OK so I am really pissed off that those serbs won eurovision and so in protest I am moving my blog.

If you wanna read it it is now at:

http://baria.vox.com/

It's worth the move. Pictures and more stuff there

see you I hope

Euge

Tonight on SBS Australia A must see!

Oi!

One of the things about getting older is that you never think twice about being bad. Either you are or you aren't. It's a choice you have already made when you were about 15 and it is not going to change.

There are some people though who seem to think that a piece of plastic and picture are somehow going to alter your DNA.

Take last week.

I was at a big festival On Caxton Street where AS WE ARE were playing a set and so were Intercooler. Bloody excellent. Just in country, sunshine, mates and beer. Nothing better.

So in the midst of 30 000 revellers I made my way to a beer stall - the place is hopping like 6th St Austin during sxsw or Glastonbury 10 years ago. All good.

The girl at the tent tells me I can't buy beer without a wrist band. Okay. So go to the white tent inthe middle of the street and they will give me one.

Off I go. After a few minutes of doing that weird little dance that we all do in crowds - you know the one - turn side on - put your arm between people - bend knees, slidddddeeeee, stand, shuffle and repeat- I got to the tent which was manned by a youth with knock knees and a severe case of superioritis.

" have you got any ID" says Spotty Herbert

"I have got my credit cards but I didn't bring my passport, No."

"Can't give you a band then."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Whats your date of birth?

"My what? " I nearly pissed my pants laughing. Nobody has asked me that in 10 years.

"I would tell you that but you wouldn't believe me."I said. "Don't these flecks of grey in my hair give the game away?"

"What is your date of birth?"

I told him and he looked at me with disbelief ; " I look this young because I have spent the past 20 years pickling myself from the inside. "

"No one was born then: he said - absolutley seriously. Now you know why he was in the tent instead of at the party.

"Listen snot nose. I was born before your dada and I am still alive and well. Now give me the fucking band and let me get a beer!"

Thats when a nice copper came up and put the band on my wrist.

"Bloody idiot!" she said to me with a smile.

Thats when you know you made the right choice all those years ago and ID cards are just an excuse to rort more money out of us so that imbecilic youths can get a job.

Suffice to say I got really pissed, started 5 fights and robbed a liquor store on the way home where I beat my wife and shot the dog.

A good night out all round.

Aloha,

as I wend my way around the globe I often meet people who say that it is a really glamorous life. "jet setter" they say and smile knowingly to themselves.

The smile tells me a great deal about what that person has experienced in their lives.

If it has a painful tinge to it I know that person has been to places far and wide and has truly experienced life. On the other hand if their eyes light up and they grin like a cheshire cat as they secretly contemplate the debauchery that they consider inevitably part of global exploration I know that they have never been further than the back yard.

Forgive me if that sounds cynical but invariably that synopsis is accurate. You see one of the deep joys of travel is to experience new things; foods, people, cultures, smells, rip-offs and all manner of human life. However one of the deep frustrations is that unless you are truly familiar with the place you are visiting you will never have a clue what is going on.

Of course there are always friendly guides who will describe how Hannibal marched his elephants over yon hill or how in 1956 the President was victorious in his campaign to oust the corrupt regime of the American lick spittle who came before him but that is about as much use as eating coal if you are constipated. The truth is you will never get to grips with what makes a country tick until you give over a significant portion of your life to it.

So it is that I sit here in Australia - my adopted home - on a dreary Sunday and wonder how the hell I got it so wrong this time.

Today is Mothering Sunday here and last week (a week later than the rest of the planet) was labour day and I have been waiting for both these "holidays" to pass before I can get on with my life.

I have had worse: I once went to Chile with my wife. The journey of a lifetime. It certainly was!

I mean, it is not as if Chile is on the way to anywhere is it? You really have to want to go there to get there. If you went any further you would fall off the world or go swimming in Antarctica and neither of those options are specially appealing to me.

So we traveled across the great Pacific ocean and stopped half way - after 10 hours from New Zealand no less - on Easter Island. What a place! Remote does not describe it. Another 8 hours and we arrived in Santiago.

