Vada Scoparti's Diary

There hasn’t been much productivity here recently considering that the majority of the writing staff has been sitting in the library sobbing into the pages of books on Renaissance etiquette. If you expect to me to apologise, stop. In fact, I really have much better things to do right now. To introduce to the fray is our new columnist - the sassy sashaying student soliloquist, Vada Scoparti. Hence: 

I indulged in a most unsavoury liaison at Vodrevs Tuesday last. He wasn’t an Adonis but I saw he was dressed well so, TVRs flowing (if it’s too complicated an acronym then you belong in the proletariat), I thought it apt to go home with him. Honestly I was absolutely out of it, I must have had literally a gram of meph on top of that, so one couldn’t very well be blamed for falling into so promiscuous a trap, nor if I make any minor discrepancies in this story (which I assure you I won’t). The house. Was. Filthy. Ohmygod - I had to leave the Kurt Geigers by the door simply because of the state of the carpet.

Making a god-awful semantic nightmare of ‘salacious’, among other lengthy words beyond his comprehension, he wooed me to the cesspit he called his bedroom. I stopped by the bathroom beforehand however. Now, who in their right mind lives in a cold house and doesn’t have a wooden lavatory seat? What am I meant to do with porcelain, let my buttocks freeze to the seat? I am not wont to such blue-collar displeasures.

I got over this. But then the shit really hit the pan: Sainsbury’s Basics toilet tissue. BASICS. 2 shitting ply. Ohmygod. What kind of despicable oaf expects me, of all people, to wipe with such dross? I kicked aside some filthy clothes, finished his drugs and took my leave, slamming the door and harumphing loudly enough that he got the message.

As a mark of my disdainful contempt, I did not flush. 

VADA SCOPARTI

FAMOUS PAINTINGS EXPLAINED No.2

Bill Hammond - The Fall of Icarus, 1995. Acrylic on canvas.

Tears of acrylic seep down the canvas, sliding desperately down the painting into a white abyss, eternal nothingness. The drips remind me of a desperate man clawing for purchase on a cliff face. Unsuccessfully. The painting is meant to represent man’s effect on these elegant birds’ habitats - they sit powerless in the dead trees as pollution melts their world away, a despairing view of hopelessness through watery eyes.

But that’s what Hammond wants you to think. What people don’t realise is that he’s actually one of Anna Wintour’s harshest critics. You see, Hammond has an unfounded and totally irrational hatred of her, but has disguised this for years behind the ingenious veil of worrying about climate change and all that la-di-da. All the birds are in fact sullen little Anna Wintours watching her aging face in the mirror droop down the canvas (her cheekbones). So in fact, the abyss is the irrevocable past, and the long trickles of paint are Wintour's looks cascading into it, where they will remain. Ouch. 

As in The Merchant of Venice - 'truth will out'. Other interesting revelations that have come to light this month include the news that John Flaxman's Athena in the form of Penelope’s sister tells the queen of the return of her son Telemachus (1810), contrary to its lengthy title, actually depicts the most bodacious happy-slap of antiquity - the famous 'diving bitchslap' pioneered by the Athenians in the 5th century BC (below). 

THOMAS

=\\ JUSTINE LAI //=

It could feasibly be argued that I'm turning into an old man at 20 given the way I react to some things these days. I thought I was pretty liberal, but sometimes I surprise myself. With this in mind, one of the main reasons I like the Californian Justine Lai's project Join Or Die is that it can be cheeky and provocative, but not so much that the paintings cause offence, or leave you pissed off for the rest of the day. No gratuitous bell-ends, no casual vagina and most importantly no kids with dildos for noses. No, I'm sick and tired of that kind of stuff, only there for shock - no artistic merit whatsoever. What am I meant to say at a Chapman brothers exhibition? 'Great, you went to the trouble of putting a cock on the face of a child mannequin.......so?' I can tell I'm going to get terribly sidetracked here - it's time for me to 'get my fuck on' as the late Tupac Shakur once put it, and so eloquently too. So without further ado: Fuck you, Chapman brothers. 


