Strange The Difference A Day Makes.........

So I strode out of the house tonight, The Iggy Pop mix of Raw Power lacerating my synapses through my cheap and nasty headphones and making me feel about twelve feet tall. You know, that "I'm Fucking Alive" feeling that you just don't get often enough in a lifetime.... It's funny, because I was on my way to Firhill to watch Partick Thistle, much against Doctors orders it has to be said. He said the Jags were "in for a pumping" as he took my blood pressure and advised I take up less stressful hobbies like lion taming or drug running.

Anyway, God only knows what the players had roaring through their heads pre-kickoff, but they arrived on the pitch as hyper, switched on and alert as I was and proceeded to play in a way I haven't seen this season. 2-0, going on five or six... Whatever it was, I hope the manager has a plentiful supply.

I've been a bit down for the past week it has to be said. Nothing big really, just niggly little things. Seeing my mother come back from a weekend break in Newcastle a day early due to yet another urine infection was a real fucker. I mean, is it too fucking much to ask that she gets away for a few days without coming down with this shit? That's two holidays out of three ruined by the same condition. Needless to say, she's absolutely armed to the teeth with anti-biotics for the next sojourn...... Wish her luck.

Talking of walking wounded, I'd also like to give a belated shout out to the Fat Sparrow, who's having a fucker of a time with illness too. Go and wish her well here. She hasn't updated since late Feb, so I'm hoping she's Ok and just laying low. Haste ye back missus.

Ok, that's it.

Go on, Beat it!

Nothing To Report

Sorry folks......

Have to be honest, I might not post anything of note until the end of the week, real life is kind of encroaching a bit and there are things I should attend to.

I'll have something up when the notion strikes me and not before.

Cheers!

Hank, Put Out The Light When Yr Finished

Thought for the day. Does anyone have John Reid's number so I can text him and tell him to fuck off and get a job as a Rocksteady events steward? Or I could be blunt about it and tell the cunt to leave the country.......

Yes, I know it's old news, it's been at least 24 hours since that fart in the wind broke......

The iLL Man spits on topical relevance.

Say hello to these chaps, runners up in the British Eurovision heats (Northern Finals) 1979.



Not sure what became of them.....

Ok, not a lot else to be said, so I'll leave you in the hands of 'Mr Chinaski', thirteen years dead yesterday....

One For The Shoeshine Man

The balance is preserved by the snails climbing the

Santa Monica cliffs;

the luck is in walking down Western Avenue

and having the girls in a massage

parlor holler at you, "Hello Sweetie!"

the miracle is having 5 women in love
with you at the age of 55,
and the goodness is that you are only able
to love one of them.
the gift is having a daughter more gentle
than you are, whose laughter is finer
than yours.
the peace comes from driving a
blue 1967 Volks through the streets like a
teenager, radio tuned to The Host Who Loves You
Most, feeling the sun, feeling the solid hum
of the rebuilt motor
as you needle through traffic.
the grace is being able to like rock music,
symphony music, jazz . . .
anything that contains the original energy of
joy.

and the probability that returns
is the deep blue low
yourself flat upon yourself
within the guillotine walls
angry at the sound of the phone
or anybody's footsteps passing;
but the other probability--
the lilting high that always follows--
makes the girl at the checkstand in the
supermarket look like
Marilyn
like Jackie before they got her Harvard lover
like the girl in high school that we
all followed home.

there is that which helps you believe
in something else besides death:
somebody in a car approaching
on a street too narrow,
and he or she pulls aside to let you
by, or the old fighter Beau Jack
shining shoes
after blowing the entire bankroll
on parties
on women
on parasites,
humming, breathing on the leather,
working the rag
looking up and saying:
"what the hell, I had it for
while. that beats the
other."

I am bitter sometimes
but the taste has often been
sweet. it's only that I've
feared to say it. it's like
when your woman says,
"tell me you love me," and
you can't.

if you see me grinning from
my blue Volks
running a yellow light
driving straight into the sun
I will be locked in the
arms of a
crazy life
thinking of trapeze artists
of midgets with big cigars
of a Russian winter in the early 40's
of Chopin with his bag of Polish soil
of an old waitress bringing me an extra
cup of coffee and laughing
as she does so.

the best of you
I like more than you think.
the others don't count
except that they have fingers and heads
and some of them eyes
and most of them legs
and all of them
good and bad dreams
and way to go.

justice is everywhere and it's working
and the machine guns and frogs
and the hedges will tell you
so.

Charles Bukowski

'Hair By Maurice'

All it took was one glance in a mirror that happened to be sitting in the window of an antiques shop I was passing . I think I got an attack of self loathing, decided my hair was a disgusting mess and doubled back to the Turkish barbers I'd just passed. Ten minutes later and I'm somewhat lighter (and colder) on top and distinctly happier.

Response at work?

"Yay, iLL Man's had a Britney", followed by the inevitable question....

"So, does your head not get cold?"

Oddly enough, yes it does. What is the point of this question? What do they think I'm going to say?

"No, it's ok, I keep a three bar fire under my hat to keep it warm......."

That said, I know someone at work who's balding from the back and spends thirty quid getting his hair 'done'. Why? If anyone were ever in need of a No1 cut, it's him.......



Anyway, I was moved to a new seat the other day and I'm frankly unimpressed. I reckon I'm 'under surveillance' by the supervisor because he thinks I'm not doing enough work. Fair enough, I'm not........God it's the most awful shitey work and now I can't even send sneaky emails and look at the net on the sly. The guy across from me loves it of course. He wants to be a para-legal or something, the poor fucker, can't get enough of the old title deeds and whatnot. As if being an obsessive Celtic fan wasn't enough.....Anyway, I was on the verge of getting out a few weeks ago, but you know how these things go, you need a few runs at it before you take off.......

