HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Trick...............




or Treat?

Was supposed to be a pumpkin, I ended up a sort of cross between a burns victim and a cast member of 'Cats!'

Transform your own face with the Face Transformer.

http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~morph/

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Well ex and hairy neighbour have finally done the dirty deed, with a suicide bid on the part of hairy neighbour as foreplay, and its somehow my fault, suprise suprise. Ex is now, as my dear old Granny would say "like a dying duck in a thunderstorm."


This is more how I view that sort of activity at the moment.

Trying to make a cup of tea this afternoon a mouse shot out of the kitchen drawer. I've filled every hole I can find with plaster and wire wool and will finally have to graduate from traps to poison. It's hard, seeing little rumps with tails disappear like a shot, not to feel that my dogs aren't actually long -haired rats. I'm going to have OCD if I don't get on top of this.

To add further to the gloom, the day started with the police asking me if I knew anything about the dead baby a few doors down. Found that it had been reported in the papers two days ago. Well that's cities for you. Havn't commented before on events at Clapham Common this month. Walking home from where my family live cuts right across the common and I'm always leaving late. Try explaining to gentlemen appearing from bushes that you really are just walking two yorkshire terriers home.

FLEA CIRCUS

"Is there ever a day when nothing is happening in your world?" I ask ex.

The winter sun is glinting through the fountains in the park, and ex and I are sitting on a bench with four dogs/child substitutes circling. I should be happy, even though I'm nearly forty and sitting on a park bench in working hours. "Just think," I said, "a couple of years ago we didn't have any dogs between us."

Just the day before ex and I had been circling the subject of ....................... intimacy. "I refuse to feel any guilt when I know now what you really want is a hairy chav." He mumbles something about spirituality. Plus I was up all night in agony over ex's dodgy prawn cocktail. I had to get out in the middle of my agony to squirt sealant into the skirting board and shut up the gnawing of mice.

This morning I get a call to come over.

The first dog we both looked after [and the first yorkshire terrier], I took over the first time, and then got my two dogs. The ex looked after it the second time it's owner was in hospital, and then after a brief flirtation with three legged "Elvis" got his own dog, a walking coffee table. The dog is in crisis a third time. Apparently her owner, a faded beauty with a painkiller addiction, has been whisked into hospital and her neighbour needed somewhere to dump the dog. I was nearly in tears recently, when in the post office and stood behind faded beauty's much younger Italian heroin addict b. friend and the pitiable remains of a once much-loved dog.

I rush over to ex's as the dog arrives. Ex is determined to keep her despite having to return her after three months when faded beauty came out of the hospital to kick her painkiller addiction, and despite now having his own dog.

"Wouldn't it be better to leave her as she is until someone official has seen her?" We both chicken out, and I still have my qualms about taking someone else's dog [I ran in the road when ex tried that with me] until I see the state of the dogs under carriage. See pic. [I never said this blog was tasteful!]

The dog is covered in flea shit, as well as fleas of every size, seriously underweight and a 'knife and fork' haircut. If ever my dogs look a little frayed around the edges, I always felt shame about how faded beauty used to bath and groom her dog every five minutes, no exaggeration.

I'm giving the dog the works on ex's doorstep, flea spray, trim, and combing out fleas. Neighbour one side said she washes her cats regularly! "I don't care, their in my house." Neighbour other side has just come back from Prague. "Oh, on a photoshoot?" I quip. That's for wondering loudly on the phone whether ex's current lover is the skinny one with two dogs or the fat one in the tracksuit. Cheeky queen! A bath with Boots Coconut and Almond Oil shampoo [my reccomendation, anything else goes sticky after a week] and dog is looking dramatically better. Before you think I'm too camp, I havn't shaved in a week and I'm not sure how fresh my underwear is.

I urge ex to call someone for legal advice, and we go out to the park. I collapse at home after and call round later. Hairy straight neighbour esconced in front room while ex and he try and work out how to get gay movies "on demand" on the cable that took a week of stress to get installed. How helpful. Ex still hasn't rung anyone, despite having millionaire relation high up in some animal charity. "You can just ring up and say you're asking for a friend." Turns out ex is paranoid. "You've got to remember they bugged the phones where I come from." Well, he might not have been arrested for absconding from National Service if he hadn't dyed his hair red!

Dread to think how this is all going to turn out.

Who's Afraid?

I have to say I'm a little bemused at the interest in my "turbulent relationship." If only because Over the last 5 years I must have bored titless everyone I know about the whole matter. It was all a bit too queeny for my liking, and we did get a reputation as being the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of the area.

