stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, silence the pianos and with muffled drum bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling on the sky the message he is dead, put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. he was my north, my south, my east and west, my working week and my sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; i thought that love would last for ever: i was wrong. the stars are not wanted now: put out every one; pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. for nothing now can ever come to any good.

—w. h. auden

the timing was strange, in retrospect. initially, we invited qboy marcos round for a birthday lunch on sunday afternoon—.greg and i thinking, wouldn’t it be nice and civilized to cook lunch for our dear friend on his birthday?

what ended up happening was your typical, high-energy, people-crammed-in-the-kitchen, spilled drinks everywhere, furniture-moved-out-for-dancing, late-night dance party. if you closed your eyes, you’d swear that it was midnight on a friday or saturday night… mz. fontaine struggling to deejay in the lounge—lights out, boyz and grrls grinding to hip-hop, the kitchen filled with randoms, people queueing for the naughty guest bathroom [resembling a gay porn photographer's darkroom] whilst the birthday boy is napping/shagging in the other bathroom.

but, see, it wasn’t midnight… this bizarre birthday-lunch-cum-house-party started at 3pm, and by 8pm our place was filled to capacity… the dancefloor in the lounge getting smoky and sweaty, and kitchen getting so packed such that nobody could find any booze, and all sorts of naughty things happening in the bedrooms.

i played host, even though i didn’t know most of these freaks [it was marcos' party, see], trying to keep things lubricated, popping down to the petrol station several times to buy alcohol.

my current beau ben was brave enough to join the party, and within moments of arriving he and qboy had a war of words, sizing one-another up [note i say qboy when referring to the big-ego celebrity, and marcos when referring to my lovely dear friend]. i’ll pretend that their argument really just implies marcos was being protective of me, and/or he likes ben so much that he was just being playful. drrrrrama!

i spent the first few hours being unmotivated/antisocial… sticking to the handful of peeps that i already knew… atif .greg oliver michael ralph grace etc. but eventually i branched out to the freaks scattered all throughout my house. spent some amount of time chatting up this lovely jesus-looking lad who turns out is an olympic hurlder [you know where this is going] and showed me some interesting ways in which his legs erm rotate. after the freaky olympic swimmer i met in sydney this march, that would make this the second olympic athlete i’ve drunkenly met this year.

it’s now tuesday morning, and i think the party has finished. i think. the birthday boy has survived—barely, the flat is a right state… the only thing .greg and i have done to clean is empty out bottles into the sink… there are literally hundreds of bottles and glasses in the kitchen.

i’m glossing over ben, the new lad who i’ve been stalking the past few weeks. he reads this and so on and so forth and i like him and so on and so forth and i don’t wanna jinx it. we’ve shared romantic dinners, we’ve shared big nights out, i’ve met his friends, he’s met mine, we even went on the london eye for chrissakes. the thing that makes me smile the most, i think, is that he’s accepted me for who i am… no pretenses, no sugar coating.

deep down inside i am a romantic and a great boyfriend and a loving person. on the outside, i am a sleazeball who drinks entirely too much and spends more time clubbing than sleeping, and is used to flirting with any cute lads who walk my way, and maintains a grandiose self-flattering website filled with exaggerations and half-truths.

but he likes me anyway… swoon.

i hate it when self-importantant bloggers rave about some music group and insist that you listen cuz they’re the undiscovered gem and ooh god you gotta listen cuz, dude, like they rock.

well, the faint have been around for a while, and i somehow never heard of them until cousin jason in los angeles insisted that i’d love them… and, damn, he’s right. if you like bis, if you like the mode, if you like that lovely lad who taught me how to spell ukulele, then you’ll love the faint.

you can snag some audio clips here, but you really need to buyborrowsteal their track take me to the hospital:

hold my hand its shakin’ bad i’m going to the doc i pay him he’ll fix me up i think ive got enough ambulance no costs to much we’ll take a van if they can’t fix me no one can if they can’t fix it no one can want you to take me to the H, take me to the O, want you to take me to the S, take me to the P, want you to take me to the I- T- A- L. want you to take me to hospital HOSPITAL

you’re either thinking right now that sounds like the most ridiculous nursery rhyme i’ve ever heard, what sorta crack are they smoking down in vuaxhall?!, or, you’re thinking that sounds like exactly the type of silly electorockpop i need to make my thursday just slightly more enjoyable. yeah.

p.s. the kid in the photo above looks like he’s about to rock out to jesus. he’s about to flip out into a jack black-cum-peter frampton solo, licking his sweet fender stratocaster, knocking over candles on the altar and shocking the old biddies in the front row of pews. he has nothing to do with the faint, but still, rock on, little boy!

i’m at my mom’s house in suburban indiana, and we’re all huddled inside the house, all of the windows boarded up and doors shut, and the sun has just set, leavin the sky and eerie dark pink. i’m doing my best to frantically trying to kill all of the flourescent orange tarantula spiders that are creeping into the house through every nook and cranny. the house is quite big, so i have to keep running around and smashing them whack-a-mole style, as they creep in under the door and down the chimney and so on. i wake up thinking there are spiders on me.

stumbling down the street with some unknown friend at 4am, running past cars and under orange streetlamps, i encounter a freddy krueger-looking bum, in a trenchcoat and scary hat, who stumbles after us with some sort of big glass pipe, the size of a baseball bat. we’re frantically running but he manages to keep up with us, and eventually he smashes my friend but i keep running. after turning corner after corner, eventually he smashes me, right across my face, with glass flying everywhere. i lie there on the ground for what seems like hours, picking out the tiny shards of glass from my mouth. i wake up laying on my back, mouth wide open and cottonmouthed.

just about every morning i wake up, confused but otherwise refreshed, thinking that i’ve just encountered one of the strangest dreams of my life. this has been going on solidly for the past two weeks, ever since my return to the uk from my holiday in the states. i’d say i usually only remember my dreams 5% of the time, and i’d guess that i probably only have vivid/unusual dreams rarely.

all of this rem sleep is leaving me quite rested, actually, and some scientists think that rem sleep is the mind’s way of sorting through information, filing things from short-term memory to long-term memory, resolving lingering issues and problems, and otherwise just sorting itself out.

these are just two of the dreams i’ve experienced recently—the others are too disturbing or embarassing to share [trust me!] bizarre dreams are very often linked to spicy foods or excessive drinking, both of which i’ve definitely been enjoying a lot of over the past few weeks.

the pubbing and clubbing never seems to stop, with the concept of the weekend becoming a convention ignored by anyone i consider to be my friend.
and my loverly flatmate .gregiño has been cooking dinner for me quite often, almost always something spicy, which i usually eat late in the evening. i also have resumed my long-standing tradition of late-night teevee watching coupled with my number one junkfood addiciton—chips and salsa.

i don’t mind so much, it’s just unsual after so many years of boring dreams and bland mornings. tonight we gobbled up some onion-heavy salads and spicy homemade nandos peri-peri chicken. see ya in the morning!

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update: society is frantically coping with an end-of-the-world scenario… life on earth is coming to an end, we’re running out of natural resources and there’s a major disaster about to happen. being the natural leader that i am, i’m scrambling to find a way to save the world… contacting governments, doing computer stuff. as is always the case in action films like this, there’s always a baddie out to foil my altruistic plans… in this case played by my mate david paisley. the only way to tell his bad guys from my good guys is that we’re wearing different color track suit bottoms.