Things I've discovered this week:
When I'm bored I ( waffle" )

I'm going out of my skull with boredom.
I seem to be drunk a lot, and penniless because I've been buying too many cds on ebay.
A woman from the women's centre called me all apologetic because they'd lost the form I filled in for them months ago about being a volunteer. I wanted to say if I worked there the form would have never been lost. It would have been filed away alphabetically and probably colour coded. They obviously need me.
I'm on their list but they're not taking anyone on until september so I have a few months of twiddling my thumbs and killing time. I don't know what to do with myself until then.
I keep thinking of wandering around town but there's only so many times you can wander aimlessly around Halifax without it leaving you wanting to top yourself. It's not the most cheerful of places.
There isn't a part of me that doesn't itch right now.

Things you should know
They've just released Takin Over the Asylum on dvd. Go and buy it. I've been waiting for a dvd of this for years. It's just fantastic. And you get to see David Tennant before he was tv royalty.

The Gossip were my favourite part of th Glastonbury coverage. And not just because I have a thing for their drummer. They were all fantastic. If you missed it then you can see their set here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/glastonbury/2008/artists/gossip/

The Doctor Who finale is ace.

I hope you're all happy campers.

Why I love Kate Rusby.

My favourite junk mail this week.

Hello baby,
Am terry by name,single looking nice guy humble and quite man that you have never see in life,please i want you to know that my reason of contacting you is show you the road to heaven which i mean that my love to you now is like a heaven river that have no end please come my love try to understand me i want your true love that will last for forever and nothing can stop us when it start please my love i want you on my arms and your love to me is very meaningful to my life . Baby try understand that love is not an articles in the market because before i said this to that mean ever though we have never seen each other before but our love to one another have meet our seves invisible and my honey don't be delay to contact me for more understanding to each other and again please i want the real woman that want me to reply me and if you where not interested please forget this mail don't reply to me the really woman i want is the one that is trueful and can take good care of fanancially and naturally when i demain from here because am from poor family i don't have much to use for woman but i have the really love for you my love.
From your lovely man, Terry

Ah, it's stuff like that which makes me glad email was invented.

I was sat in my mum's car today driving past the high school when the kids were coming out and I noticed all the girls were wearing trousers as part of their school uniform. Have we moved on? I had endless shit for wearing trousers in high school. I was the only girl in my class who did.
I feel incredibly old.

It's March. I've lived through another february. And so have you.
Well done. Go celebrate.

Oh, as I'm not here often, music for you.
My top five most played songs recently (according to Itunes which can never lie)
1. The Noisettes - Don't Give Up
2. The Replacements - Kiss Me On The Bus
3. Antony & The Johnsons - My Lady Story
4. Dawn Landes - The Kissing Song
5. The Divinyls - Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore

PS (If anyone is watching the Saw films I recommend you skip the fourth one. You've better things to do with your time. Really.)

I had an entry written about feeling sick and depressed but I deleted it. It's not something I want to talk or write about. It's a fruitless process. And today is Imbolic, the festival that casts out the old and makes you focus on the new - spring cleaning your mind. And who doesn't need that?
So while I concentrate on what I want ( world peace; death to starbucks and Tescos; for my family to be happy and healthy; for my bones to quit aching; for fictional character Beebo Brinker to come to life and seduce me ..)
guess what I saw when I woke up - Stainland has snow!
I'm such a big kid.

I can't believe I used to go without sleep for days. I had 3 hours last night and today I'm a mess.
There are gale force winds rattling my house and threatening to carry me off to other lands. I lay awake most of the night worrying about the dodgy latch on one of my windows and whether it was going to break. I kept checking it while knowing there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it and staring at it wouldn't change anything.
And people tell me not to worry, like that's something I haven't thought of doing. I hate that I can't switch it off, but it's like a tic. Things get stuck in my head and won't budge no matter how much logic I throw at them. They just loop over and over until they're replaced by something new to fret over.

I have housing benefit officers due on wednesday and I threw a bit of a strop over the last few lines of the letter they sent me. They've told me not to smoke when they come to see me.
How dare they? It's my house. You can't invade my house then tell me how to act in it. I'll do whatever I like in my own home. I don't smoke but I'm tempted to take it up for the day.
They'll be rooting through my cupboards next, removing unhealthy food in case I tempt them into obesity.

I have a feeling everything will piss me off today.

Things currently on my mind:

* I'd forgotten how straight our tv has been lately until Torchwood came back. I get a thrill thinking of the letters of complaint over the edited kiddies repeat that didn't cut out the kissing between Jack and John. I was worried that the kids versions would be just the same but minus gay innuendo and Ianto's stopwatch. I guess they decided if they did that there wouldn't be much of a show left.
It makes me miss Queer as Folk a little more but apart from that I'm happy. I love that they're giving Ianto more to do.
And I've subscribed to Torchwood magazine so I'm in geek heaven.

* staying with camp, I think too much QAF has adversely affected my music taste because I've been listening to disco songs and I've never been a disco fan. I can also be brought to tears by The Man That Got Away by Judy Garland. Mainly for the lines
" The night is bitter, the stars have lost their glitter, the winds grow colder, suddenly you're older."
which could be the greatest opening lines ever written.
I think I've earned a feather boa now.

