Ratso

You meet all sorts of people as soon as you start letting contractors into your house, some of these people are nice, some are not nice, and some are just plain crazy. It's the latter catagory I ended up dealing with yesterday.

A contractor was round installing 5 new windows in my attic - and let me start by pointing out that he did a good job so I have bo qualms about his workmanship - it was his assistant that freaked me out.

He was a short skinny rat-like man who just oozed sleaze and talked about nothing except drinking and fucking - the kind of conversation which is fine down the pub but could be construed as strange when you are talking to a customer whom you've never met before.

He's yammering away talking to me while his boss does all the work, occasionally he picks up a dustpan and brush and does a bit of sweeping but mostly he just wants to talk about drinking and fucking. Eventually I get tired of it and retreat to my office for sanctuary.

5 minutes later he's at the office door with a bottle of Guinness in his hand that had previously been lying on our dining room table.

"Is it true what they say?" He asks me.

"Is what true?"

"That Guinness gives you strength?".

"Well, I know that's what the old style Guinness ads used to say, yeah!"

"No no no, you don't understand. I heard it puts lead in your pencil!".

"Eh?"

"You know, like Viagra and shit..."

He then proceeds to talk to himself about how this might be true and maybe it would work if he put a raw egg in it. Raw egg and Guinness sounds to me like a really disgusting combination, and to be quite frank, might be enough to put me off Guinness for life. I tell him to take the bottle away with him as I really don't feel like drinking it anymore. He goes back upstairs to his boss like a child with a new toy.

God helps us all if this man is breeding....


Later that night I end up in a bar called "Siberia" - a dump of a place just off Times Square hidden behind an unmarked door inside a parking garage, no I'm not joking! The toilets have no locks on them, they only sell Budweiser and other FCTW beers (FCTW - Fucking Close To Water. As in, "What's the connection between an American beer and having sex in a canoe? They're both FCTW..."). The jukebox is great, the staff are dismissive and the walls are streaked with grafitti. In short, Siberia is your classic NYC dive bar.

I stagger out into Times Square in all it's neon corporate glory and sudenly I'm thinking about the movie "Midnight Cowboy" and what Times Square used to look like and just how much the afternoon's encounter with ratman reminded me so much of Ratso (Dustin Hoffman's character in Midnight Cowboy). I think it puts a nice sheen on your day when your mind makes weird connections like this.

Ivor and Ali R.I.P.

IVOR CUTLER R.I.P

The big news in all the American papers today is the death of Dana Reeve, widow of Superman actor Christopher Reeve. Sad as this is, it was two other deaths today that caught my eye - Scottish poet and humorist Ivor Cutler and Malian musician Ali Farka Toure.

Both these guys were people at the periphery of my record collection but they were artists who I returned to frequently when I felt the need for a cleansing of the palatte. Ivor Cutler for his absurd outlook on life, particulary Scottish life, and Ali Farka Toure because his album "The Source" was the most played cassette on an inter-rail trip I did round Europe back in the mid-90's.

i can still listen to this album and close my eyes and see out the window of a train rolling across the hot and dusty landscape of Andalucia towards Sothern Spain and the boat to North Africa. It was probably the best holiday I've ever taken and a life changing experience. Ali, along with Salif Kieta and Mori Kante, is the reason that if I ever take another trip to Africa in my lifetime I want to go to Mali. No other African country has given us such great music. Thank you Ali Farka Toure.

As for Ivor, the man speaks for himself: "Imperfection is an end; perfection is only an aim".

R.I.P

Boyracers

My Brother H sent me a book called "Boyracers" which is set in the town I born and went to college in - Falkirk, Scotland. The book has awakened a lot of long-lost memories of the place as it trawls through the pubs, car parks and shopping malls where I spent my student years (for the record, I was born in Falkirk and raised 10 miles down the road in Cumbernauld but I did not return until I enrolled at Falkirk College).

Places like "The Big Bar" in Bainsford, a perennialy empty pub with huge windows and a long, nicked-up, wooden bar. An "old mans" pub that we students would go to when the money was getting low and the cheaper booze numbed the boredom. Places like the Martell pool hall where we would go at lunchtime for a roll and chips and a quick game of pool before hopping back in my friend Andy's car which he had inherited from an Uncle who had recently died. Rosie O'Grady's, the bar/club opposite the cinema that sold cheap booze one night a week that was past it's sell-by date. The Maniqui, a meat market of a club that was only to be visited when you were already well wasted. The list goes on....

