The blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul
Leonard Cohen – The Future

Look! You know I am the typo king! And you know I think coke is rubbish. So please stop emailing me having a go at me for being a cokehead just because yesterday I typed “Half Coked Diary” when I meant half-cocked!

(How can one be “half coked” anyway? Either one is on coke, or one is not, surely?)

Anyway.

Before I get into the whole World War 3 business, let me direct you in the, erm, direction of some good music. Firstly, the good people at Wu-Tang Corp have put together a special mixtape in memory of Russel Jones, AKA ODB, AKA THE KING OF EMOTIVE RAP (RIP). You can download it here. And my boy Anth Latue, the geordie wonder-emcee who you’ll remember from some corking mixtape contributions over the past 18 months, has made an album, and put it on his website. Don’t let the crappy website put you off, the album is dope, and my boy’s beats are fonky as shit. Cop it here. Northern Dreams bebbe! Serious.

So. World War 3. British troops in Iran? “You can never say never in any of these situations,” says Fuher Blair.

Iran will pay “a very heavy price” if they resume full-scale uranium enrichment to build nuclear weapons, says acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

“All options, including the military one, are on the table,” says Rummy Rumsfeld

Russian parliamentary leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky told the Ekho Moskvy radio station yesterday that an attack on Iran is inevitable and that it will occur on March 28th.

“The war is inevitable because the Americans want this war,” said he. “Any country claiming a leading position in the world will need to wage wars. Otherwise it will simply not be able to retain its leading position. The date for the strike is already known — it is the election day in Israel. It is also known how much that war will cost.”

The cartoons’ publication, thinketh he, was aimed to “provoke a row between Europe and the Islamic world… It will all end with European countries thanking the United States and paying, and giving soldiers.”

Over here in the US the press is full of “why Iran is evil” stories. These have been growing in number for the past year, as we have noticed. Now we’re hitting fever pitch. Of course, Bush and Blair’s problem is that they don’t have Europe on side. Enter: Crappy Cartoons!

Four shot dead in Kabul. Condy Rice says “I don’t have any doubt that … Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes. And the world ought to call them on it.”

A reader, Dangerfield, writes, “it has taken a welsh student rag to show all the press in the UK what they should have been doing: University of Cardiff student newspaper Gair Rhydd – which means Free Word in Welsh – was forced to recall copies after it reprinted one of the 12 cartoons originally published in a Danish newspaper…

Indeed.”

Indeed!

Many of you are writing to me saying everyone should publish the pictures and it’s a free speech issue. That many images of the Prophet have previously appeared, to little, or no protest.

The Mohammed Image Archive website contains numerous examples of previous instances of the portrayal of the prophet Mohammed. None of them show him with a bomb in his turban, but he has been used to advertise products in Germany, for instance.

“While the debate rages,” writes the site’s author, “an important point has been overlooked: despite the Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammed under any circumstances, hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint from the Muslim world. The recent cartoons in Jyllands-Posten are nothing new; it’s just that no other images of Mohammed have ever been so widely publicized.”

And therein is the crux. So widely publicised have these crappy drawings become, there probably isn’t a practicing Muslim alive who hasn’t been deeply offended by them yet. This isn’t about freedom of expression. It’s about winding up an already outraged Muslim world, and getting the Europeans behind the globalists’ invasion of Iran.

In other news, YES TV IS FUCKING BAD FOR YOU, and YES IT BREAKS LITTLE BABANS’ BRAINS! This would be why everybody seems midly retarded and thinks me to be mad when I talk of these things. Thank you to my Mother for sheilding me from all that nonsense when I was small. If you have a TV set, parents, plese throw it away. Your babans will be mocked, as I was, for not knowing what’s going on in Neighbours, or the modern equivalent, but they will be richer for it.