Mostly Unpleasant

Four Nil! Four Bloody Nil!!

Weekends. When they're good you wish they'd never end. When they're bad, drinking yourself into a coma seems to be the only option.

So, there I am nodding out at work this morning with sheer fatigue and two days drinking like a man with two heads. It's that sort of glaze eyed zombie mode you go into when yr body seems to be on the edge of shutdown and the only way to fend it off is go to the kitchen and make yourself more tar-thick sweet black coffee. I'm getting too old to do this kids, I need a new hobby.

Anyway, three cheers for my brother. He bought me an AA battery charger (and some batteries obviously) The first thing this will do is free up the best part of about fifty quid a month spent on the bloody Duracell batteries that my camera guzzles at a most alarming rate. I have also been told that it will impact less upon the environment, which is nice. I know absolutely nothing about environmental concerns and usually act accordingly, but hell, it's nice to know that I've reduced my 'carbon footprint' as it were. Thing is, since I don't own a car and since I stopped burning tyres and dead animals in my back garden, I feel I'm maybe entitled to the odd wee bit of environmental vandalism. For what it's worth, I wantonly waste electricity, steadfastly ignore recycling and try my very best to buy the product with the most extravagant packaging above all others. It might not be much, but I like to think I'm doing my bit.......

Anyway, Monday Youtube clip for y'all.....

Guitar Shop Man

Evenin'

You'll have to forgive me, I've been trawling the depths of Councillor Terry 'Gumby' Kelly's blog and haven't been able to withdraw myself to attend to my own blogging duties. I think I'm becoming obsessed.....

Ok, now I'm here......

New guitar tonight. It was cheap, it was from Victor Morris, and the long hair that flogging it to me commented on how great it's pickups were.......

Lord almighty, it was sixty quid, did he think I was a moron? Don't answer that, of course he did. From the moment I walked in he had me down as the sort of gonk who wouldn't know a Fender from a Gibson. he was wrong of course, I found out the difference just last week, so there..................

Joking aside, I got into the very worst guitar shop situation possible. Instead of going for the whole "yeah yeah, whatever, I know it's a hunk of shit, I just want something that'll stay in tune" gambit, I allowed him to tune the fecker up for me, plug it in and let me play it in the shop.

Rule One Of Buying A Cheap Guitar: Just buy it, don't get into a situation where trainee Joe Satriani's can wank away for thirty seconds, then pass the ruddy thing to you with that "Ok, let's see what you can do" look on their face. There is a perfectly good reason why the frustrated bastards work for minimum wage selling leccy banjos. They lack any imagination and believe that their blues rock band, probably called something like 'Foxglove' are only one killer song away from being signed.

Anyway, the bugger looked at me in disbelief when I told him I'd done a few acoustic gigs and wanted to get back to playing electric. The reason for this was the fact that when he passed the guitar to me, I didn't pull out the requisite rock licks or at the very least play Smoke On The Water. Nope, I just fumbled a few chords, figured the thing worked ok and decided to buy it. I just don't believe he thought I had ever picked up a guitar before.

It's my fault, it's how I come across to people. I can bullshit my way through things I'm almost alien to, yet I can't convince some dork in a guitar shop that I do actually know what way up to hold a guitar.

I should of course have taken the approach I applied the last time I bought a guitar -

Assistant: Aye, it a nice guitar, well made, good sou....

Me: I'm just after something cheap to make a bit of noise on

Assistant: Do you want to try it?

Me: No

I got sucked in this time. Be forewarned, guitar shop blokes are failures, they will try anything to make you feel small and stupid.

The New Toy. Lovely........

More Tales Of Death And Destruction

My office sits by the motorway. No big deal you might think, lots of offices sit next to motorways. In Glasgow it's a wee bit different, as my office also happens to be about five minutes walk from the city centre. Council bawbags today and council bawbags of yesteryear have one thing in common. They're all bawbags. I'm sure if it didn't already exist, some prick at Glasgow City Council would come up with the ripper idea of chucking the M8 through the middle of the city and sticking about half a dozen junctions within a one mile stretch of it. How there aren't more accidents I'll never know....

Anyway, we all got something to look at today. A roaring sound signaled to us that either a 747 was making an emergency landing on the Kingston Bridge or some unlucky fucker was in the process of having his or her car written off. We all trundled over to the window in time to see an articulated lorry and what I think used to be a brown Vauxhall estate of some kind parked up against the central armco barrier. The truck driver was out in an instant phoning the emergency services, maybe his boss too, maybe to let him know the delivery would be just a wee bit late. The poor sod in the car looked to be in shock, as well he might after being rearended by a huge freight truck. Failing that he'd been injured and couldn't have left the car even if he'd wanted to....... It was like some alternate universe Smokey & The Bandit scene and I was just waiting to see if Boss Hog and Enus were going to roll up in a comically wrecked Plymouth police car to dispense justice, when the supervisor appeared over our collective shoulders and ordered us back to our desks. The cunt!

What else............Oh My! Spring is here! Well, for a day at least. Is it me or did it feel positively humid for the time of year this lunchtime? Maybe not, but it got me wondering when, or even if I'm going to ditch my trusty scarf for another year. The days I've forgotten to take it with me, I've felt more than just a little naked without it. Naked? Did I just say that? Ok, I feel a bit exposed shall we say, like I'm missing something vital, even when it's not particularly cold. If anyone I know sees me still wearing the damn thing in May, then please feel free to hide it, I'll learn to live without it......

Bon Nuit mes Enfants!