The same goes for Gilbert and George. Fuck you, Gilbert and George. How in the HELL did they get so successful? Am I so sad and boring that I can't see the funny side of two creepy old guys blowing up colourful photographs of each other's wilting genitals and calling the works things like Blood, death, shit, semen? Well really. 

Lai started Join Or Die in 2006 with the aim of painting herself having sex with every US president in chronological order, and it works. It's amusing, different and attractively and skillfully painted too. Furthermore, there isn't any unnecessary genitalia, which would ruin the charm of her work. Yes, they're actually nice to look at don't you think? God I sound old. Fuck that too. The following innuendo-laced quote is indicative of Lai's way of teasingly fingering the boundaries of good taste without feeling the puerile need to bend them over and force-fuck them (think Gaybert and Gay and and the Gayman brothers*)


"I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated." - JUSTINE LAI

*Had to do that to make myself feel less old.


THOMAS

MANCHESTER RANT TWO

The painting above is by David Inshaw, a former member of the Brotherhood of Ruralists, and has absolutely nothing to with this article, except that I envy the quintessentially English serenity enjoyed by the two badminton players. 


It's a quiet Friday night for me, I've been working all day and all I'd like to do is rest. Not even rest hard like most people do at this time of the week, but just sit in front of the television eating something inane and watching something even more so, but apparently it's frowned upon to do that around these parts. 


I've just come back from a short walk incorporating a visit to the local Sainsbury's, apparently the place to go to have one's choice of evening entertainment churlishly mocked. I'm going home to London tomorrow to spend the week with my girlfriend, so sorry for not 'going large' the night before (see My Boyfriend Is A Dick for why). So you may now imagine me, standing in the queue, holding a modest four-pack of beers and a microwave meal. For one. 


I was staring into space and daydreaming as I got to the checkout and proffered said items to Stuart, my indefatigably helpful cashier for the day. Now, it's a fucking supermarket, do I have to have my wits about me every minute of every day, especially after spending hours learning why a fourteenth century Italian courtier should possibly want to be good at archery and ballroom dancing at the same time? And then he popped the question. 


"Night in alone eh?" Asks Stu with a patronising chortle. Urgh. One of his colleagues laughs, and sharing the amusement are three scantily clad female students (inappropriately so considering their generous proportions) each clutching their own crate of Strongbow, who titter asininely. What if I needed ingredients for a salad and happened also to have dry lips? What kind of reaction would I get if I put a cucumber and a tub of vaseline on the counter? For fuck's sake. 


I guess I must live the reclusive life of a total loser, and I was thinking that from now on I should use the self service checkouts so as to avoid the fatuous scrutiny of my shopping (or just to avoid any contact with other humans altogether) when I thought: No, you know what? Fuck you Stuart, fuck you his bald colleague and not forgetting the girls, FUCK you, you three, fat, soon-to-be-drunk bitches. 


I'm going downstairs to put the microwave to good use and listen to Minor Threat. It had better be a good fucking meal. Over and out. 

MANCHESTER RANT ONE

Manchester is home to two massive universities - the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan (three if you count Salford), so the city is great for students. The only problem is there are fucking thousands of them. Living in a student area like I stupidly do, it’s impossible to avoid them.

Tonight was a Monday night, and there was gash on the lash everywhere. Now I’m not a sit at home loser, I don’t even smoke pot anymore, but come on. I’m game for a party Friday and Saturday night, Thursday too, and maybe Wednesday. Okay Tuesday as well if there’s something good on. But Monday night? What could there possibly be worth going and getting fucked for on a Monday? You see drunk girls wobbling across the middle of the road, their fat fleshy arses illuminated in a car’s headlights as it has to slow down and herd them along like cattle. Oh no! Stacey’s broken a heel and now can’t walk because she’s too fucking obese and wasted. I don’t care, fuck you. Just don’t puke on my shoes while I help you stand up again.

So it’s 24/7 this stuff. Am I a psychopath if I have happy daydreams of watching all the shit clubs they go to burning down with them inside? There’d be me cackling on a rooftop somewhere to myself - ‘Tiger Tiger burning bright, Aquapop also alight, etc....’ I’d be listening to ‘The End’ by the Doors, except playing it backwards with my finger on a record player and throwing petrol doused faggots at virgins on the cobbled streets below.