The excitement rose in me. What adventures lay in this great sliver of a country? The only country on earth where the revolutionaries coined a battle chant "There can be no revolution without song" (No ai revolucion sin canson - or something like that). This was the home of Allende and all that amazing story telling and best of all it was where the infamous BERNARDO O'Higgins made his mark. A half black - half Irish revolutionary with a fantastically mongrel name. He had to be a great bloke to have a beer with. I was so enamoured with Chile that I even named my dog after O'Higgins. Finally we were here and I was ready to explore.

We had a plan to go to the Atacama desert and roam through the plains and valleys, mountains and fjords for weeks. All ready and raring to go!

So we check in and after a pleasant interlude off we went to the Zona Rosa. Streets filled with life and love, colour and cacophany. There were mariachi on every corner and all the people were dressed to the nines. I was in heaven.

There. Across the street, a restaurant. Excellent. Just the thing to get us ready for a true Chilean experience. We ordered Gambas and wine and tucked into to our well earned dinner. All was well in the world until 30 minutes in the waiter came over and asked if we would pay the bill please because they were closing.

CLOSING? Oh well, there were millions of other places to go and we were just getting started. It was only 9pm after all. So we paid the bill and wandered off arm in arm through the the streets of Santiago. More and more people - a real buzz of excitement. THIS PLACE IS AMAZING!

So we go to a bar - "Sorry Senor we are closed."

?

Try another bar

same again.

?

What's going on?

"Ah, Senor, there is a Presidential election and we must close so that there are no more riots like in the old days."

OH CRAP!

Well, you guessed it. In 40 minutes the entire city was dark. Not a soul about except for the guys who worked at MacDonalds and a few political activists tooting horns and waving flags, (YANQUI PIG CAPITALISTS have a dispensation to sell their crap apparently).

So that was it. back to the hotel. Except the Hotel was closed and we had to jump over the locked gates and buzz the concierge to get into our room.

This was a country in lockdown. Jesus! We had just come to visit a real life Graham Greene novel, except this time there were no vacuum blueprints to sell and we had no inside track with the espionage rings. We were alone in a foreign land with nothing but Big Macs for company.

To say we were disappointed is an understatement. Gutted from Brisbane and wife. Big fish have bigger guts and ours were spilled all over the pavements of Chile.

The lock down went on for days.

We tried. Believe me we tried. We walked about 10kms each way to the Bernardo O'Higgins parc only to find it was a dry and desolate field where only the homeless and horny visited. We roamed the beautiful streets for days with no one to meet and nothing to do. It was like that Charlton Heston movie where he is the last man alive and everyone else is a zombie.

We even managed to book ourselves onto a Cultural excursion around the city. Our marvellous guide and his driver were excellent but we were the only ones on the tour on a 50 seater bus. It seems like everyone else had got the message. At the end of the tour there is a big dinner and dance show where the tables are set for hundreds of merry makers to dance traditional dances and drink local wines and generally have a great time in the company of other follish travellers. On the night we went we were joined by 5 rather bemused Koreans and a Russian who was trying to sell paper making machinery. The five hour excursion was over and done with in about 2 hours.

Which reminds me - why is it that you take an hour to eat dinner with friends and 4 minutes alone?

BY day 5 we had had enough and made our way to airline office.

"Get us out of here please"

"Certainly sir. We were wondering if you would leave or stay. Only the Embassy staff are here at present. Most everyone else has gone to Argentina." said the wily airline rep.

Would you like to go to Buenos Aires for a few days? I can arrange a nice hotel but they are having some economic problems now so the taxi's aren't running to the Airport. Perhaps you would like a limosine?"

"Nah. Fuck that. Get us home asap!"

And so we left the next day.

A dream of discovery destroyed by the vagiaries of national holidays and blind expectation of perpetual motion in every country but the one you live in had managed to comprehensively destroy our plans.

This is just one story. There are many more and everyone who travels will tell you about the day that a certain country was shut. It has happened to me in Spain, El Salvador, Australia, New Zealand, Wales, America, France (which closes for the whole of August), and many more.