I was going through a particularly trying time with my family a couple of years back, and was stressed out to the max. I had just got my first puppy, and ex was the green eyed monster. "Do you think you could look after him with all that you've got going just now?" My parents lost custody of their children at a very early stage , and it's an area I'm quite sensitive. I'd spent that weekend wrestling a distressed relative to the floor to prevent them discharging themselves, watched on by greek chorus of impassive medics, and as I tried to slip out for another very long day at the hospital I was acosted by ex. I'd already had to leave the puppy on it's own for most of the last few days. I had a mad moment and said I'd given the dog away, anything to get some peice. Ex burst into tears, very rare and completely unexpected on my part. I chase after him and caugth up at our very busy junction, where I'd been run over 6 months before. I tried to comfort him and try and salvage the situation by saying that the dog was still at home waiting to be collected. the crying stopped immediately and he wanted to go and get the dog there and then. I freaked at this point, at the selfishness of everyone I knew, probably including myself, and spent the next five minutes trying to get myself run over. At night times juggernauts hurtle through at top speed, but this was rush hour and standing in front of lorries wasn't going to cut it.

I'll tell you some day how making a cup of tea [an standard occupational test] got me my freedom

Ex and I are speaking a the moment and I was at his place touching up the paintwork today, mainly as a break from a website I am trying to put together. He came home from work with an old polaroid camera with a carton of even older film. As a figurative artist, I'm used to the naked human form, and have roped in friends and even acquaintances to model for various projects, ex included. He's always been a bit nervous of a series of polaroids I took of him a few years ago. "I think it's only fair that I have something on you!" Did feel a bit strange posing myself but what the hell. Well the results were a sort of 70's green sepia, I've lost a lot of weight recently and it all came out a bit Larry Clark.

Attempt at a new self portrait, though after many watercour filters I seem to have developed a lovely 'van-dyck' moustache and goatee.

Whaddya think?

New Religion - Damien Hirst

13 October - 19 November 2005

paul stoper
78 Luke Street
London
EC2A 4PY







http://www.paulstolper.com/

Memoirs Of A Geisha

U.K release date 13 January 2006.

















Link to trailer:

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/memoirsofageisha/

THIS JUST IN

Who is the real J. T. Leroy?

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/14718/index.html

Ever Wished You Lived A Hundred Years Ago?

This photograph - from amongst all my clutter - was taken in Whitechapel London in the 1870-80's.

Could it be......................... Jack the Ripper?!

This n' That

Came across this as a pattern for some babies booties. It's actually material availiable as coats for greyhounds. [wildthingsforgreyhounds.com]

Saw Derek [Big Brother 6] playing tennis in the park this evening. He was giving out girly squeals each time he hit the ball. I shook my head as I thought, I've seen you doing gymnastics in a mauve leotard.

Spoke to the ex for the first time in ages. Told him about the attention he had recieved recently in this blog. Took it quite well, considering. He'd been sweating that I'd been emailing naked pictures of him to his mother in Cape Town.

Took me a long time to realise, and hence the bitterness, that despite all the growing up with swimming pools and servants, his thing is chavs, ala "Maurice." I'm more the bohemian [Catweazle] type, Hence why I couldn't understand his patience [drooling] over lumpen friend who nearly thumped me for accidentally outing him. Still, coke and syphilis is keeping that one busy, and he recently spent a night in the cells care of the gay domestic police team for trashing the new flat of rich other-half. His straight brother's got a staffie now, with a burberry collar, and seems to have forgotten his experiments with his sexuality. I am begining to realise being well-covered and a cockney accent, plus track suit and cap is the gay equivalent of a dollybird in this neck of the woods.

I have been wracking my brains for an amusing episode, but can't see how to relate the one weekend that sticks in my mind. I enjoyed the attentions of, in the space of 3 days with:- a peado in the loony bin in some mad desire to convert, and a devotee of yellow and brown the evening I was discharged, on the pretext of ex teaching me how to cruise, and trainee teenage rentboy.

I'd gone in to loony bin gibbering at the news that ex was planning a threesome with delivery boy at work, only to recover having my vomit eaten, by making up numbers in said threesome. It was then I realised, looking at the body of a greek god belonging someone of legal, but nearly half my age, that despite the depths of my naivety, I was no longer the young ingenue.

I have in the past been the plaything of men rich, and richer, but I felt this was my cue to bow gracefully off the stage.

[I have considered renaming this blog "Too Much Information," if I only knew how!

In Other News:

From the makers of South Park













Princess!

Bit too graphic for work, but I couldn't stop laughing. Link on right.->

If I gave her the wool, would she make me one too?

BATHING TRUNKS

Materials: 4 oz. Patons Beehive Fingering, 3-ply, for large size; 3 oz. for small size. A pair No. 13 "Beehive needles.

Measurements: Large size to fit 36-38 inch hips, 33 inch waist. Small size to fit 34-36 inch hips, 29 inch waist.

Tension: 9 stitches to an inch. N.B. - Instructions for small size in brackets.

Front. Cast on 114 (92) sts. very loosely and work 2 1/2 inches k. 1, p. 1 rib. Change to stocking-stitch and increase at each end of next and every following 4th row until there are 132 (124) sts. Work straight until front measures 10 1/4 (91/4) inches from start, ending with a purl row. Continue thus:- 1ST ROW: Kint to last 4 sts., turn. 2ND ROW: Purl to last 4 sts., turn. 5TH ROW: Knit to last 9 sts., turn. 6TH ROW: Purl to last 9 sts., turn.