Enough of that - I’m not trying to open myself up to a psychiatrist, or tell the court why I did it. But maybe you can sympathize with me, like I evidently can them - in life you face many difficult situations, so am I a bad person for wanting to smash some heads between a rock and a hard place? OK sorry I said enough. 

TEENAGE DREAMS

Everyone knows the saying 'live life to the full because you never know that one day you might walk into the road and get hit by a bus.' Yeah well me and that saying have a special little relationship, because it happened to me a few years ago. I was about 17 and drinking White Lightning or something similarly homeless near the Junction with one of my best mates, when we decided we'd go off to his place north of the river. Being the good, sensible little boy that I was, I phoned Mother Dearest to tell her I wouldn't be back until the morning. As I was on the phone, the bus came and I couldn't for some reason get my wallet out so I just told my friend I'd get on the next one. Biggest mistake of my life. 

As I was waiting, Mr Cuntfucking Biggest Asshole of all time (from Lewisham, urgh) came and asked me for change. Weighing this guy's appearance up, I decided to walk off, but he kept fucking following and pestering me. At this point I should say that my justification for this decision and some pretty stupid ones that followed it were probably due to the White Shitening, which I have only ever drunk since on one occasion, after which I was woken up by my fringe and forehead getting soaked as my calmly sleeping face splashed into the toilet bowl. I own class, me. So anyway, I kept getting followed, and we ended up on some estate where he was going to roll a joint or something for us. I said I didn't want any, and this must have pissed him off because the next thing I knew he had one of his hands going through my pockets and the other repeatedly punching me in the head. 

As you can imagine, I didn't enjoy this. The thought did cross my mind that I could have been about to lose my anal virginity, but don't worry, that came later by the hands of some Asian dude called Kerpal or something like that. I decided the best thing to do would be to leg it, and seeing a group of people outside the estate and on the other side of the road I reckoned I'd be safe if I ran to them, he wasn't going to mess with five or six people. In an inspired move, I got free and sprinted into the road, only looking for traffic after I was in the middle. I looked right, and missed a Transit van by literally about half a metre, and then coming over the crest of the hill from the left (it hadn't been there when I'd jumped into the road) was a huge passenger coach coming at about 30 mph. I suppose if I was going to do this, I may as well have done it properly, and I'm glad I got hit by one of the biggest fuckers on the road, not some pussy hatchback or saloon. It was literally like being hit by a moving brick wall, the face of the thing was totally flat. I reckon I must have been hit in the leg, flown a few metres and landed on my face. The worst bit is that I wasn't concussed, so I remember it all, the headlights, the hit, the taste of the road, everything. The thought of my teeth grinding along the tarmac still makes me shiver, and I hate that kerb bit in American History X now. 

I got up straight away and walked about a bit before it really sunk in, I was so in shock. Then the blood, Jesus it was everywhere, I wasn't doing things by halves. Some poor woman came up to me and asked if I wanted anyone phoned. I said to phone my friend (I wasn't too intelligible with teeth and bone hanging out everywhere) and tell him I probably wasn't going to make it to his that night, but forgot about phoning my parents, I wasn't really thinking too straight then. The ambulance ride was horrible, but morphine's actually pretty good, why do you think Snoop Dogg smokes medicinal weed? The NHS has got that shit on lock. My Mum got to the hospital, but declined to take a picture when I asked her, I was pretty bummed out by that. Then the nurses insisted on cutting my brand new shirt off (I had not a single chest injury, my face took the fall). I managed to persuade them to leave it, and so I just lay there staring at the ceiling in despair as my stressed out mother thanked God that I was alive. The girl in the bed to the left of me couldn't speak English and was in for a drug overdose/attempted suicide whilst the guy on the right had multiple stab wounds. I love living sometimes. 

That's about it really, I was pretty immobile for the next couple of days. The only further embarrassments/total losses of dignity include drinking a pint through a straw, having some guy shove medicine up my ass, spurting a pretty good jet of claret everywhere when I had my drip removed, not recognising myself in the mirror, having my mum bathe me at 17 and staring at some old guy's stinking, overflowing catheter bag for two days. I don't think I've been lower to be honest, but I got some nice cards and rumour spread that I was in a coma which is always pretty fun. 

