Of this parish

perennial fairy lights

the anaemic room

weakly illuminate

loops of pain in

strata spiral down

to our liquid sulk

Miffy, Hello Kitty

index finger toothbrush

the bookend kiss

it`s all a touch, honey

whereas,
down to his laminate
you know he is
imaging
size 6
in pilates

Back Door Gender Agenda.

I love the nightlife/I love the boogie. But.....

...It seems to me some difficulties have developed once we get to the swinging results of the nightlife. I am not really one for sitting around the Creationist table when there`s archaeology to be getting on with but just this once let`s go deep, deep south.
I should like to consider the placement of pleasure centres, erogenous zones within the human anatomy.
The prostate gland. In the Fiefdom of Pleasure the prostate gland and its absence seem to be King and Queen. Queen mostly, all of a sudden like.
It might be an idea to try to sex your God. If you have a God already decided to distribute the look-no-hands aspect of the prostate gland to only one gender then its current location is a fairly good place to put it and really quite hilarious. Ladies seeking to satisfy can dispense immediately with worrying about fellatio technique and reach for the strap-on. Or Thimblelina. By rights in the current climate this ought to be standard play fare especially at 3 o`clock in the morning.
It`s curious [we wish] the behaviour of the contemporary male with his seemingly accelerated tendency to go imitating what might be his own pleasure in his female partner and not ask for the uh, compliment to be returned. It`s a contradiction wherein the unfortunate female has no orifice to go to on her male partner which is not, to some extent designed for pleasurable sensations, she has no opportunity to exact her revenge. In purely physiological terms it don`t work the other way. I doubt this is the behaviour of a female Creator, I feel she would be a little more democratic.

Of course I am taking the piss, nevertheless it does appear yet another thoroughly modern exponentiality is revealed. Five years ago I was back on the rack after a lengthy absence, I found certain expectations to have changed considerably, so much so I could have been forgiven for wondering whether the physiologies had changed or been switched during the period of my monogamy. By simple dint of being a man it was forthrightly expected I might be one to have expectation of going in search of a transgendered prostate. I know they are getting good at transplants and body modifications, good if not particularly aesthetic.

I suppose I am somewhere between angered and confused by the willingness of the clever, modern women I have encountered to even feel they have to consider as a protocol the offer or declination of the opportunity to physically humiliate their bodies when it is plainly something they do not desire. Of course all things both consensual and knowledgable are fine if that is what they are, if they are not fully and precisely consensual then they are, put simply, subjection or rape , neither of which should ever be fashionable.

Sexual dominances appear to me to be fashionable, so much so that the expectation of intimacies previously `fashionable` appear to have been, for want of a better word, subjugated.


Whose agenda is that?

Improvisations

FIRING SQUAD


Blindfold,
hilarious!
just the cigarette
fetch
your sweetest bowl-cut
choirboy
have him light me
send him running
fast as his tassles
will carry

i haven`t, i wasn`t
it isn`t me
i deserve
on account of
a lascivious look
of guilty

call that a parade?
let them go bat a ball
swim in the creek
girls giggling
and fucking
grant yourselves
a legacy

holding office
achieving privy
a waste of boys
you`re good at it
you`re experts, committee

you`re nothing else

an expended species

those that mourn
their clips
exhausted, empty
wait for
after thee.

Shrunken Gap-heads on Sticks.

A few of us here were waiting for Observer Woman to run the feminist number.
9 real women on 6 pages. Only 88 pages of the usual drivel. The sponsors will have their limits, 6 pages, there you go.
I love [No] the little floaters they`ve used to illustrate the quotation grids in this article - the cover to Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus flags-up Jess McCabe`s comment- `The attitude it embodies make me angry, too`. Totally with her on that. That`ll be the attitude that isn`t the unyet-unwritten Men are from Mars, Women are from Mars, then.

But It`s the carcinogenic copy on page 6 which leads me to blog. We are on the what`s -hot -and- what`s- not interchange, no reported incidents. Wherever perishable thoughts pierce binliners there you`ll find The Gap:

FOREST WHITAKER IN THE GAP ADS.

Did Gap kick-start the whole celebrity-stars -in-a-cool-ad-campaign marketing strategy thing? We`re not sure- but we do know they should own the copyright on it, spiritually speaking. Gap has a long heritage of juxtaposing unobvious celebs, accomplishing styling, and low-key photography, in an artful fashion. This pic,starring super-credible Forest and taken from the current US campaign , illustrates our point nicely. And by the way, their newest UK collection is sublime.

Poor Forest, he looks like he is passing a golden egg there - must be such a travail for `Unobvious celebs` everywhere. Of course we expect the worst kinds of outsourced labour from The Gap, and we expect the Western Gap shop workers to allow themselves to be cajoled on catching their quotas [Helps turn over those desperate debt-ridden post-grads] at $15 an hour - come in early, get out late, let`s get this thing shop-shape.

