sweet effay

Great news for liberals everywhere, as the British Navy recruits its first Satanist sailor. It is particularly nice of them to let Chris Cranmer perform rituals on board ship, although I should point out that as he gets his inspiration from Lavey's Satanic Bible, he probably won't be bringing any goats or babies along to see him through the voyage. The book in question (yes I have read it, but I borrowed it from someone else, honest!) Is just a pathetic attempt to justify a life of indulgence by grafting on some pseudo-mysticism and a bit of added anti-Christian naughtiness. Yep, you guessed it: The Church of Satan is basically just a bunch of hippies dressed in black. The Neo-Nazi, Satan worshipping, serial killer obsessed psychotic who lent me his copy of The Satanic Bible was deeply unimpressed with them; as were they with him when he got in touch (he had some theory about turning the rank and file into proper Satanists). Consequently my guess is that Cranmer's 'rituals' will consist of trying to convince Wrens to get their kit off.

Still Satanic naval technicians should hardly come as a shock because, as any fule kno, the true rulers of the world are all Satanists anyway.

I surfaced this morning to discover Mrs effay being hideously and ingratiatingly cheerful and my suspicions were immediately aroused. It didn't take long for me to winkle out the reason: She had been looking at tents and decided to buy one. I pointed out that we have a hellishly expensive tent in the loft, which she purchased nine years ago and we have only used once, but was summarily informed that it had become unsuitable with arrival of the Little effay. This took me aback somewhat as there are three of us and the tent in question sleeps four comfortably and six at a push. Apparently though, the geometry is wrong as our daughter would be in a separate compartment from us. I pointed out that she was welcome to share a compartment with Little effay whilst I shacked up with the dog, but this cut no ice.

I then suggested a trial run with the old tent before we invested in a new one, but was informed that this would not be necessary as we would definitely be going on holiday next year and also heading off into The Great Outdoors on many a weekend. This would mean we would definitely get our money's worth out of the new tent.

This went back and forth until I suddenly remembered something else you can use a tent for: "Of course, it would mean that we could go to festivals again." The sparkle left her eyes immediately. She rallied marvelously by claiming that we couldn't take the child, but I pointed out that the sort of festivals I had in mind didn't have a problem with children. The full horror of her predicament now hit her: If we do buy a tent, she'll have no excuse not to go to at least one festival out of the multitude I will suggest, because otherwise I'll be proved correct in my claim that it won't get used enough. Such are the pitfalls of domestic politics in our house.

I may have slightly overplayed my hand by suggesting that we nip out and buy a tent immediately on the understanding that we head down to Glastonbury for the Gong family gathering this weekend ("We can't take Little effay camping at this time of year!"
"True, but we should really test the new tent without her initially. I'm sure your mother would have her."). Nevertheless, I'm quite looking forward to summer.

Oh look, somewhere else to argue with people. It looks very pretty and could be fun.

Infinite Thought and Mark K-P draw our attention to an article in the Guardian about the increase in people willing to admit to their asexuality. The main thrust of the claim seems to derive from this website. I wonder whether IT and Mark checked it out before embracing this article?

I may not agree with Mark, but at least he can put forward an interesting and sophisticated argument. I'm a bit dubious as to why he would want to ally himself with people who hold debates about degrees of asexuality when they obviously mean degrees of sexuality but don't want to admit it, and continually worry about whether you can be asexual and still masturbate.

I used to know somebody I would consider genuinely asexual (although I never heard her use the word): Not only did she have no desire for sex, she wanted to have a hysterectomy so that she no longer had even the potential to reproduce. She was an interesting and fun person and a million miles away from these idiots with their novelty underwear.

Well, this actually. My right arm is now encased up to the armpit in a very fetching bright yellow cast, so I am reduced to banging away with my left index finger.

Hilarious news about the teenager from Pontypool who made 46K on eBay by selling stuff he didn't have. I particularly liked the way he contacted his 'customers' to tell them how he spent the money.

It would be nice to think that he was bowing out with one final scam, and this was it. What is it that makes some people who are into Coil pay ridiculous amounts of money for not very interesting items? Admittedly this is a bit nicer looking than some of them, in that Jhon Balance hasn't doodled or bled all over it, but even so. Coil: great music, nice album covers (when Sleazy does them), shit art editions (particularly if Balance has anything to with it).

