Drop us a note when you beach the U Boat. [Music: Alkaline Trio: Crimson]

Constant caving... Finally got around to seeing The Descent. Not a patch on Dog Soldiers for about a million reasons which I will go into detail on later, but still worth a trip to the flicks as I think some of those very cool and realistic sets may suffer on the small screen. Right now I need to jump in the bath and then catch up with Battlestar: Galactica. I hear that last episode was a doozy. We'll see... damn show's been mostly coasting since the first season finale. Jess is having some kind of all female gathering here tomorrow which means I may be locked in another room out of the way while they synchronise their ovaries or whatever the hell it is women do together when they swarm... [Music: off] - I am old and the cinema rattles my head around

Good news from Oz... In his own words: I seem to have scored myself a job, through the Internet, cooking at NZ's main Army Base in Waiourou. I'll be living on the Base and working in the Officers Mess and Sergeants Mess. This place is in the middle of the Volcanic Plateau in the Middle of the North Island. It's where they filmed the Mordor scenes in LOTR. A blasted, desolate place. With lotsa Tanks. I'll be living in a Hostel, but I'll at least get my own room. Should be interesting, to say the least. I'm off to buy my plane ticket now. I've known Johnny for a long time. We met in a place worse than Mordor (and slightly more fictional) so getting the chance to meet him in the real world much later was one of the highlights of the trip we took in 2003/04 ... man, we had fun. If ever a job (or a place for that matter) was made to fit someone then this seems to be it. The stories that will come out of that place... [Music: off]

Worse than his bark? This post over on Boing Boing is very very cool. The Hi Res version is very very very cool. Now me being me the most interesting thing about the shot is the reflected writing on the suit. I immediately decided it would be cool to have the word PURGE printed on lots of crap I have flying around... But when I span the image around I also saw the word BITE: Why does an astronaut need a BITE button. I'm intrigued... [Music: off]

Chili con barmy... I cooked up a LARGE batch of Mike's traditional old school slow cook veggie chili. Jess is in for a treat once she gets home... In other food related issues how come it took me thirty-two years to discover the awesomeness of pumpkin seeds? You guys should have told me... [Music: Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan: Duets circa 1969]

No longer just another brick in the wall... Banksy on holiday: Now arguing over the merits of Banksy in general and this project in particular. For the record I'm pro Banksy and anti big walls. [Music: Descendents - Cool To Be You]

I was away... In fact tonight I even missed out on the chance to rub shoulders in a bar with Tom Baker. Ahh well... Time to get back into gear. Dear Ayman al-Zawahri... That should do for starters. Tomorrow I tackle the email tsunami that has brought tears to the eyes of my little gmail mascot, Kenny. Tonight we got to hang out with Jane again which was very cool - haven't seen her in ages and we always seem to miss each other in California. Nice to catch up and hear first hand about the PhD and the book. Good stuff. And there's a couple of documents open on my desktop that could turn out to be the first step in the oft talked about move to San Francisco... early days yet though. I haven't finished poking London in the eye by a long shot. [Music: Turbonegro - Party Animals]

Hearting the free stuff... I just received a couple of tickets in the post for a preview screening of Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog). Cool. I knew there was a reason I hadn't got around to watching it yet... [Music: Butthole Surfers: Locust Abortion Technician]

Did Rogers put you up to this? When I get stuck writing one thing (yesterday it was about Ken Livingstone and cursed Japanese tourists) I tend to hack away at something else until the mist clears. So here's a little fun for those who like Global Frequency and a certain bad tempered genius with a fondness for filthy assistants and Red Bull. Mike is writing to Jets to Brazil

And we're back...

Normality is slowly returning as life reboots with the original cast of me, Jess and the cat. It's so damn quiet. Apart from the music... Lots to catch up on. More later. Mike is writing to The Descendents