On a lighter note, I had a lovely night last night. Danny Saber and I made three amazing beats, and his dear wife Helen and the lovely Carina kidnapped me and took me to The Rainbow on LA’s sunset strip. It is full of big-haired eighties leftovers, I like it. Carina gave me that bracelet you see above, with three-eyed- blobs on it. She is still unaware of the existence of The Blob. Jeff considers that significant. I wouldn’t know about that sort of thing. I just think it’s dope.

Oh, and I was in my favourite newspaper, the Independent last week. Wowza.

— Wednesday, February 8th, 2006

We are in San Francisco right now, on the thirtieth floor of the Grand Hyatt, which is next to a big tunnel, atop which sits a nice bar called Tunnel Top, which serves whiskey in pint glasses, with an inch of coke bringing the liquid level to the top of the glass. My left eyeball is bright red, which tends to indicate a decent night on the tiles, and Jeff tells me I danced an awful lot to bad house music for hours, and span ladies about like whirlygigs. I have no idea. I left that End Up place at ten or something, with the sunshine beating down on me, following a row with the stubbly lesbrarian door lady, who I mistook for a man and called dude a lot, but Jeff was still there at 2pm. He seems in remarkably good shape, however. We got up at nine and went for nice Italian food down by the docks, but I shall go back to bed now, as I am tired and confused, and we have to drive back to LA at 6am. I think I am going back to New York on Wednesday. We have a week of Grammy parties and drawing and making mixtapes and comic books ahead of us. It is not such a bad old life, for some of us.

— Monday, February 6th, 2006

That’s me taking a photo out of my hotel room window.

So, after a nine hour drive along the “one”, AKA the PCH, AKA the Pacific Coast Highway, we are back in LA, in Jeff’s darling wee house. Jeff is watching Saturday Night Live, which I usually find dire, but it is quite funny today. It is hard to escape TV in this US of A, you know. My mother is concerned.

“Considering I did my best to keep you away from the evils of TV as a little one,” writes she, “and you don’t have a set of your own, you seem to watch more TV than anyone I know!! Read a book or listen to a pod cast in your hotel room! Learn Swahili or something. Leeches indeed! Your brain will rot! ”

Pod Cast! See, I am all futurey, but I haven’t sussed out Pod Casts. I haven’t sussed out the iPod Jeff gave me, to be honest. It still has his stuff on it. Which is mainly Journey and Peter Frampton and Wu-Tang, which is fine, actually. But anyway.

That’s the view down from my hotel room, that is

Yeah, mam, it is true, the very little of this TV I am getting is far too much. Last night, prior to peeling the contacts from my bloodied eyeballs, I happened upon this thing, of which I have heard a very little, called Catching A Predator, in which a “news” programme called Dateline sets up dudes on the internet and shames them on national TV. Basically, these dudes sit at home, talking to what they think are teenagers on the internet, then they arrange to meet these teenagers, then they go to a house, wherein waits this Dateline dude, who grills them creepishly and confronts them with their predicament. They tend to make bizarre excuses for being there (“I was here to sell a house”), and for the viagra/cameras/magazines/outfits they are carrying (I was gon my way to a fancy dress party and thought I met get lucky”). Then they go outside, and the coppers arrest them. It is quite gross. Public hangings will be back soon, I suspect.

Cube view.

Still. That drive back was awesome. We saw the biggest waves ever, then we went through Big Sur, which is just like I imagined it, but bigger, and full of tiny black sparrows that walk right up to you and make a devilish noise. And an eagle! I also saw lots of really sick mountains, like the one below, but I only remembered Jeff’s camera at the end, plus that photo totally refused to capture the big sick moun tains big sickness. Pretty sky though, hmm? Indeed.

Totally sick mountain.

So, World War III has been boiling away for a while now. But could a cartoon of the Prophet Mohhamed be the trigger that sets it all off officially? One hopes not, obviously, but one supposes it would be befitting of these retarded days in which we live. Incidentally, Merete Eldrup, Managing Director of JP/Politikens Hus A/S, the company that published those unfunny and entirely Skygoshdarned incendiary cartoons in Denmark, is married to Anders Eldrup. That there man is a big Bush Buddy, and attendee of the last five Bilderberger meetings. Not that means anything of course.