MY BOYFRIEND IS A DICK - Part 2

3. I can’t even trust him when he is asleep

Had successfully managed to get my boyfriend home and into bed – a significant achievement considering when he is wasted this is literally as difficult as getting a dog to piss without cocking his leg or licking your elbow. Good. Baby sleeps.

Anyway, I wake up a couple of hours later, and realise my Big Baby is not next to me. Shit. Is he being sick? Has he passed out over the loo? I got dressed – no sign of Big Baby in loo. Shit. Maybe he is getting water? Hungry? Not in kitchen. Shit. Right, erm, living room?

SHIT

MY BOYFRIEND IS A DICK.

Asleep, sprawled across the sofa, in my parent’s house – naked. Lovely.

All these examples are when he is drunk, indeed my boyfriend most certainly excels at being a dick when he is wasted, but he is also pretty good when sober. I introduced him to about ten of my friends as my boyfriend and he looks at me, says with a completely straight face “I’m not your boyfriend” and runs out of the house. Dick. He is also constantly trying to humiliate me publicly, for example loudly telling me he is gay and it’s all over in the busy checkout queue in Tescos.

My boyfriend is a dick.

J CONRAD

MY BOYFRIEND IS A DICK - Part 1

Why my boyfriend is a dick

Some boyfriends are indisputably dicks because they beat and cheat their girlfriends. Other guys are dicks because they do plain stupid oh-my-god-is-this-guy-really-my-boyfriend stuff. So don’t panic reader, this is not a frighteningly candid and uncomfortable confession about my abusive boyfriend ruining my life. My boyfriend is just a bit of a silly twat.

1. Our romantic mini break
Right, so we have been seeing each other for a few weeks and decide it would be nice to spend the night in Brighton. My romantic picture perfect expectations for the weekend, and I guess for our relationship, were abruptly thwarted when he burped in my face, laughed and ran off, leaving me alone and embarrassed at the bar.

My boyfriend (who wasn’t even quite my boyfriend yet) is a dick.

Sure, we had a nice time. We sat on the beach drinking beer and throwing stones, wandered round Brighton hand in hand, sat on our sea view balcony listening to music, went for dinner. All good, until we go to a pub and babycakes decides to get absolutely shit faced.

He must have downed about twelve pints (surely not that much, but thanks for the flattery, Ed.) before he burped in my face; I had to literally carry him back to our hotel before he fell face first into the bed. Perfect.
I’ll spare you the gory details and him the embarrassment, (“the fact that you are trying to initiate it by prodding me up the arse with your dick suggests that yes, you were right before, you are definitely too drunk to have sex”), but it all got pretty messy and I went to sleep alone as he was slumped over our ensuite toilet. Awesome.

“Sorry babe, I was just really nervous”

Well his “nervous” excuse was all very endearing until he got absolutely shit faced and acted like a dick on several occasions after this.

2. He nearly killed me
My boyfriend is actually pretty funny when he is shit faced. This particular night he has been working at the pub but somehow, managed to get completely wasted. (Well it was a beer festival, Ed.)

I always think drunk people look a lot like babies, staggering around and laughing uncontrollably at basic and often not very funny things. My boyfriend wobbled towards me like a cute little baby just learning to walk, smiling the stupidest smile. Gurgled kisses me all over my face, silly dance, inane wiggled hips. With piss poor pissed Spanish, he unknowingly introduced me to a Galician woman as his daughter before smiling and giving me a massive snog. I am loving enough to appreciate the amusing side of this, so all quite funny.

Unfortunately, the drunken baby then stupidly decided to lift me over his shoulder. Don’t get me wrong, I am not hugely over-weight or anything (therefore usually particularly easy to lift), but considering the trouble he was having standing up this was obviously a fucking stupid idea. Not funny. Suddenly it is like he has literally hurled me head first into a fire extinguisher. Luckily the pub manager caught me but if he hadn’t I am pretty sure that my boyfriend would have killed me.