The Gap has the by-now-usual detour it wants us all to take this Autumn. They call it `Classics Redefined`. Class of 2007 is peachy- keen on redefinition, It`s all the rage. How you do that redefinition thing? Well, teacher swings in and slaps the sourcebooks on the desk - you`re a bit older now and you only do Nike on a Sunday. The first thing with `Classics` where you have them is that they do not require any redefinition, they stand anyhow - It would therefore be somewhere between vanity and plunder even to attempt to `Redefine`. If we have `Redefinition` [It seems we must] we have the appearance of things being updated, of being dragged into the present - the zeitgeist sucking golden eggs, the gilt-edged refraction of the brandscape. Typical.

In the quicklime pits of language decay some words are dead, others are thrown on the cart still clutching for breath; COOL MARKETING STRATEGY SPIRITUALLY HERITAGE ARTFUL CREDIBLE SUBLIME.

Just kill the thing and let the rest of us talk Chaucerian.

Yea, verily.

Giving it all up for Tom Ford. Goosing for Gucci.

Sometimes I don`t get how we don`t get it.
I don`t get how even some of the people I dearly love routinely stick to The Program.
Is smalltalk and passing the time of day dependent on the ubiquity of The Program?
The Program is the routine and that`s how The Program likes it.
And Tom Ford and his eunuchs. The Program has this compacted irony gas to pump in - Lets us know we can take or leave it. Except the bit about `Leave it`.
A young virtual friend asked me if it was true we used to discuss the weather. Well, yes - with the basic requirement that we notice the weather as the first thing without the distraction or diversion of plugging-in. And there were wild birds and convoys of milkfloats in the Metropolis,even. Mere clatter.

Why pick on Tom Ford? Because I need a man. A gay man? Even better.
I`d read the signs that I was about to give up on newspapers, T.V, magazines. Just leaving the billboards, flashverts and mailshots. De-clutter, de-clatter.
But Tom Ford articled in the June 2007 Observer Woman by Vanessa Grigoriadis bought me the ticket. Tom quit Gucci to do his own thing on behalf of menswear. Tom made certain adaptations to womankind while at Gucci - but he went too far, now he has taken it upon himself to correct the balance. Don`t believe any one man can have such significance? Let Tom tell it to a simpering journalist herself modified by the Tom Ford Diet.
How can I give the minutes of my final encounter with the wafers of irony?

1. `I wish I could`ve been a rock star. They don`t have to talk. Plus they get to sleep all day, do lots of drugs, and have sex with anyone they want`.
2. Vanessa: Tom Ford single-handedly reinvented sexy. [ I assume he did this while romance was wintering in the Bahamas].
3. `Why shouldn`t women have sex for enjoyment? Why should showing off be a bad thing?`
4. Vanessa: Ford taught American women to become sexual dominants, supplying them the costume of [ Time for a list?] stovepipe trousers and Halston-meets-Elsa Perretti white jersey dresses, as well as leather spankers and sterling-silver handcuffs. [Sexual dominance as a costume?]
5. `I feel,` he says breathily, [Tom don`t...pleeassse] `that I am keyed into the female consciousness`.
6. `I am my own muse`.
7. `...but there`s a difference between being egotistical and knowing your value as a product and an actor. I know my value as a product, and I`ve divorced myself as a human from myself as a product.` [Absolutely crystal clear].
8. Vanessa: As a human, Ford is nervous about almost everything, sleeping only a few hours a night, budgeting every minute of the day.
9. Vanessa and Tom get plastic: Ford`s new vision for men is very Ken and Barbie on the jet for the weekend of razzle-dazzle business and pleasure in Dubai. The store [ UK = shop] , which comprises one ready-to-wear floor and a mezzanine of made-to-measure suites, is an Egyptian temple of metrosexuality - gleaming vitrines of [ anyone for a list?] diamond -and-onyx cufflinks, eyeglasses with 18-carat-gold bridges, monogrammed hand-knitted socks, and perfumery of Estee Lauder-produced scents. Ford has said that they are supposed to smell like the sweat of a man`s balls. A woman wants a man to smell like a man, he thinks. `You know, when I was young, men were very attracted to me, and teenage girls were attracted to me, but women weren`t , and now women are very attracted to me,` he confides, `So I think that I know what kind of men women want.` [ Who better to design them?].
10. C`mon Tom, give us a list, details are important: `For evening, we have double-breasted , single-breasted, peak lapel, notch lapel, shawl collar, white dinner jackets, dinner vests, and dressing gowns, which is one fantastic way that a man can be flamboyant. They retail at $3900, which I think, actually, for all the work that went into it in today`s world, is not crazy`.
11. `The shoes, they are like Berluti,` declares a Frenchwoman, handling a pair. `Well,` says Ford, drawing himself up, `I like to think they`re like Tom Ford.`
12. Vanessa and Tom in a hug: `Did you see there?` Ford whispers to me. `I thought the men`s store had to be designed around a vagina.`
13. `We are running a business that`s not for everyone, and I`m not trying to be an asshole [ No need Tom, you are effortless] , some people can`t afford it and maybe there is a sort of resentment about that.`
14. Are you a retard Tom? `Functioning buttonholes start to stand for something more than buttonholes that don`t`.