— Monday, February 6th, 2006

Now look at the size of that fucking rabbit! Fat bastard! It looks like it ate you!

Anyway. As I am in La, let me dispel a myth for you: That British TV is better than American TV.

The truth is not so. Americans are much better than the British at Television, good and bad. They make the worst television. So bad can they make it! But so too, they make the best. Ours is mainly a bit crap, and super-occasionally very good. In America it is mainly awful, but there is always something really amazing on, like South Park, or The Sopranos, or Dave Chapelle, or The Daily Show, or Seinfeld, or the Young Jeezy video.

However, it is full of humiliation and torture. They’re force feeding a man leeches at the moment, and laughing at him. “It’s not good enough Kevin. Looks like Lucy’s gonna get that Hummer!”

Lucy is in a vat full of lobsters and lice. She has bile dripping out of the corners of her collagen plump lips.

She is kind of hot.

Oo-er, people! We are entering a new plateau of high weird, here in this 21st century, itself a tricky little bit of subtle deception to make us thing there haven’t been billions more, in which reality TV game shows were not a controlling factor and huge beasts flew about the skies, swooping down on occasion to feast on giant vermin, oblivious to the big white dude in the clouds and the red one with hooves beneath, who one day would plant their bones in the desert in order to trick innocent Christians into thinking the Bible to not be literal. Dark!

If I had a brand new combine harvester, I would not give you the key, as you might break it.

HAHAHAHAHA!

So I was up at Interscope yesterday, plotting, which is fun, cos it involves puffy stickers and stuff. After we went to The Viceroy, which is one of those restaurants in a hotel which is so expensive they don’t put the prices next to the items on the menu. Lou Reed was there. Lou Reed is short. I had half of Jeff’s burger and a bunch of whiskeys, thank you. We all got given a small quantity of potato and random meat on a spoon. I have no idea why. Dyana told us this story about how one time she was doing karaoke in some dive, and Whitney Houston came in a hoodie and got up and did The Greatest Love Of All. Ray told us about how Manhattan Beach has been ruined, by a load of raw sewage wot got pumped all over it for some bizzaro reason. “You can’t shake that shit,” he noted, sadly. Seems the beach is likely to be ruined and unusable for 20 years, as the sewage penetrated the sand, and it is now full of bacteria. “The shit went down,” explained Ray, usefully.

My Blackberry notes are a bit vague after that, as we hooked up with Jeff’s brother and got battered. Jeff’s brother hangs out with legions of 22 year old Californian girls and smokes bowls and does too many shots, and can’t remember a thing that happened last night, today, but is painfully aware that his girlfriend hates him and Jeff nicked half of his weed. Ah-ha ha ha. Brothers! I had a good time, between the worst club in the world and a relatively safe one, and I finally found some moustache wax, and I kept finding things to be amazed by, like dogs, those freakish inventions of human selective breeding, you used to be wolves and shit! Ah ha ha ha!

Today we went to see Danny Saber and that freak dog Wolfie and the long-suffering Helen, to make substitute music. I did some Singing. It sounded like Belle And Sebastian, before we pitched it up. In my head I have a giant, magnificent, Pavarotti voice, but in reality I have a gay indie voice.

I learn so many things here! Today I learnt that Madonna has a recurring nightmare in which she is chased by a midget weirding a knife. And Lynsey Lohan was interviewed for the part of Tom Cruise’s wife. Scary!

Anyway. Tomorrow, we are driving to San Francisco! Road Trip! Best not be any earthquakes! We know what you’re up to Jeb, you fat little shit!

— Saturday, February 4th, 2006

What would I do without you lot?