*I've been spending my money on Alias box sets, Ann Bannon novels, and hunting out as many Victoria Frances jigsaws as I can find. After all the posters of hers I've bought I think my bedroom is going to look a shrine to goth girls.

* I really want to watch Sweeney Todd. I haven't been to the pictures for years, I think Fanny and Elvis was the last thing I watched and I can't remember when that came out. Well, I still call it the pictures, it's obviously been a while. But a mix of horror film, musical, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp back together and Helena Bonham Carter in a corset sounds like the best cure for agoraphobia.
I may cry if I can't go.

*I've been re-watching the films that I saw when I was a kid. Winter makes me nostalgic. The Lost Boys is still great, Pretty in Pink is only of interest for Duckie and to laugh at the hideous things they make Molly Ringwald wear.
Footloose is ridiculous. I can run with the idea of dancing symbolizing sex.. but not line dancing. That can never be sexy.
it was actually Brett from Flight of the Conchords that made me dig out Footloose. He does it better..


My highlight is that I finally found My Best Friend's A Vampire. It's taken me ages and now I understand it's because they changed the name of it. It's now I Was A Teenage Vampire which makes more sense. I know I watched it when I was a kid but remembered very little except an anaemic looking Robert Sean Leonard and the song on the soundtrack that crops up on loads of eighties movies.
I watched it for the first time in what must be fifteen years at least and after about two minutes realised I still knew all the dialogue.
I think about the space in my brain that could be filled with important knowledge but is already packed full of scripts of eighties films hardly anyone remembers anymore.
Now I have to track down Dream a Little Dream and see if it's aged well. I suspect not.

* Brad Renfro died of an overdose last week, Heath Ledger went yesterday. I can't help thinking about the celebrities dying in threes myth. I'm disturbed by the amount of people online I've seen talking about Heath Ledger dying and saying that it should have been Britney Spears. I'm sure there's a facebook group about it or soon will be. I can't get my head around the nastiness that breeds online, even now i've had the internet for years. Maybe it's because I missed most of high school so was never part of that bitching mass mentality.

*weirdest piece of tv I saw this week was our local news trying to understanding goth and s/m culture. They interviewed the couple who were thrown off a bus because the guy had his girlfriend on a leash. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7204543.stm
The clash between cultures on tea time tv was refereshing. It's usually just car crashes and old men who grow funny shaped vegetables.

This entry was brought to you by:

white wine
too much coffee
boredom
anxiety

Judy Garland - The Man That Got Away

Timbuk 3 - The future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades. Everywhere on eighties film soundtrack, hard to come across now.
Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyesjust while we're on embarrassing old nostlagic stuff I like that I'll never tell you about at any other time.

Victoria Frances

Someone sent me a christmas present present today which is lovely. But they didn't attach any name so I've no idea where it came from. Someone will think I'm very rude when I don't thank them.

I just came to add that Im very fond of my new broadband connection. I downloaded a song which used to take me nearly an hour and it just did it in a minute. I'm in awe.
I'm also in awe of the song. I've just subscribed to CASH and downloaded Kristin Hersh's Slippershell.
I have to restrain myself from talking about Kristin Hersh because she's my heroine and I can wax lyrical for hours, days, weeks - well, til the end of time.
But CASH is something that needs raving about, it makes me all happy and gooey inside.
Basically Kristin and a few other artists (Donita Sparks of L7 is also involved) have had enough of record companies. Like all companies they control you and mould you and it all becomes a business. She's one of those musicians who wants people to hear and share her music and isn't interested in fame and fortune, but unfortunately the world doesn't work that way and she still needs to cover her expenses. So CASH is a project where music is offered and you choose what you pay for it. She also wants contributions and people to be more involved with the whole process.
Art is by nature a conversation. I'd like us to make it a community. Think about what you have to offer. Read-only culture is not enough anymore. We'd like you to treat this stuff as read-write. I'd also like to hear your comments on the songs I post each month. I'll read them all and reply too.

What does read-write mean? Maybe as you're listening to "Slippershell", you're inspired to DO something: paint a picture, write an essay, make a video, remix, or even re-record the song. Please do so. And share your work with me and the rest of the CASH community by uploading it somewhere and sending me a link. I'm offering my Pro Tools mix stems to make it easy to work with my recorded material. We will review all the links submitted, I promise. At some point, I'll release the songs I post here in the form of a CD. It's my intention that the CD release should also include lots of the stuff you send me. I think that would be incredible. - Kristin Hersh

It's just yummy delicious hippy commune thinking at it's best.It's cutting out the middle man and treating art as a shared experience. It's gorgeous and needs your support. I expect as time goes on there will be more artists involved and it will the kind of family that rivals Ani Difranco's Righteous Babe Records for independance.
Kristin is the artist I will happily pay to keep recording because I need her music more than that of any other artist but CASH is something the rest of you should be interested in because it could give musicians the freedom to produce what is important to them, not market researchers who truly are devil spawn.



http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/