Oh, and he nearly killed me and found it hysterical. Everyone else in the pub obviously hadn’t quite realised that my boyfriend is a dick. They all looked at him in disbelief, kept asking if he realised that he had nearly killed me, and he was just bent over giggling uncontrollably. For ages.*


J CONRAD
*To be honest I was laughing pretty hard too, and in a slapstick way it was very very funny. But still, he found it a bit too funny. Dick.

MATTHEW HOPKINS - WITCHFUCKER GENERAL

Since it’s not halloween any time soon, here’s something about witches. Ladies will be glad to know that it is no longer punishable by death to have your imp or familiar suckle your third nipple, but in 1645 - things was different. Witchcraft supposedly existed to tempt man and defy God, and has existed in its various forms since well before the dawn of Christianity, and one can imagine that the two didn’t get on hugely well. The recorded persecution of witches had actually been in decline in the thirty years leading up to 1645, but then a certain Matthew Hopkins bestowed upon himself the totally unofficial title of Witch Finder General, and went on a two year terror trip through Essex and Suffolk. Many witches were hanged, but for what exactly? 

I do wonder whether witch finding in general was just a catastrophic failure on man’s part to understand the earliest suffragettes, but either way the idea of some black magic virago used to have people defiling their britches all over Europe. About three hundred years after the St Osyth Trials of 1582, an Essex man inadvertently exhumed two of the executed witches in his garden to find that each had their arms and thighs riveted together by the executioner lest they had decided to escape their graves and brew a Charybdis of mischief. I mean really. 

But what caused the blind frenzied panic that led to so many prosecutions of witches between 1645-7? It seemed that Hopkins had a large cauldron full of shit himself, which he was particularly adept at stirring. These witches weren’t actually that bad by European standards anyway - they didn’t fly or partake in perverted orgies. But there was one thing, and given the instability of the time after the Civil War mixed with the braying stupidity of terrified bumpkins, Hopkins pounced on it. 

Suspected witches all had their own imps, which could be in the form of dogs, cats, mice, spiders, toads, crows, hornets, moles, whatever. Supposedly they could be sent on malevolent missions, such as wrecking the bread at a bakery (only someone that followed Satan himself could imagine conjuring such evil). This delightful conjecture extends to suggest that they could however be used for other things, as I have found out. 

Margaret Landish confessed on the 6th of May 1645 that “lying sick by the fireside in her own house, something came up to her body and sucked on her privy parts and much pained and tormented her.” Landish claimed that if it was an imp then it must have been sent by Susan Cock. No shit. A witness actually claimed that this was a regular occurrence. Erm, right. More likely story - her husband walks in, sees her being licked out by the cat, and denounces her in disgust. 

This isn’t an isolated incident however. Joyce Bonds had two imps like mice, who apparently crawled into her bed and suckled her, whilst Anne Cooper had three black imps called Wynhoe, Jeso and Panu, “which suckled on the lower parts of her body.” Jane Cooper had a frog named Frog that killed two children, and Mary Johnson pushed her rat through a door to kill a baby, but my favourite is Margaret Moore, who kept a rat in her drawers. (Surely all women do that? Ed.) She often sent the rat to do her evil bidding, and her rat was said to give off “such an extreme and offensive stink” that nearby people were “scarce able to endure” it. Other infamous imps included Vinegar Tom the greyhound, Elemauzer, Pyewacket and Grizel Greedigut, names that, declared Hopkins - “no mortal could invent.” 

THOMAS

THE DAY I... SHAT MYSELF

A short letter from a man that fell in trouble on his travels. 

Arite cunts, I'm OK and having a good time, nothing's gone wrong yet. Except for today. So far this trip I've felt that my anatomy has been in perfectly good working order but today, God proved me wrong in all of his almightyful glory. As I said, I've been feeling fine and so, sometime after lunch, I felt thad I needed a shit. OK so it had the rumblings of a biggie, but for someone like this man here that's nothing to worry about.