The really ridiculous thing about people paying all this money on eBay is that if you've been into Coil for any length of time you inadvertently end up with a collection worth serious money. I have never deliberately bought a Coil art edition in my life, but given their propensity for making everything limited or special when it first comes out (it is said of Terry Pratchett that he does so many book signings, that his books are worth more unsigned; Coil autographs are similarly prolific), I have ended up with all sorts of 'special items'. My favourite (read 'most ludicrous') is a unique Instamatic Polaroid, taken by Sleazy, of a naked and semi-tumescent Balance being bound to some banisters with clingfilm. I was going to share this wonder with y'all, but then thought we might get in trouble for publishing porn. Consequently, you'll have to be content with the autographed back:

Derrida has died. Cue wailings from textual studies departments, of whatever ilk, across the world (except in France) and reams of facile obituaries written by people who don't really have a clue what he was on about.

Derrida is one of the few contemporary thinkers who has outlived my enthusiasm; for some dark, occult reason they tend to die when I start to take them really seriously. Just as I had finished Anti-Oedipus and was wondering what it all meant, Deleuze jumped out of the window. Burroughs popped his clogs as I was commencing a dissertation on him. I stick to dead people now to save on the wastage.

Nevertheless, there was a time when I was heavily into Derrida. I remember being taught about deconstruction, then actually reading Of Grammatology and discovering that everything I had been taught was wrong and that Derrida was both more interesting and a hell of a lot more complicated than I had been led to believe. I then made the error of thinking that what I should do was read mountains more Derrida in order to better understand the stuff that I'd read already. This I duly did, enjoying myself immensely but probably understanding less than half of it.

By this point I had achieved two things: Firstly, I had alienated myself from my philosophical peers who were convinced that I was an idiot to take this sort of stuff seriously and were getting more and more offended by my insistence that they were clearly wasting their time thinking about utilitarian models of biomedical ethics and the Institutional Theory of art. Secondly, I had realized that if I was ever going to manage to wrap my head round this stuff properly, I would have to do some groundwork by reading Heidegger, Freud, etc. etc. Consequently I decided to join the philosophical equivalent of a leper colony and headed off to Warwick.

Somewhere in the midst of all this I came to the conclusion that Derrida was a bit of a one-trick-pony (although it is a good trick) and he fell out of favour. It didn't help that the more he published the worse his work got. Still, it's safe to blame him for turning me into the over-educated, gibbering embarrassment to polite society that I am these days.

Good to see Zizek getting into Private Eye's Pseuds Corner. I wonder exactly when that quote was in the LRB? It comes from The Plague of Fantasies which was published in 1997...

Blimey, I come crawling back from my hospital bed to discover that cyber-vampires have decimated the Cinestatic empire. Commiserations to Mike, the Grand Architect, but also thanks for bunging this blog back up so quickly; it certainly wouldn't have been high on my list of priorities.

Farmer Glitch has been reminiscing about the Stonehenge Festival. This would normally be the cue for me to go all dewy eyed and drone on for ages about the joys of Stonehenge but, luckily, I've only got one good arm at the minute so typing is a bit of a chore. Farmer Glitch also has a lovely picture of various people in front of Twink's bus. Who can name and identify all the members of Here & Now?

I bet Dave can. After seeing Hawkwind at Stonehenge in 1984 on my favourite gigs list, he very kindly mailed me about the existence of this, which I immediately snapped up to go with my edited video of the same. Cheers Dave, but it's not the whole first set (I know this as I have both sets on cassette). Well worth getting hold of though.

The only thing that pissed me off about the DVD was seeing my traveling companion Pablo striding across the screen and me not featuring at all. What makes this particularly irksome (outside my oversized ego) is that we only split up once during the whole time we were there that year. Consequently I can confidently assert that he had been allowed out on his own with particular instructions and detailed directions as to how to effect the purchase of a quantity of superman blotters. He arrived back with blue microdots and vegetable curry.

Oh no, I am getting nostalgic! Time to bugger off and play with the remastered Gong CDs which arrived in the post this morning.