So perhaps now you have an incling of why I am cynical and why travel broadens the mind and expands time to fill whatever voids have been left by local traditions and cultures.

It is not glamourous. It is generally fucking boring and I wish I had a playstation or something.

via condios muchacho's

Ah my minnions at last we hear the news the kingdom has been waiting for: Tony Blair has given a date for departure!

I am both heartened and saddened by the announcement.

You see I have been a member of the Labour party in the UK since I was a student and Maggie Thatcher was king.

The awful reality of being in politics is that it is almost unheard of for a top politico to leave with the good wishes of the people.

There are of course some like Harold Wilson and that Aussie guy who went missing who leave a bereaved public but normally it ends in tears and Blairs departure is no exception.

Before he was elected we of the Labour old guard had a lot to cheer about. The Tories were in disarray and although we missed John Smith there was always the hope of the new. So with girded loins and renewed vigour we went out on the stump and battered on doors with gusto.

I remember knocking on a door in Islington and being chased away by a guy in a towel who was sworn member of the fascist BNP. He hated me and if he hadn't been in danger of revealing his miniscule manhood I think he may well have caused me some serious damage but that was small fry when placed under the microscope of the body politic. Small and rather wrinkled as I recall.

Anyway, on the night of the election in '97 I was a member of the Socialist Republic of Islingtons General council - which is not as good as being int he old Soviet politbureau but it has a nice ring to it. As we Red brothers sat watching the results unfold every seat won was cheered with abandon. We could not believe it - after 18 years we were going to win!

Then one momentous moment occurred: A guy who was well disliked withinn the ranks for being a pompous prig of man with no more right to be in the socialist movement than Himmler and who had plagued the Islington meetings for years - Mr Stephen Twigg - was elected; against all the odds, to replace Michael "I am not really totally gay" Portillo.


Rapture!

We had won and got rid of the pompous ass all at once, Brilliant!

So a crowd of us ran out and jumped in cabs and went to Westminster only to be greeted by deathly silence.

After a short discussion there were two options. Gloat or Gloat. I chose to gloat. the question was where - either at that overblown farce of a party at Millbank or outside the central office of the defeated Tories.

I chose the latter and so off I went - alone to heckle - jeer and release a lifetimes worth of frustrations on the poor tory boys inside.

I raged all night until John Major arrived at which point I exploded in uncontrolled abuse of all that is holy and christian and generally right wing.

At this point a rather affected and, it has to be said large, tory worker came rushing from the building and grabbed me across the crash barriers

"What is your fucking Problem?" he screamed

"YOU ARE! ALWAYS HAVE BEEN ALWAYS WILL BE!" I replied - the best reply I have ever conjoured in a moment of stress it has to be said.

At that point a scuffle ensued and the police seperated us.

He was ushered to the Smith Square sanctum and I was marched towards a police van.

"SHUT UP." said the copper
"I won't I know my rights" says I

"Look shut up !" he said again and continued, "If you do I'll let you go."

"HUH?"

"Its the end of my shift and I can't be arsed nicking you and anyway I think you are right."

Stunned silence.

He made me wait on the back step of the van whilst Korean and Swiss TV interviewed me before gently nudging me off towards the tube.

"result" was his last word to me as I staggered off in a delirious state.

I knew at that moment that worlds could change and that anything in life was possible.

Now, 10 years later I see the opportunities Blair has wasted and I bitterly regret every one but please forgive me if I also feel a tiny twinge of regret that the passing of Blair as PM marks the passing of the hopes of an entire generation of us, We are now middle aged and small c conservative and worried about our mortgages.

It could have been so much better - and - for a moment it was.

Kurt cobain, keith moon and why they did it

* May 6, 2007 at 2:04 PM
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g'day

you know what is really weird about being close to happiness? The imminent looming presence of death is what.

I just got back from a great night with friends and fiends and I didn't know I knew so many.

Then: an email: reminding me of what is happening in the other side of the globe and of the emotional spectrum/spectre.

here it is in full. I hope she doesn't mind but you should know why eventually we all contemplate the end,

You need to know so that it wakes you up

It hurts.