“for the record,” writes a person calling themselves “Booty”, via MySpace, who has one friend – which is Tom, freakish grinning friend of all – and no picture, leading me to think he joined just so he could inform my dumb Limey ass: “any form of protest at the presidents address is not allowed, those are simply the rules! sheehan was asked before hand not to protest and she did! she broke the rules, end of story.”

Which is interesting to hear. I don’t like those rules, myself, but hey…

“…she was not the only one removed that night,” continues the letter. “a pro war republican was also asked to leave for wearing a pro war t-shirt!!! explain that one?”

To show no-bias, I would assume. And I wouldn’t call a T-Shirt reading “Support the Troops” a “pro-war” shirt. I would call it, if anything, a pro-troops shirt. Or a pro-persons in danger shirt. Maybe just pro-people. Whatever.

“Both women’s shirts resulted in their owners being ejected from the House chamber before President Bush’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night so basically you have carefully edited the true events, true marxist style, and concocted your own version.”

Oh, were that true! I just hasn’t heard about the “pro-war” shirt. It should also be noted that Cindy, whose shirt read “2,245 Dead. How many more?” was forcibly removed, then arrested. Beverly Young, wife of Republican Rep. Bill Young of Florida, was asked nicely to go outside, and not arrested at all. Whatever, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer this afternoon said that neither woman should have been removed from the chamber and that, “we made a mistake… just wearing a T-shirt is not unlawful.”

Well, good. Were it, we would be living in Bizzaro world, and I would be called Eustace, or something, surely?

Booty continues:

“so what it be alright if say one night you were djng and i climbed onto your set and blocked the sound system, stopped you from working? that would be ok wouldn’t it? or would you have the burly bouncers remove me so you could continue? if that’s ok, i’ll come to your next show and protest and sit on your booth waving banners, interrupt you, block off the music, you are for freedom of speech yeah?”

Well, Booty, were you to turn up at any of my public engagements, as twere, waving a banner, yes, that would be fine. I am sure it wouldn’t stop me from working. But we are discussing T-Shirts here, aren’t we? You can wear a T-Shirt saying “Akira The Don Fucks Little Kids” for all I care. “Akira The Don Loves The Killers”. Whatever. That’s fine. But, serious, someone wearing a T-Shirt, or even waving a massive banner, is not going to stop Resident Douche from “working”. Even not being voted in didn’t do that. Impeachment wouldn’t. We are dealing with a particularly nasty Hydra here, let us never forget.

But, Booty, do continue!

“as for katrina??? ethnic cleansing? what planet are you on mate, you’ve been smoking too much weed. for your information all those poor blacks that were taken out of new orleans are not living in “concentration” camps but put up in 4-5 star hotels, cheap motels, brand new trailer parks across the USA! they are also given government cheques to support them, they have been provided with free food and clothing etc. your article was racist and uninformed.”

Well, yes, a fair few folks have been doing OK. A friend of mine followed a number of families, who have moved in with others in places as far afield as Georgia, and even New York, and are doing wonderfully, considering. But some 200,000 remain in what are, essentially, camps, and may be until 2010. In these places, the folks have been separated from their spouses, are not allowed to cook for themselves, and are not allowed to leave the premises. You can read an account of one such camp here.

Do go on thought Booty.

“mayor nagin was the one with the ultimate responsibility who could have ordered the evacuation, which he did not do. he had a fleet of hundreds of bright yellow school buses he couldve used but chose not to? he didnt listen to the governments advice nor to local meteorologists to evacuate, but thought that a cat 5 hurricane would not flood “his” city. strangely enough he managed to get his “black ass” straight out of orleans leaving “his” people to the mercy of nature and the looters. Note: the USA is a collection of states, rather like mini countries, the president did not have the executive order to just go in a remove the people (white and black), who were pretty stupid to hang around in the first place whilst a cat 5 hurricane descended on them.”

