So now you've got past the virtual shopfront, kick your shoes off and relax in the back-parlour where we use the second-best china and don't bother dressing for dinner. This is my place:
Well, my workplace. Well, my workplace of several years ago that I happen to have a picture of but is not my workplace anymore. Still, it gives you an idea of where I might be, and what I might look like were I to wear a coat on my head to avoid having my picture taken. Can you spot the pictures of the Jesus and Mary Chain and Sylvia Plath, children?
I could write down a bunch of things about myself as a means of explaining me to you, but that is far too easy. Instead, you can infer whatever you like about me from the following random(ish) information. Not an original idea, I'm afraid, but one I nicked from leek (who seems to have gone all reclusive these days). The idea is to give you, dear reader, a chance to exercise your brain and make a bid for inclusion in the reknowned useless pages at the same time. Neat, eh?
The last seven books I read (several of them in the `rather old, but better late than never' category):
Of Love and other Demons, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh.
Complete Nonsense, Edward Lear.
Significant Others, Armistead Maupin.
Selected Letters, Jack Kerouac.
Ladder of Years, Anne Tyler.
Snowcrash, Neal Stephenson.
For a change, all of these come highly recommended (I read a lot of rubbish I wouldn't foist on my worst enemy). Kerouac's letters are strictly for the enthusiast, and Snowcrash a little too cyberpunk for the average reader (though I have it on good authority that the Sumerian bits are real but nonsensical), but the rest are all well worth a go. And nobody should live their life without hearing about the Co-operative Cauliflower.
The last seven albums I listened to:
Heaven or Las Vegas, Cocteau Twins.
Garbage.
The Art of Fugue, J. S. Bach.
Lust for Life, Iggy Pop.
Sea Monsters, The Wedding Present.
Sister, Sonic Youth.
Our Man in Paris, Dexter Gordon.
The mix is real, honest. When I wrote this I'd just been jaunting off to Houston and took all these on tape. Something for every mood. Worked better than usual, when I stuff my bag with tapes that fit how I feel at the time and then wind up not wanting to listen to them at all.
And here to break things up is a totally gratuitous picture of me (several years ago) waving an Easter Fax from Alessandro.
And back to the Rorschach-lists. Seven of the pictures on my office walls:
A Peters projection (very sound) map of the world.
Klee's `In den Hausern von St. Germain'.
The poster for the International Cartoon Festival in Budapest in 1990.
A picture of me as Judge Interesting drawn by my mate John.
An anatomical drawing by da Vinci.
A map of Babylon at the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh's `In Fairyland'.
A red wooden cat.
The left half of a sheep's jawbone.
A rectangular chunk of copper with a screw thread protruding from one end (which I machined from a large rectangular block of copper when I worked in a factory).
A lychee plant.
The carcass of one of those yellow flashing lights which is mounted on a tripod and warns you about road works.
An empty tin of Pulcinella Italian plum tomatoes.
A pair of chopsticks.
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