“Austin Mitchell, the colourful Labour MP, has fallen victim to computer hackers. His outspoken weblog has been replaced by a picture of a young man in a gas mask, boasting of how he has taken over the site.

This means visitors can no longer read Mitchell’s story about the government whip who keeps a picture of Blackfriars bridge on his office wall alongside a photograph of Roberto Calvi, the Italian banker found hanging there in 1982 amid mysterious circumstances. “If the government loses a vote,” the whip told Mitchell, “that’s what will happen to me.”

The site is back online, minus that particular item. Similarly missing is the Times story that reported on it.

So, I saw my first The Killers video last night. What a pile of horse shit. Someone needs to put a bullet between that Skygoddamned Mormon’s fucking eyes. That was gross. It made me ill.

You know anything about Mormons? I would suggest they might be the stupidest people on Earth, but as we know, it is a big old World. I conclude that they are just fucking stupid.

The church was founded by a Joseph Smith in the early 1800s. Smith, the son of a fortune teller, claimed to have been visited by an angel, who directed him to a place where he dug up a stone box containing some gold plates, inscribed with Egyptian writings, and “a sort of wonderful pair of spectacles – two crystals set in a silver bow”, through which the illiterate Smith could translate the markings.

This only worked, said Smith, when the plates were completely deprived of light, so he had to put them inside a big hat, into which he would cram his magic-spectacled head, and dictate the translations to a friend, who wrote it down. No sooner were the plates translated, than an angel appear-ed, and flew away with the plates and the spectacles.

So was born The Book Of Mormon!

And, to any of you smirking out there, wipe that thing off your visage. If you think your religion is any worthier, and was conceived in an less a fraudulent manner, well, I think you might well be living in the land of Dreams, and you should wake the fuck up now. Serious. You are holding us all back with your unthinking, selfish idiocy. And just because Pat Robertson is quite evidently rotten, a liar, a murderer, a douche – he is not so different from you.

“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
J. Krishnamurti

Amen.

You know, there are 5,000,000 of these Mormons – 26,000 of those wondering about under the mantle of “active missionaries.” My favourite kinds of people. Apart from Scientologists. Banned from France, you know. They sent Tom Cruise over to convince those evil French to reconsider. Weirdly, they did not. Do they not respect the awesome power of The Cruise, lately to be found leaping atop sofas on Merkin telly to proclaim his love for that lady that was a bit crap in the new Batman movie? What are they, STUPID?

In the face of it all, sometimes I can but laugh.

Bwah-ha. Ha. Ha.

— Wednesday, August 24th, 2005

My life is pretty amazing you know. I am not bragging. I am AWED. Seriously. I am up a mountain in LA making songs, for Skygod’s sake. Danny’s got a fucking ton of vinyl and noise making machines and wooden things, so when we’re done with these three I made previously, we shall make a BRAND NEW ONE. I love new best, always did.

So Dr Saber gave me a big ol’ pile of circular plastic ealier to listen at. I found this amazing Charlie Manson song and a recording of four groupies from the 60s, talking about their lives. There’s this amazing quote from one, seventeen years old, about how these supposedly anti establishment types just made a new establishment, with new leaders, a new elite. New groupies. NOTHING CHANGES!

Really rotten things is, these are all super smart girls. Yet they still felt love and acceptance came in being cum receptacles for assholes. They all got beat up, mangled, and torn. They were all thrown away when the tour ended. I wonder where they are now.

I got an email off a girl I used to go to primary school with today. Way back in the day, in Llangoed, a pretty little village on Anglesey.

“Dunno if you remember me and the sisters Jones,” she wrote. “I’d hope you do, as a many a long hour was whiled away at your house playing lego and such like…. those were the days. One distinct memory is when Meredydd broke your arm in Primary, you were on his shoulders swinging from the goalpost (you always were a short arse!) and you fell.”

I don’t remember her being involved in my youthful Lego. But I remember the goalpost. And I remember her being sweet when everyone else was mean. So big up Anna. Love to Llangoed. I could burst into tears just thinking about the place sometimes, for some good, but mainly ill. Those were the days. The horrorful, wishful, dumb failed-romantic days when I used to walk for miles to wander past Ellie’s house on the weekends and got beat up every weekday.

Danny’s awesome wife met Hunter at a Fear And Loathing set-party, she told me. She freaked him out, and he called her answerphone. How ace is that?

I fucking miss Hunter and I never met him. But I can’t imagine I’d be up here without him.

Bravecapatin, in one of the best and most beautiful emails I ever got (which I shall take proper time to respond to in the morning) wrote: “i was wanting to write something about the uk today and all the wonderfully terrifying that are going on, i think that chaos is the only bed that man will ever lie in. you must embrace it and maybe even start to enjoy it because if not, if you think that one day everyone will walk around free and equal in empathetic harmony, you are wasting your life and everybody else’s time. hunter believed that, as did nelson algren. i truly believe that and yet i fight for harmony and empathy every day; as they did. as you do. i’m not sure what kind of confused idiot that makes us.”

Me neither. But I am glad I am that kind of idiot. It is a nicer life than the Other. Those freaks sob themselves to sleep every night on cancerous pillows. Their muscles creak with cysts. Their daughters loathe them, and their poor mothers die new and painful deaths every day. And their eyes – I am seeing this every day on Fox “news” panel discussions – are glazed and empty. They are dead already. The walking dead. And that is their lot, for there is nothing else. No hell, no heaven. Just one life, one life they lived dead.

It is all in the eyes, brothers and sisters. Find some eyes you can swim in. That is what it is all about. That and being up mountains making things that bring you joy.

— Monday, August 22nd, 2005

This is Danny Saber’s palace, where I am currently recording and sleeping. That thing was there when he moved in. Neat, huh?

— Sunday, August 21st, 2005

THE MUSIC IS DOPE.

Jeff Wayne Dope.

Wagner Dope.

TV just tried to sell me teenage girls getting porno whilst pissed, then make me watch young men beat each other into hamburger.

There is – get this – an eye on the rooftop.

Photo in the morning.

Head up Skinny. Fuck that. Your time’s coming.

— Sunday, August 21st, 2005

I just had jerk salmon and corn on the cob in a glorious beachside restaurant in Malibu. In a minute Jeff’s driving me up those Hollywood mountains to Danny Saber’s and lo, we shall make history. Danny is fucking safer than fuck. He digs Adam And The Ants.

Might post some video footage of studio stuff later. Jeff’s getting a video, so we can make stuff for my DVD. It’s gonna be an amazing DVD, swear down. Have I mentioned that Clones – The Cartoon – is looking amazing? Oh, OK then. How about that Miranda Richardson was on my plane? She smiled at me. YUH!

Mothboy sent me this. I fucking pissed myself. Old Tories are the craziest people in the world.

— Friday, August 19th, 2005

Dear You

What a lovely day it has been!

For me.

I can read about Luke Haines in the car on the way to the mountains.

Oh, gadgetry. How I will miss you.

She used to live by me. I saw her put the bins out. The wind blew her hair away, and she smiled.

What was it I read last week in a letter in The Independent? “Robin gone, only Mo Mowlam and Clare Short to go.”

Don’t go anywhere remote, or get on any small airyplanes. Lock your doors, Claire. History is calling. And you were right about page 3.

— Friday, August 19th, 2005