I find myself in an unhealthy, but enjoyable, rut of nostalglia as I read this book. If there was one time in my life when I was carefree it was my years in Falkirk. I never had any money and jobs were scarce, but I knew a lot of people and there always seemed to be a party going on somewhere that you would be invited to - even when that party consisted in sitting in someone's flat with a 3-litre plastic bottle of supermarket brand cider.

I think about the people I knew that I've lost touch with or are dead - Big Davie Sutherland, ex-bank robber and next door neighbor who treated me like a brother. He was also my isurance man who told me that if I ever got robbed he would get my stuff back as he knew all the local gansters and they left him, and friends of his, well alone. Big Davie had liver problems but everyday could be found drinking his life away, I hope not, I guess he's dead now.

Then there was James Mills, a.k.a "Jam". Your typical small-minded, racist, neo-nazi blue-nose that Falkirk was reknowned for, unfortunately. I have no idea why this guy and me were friends as we were at oppoiste ends of the political spectrum (back then I called myself a Communist and was proud of it - today I call myself a Humanist). We used to have raging arguements over politics and religion but for some reason I kinda like the guy and we played pool and got drunk together a lot. I strongly suspect that he is probably still in Falkirk - there is a certain type of person who doesn't stray far from the nest and he's probably that type of person.

Hami (second name witheld) was another guy I hung around with. Hami was a chancer who was pulling a college grant and signing on the dole at the same time. You could tell because every second Wednesday he was late for class - a date at the brew office intervening. He was also the only guy I knew with his own flat - even if it was a council flat - he had this gorgeous Polish girlfriend that everybody fancied (I forget her name - isn't that typical?), and she used to sneak us non-Poles into the Falkirk Polish club for cut-price beer. Other times we'd sit in his flat and play on Sega games console - my first introduction to Sonic The Hedgehog!

Then there were my flatmates - John. a chef from Maryhill in Glasgow who was hiding from the police because he had run over a deer while driving drunk in the Scottish Highlands - to make matters worse, he was driving a van that belonged to the hotel he was cooking at! He moved to Falkirk, became a student, drank up all his money and stopped paying the whopping fine the police had imposed on him. Needless to say they were at the front door pretty quickly and he answered it prentending to be me. Thankfully I was not home at the time or I might've had to convince the cops I was not him! He turned himself in a week later and got 5 days in jail (a deal that I thought was pretty good considering he would never be able to pay the fine off with 5 days wages).

Another flatmate was Mark, a strange guy from the Outer Hebridies who was obsessed with joining the military and was only at college so he could join up as an officer and not a lowly private. He lived in our house like a ghost; we'd have a party and he would lock himself in his room, we'd be watching TV and he would sneak by into the kitchen without saying "hello", he would laugh at all the wrong times - an example of this led to a huge arguement between me and him - we were watching a documentary about The Falklands War and he was laughing everytime he say footage of a dead Argentinian - I was disgusted and told him so. I don't think he ever spoke to me again after that. One night Me and John got stoned and ate all his jam doughnuts - he moved out a short while later.

I am laughing inside right now recalling the jam doughnut episode and wondering where all these people are now! If anyone should read this please contact me... unless you are a nazi or an officer... lol!

Muslim = Arab. Bush = Idiot.

Bush is in Pakistan and yesterday he said: "Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbour for India, and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world.”

Arab World?? Does George Bush think that Pakistan is an Arab country or is it just his small-minded stupidity that assumes all Muslims are Arabs? Jeez! Does anybody else remember how we laughed when Dan Quayle went to Latin America and wished that he could speak more Latin? It doesn't seem so funny now does it. Oh well, at least Bush also said this:

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."

I sometimes wonder wether this man is truly so callous and evil that He uses his stupid-mask to cover up the real stuff He is doing. Are we all giving him too much credit in his buffoonery and using that to excuse the things he is doing in our name.

On a related note, over in the 51st State of America, Governor Tony Blair said that God will judge him on his actions in Iraq. For the first time in my life I find myself agreeing with him. I fucking hope so! Better get the anal lubricant out Tony - there's a big red-hot poker coming your way!.

At the risk of making the man sound like a harmless eejit, here's a few more Bush-isms for you, just because we all need a laugh sometimes:

• "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."
• "Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."
• "Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
• "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
• "The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."
• "I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change."
• "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared.'"
• "Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things."
• "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future."
• "The future will be better tomorrow."
• "We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."
• "People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history."
• "We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
• "I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican."
• "I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix."
• "When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame."
• "Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it."
• "We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
• "For NASA, space is still a high priority."
• "Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."
• "[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."

Somewhere in Texas a village is missing an idiot.