Morning all

Eventually achieved my aim of changing Tony's care back to Mr Yeomans on Tuesday. Monday evening's rounds were carried out by Mr Smith - as I was there I questioned why he was continuing to take a lead on Tony's care as I had understood there was to be a transfer back Mr Lansdown team. He asked Tony if he had any complaints about the care he was receiving - Tony not wishing to cause any upset said "he thought the medical professionalism of both teams was fine but that I had problems". My answer was it was the "mental care". This then led to tears - Mr Smith was very sympathetic and tactfully got rid of the rest of his team closed the curtains and made appropriate reassuring comments. Then from Tuesday Mr Yeomans was back on the case.

The first thing Mr Yeomans did was diagnose shingles! Tony has a rash on the right side of his chest reaching round to the spine. Thankfully it is not too itchy. An IV anti-viral drug was prescribed which was to be adminisered for ten days and on Wednesday night Tony was transferred into a single room and kept in isolation - not even allowed out to use the loo! This made physio very difficult as he could not walk far to build up strength. The nurses ignored him even more than before.

Tony managed to have discussions with doctors who agreed the anti-viral drug could be administered orally so were not a reason to keep him in hospital. Mr Yeomans view on discharge was influenced by the level of nursing care Tony was receiving - which was fairly minimal. He arranged for the staples to be removed on Saturday morning and approved discharge for that day. There has been no discussion with us about how we will cope at home. The nursing staff on the surgery ward are very busy and just do the tasks required to get over the operation with no holistic care. I only saw Mr Yeomans on the ward once whilst Tony was under his care, so have not had his reassurance and guidance which was invaluable last time. When I did see him it was to ask him to write letters for Alice and Ben explaining the impact of Tony's health on their studies. Alice struggling to pass the first year at university and Ben about to take his GCSE's. Mr Yeomans has provided us with letters of support for them both.

Anyway Tony was discharged on Saturday, having lost 5 kilos in weight. His drugs have been changed. He was informed what drugs to take but no information about why certain drugs were to be taken. He is now taking a daily dose of aspirin - I thought this was recommended for patients with heart problems, so I am now worried that there are some cardio-vascular problems. If this is the case it should effect the diet I give Tony to build himself up, at the moment I am giving him a high-fat diet to ensure concentrated calories in small volumes I need to know if this is ok or should we take a different approach? The lack of opportunity to discuss with hospital staff has quite distressed me.

I feel guilty because I should feel happy that Tony is home, but he is weaker than he was at the last discharge and needs a lot of care so I am not happy about having to look after him. I found the strength to cope last time but this time everything feels a real effort - I want to be outside in the garden sorting things out, but he is stuck indoors on his own if I do. I have not arranged time off work yet, as I did not know for certain when he was being discharged. He has out-patients appointment on 10 May to review for possible chemo the following week - and this will make him even weaker!

It's my birthday on 12 May and I can not see that we will have any celebration for it this year, I guess I'm too old for birthdays, but I am definitely aging - though not as much as Tony.

As you can probably tell it is not much fun at home at the moment so any visitors are appreciated - don't expect any hospitality, but if you can face it you will give Tony and me a break. Alice is at home until Wednesday and is doing her best to keep me on track, but it is a challenge for her.

There must be an end to all these medical problems eventually, I just hope I see a glimmer of hope soon.

Take care and hope to see some of you soon.

So next time you feel like its all too much I have something to tell you.
My step dad died like this 2 years ago.

FUCK IT!

LIVE YOUR LIFE AND STOP WORRYING ABOUT THE BASTARD ABOVE YOU.

IT IS NOW.

THERE IS NOW TOMORROW

out

Godan dayin keneri,

one of the things about being alone in a foreign land is that you suddenly find that you have hours of spare time that simply aren't available at home. So what do you do with all that life that suddenly lands in your lap with no commitments to fill it?

I guess that depends on what you are made of and what is pre-occupying you at the time.