So, I approached the bogs with a slight swagger in my step - the strut of a cockerel who knows he's the dog's bollocks and likes to flaunt it. This attitude was, however, to become my undoing. A fall from greatness. I entered the toilets at precisely 6 minutes past 4 and casually lent against the wall to check myself out in the mirror, as one does with looks like mine. After looking into the mirror for what seemed like minutes but was probably hours I turned to start my predatory stalk to the toilet door, casually farting to anounce the Great One's approach to all the cockroaches that were probably waiting under the bogseat to ambush the weary traveller...

...BLOODY HELLFIRE, CHRIST, CHRIST ON HIS CROSS SURROUNDED BY ALL THE BLOODY SAINTS! I'm not going to lie, to my shocked amazement I had followed through. Big style. And shocked amazement it was for someone who had honed his bowel control on the battlefields of India, the swamps of northern Thailand and the deadliest kebab in Cardiff. I finished the ordeal off whilst sitting on the toilet and a messier occurence I have never known.

However, the ordeal had only just begun because, as we all know, toilet paper can only help so much, especially when you can't even flush it, and I knew I had to make it to the showers or accept surrender and almost certain doom. So, with my pants round my ankles I peered out of the bog and checked that the coast was clear. It was, and I started my great journey across the vast corridor. It looked like something from the March of the Penguins and to my shock and horror, right at the point that I was waddling over no-man's land one of the prettiest girls I've ever seen walked into the bathroom and my dignity and arrogance plummeted to lower than my grandma's tits. Saving what was left of my tattered dignity, I stumbled into the shower and the rest, as they say is history. 

YNGWIE MALMSTAIN

THE ALBUMS OF 2008

Here at Jealousy one of our staff recently read an album review that he said was so uselessly researched and written that “a pissed kid” could of writ it better.” So to look back on some of our favourite albums of the past year, here is a pissed kid. We met nine year old Daniel by the duck pond at Platt Fields Park and started him on a three litre bottle of White Lightning. After half an hour and with Daniel already beginning to look quite drunk, we began the interview. 

Late of the Pier/Fantasy Black Channel 

TOL: Hi Daniel.

Daniel: I feel really sick.

TOL: Don’t worry it’s all part of growing up and being a big boy. 

Daniel: Ok. This sounds funny but I like it. They all look silly. Is your head meant to feel like this? Mummy always shouts at Daddy when he drinks because he does it all the time. But he calls her a stupid cow because he says she is a headache. But she doesn’t look like a cow. Haha I feel so funny. I think Daddy’s right. 

TOL: Why?

Daniel: Because if Mummy drank this she would lighten up. 

TOL: Right. Well do you like it? Do you think you could dance a lot to it?

Daniel: No. It’s like the monsters from Doctor Who. Can we do the next one?

Crystal Castles/Crystal Castles

Daniel: My cousin has this really old thing called a games boy or something but it’s rubbish and the graphics are so bad. This sounds like that. Are they really old? My PSP is better.

TOL: They’ve been around a couple of years, but have lost the sense of underground mystery they used to have when they first started out because they became really popular with a lot of big kids and are not so cool anymore. 

Daniel: Oh like Yu Gi Oh cards. We had them at school, me and my friends, and then everyone liked them so they got gay. I don’t think this counts as music though if it’s from a game. Can I go toilet pleeeease?

  

Metallica/Death Magnetic

TOL: Don’t you think the album cover looks a bit like a hairy vagina? 

Daniel: I don’t know what that is.

TOL: I didn’t think so. When you’re older booze will help you get it. 

Daniel: You’re weird. These guys are really angry, my sister likes this kind of stuff, she’s fat and got braces and wears black all the time. Loser. Can I lie down? I’ve got a really bad tummy and you just keep playing me wank music. 

TOL: Woah. Where did you hear that word? Well do you like any music?

Daniel: Yes, 50 Cent. And Razorlight. They’re both mainly popular with kids my age I think. I’m bored and you guys are pooheads. 

At this point Daniel ran off to the playground and was violently sick all over the curly-wurly slide. The interview had to be cut short. 