Well Booty, the Mayor did indeed order an evacuation, which those with the means, mainly white, were able to heed. Those without the means to pack up their houses and flee by car, those without cars, those unable to pay for gas (which had run out due to the scramble anyway), those in hospital, those on drugs, the old, the sick, they couldn’t move, I am afraid. So those people were left to die, by the government. “Hang in there.” That poor Mayor was doing all he could! “The national guard are on their way,” he was promised, but of course that guard took over a week to show, while Bush continued to trot around the country making the case for continued war, and playing guitar in photoshoots.

It wasn’t just that Bush didn’t go in there and drag everybody out. It was that the people of New Orleans, Mississippi, and the surrounding areas, were left to die, for over a week. When the National Guard did show up, they surrounded these places, and refused to let the Red Cross or any provisions at all in, saying they wanted people to leave, and letting in supplies would draw people back.

No water for four days. International aid refused. FEMA denying aid, cutting phone lines. Bush on tour, Cheney on holiday. So, the streets filled with bodies, dropping like flies from the heat, from starvation, from exhaustion. Some, literally, exploded. Popped like over-ripe plums in the midday sun.

“do you know that it wasnt just new orleans that was destroyed?” asks Booty, sadly. “the whole costal areas known as the gulf coast was tragically hit, about the size and mass of the UK was destroyed, can you fathom that? or has the BBC told you what to think? how could one man, a president stop a cat 5 hurricane? evacuate millions of people in a few days.”

Well, here’s the thing, Booty. Everybody knew a hurricane, of horrorful magnitude, was going to hit the Gulf Coast. That was known three weeks prior. It was all over the weather channels, and even on the mainstream news channels, like CNN and Fox. Remember the US response to the Tsunami? Wasn’t it incredible? In there like gangbusters, pow! And beside that, everybody knew those levies were, for want of a better word, rubbish. A report conducted in the sixties predicted the very eventuality that Katrina ushered in. The Bush administration actually took away money that was supposed to be paying for their repair in 2003, to pay for their war in Iraq. You can read a little about it here. Search about, there is a lot more. I haven’t time to do your research for you right now, I am afraid.

“my advice,” concludes Booty: “lay off the ganja, stop watching the BBC news for your daily propaganda and whilst you are in the USA, NYC, travel around a bit, speak to people that were actually in louisana before jumping to idiotic conclusions about genocide and concentration camps, throwing your magazines against the walls etc. next you’ll be saying that the hurricane was created by republicans using some brand new weapons system.”

Well, thanks for your advice Booty. As it is, I very rarely smoke weed these days, as I have too much to do. And I don’t watch the BBC either. I don’t own a TV! If you dig about my archives a bit, you’ll find lots of testimony from people I’ve spoken to, all around America and the world, about these things of which I speak. I talk to all sorts of people, all the time. It’s part of my job you see. And of all the people I have spoken to, who were in New Orleans when that shit went down, not one has a single good thing to say about the Bush Administration, or FEMA. Many have love for their Mayor. Anyway. I wrote a great deal about all this throughout September. All linked and referenced. Well, not all, sometimes, I like, emote. I am allowed. Have a nosey about. And, finally, I have run this before, but one more time:

“Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

My advice for you Booty? Read lots more. Start with this – it’s short, and funny, you’ll like it. It’s a historical artifact from the time of the horror: “8 Tips On How To Avoid Dealing With The Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Obvious Racial Dimensions of the New Orleans Tragedy, As Taught To Me By Television And The Web In The Last Week”

Oh, and regarding your final point – whilst nobody would ever believe for three seconds that anybody would actually use weather modification technology on people, let alone “their people”, we do know that, well, it exists, and a bill was passed last year making it completely legal for the US military to use it. You can read a little about it here, but I’d suggest you do your own research, and draw your own conclusions.

Peace be with you.

Oh! I nearly forgot. Good news. Mary emailed me the following:

“The religious hatred bill didn’t go through, tony lost by one vote and he couldn’t vote hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha”

Read all about it!

— Wednesday, February 1st, 2006