I forgot to write to you yesterday. Sorry. I was busy! I mixed a pair of Marvin The Martian songs, which are amazing. It is a lot easier mixing other people’s vocals. You can hear them properly. When I;m doing mine I am never sure if I’m hearing what’s actually there, or my memory of it, as I wrote and performed it. If you know what I mean. Anyway. It is confusing.

I recorded two songs today. One is called ‘Unlearning’, and is about, um, unlearning. And relearning. I sampled Gonzales covering Daft Punk. Maybe I put it on the next mixtape. Maybe I save it for an EP. Who knows? I am supposed to be writing my second album, but I get bored of songs easy, and since its also easy to just, like throw them at you, I’d rather do that really. I mean, half the songs on my first album, which isn’t out yet, are nearly two years old! This is what the machinery of the music “industry” does. Makes things really slow.

Fuck that though. The other song is called ‘Be There’, and my boy Dego did the beat. It is APOCALYPTIC. And a bit dissy. I don’t usually diss, but sometimes it is necessary. That will be on the next tape. As will a lady called Envy, AKA ENVEH! Who is coming down from Manchester to record some shit on Sunday. You can also expect hot new collaborations between me and the mega-hot OddKidd, the sunblocking Nimblor, the planet-esque Narstie, and lots of other people. I shall drop feed you info over the next few weeks.

Rah, it was fucking SUMMER in Stoke Newington today! I read the paper in the park again, and watched teenagers chase each other round with water bottles. They are pretty hardcore, teenagers, these days. Still. I couldn’t linger long, I had work to do.

Oh, Face and Dego’s sick partnership has spawned a MySpace page. Go check them out: www.myspace.com/degoface.

Anyway. I must dash, I am afraid. It is my intention to write another song before I sleep. Go read Jeff Wells.

— Thursday, May 4th, 2006

“Fuck the Big Apple when I got an orchard!”
Narstie

My old man has two numbers and none of them work. I believe this is a deliberate ploy to stop his sons talking to him, so that, on his death bed, he can curse us for being crap, and give his huge record collection away to some Polish Orphans or West Bromwich Albiom out of spite.

But never mind that. Summer is here, I am skint, but Martin swung by earlier with some bread and eggs and bananas and orange juice, so I am all tummy full of goodness, AND he bought me The Independent, so I took that to the park and read it in the sun, lifting my head occasionally to watch some children beating the living crap out of each other. Life might not be a bowl of cherries, but it isn’t a bowl of shit either.

I think that it is a bowl.

In case you’d not been looking at the gigs page, or that funny flash thing on the right, or the scrolley red headline above, me and my band are playing London’s ULU this Saturday. It will be really really indie! Ladyfuzz and my dear old pals Cazals are playing too, and Eddy TempleMozzer is DJing. It’ll be ace! PlayLouder have a competition to win tickets going on, so if you wanna come for free, go over there and enter. Or just hang around outside the venue until Jeres turns up and give him some cider.

In other ME news, I have made a new background for my MySpace page, and uploaded the Chris de Burgh sampling version of Thanks For All The AIDS, which isn’t ever going to be released, not unless Chris de Burgh gets really skint and quits cockblocking me, anyway. I love you Chris de Burgh! Why do you forsake me so?

I guess that’s what happens when you love. If your heart is on your sleeve, people can see where to stick sharp objects in it. Keep it in your ribs, it’s safer. Die cool! We invented air conditioning and central heating, it doesn’t matter any more!

A-HAW! I crack me up.

Hey, speaking of big hairy Funny, remember when those cray-zee Imperialist Neo-Con Nu-Monarch Yanks promised the Iraqis freedom? Turns out it was pretty much the same freedom Abe delivered the slaves. Iraq’s only gone and got their fucking gangs. WOW! DOT! COM!

Speaking of which, remember I was telling you about Bill Gates’ plan to charge for sending and receiving emails, (which will kill mailing lists) and the government run Internet 2 (which will kill the internet)? Shit is speeding up in that area at a fucking alarming rate.