For some it involves beer, fags and a canoodle in a dodgy bar filled with ex-pat oil workers and lady boys. For others there is the opportunity to go shopping with abandon. Then again there are the solitary types who hike mountains and masturbate frantically in the privacy of their sleeping bags. Yet again there are others who take the opportunity to go sight seeing and absorb some local culture.

This time for me it has been a voyage of discovery; a vertitable orgy of indulgence; I have finally read some new books.

However, it's not all good. As is often the case I picked up the tomes ta Heathrow in the Borders shop there and not being inclined to read Jeffrey "plagiarist" Archer I decided to try and fill in the gaps regarding doing business in the modern world.

As you may know there are a plethora of books that claim to teach you how to make millions or fix companies or manage networks or any of that other corporate crap when in fact they all have one thing in common: one idea expanded and reiterated ad infinitum.

It's kind of interesting that most of these books ignore what they purport to tell us. I mean how many Internet marketing books are there? Book - Internet...? Some dichotomy there I think.

Then there are the enticing quotes on the gate folds - "brilliant.. A masterpiece .. every CEO should read this book..." etc. All total bullshit. These little nuggets are the synopsis of a book and of an entire ideology. The ideology of instant gratification.

I want to tell you that they do not and will not work for you or your organisation. They are simply another pile of pulped paper that would be better used in art classes for 5 year olds.

Take for instance the last one I read - THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell. The bullet points on the cover say, " fascinating" twice, nay thrice! whilst the reality is that the entire thing is dedicated to trying to justify a spurious theory that fads are akin to epidemics. He has three new terms to pontificate about and an interminable analysis of Sesame Street and Blues Clues - I kid you not.

Now that may be fascinating and relevent to the makers of kids TV but it has not the slightest bearing on how anyone else does business - although he does try tp make Hush Puppies some kind of uber-brand.

So I guess what all that means is that most of the stuff you read is totally irrelevent and/or useless.

Sadly there are sufficient numbers of graduates in big companies who rely on these kinds of books so that they can impress their bosses with the new ideas. Unfortunately the bosses are too damn busy to read them for themselves so experience is subsumed in a wave of "modern" thinking which is 99% useless.

Which brings me on to the basis of this rant and that is that American / Western business practises are about to be dealt a body blow by the East.

In the past few days in Singapore I have read a lot of stuff about various markets that I have little knowledge of and I have to say that I am massively impressed with what I have come across.

Did you know for example that Singapore, The Philippines, Malaysia and India are all in the middle of huge property booms? Singapore has more than doubled in the past year alone.

Now there is a great deal of action by foreign companies here - Citibank - HSBC and so but there is an equal amount of action going the other way. Did you know that the ousted PM of thailand is trying to buy an English soccer club? Just like the Americans are doing? Perhaps that will be the battlefield where the lines are first drawn - America v Russia v Asia using African and S American troops. Sounds ominously like 1984 to me!

The difference I have seen on my many visits to Asia is that people here are ready and willing to learn about how we Westerners think whilst Westerners are almost all in the dark when it comes to figuring out what makes Asians tick. That is a legacy of empire and the unwavering belief that we are right.

We aren't. At least not always.

So the business school models that teach us all about profit and loss and corporate legacy and so on are going to have to change and change quickly. Much as Microsoft will loose out to Linux and ipods so will Citibank fall to the claws of an emerging and dynamic asian tiger where longterm planning take over from short term gain.

You can already see it in the UK where the richest man is Mr Mittal - an Indian, followed by 2 Brits and a Russian, and an Iraqi Jew and 2 more Indians. Pretty soon you will be amazed to find that 7-11 in downtown Montana now sells shells made in Amritzar, beef jerky from Phnom Phen and the latest Chinese chart hits for download on your Tawaniese made cell watch and nano computer. (wanc for short - made by the wanc corporation of Dubai).

America and the West have an unflinching belief in their systems and methods but I can't see why. they don't even work in the home states so why on earth would they translate across continents?

There is a definitive list of certainties in this world and it is this:

DEATH
TAXES

I would also like to add one more vital element to this combination; shit.