Enough.

Towering wafers of irony have buried me. Anyone got a dirty bomb filthy enough to take out Tom`s ego?

Yep, that was the day I gave up the newspapers. Again. The Observer, ditto The Times were both shot through with the wafers. I shall add to their circulation problems.

Over at the Sunday Times we`ve got Shane Weston [ A woman]. She`s got lists and irony wafers, stack `em up Shane, atta girl. She`d probably even take the Tom Ford Patent Estee Lauder Detour to get to that ball-licking.

It`s more expensive than just going to that towering Self Development section to scan`n`bag the manual on those strange male creatures. You know how we like it. Shane, possibly you are next on my list.

All deserted/stand alerted.

Make Mine Silvine. Mary Pret a Portas.

I don`t watch a great deal of TV but I made a point of watching Mary Queen of Shops, the one about the elephants` graveyard of the 1990s [ Brighton].

Then she was in Sunday Times Style magazine. Several things about this have nagged at me all week.
I wanted to like Mary Portas. I quite liked this:

`People say they love American fashion. I say `Sorry?` I mean it is so safe. Abercrombie and Fitch is just Gap in a nightclub, isn`t it?`

Well, shit nightclubs and David Lloyd sports centres.

Does Mary look dangerous? They tried to style her for TV but she wasn`t having any, not when she`s got `Last winter`s most-coveted accessory, those YSL platform ankle boots`. Accessory? To what?

Oh Mary, skewer me now. `I didn`t turn up to a meeting with Armani because it was Mylo`s [ her son, not the rock`n`roll-destroying nuisance] sports day`. Silver bells and cockle shells...

Then there`s the things in Mary`s world. She never leaves home without her little red Smythson notebook [from £28]. I never leave home without a Silvine exercise book [ from 28p]. `The affordable new YSL jewellery line is addictive [ring, £70]`. When you`re done with this addiction pop the YSL ring in a party bag, the recipient will be none the wiser.

Mary wants [and she Quants] to `Put the joy and glamour back into shopping`. But Mary, what are you wearing in your self-styled photo?
Part Purdey New Avenger, part Eric B and Rakim. You know those secondary parade ladies` dress shops which are all closing down as we speak? You know the last two items they can`t shift as the bailiffs hover? Mary`s stitched them together. You`ll get more joy and glamour at a church fete.

What did she do in Brighton? She New Rave`d them up is all, still it`s better than tripping over a didgeridoo and putting your `accessory` through a bodram. Mary, you`re such a checklist - Mark Jacobs, Notify, Theory, Hamish Morrow, YSL, Armani etc. Mary is `All emotion` - how dare they run around in their affordable, replica fashion - where`s the joy, the excitement in `Stacking my bag with tons of identical clothes that add up to less than £50?`

As if she would. Millions of people have no choice but to think hard about where £50 will go, all of them no doubt in need of a make-over.



Next Guru please.

Introduction.

I hadn`t really thought about what to call it.
I reasoned I would find it helpful to [re]join the blogging community here perhaps as a kind of nursery slope, a sharpening of tools, a jumping of the gun, a tennis ball punted into naive orbit.
To find my condition.
Lost? Could say.
Remembrance of things lost. And live action, of course.
Hiatus. Has to be called Hiatus, because that`s what it is. I am in hiatus. It`s not my fault and yet it must be.


I like to lay into obvious sycophants and hypocrites especially those who get paid for excruciating banality.


Images and texts which snipe at the passer-by. We are all treated as though we are adolescent, pubescent, nascent,unfinished, incapable of individual identity. We are all houseplants at their focus groups.
The pitches of High Street brands especially when they`re grooming young people. Or shafting the stylish sophisticates. Or necrophobics.
And `Ethical` consumerism. Foot-in-mouth disease.

Accelerated times.
We are beyond the Spectacular, beyond Simulation. There is certainly a scramble towards digitalia. A massive shift in our use of time. I sit on the fence. An unpainted spiky metal fence around a flagpole`d mews-y newbuild. Fucking hurts.
Many of the strongest words ever written seem to apply, as though on a loop. I feel I am being consumed by a blossomdrift of Post-it notes wafting in from history and herstory. Genii and lunatics in sync. Lautreamont, Mary Daly, Baudrillard, Anais Nin,Vaneigem and many others. They`re all on Jonathan Ross tonight.

I`ve got a catapult of twig and elastic, doubles as a bullshit divining rod. And I`m going to use it.