THOMAS

FAMOUS PAINTINGS EXPLAINED

No.1: how Renaissance paintings influence football today

One of the most important yet largely forgotten aspects of Renaissance art is the powerful influence it still manages to wield in modern popular culture. One of the most famous physical allusions of recent times was during Chelsea’s victory over Liverpool in the Champions League last season. Abandoning typical methods of goal celebration, some of the Chelsea team opted for the more cultured approach: their interpretation of Beato Angelico’s Deposition of Christ (1432-1434). Lampard, the goal scorer, portrays Christ, whilst Drogba and Carvalho act as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. It is fantastic to see football players taking the time in such a crucial match to display the strong artistic bonds between early Renaissance Italy and the Beatiful game. 

In fact, countless goal celebrations would not exist without the help of such homage to antiquarian ideas and methods in the early fifteenth century. Some of the more notable ones include the popular ‘rock the baby’ routine and ‘the robot.’ The former has its roots in the many depictions of the nativity, whilst Peter Crouch’s robot dance is particularly reminiscent of a well documented event in 1492 when the statue of John the Baptist at Orsanmichele came temporarily to life and awkwardly travelled to Santa Maria Novella and back. Obafemi Martins’ trademark backflips are allegedly identical to those performed by the cripple healed in the Masaccio and Masolino frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel (a fresco which was short lived, having been painted over due to spatial limitations). 

It simply could not be easier to spot the many traits footballers and football fans owe to the period. Tottenham Hotspur fans are renowned for uncannily resembling the damned from Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement for instance. Try it yourself at home and why not take a football with you next time you visit the National Gallery? 

THOMAS

brushing your teeth with DISCO

When you're pretty sure someone's gone and C'd in your K. Fcuk. And that's funny for many reasons, fashion or otherwise. 

Fucking hell this rocks. Just dance with myself for two hours in front of the mirror brushing my teeth. It's fucking cool man........nnnn aman mana  mananama amananamamanam. I reckon someone accidentally left a bit a you know what in my you know what. Stand up against the wall because that?s where the mirror is and that's where the other room is FUCKER! WOO! Fuck knows, I just shouted wooooooo! Down my sink like it's 1999. It's partay tyme I tell ya. What the fer da sher is my toothpaste? Wooo! Fluoride probably, it's the shit you stuffed up your nose that matters. What was it? Woooooooooo!

I turn around and my own room is a tip, full of the articles of my shitty life but then you look into the mirror and there is that w-w-w-w-w-w-woooooooo-GUY! Mr Can DO! FESTA! FESTA! Giorgio Moroder toothpaste moustache. WOO! Fuckin, whoever thought Italo-Disco and brushing my teeth made such a fucking prime perfection couple??? Well whodathoughtit? ShitIfuckinspeltthatright! Wooo!

My toothbrush was like see through purple (pretty disco anyway) but now it's see through with sparkly bits, like a fucking disco ball in your mouth motherFUCKer! IT'S THE SWEARING AND THE CAPITALS THAT LETS YOU KNOW I'M WOOOOO!

I can't remember even what I'm doing. I'm not allowed to look back you see? By who? Me. Got to go out soon, imposisviorv. Impossible. I felt a blip. But ingore it and it goes away? How can you write this you can't it's coming out and I'm not thinking. Not looking at the keys jst my finfgers fodning the worj, \\

Right Party.

Oh how could I forget, I know at the end I'll feel shit and low and !(I'll put a ! because at this point I can't think of the third word - it's a mixture of these - desperate, unmotivated, nothing to look forward to, ashamed, upset, wanking, bored, anyway.  Look no close bracket. Ha! That's what a trip's like. You get an open bracket - WOOOOOO! But then no close bracket.

Shit I'm desperately hanging on to my high here, and arguing with my head. Shit I have to think.

Thank-yousergesantiagomegaMIX! The open bracket is the beginning of the trip, you know you're not boring normal anymore, and we're/they're off. When I say u say we say they say make some NOIISE! What the fuck is this § ? But there is no close. I hate the close. It is never definite and never the same, I hate it, but there is no close. So you can't have afuckingnother bracket. I don't want to be the one that doles 'em out.

Fuck have I shat myself?


Better check.

No.

Okay again then. The bracket. Alright then so we've established that a trip starts with a (

I didn't put a full stop there because that would be a bit paradoxical.