7TH ROW: Knit to last 12 sts., turn. 8TH ROW: Purl to last 12 sts., turn. 9TH ROW: Knit to last 15 sts., turn. 10th ROW: Purl to last 15 sts., turn.

11TH ROW: Knit 51 (47) turn, leaving remaining sts. on a spare needle. 12TH ROW: Purl to last 3 sts., turn. 13TH ROW: Knit. 14TH ROW: Purl to last 6 sts., turn. 15TH ROW: Purl to last 9 sts., turn. 17TH ROW: Knit.

Continue thus, working 3 sts. less at end of every purl row until 3 (2) remain. Change to k. 1, p. 1 rib and work over all 66 (62) sts. for 12 (12) row. Cast off loosely in rib using double wool. Join wool to stitches with right side facing, working the 3 sts. less at end of every knit row until 3 (2) remain.

Back. Work rib as far front and continue thus :- 1ST ROW: k. 63 (52), turn. 2ND ROW: k.24 (20), turn. 4TH ROW: p. 30 (26), turn. 5TH ROW: k. 36 (32), turn. 6TH ROW: p 42 (38), turn.

Continue thus, working 6 more sts. on every row until all are in stocking-stitch. Now work exactly as for front, starting leg shapings when stocking-stitch measures 7 3/4 (6 3/4) inches at side edge.

GUSSET. Cast on 3 sts., work in stocking-stitch, increasing at each end of needle on every knit row until there are 53 (47) sts. Now decrease at each end of every alternate row until 3 remain. Cast off and make another piece the same.

TABS. Cast on 8 sts., and work 1 3/4 inches k. 2, p. 1 rib. Cast off and make 3 more the same.

TO MAKE UP. Press work lightly on wrong side under a damp cloth, avoiding rib, then join side seams. Sew together gusset pieces, back to back, then insert gusset so that bottom of fold comes just below top of rib. Turn down waist rib to make a hem and stitch, allowing for stretch. Run in a plait of thread elastic. Sew on tabs.

Bitter? Moi?

Many thanks to Trashbinder for the link. Still don't know how to rename links, but url is below. Great for downloading obscure tracks.

http://killingmusic.blogspot.com/

Hiding out at ancestral pile to get away from baliffs, mice infestation and ebay invoices. Picture is from friends place. I introduced her to ebay in January, and she now has hundreds of cat ornaments covering every surface. Her feedback rating is nearly 400! And you thought ebay was for secondhand mobiles/cellphones and dodgy ipods.

Commenters seemed to enjoy my first post, and as it's been a year, what with forgetting my password, I thought it was time for an update.

Well, havn't seem much of ex since he came over a couple of months ago, and watched internet porn for 5 hours on the trot. I gave a moue of irritation, and had another hour of psychodrama directed at me. Well I did have to get on with my dusting. At least I can forget about having to take Viagra. Forget about strokes, you can't enjoy a post-coital glow, when your nose is completely blocked. [Apparently nasal passages contain erectile tissue. Who knew?]

We could have had alot of fun, though his waiting for a kidney transplant didn't help matters. though I had to draw the line at the "free holiday as drug mules" idea.

I had been hoping that his circling of butch chav neighbour would come to something and help close a chapter. Ex was first point of call when said neighbour's wife was about to give birth. The minute ex's back was turned, he found hairy neighbour propped up in bed starkers. "Do what ever you want." Things is, we all know straight blokes have helium heels when they're in bed with another man, and this bloke was built like a brick shithouse! I think it would shatter ex's illusions re masculinity, and excuses were made and neighbour left. The neighbour's brother's not much cop either, now it's not just coke, but syphilis too. And the cheeky c*** had the cheek to say that ex could do better than me!

Don't think ex really got over an assignation I had in the park, at 2.0am. Well it was during a heatwave, and short of dragging her on her lead, it was the coolest part of the day to walk her. Having appearred out of the bushes, handsome stranger and myself chatted for over an hour about life and art, before I twigged why this he was patting dogs in the park in the middle of the night. Talk about slow on my part. Who said yorkshire terriers were bad for your image?

My psychiatrist has been promoted to post-partum depression, so I will have to wait to see if anyone is prepared to take on my case. Last time I saw my file , they brought it in on a trolley. He looked up my old referral for psychotherapy for something to do:- "subject seems ambivalent about analytic process." I am now, I thought, you greek b****. I hadn't noticed before that his office was just past a sign saying "MENTAL HEALTH CORRIDOR." Well it made me laugh.

I did have a referral to an Occupational Therapist, with an idea to me living on the sale of my sculpture, she even 'googled' me before our first meeting, but her idea of getting things started was to ring the Arts Council! [Sort of the British equivalent of the National Endowment for the Arts.]

Went to a friend's show of her mature students artwork this summer. I was asked what I did and replied, "professional nutter." Couldn't understand the froideur, until I was told that all the students were psychologists/therapists.

Ta ra for now.