The informed layman’s view.

The arguably hysterical view (but they have been right more often than not).

The straight view.

Whaddya gonna do about it?

— Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006

“To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.”
Valerie Solanas (b. 1940)

There is a very funny interview with me up at CultureDeluxe, which you can read with your eyes. I think I was a little drunk at the time. I often am. Sample quote:

“Dude, there’s more important things than building bearksin rafts in the post-apocalypic wasteland!”

Which is true. There’s another funny one over at Kruger as well. We are talking about sex in horror movies. Again, I must have been pissed, as I failed to properly convey my opinions about Alien and womanhood. Oh well.

This is a link to Bill Shatner doing Rocket Man. It is awesome.

Emeka, who I met at a gig recently, and was very excitable and disappointed with my height, writes:

Hello Mr Donovan,

emeka x

You have been told, mates. And maybe you womeny types should have a run too. Running is cool. I have been running for ages and ages.

Damn. Imagine a person that’d open their door to you at 5am with a Fruit Corner. See, I am not so into hot drinks. But I love those goshdarned Fruit Corners.

Oh, fuck! I just thought about a person I love getting cancer. I’ve never done that before.

I don’t think much. Now I am sad. I might try calling my old man, I haven’t spoken to him in ages.

— Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006

WOW, I feel it entirely important that you all watch Cartman tell his joke about The Aristocrats (apart from my Mam, who prolly won’t be very amused at all). Afterwards, read a little about the history of The Aristocrats (Mam might find that interesting).

Zef isn’t ill anymore, but Paul and Mary are! Poor Paul and Mary! I am not too bad today, thanks for asking. I just recorded my parts for The Gulag’s LP, with my less gruff and broken than it was yesterday voice. I’d like to go to the park now, but it seems kind of weird to go and walk in a park alone at this time of night with no fag or no dog. Doesn’t it?

PS – they’re legalising drugs in Mexico. Now you bad young Yankeedoodles don’t ever have to go to Europe again!

— Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006

mjkd writes (or, most likely, copy pastes):

Taurus (Apr. 20 – May 20)
Happy birthday, Taurus. You have a secret admirer who may reveal themselves toward the end of this month. There may be a conflict brewing with a sibling or neighbor. It is probably a good idea to go ahead and have it out before mid month arrives. You’ll both be relieved to find mutual respect can clear the air. The peace of mind you seek can be realized by working in and around your home. Exercise your green thumb with some long-range gardening goals. Your perennials will flourish this year. Plant a tree and watch it grow. The three days surrounding May 19th should bring you the news you’ve been waiting for. A new technique applied to personal growth will enrich your life.

Which seems like good news (it isn’t my birthday till the 16th though. I’d like some Skittles, a new pair of glasses that aren’t held together by sellotape, and a new back please). I have a new technique for personal growth. I have a few actually. And I have a newfound love for non-toxic greenery. I live on the third floor of a council block, however, so I don’t know where I’m supposed to plant this tree. There’s already an ant farm in my keyboard. That’s round Paul’s though. I can’t be having an ant farm, up here, even if it is a midi-ant farm. Fuck ants, they’re far too single minded for my liking. I like potential. Ants have no potential: just a steely resolve. Ants are like creationists. Fuck an ant! Tread on ant ant! And if some bald nutter brandishing a 1920s pistol comes at you in Camden with some tosh about how they’ve done nothing to you, and how there may come a day when they’re treading on you, tell him you are unlikely to live through three nuclear winters, although Dick Cheney is, and something tells me he’d fear quite well against giant ants, even armed with a 1920s pistol.

Yeah, tell him that. And tell him it was all down hill from the red indian thing, and he shouldn’t have bought all those motorbikes.

You know what I bought with my advance?

Comics.

Rah, if I’d had CCTV installed in this flat last week, the story it would tell!

That’s an interesting thing to think, hmm? I don’t think like that normally. I am learning some new thinks. A brain muse. All I need now is a brain.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

— Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006