bugs

i saw 2 mosquitoes on the subway today. it's reaching late autumn and the hovering devils are still about, molesting me and drinking my blood. i have often wondered how many mosquitoes it would take to completely drain my body of liquid, and leave me shriveled like an old flesh coloured jumper on the orange plastic seat.


some please call 9/11

to celebrate the decisive bush victory earlier this month, i decided to finally rent that michael moore movie about him. already, the whole thing felt like a period piece; like a week old newspaper. so many things have happened since then, you need wings to keep above it. i thought the most emotive parts were all the war footage, all the stuff they don't show you about war: the truck piled with bodies, the injured children, the wounded marines screaming for help, the charred US soldiers being strung up on lamppost; it makes me want to smash ridley scott for making black hawk down. any war movie glamourising war or making it somehow more heroic than it is, should immediately be sued by every war veteran for gross misrepresentation and inciting bloody murder. it's a hell of a thing to kill a man.


internal springs

i read skinny dip by carl hiaasen last week. it was an easy read, and a pleasure except for the end. it is driven by the overlapping coils, bouncing you along the convoluted story, that you just need to know what is going to happen next; and as soon as you find out, you are already caught in the next coil and you just need to find out what is going to happen next, then you are caught in the next coil and so on. this is fine until you reach the end, and there hasn't been any real ups or downs, no drama or excitement; just a load of used springs. hiaasen also can't resist name checking everything. blowin in the wind to eminem to goodfellas to fargo to gatorade all get a mention. if i were to write like him it would go like this:

a man is sitting at the desk, typing on his dell keyboard. the intel processor connected him to the internet and the windows explorer program allowed him to surf the news pages. the internal PA system played the latest destiny child single of the bose speakers. the armani suited man asked the waitress for another nescafe, and paid with his american express card. he hardly looked up from the tom hanks article he was reading as the waitress returned his receipt.

and the ending. the bloody ending! wwjd.


once a pun a time

i also saw once upon a time in america last week. it was well shot and that's about it. who the hell are those cheessy kid actors? it was like watching a bad production of bugsy malone. and all that naff dialogue. and robert de niro the rapist. he is our hero: he is our way into this supposedly secret gang world. and james woods plays an actor trying to be james woods. and the frisbee that disappears. and all the women secretly all want it rough. and the garbage truck. and the goddamn running time. and that bloodly music spooned into our ears. and the total lack of chemistry or atmosphere.