You will die; you will be taxed; and you will continue to shit until it is all over and even then you will probably manage to squeeze one more turd from the passage of time.

All else is maleable and transient.

So before you get too concerned about your career and life aspirations take these items as the basis of your creed and try to adapt to the new world. It could be better than you think and I for one would rather eat a curry than a Big Mac anyday - even if the last turd before my passing requires a loo roll in the fridge.

see you in paradise parishioners.

Aloha

today's blog comes to you direct from Sunny Singapore.

Well, I had almost recovered from my encounter with the slippery stair case before I had to leave. It's kind of annoying when you get older and aches and pains seem to be more debilitating but I guess there is a pay off for all that experience!

Anyhow, I had to leave the homestead to continue on my journey through life and today has brought me to the centre of Asia.

I must confess I love Singapore. It's a first world island in the third world. The things these guys have done over the past 20 years is amazing. There are new buildings all over and the hotels are first rate. Not to mention the nightlife which is - despite the tales of draconian legislation - brilliant.

I flew in - 13 hours not including the farce that is the British public transport system - 5 hours to go 80 miles no less - on the night flight and as is always the case I ended up with the stiffest neck in the history of stiff necks. It happens all the time because the airlines insist that 17c is a reasonable temperature for human beings. It is if you are an eskimo but for us normal mortals its just plain freezing. This is one of the downsides of globalisation that never gets mentioned in the other blogs.

So having added my bit to global warming I rocked up at the hotel in one of the ubiquitous Toyota Crown cabs that are all racked up and ready at Changi airport. I always use the same hotel - just off Orchard Road - and crashed out for a few hours before going out to see what Singers is like at present.

Well, the aching neck was no better so after a fine feast of gargantuan proportions I made my way to the Orchard Towers where I knew there would be a masseur available.

For those of you who don't know the Towers it is locally known as "10 floors of whores" but they are interspersed with some really useful things like a supermarket, tailors and massage dens - not dodgy for the most part.

Anyway, the lady who gave me a massage was about 45 and had hands that were as strong as a bricklayer. She damn near broke my neck before moving on to the spine - which has not been twisted and shaken so much since Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper were all the rage. Let me tell you it wrecked! But somehow I feel better for it. (Thanks for asking.)

Now none of this has anything to do with music does it?

No, but there is one interesting musical diversion that i have already noticed in my 12 hours in the tropics. That is that Pink Floyd are still HUGE!

The cab driver - who looked like an extra from apocalpse now - was playing Wish you were here on the way from the airport; a 3 piece band of American ner-do-wells was bashing out a terrible version of Money and as I lay on a table with a small asian lady turning me into a human pretzel the strains of Dark side of the Moon wafted over the aromatherapy couches.

It all seemed a bit weird - especially considering the fact that on my everlasting train journey to Heathrow there was a Polish family on the train taking pictures of Battersea power station and chattering about Dave Gilmour. What is happening in the world these days? Have we returned to 1975?

In my bag I have a demo from a US band called Band of Thieves. The weird thing is that they are so retro its incredible. The sound, the look, the hair - everything screams 1975. Question is - should I sign them and if so for what territories? Poland and Asia look pretty good right now.

I'll let you know.

yours

Aching stevens

owww
I fell down some stairs in a drunken stupor and have busted up my elbow.
Feels like a bowling ball in the joint.
took 10 mins to write this

no blogs till its better.

owwwwww

Good morning,

I have run out of steam a bit today but in the spirit of co-operation I have decided to sell off our last remaining copies of the Lovemakers debut album in Australia.

So, here is the deal. As avid readers of my rants I am giving away the last remaining copies. I just need a $1 for the postage so that it doesn't cost me too much.

paypal me at info@bariarecords with your address and the record is on its way.

As we go through our stock list I will let you know whats going to be available.

There are a few vinyls from Glovebox and a very few from Heavely States, Gasolineros and Blue Eyes son available as well so if they are your faves let me know.

We won't be pressing them again so I guess they are by default limited editions.

Cheers

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