Just by the way, totally off subject - I reckon you know something's wrong when you're fucked and you look back on things you did sober and frown, annoyed with yourself. Shouldn't it be the other way round? And then you know it's even worse when you just laugh it off. Like this. a. ahaha. aHAHAha. aHAAAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAA.

Okay I'll admit you do get a ) but not just like that. It has to develop. You have to recover, you can't just drink all the time can you? No, your body has to process it. So you'll know you have a ) when you're totally sober and normal. Usually it's best to assume that you won't get one without any sleep after your first bracket, so wait a day. Maybe two. Or if you're fucking with reeaaaaally trippy stuff then it could be days weeks months or yeaaaars...

And then once you've got your ), sit on it for a little while until get the opportunity for a (

GO!

PROPER FUCKING BRITISH BOOZER

As far as drinking is concerned, I'm sorry, but nothing ain't got shit on the proper fucking British boozer. I see office fags on the high streets drinking some fancy fucking Czech, Mexican or Chinese beer because it's fucking foreign and fucking exotic, but guess what - it's still shit, and has nothing on ale, or in simple language for any lager drinking nancy boys out there - real beer. As for anything else, which girl wants to fuck a guy that drinks cocktails? Fucking bum boys I tell you. Will be the downfall of the Empire.

Anyway, in a proper fucking London fucking pub, everyone's got their pub names. I shit you not son, past and present customers at the pub I work at include Mad Frank, Pervy John, John the Fireplace, Antiques Ken, Mark and Stuart, and my personal favourite Evil Stare Guy (he's Belgian). A while back we had the pleasure of barring (that means banishing out unwanted wankers you fags) Pervy John, who was a first class cunt. As we sit back and remember him, here are some of his classic phrases:

Pervy John (to barman): So which one of your sisters would look better on the end of my cock?

Pervy John (to barmaid): So when do I get to inseminate all over your tits?

(Doesn't even make proper fucking sense).

Pervy John (to me for fuck's sake): You know, if you were wearing girls' clothes I could probably knock one out over you.

THE VAGABOND TRILLS

Walking backstage at the Ruby Lounge I was nervous - I'd heard a lot about the Trills' tour antics but I didn't expect anything like this. As I poked my head through the dressing room door I had to duck a flying vodka bottle that smashed on the wall where my head had been. 'Oh fuck, sorry!' says wild-eyed front-woman Tallulah Brown. 'You looked just like my ex, I told him to stay the fuck away.' She's sitting in the corner scratching 'Boyz Suck' into her guitar with a razor-blade, somehow I don?t feel welcome here. The rest of the band - Lawson, Bërman and D'Arby - lounge about sneeringly. Bërman is screaming something down the phone at some poor roadie that?s lost a set of guitar picks, Lawson is doing shots and D'Arby is spinning round the chamber of a .38 very menacingly. Again, somehow I don't feel welcome here, but I'll try and conduct the interview anyway...

Jealousy Magazine: So how did you guys come to meet?

Alicia Lawson: What fucking business is it of yours, dickhead?

JM: Well I?m the interviewer.

Imogen Bërman: Interviewer schminterviewer, fuck you.

Tallulah Brown: You're just jealous.

JM: Erm...What are the main messages your band tries to get across?

TB: Firstly fuck you, and secondly just love and peace man, love and peace.

Seraphina D'Arby And just to get fucked up man, rock n roll, that's what it's all about you know?

JM: Right, so you've become known now for trouble at quite a few venues across the UK, are you having trouble trying to find gigs?

TB: What are you trying to say, fucker?

AL: Look, yeah we know we have this rep, but sometimes its good. I mean, we've got the Burnham-on-Sea and Weston-super-Mare Death Angels riding with us on the second leg of the tour, it looks pretty fierce when you see us all cruise into town.

And fierce they are. On tour this year the band have been riding Harleys across the country with their gear following behind in a minibus. The interview couldn't progress any further after that because everything just descended into violence. More glass was smashed, and Alicia had got up to vomit in the corner. In the band?s own words, if the Vagabond Trills are coming a town near you - 'watch the fuck out!'

http://www.myspace.com/thetrillsmusic

THOMAS