If I don't mind looking gay, I'll seem the most hetero

Well, it's theoretically a busy day for me but since I'm now waiting on emails from people who are apparently incapable of doing their fvcking jobs, I might as well update...

I enjoyed last night more than one ought to be able to enjoy any evening in Dalston, even the bit where I fell through the chair, but I could feel the crash coming and made an early exit - definitely for the best given I ended up necking Ibuprofen on the bus. Home in time for most of Newsnight, and an episode seemingly themed around my being right.
First of all, directed at everyone who admits the EU is hideously flawed but thinks we need to be in it to change it: a report on how Government-funded Europhile pressure group Britain in Europe have been criticing Gordon Brown for supposed disloyalty. This concerns his stated wish that the EU put its house in order. No one gets to criticise, you see - we have to accept the hulking and corrupt mess as it is, and love it.
And then, a handy little guide to how hideously opaque and corrupt Yasser Arafat's finances were. Complete with footage of Palestine, showing how little of the aid intended for the country made it to the streets, emphasising by implication how much ended up in the pockets of Yasser and his chums. Oh, and references to his funding of military and martyr operations, of the sort for which he always disclaimed responsibility!

They're filming something on the street you can see from my kitchen. I hope it's Doctor Who.

Through a combination of skintness, disillusion and lack of download facilities I keep finding myself missing new music. I've still not heard 'You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Got What You Deserve' by Johnny Boy, supposedly the single of the year. And I'm told I've heard the Dresden Dolls in a club, but I have no idea which track they were.

[Poll #386962]

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For all yesterday's criticism of The Nineties, it does contain some passages which are gem-like in their brilliance:
"After the London premiere of If... Lindsay [Anderson} got up on the stage and said to the audience, "The rest is up to you." Of course, nothing happened, but for one glorious moment things were a little uneasy" - Malcolm McDowell
(I felt exactly that the first time I saw Atari Teenage Riot. But everything gets assimilated)

"I thought, and still think, that pop music isn't primarily about making music in any traditional sense of the word. It's about making new imaginary worlds, and inviting people to try them out." - Brian Eno

Oh, and from Cages:
"Life's not like books. You can always look down at the number and see how long you've got to go with a book."
(And that, to my mind, is one of the great flaws with most of the arts. If you go to the cinema, you usually know when the next showing starts, and hence roughly how long you have left. Same with TV programmes, if you found them in the listings. Even in an anthology, you'd need to go out of your way not to know at what page the next piece begins. The last time I recall seeing a film and not knowing when it would end was The Pillow Book, and this bred a genuine uncertainty; especially given Greenaway's style, you really had no idea whether any scene you were watching might be the last, or whether you still had hours to go)

I'm off work on Monday morning as well as tomorrow.