Nixta Sinks

It's been proposed by Dr. R. that link blogs are on the down and out, and who am I to disagree. I've only got a Masters, itself cheated out of the system by dint of a spoon-feeding of education that sent me sailing (albeit in a roundabout manner) into a fine institution that felt it taxed its students so terribly during the course of a batchelor of arts honours degree that it ought to hand out a masters a couple of years later just for fun. Dr. R. on the other hand is, well, a doctor. So, I shan't link to things here, but rather just spout and rant in my usual manner.

And another thing, why are short curly-haired big-nosed people Jewish? But seriously, the estimable and yet inestimable Mr. Amoral recently considered the virtues of Wikipaedia, rational argument, and the concession of Israeli terrorism with such great ability that I felt it impossible to accept one single point of his argument without accepting them all, and equally impossible to refute at least a couple of his points. Consequently, I felt rather warm and comforted at a) the fine balance of the world and its tendency towards neutrality and b) the ability of Wikipaedia to succeed where Slashdot merely flounders. It is my intention to force through such neutrality and, if you like, cowardice of ultimate opinion a Wiki page on myself. It may take the rest of my natural life, and in all likelihood may have to be achieved by my offspring, but I hope to do so one day. It will, no doubt, involve a carefully honed plan based around my father, Tom Sharpe, Renos Loizou and possibly my brother once he realises how to really take advantage of ICC membership as a developing cricket nation when combined with his role as treasurer. And Metaxa, which brings me nicely onto my next point.

Who the fuck was Hunter S. Thompson? That's the question I put to myself embarassingly recently. I should point out in my defense that I have a terrible memory for names and an even worse memory for the names of the famous. I also have a ridiculous inability to recall even the most interesting moments of my own life, let alone those I read in Gawker, the broadsheets, Fleshbot and ESPN magazine. So it was that Dani slapped me about the head with a book whilst on holiday and said "You're reading too damned fast and you're going to run out of books before the holiday's over! What are you going to do then? Eh? You stupid shit. You'll be bored senseless." She left the room in a huff to smoke a pack of George Karelios cigarettes on our neighbour's roof and pull faces at Damien the baby that our other neighbours (who were sitting on our roof) had stationed overlooking and overscreaming us. I picked up the book and noticed on the front cover an elegant old man dressed in linen pants, a tuxedo shirt, smoking a cigarette in a holder and leaning against a red classic car with Colorado plates on which was perched a glass of what could only be scotch. Who is this dapper man, I asked myself, and realised I was looking at a portrait of Hunter S. Thompson. In the background stood a mysterious woman looking pissed off at being alive and at being forced to wear a dress the same colour as the car. So I started reading. These were sports journals for ESPN magazine remember, but they read more like the hallucinogenic ramblings of an overactive and great mind who looked down on the world as a plaything to do with as he pleased through a variable thickness haze of booze and fags. Politics, Gambling, Human Trade and Sean Penn seemed to be the fabric of his writing, and much finer fabric they make than you might think. I resolved at once to change my name to Stabbing P. Haddock and drink metaxa morning noon and night in front of the TV, trading monopoly money with myself in exchange for coloured socks. It's not gone too well, but it hasn't gone too badly. I'm certainly winning the trading war with myself, but I'm out any number of socks. I have however developed the ability to look at children in restaurants and scream "Get away from me, you freaks!".

Neatly this brings me onto a new game which I'm sure is old to everyone else. I'm going to publish phrases with missing punctuation. It'll be like a colouring book, but instead of crayons one has a cardboard box of commas, apostrophes, semi-colons, sphincters and full stops from which to select a single one for application. Not yet sure how the sphincters fit in, but I feel they need to be included. "I did you bitch!" is my first example. Without much thought and a single comma one can certainly invent two sentences. "I did you, bitch!" is also a brilliant way to shut up someone you once slept with much along the lines, I feel, of "Get away from me, you freaks!".

And what kind of freaks would build enormous cities below water-level and out of match-sticks? Well, Americans that build their cities below water-level, I would say. It saddens me to see the plight of whatever that sweaty party town is in Louisiana (I refer you to my earlier comment about my poor memory - I seriously can't remember - something about Mardi Gras and Jazz and all-night bars comes to mind, but I still, this far into this side-note, cannot remember the town's name), and the poor idiots that felt they should stay in town, but come on! You just can't do that in America where no-one will ever provide enough support because the whole country's in the middle-east ignoring Twin-Tower-fulls of people being stampeded to death and drowned at the merest whisper. I of course exclude the upper-east coast from the "whole country" collective because, frankly, they're rather not be part of it and they use rocks and solid things to make their houses. Still, they're only just above sea-level, so we'll see when New York and the whole of Long Island is consumed. The I-90 is ground to a halt by a sale at Bloomingdales so there's no chance of a mass exodus under emergency conditions.

I still can't remember the name of the town, and this from a man who's seen Angel Heart 20 times. Yes, it does get shitter each time you see it, but it's still not as shit as St. Louis.

Finally, Masa. Dr. R. booked us all in for a treatment at this upmarket sushi restaurant where the set menu is $350 last weekend. Fortunately he felt that he wouldn't have much companionship during dinner unless he booked us into Bar Masa where the average tab at our frugal table was $120. Unfortunately one can get better sushi and more drink for about a quarter of that. No, less. For about $24, being a fifth. Shit, it was, and not even any mackerel or saba (although it was on the menu, just out of season). As Miss Daisy pointed out, it's a fucking fish. It lives in the sea. It doesn't go out of season. I turned to the waiter and dismissed him moments before her outburst with "No mackerel? Get away from me, you freak! I've never known such terrible service!". I didn't say "Get away from me ,you freak!", but looking at Miss D. I knew there simply wouldn't be time to do so before she began her reasonable-but-likely-to-get-our-food-spat-on objection. Mind you, my comment on the service so early in the meal probably didn't help, though he didn't come back himself. He did start the meal with a marvellous put-down to country bumpkim (note, not blumpkin, but bumpkin) Dr. R with, when asked for some froo-froo drink AND a beer, the retort of "I'm sorry, you can't order both here". Also, the fucking restaurant was so far from the nearest outdoor area that there was no chance in hell of popping out for a fag. The cunts.

In other news, I'm negotiating an apartment. I will be likely sharing with Dr. R., but I'm concerned that I'm not yet ready for single parenthood: the bastard tries to set fire to things that are grossly flammable and valuable. Indoors. And that's before he's even sat down. As I declared to the Rinks at Perry Street (a much better restaurant, since it was chosen by Alice, who has a modicum of a clue) I'm amazed his GF KT has not yet killed him, or rather allowed him to die. I predict that within a week of my care, he will be in a cast and wheelchair and will have lost one of his major internal organs. His brain seems to be gone already, and I don't care if you think it's a muscle, it's an organ round these parts. My money's on his liver.

Barrett has an enormous spleen by the way. That's quite fine, but does rather attract doctors to the sonogram screen.

I'm out.