So, like I said, I got a new phone the other day (if I should have your number, mail it – I lost all my old numbers when I lost my old phone). It’s got exciting new phone technologies like WAP built in. Actually, my old one had WAP, too, but it wasn’t something I ever bothered to learn about. But since this one is full-colour sexy, I thought I’d have a bit of a play, you know?

Of course, being me, this doesn’t mean that I’m just browsing WAP. It means I’m looking at setting up my very own WAP site. Tagtag.com will do me for now, until I get my arse sufficiently in gear to write and host my own WAP site, which may well be never.

So I was wondering what to do with it, so I started thinking about WAP. It’s a transitory medium – not just in that it’s bound to be replaced as phone tech improves, but in that it’s something to use in transit. Something to look at on the bus – accessing it isn’t tied to location. So, naturally, I wanted to do something about a geography, and being me, it’s going to be London. I thought I’d use it for feeder material on TAKE A WALK. Something between the note-taking and the final words.

If you point a WAP browser at http://tagtag.com/tawk (see how kind I am? Piece of piss to type in on a phone keypad) you’ll find “Innaugural” the first entry about London. It’s not all going to be history – there’ll be bits about things I see, places I go and modern London in general, but I thought I’d start at the beginning, as it were.

On a related note, I was looking at tagtag.com’s content directory. 4000 adult wap sites? How? Why? I mean, you can fit maybe 50 owrds on screen at a time, and I really don’t see porn looking good in black on grey-green. Jesus…

It’s been a short week, but by christ, it needs to be over, right damn now. I got in the morning to dicover that I’d lost some files I was working on, thanks to the powercut. My own stupid fault – I thought I’d saved them before I left the office, but evidently, I hadn’t, so I’ve worked all morning just to get back to where I was when I left the office yesterday.

I’m completely shattered, too. Feel like rubbish. Late night on Wednesday, then a late-ish night last night, followed by a seriously disturbed night’s sleep – I don’t think I got a continuous hour’s kip through the night. My guts have been churning all morning. Don’t know why, as I didn’t really have all that much to drink last night, and I don’t have any other hangover symptoms.

In other news, I got a mobile that’ll take pictures. Yeah, yet another new toy. So, my website now has a photolog. As and when I’ve actually taken three photo’s, there’ll always be the latest three there. Otherwise, you’ll be able to find them at alasdairw.textamerica.com, if you really must look through anything older that a few days.

Now, if I was feeling madly cunning, I’d alter my blog-to-LJ script to automatically note it when there was a new photo on my photo log…

So, I ran across this site today. It’s a Russian site that offers a paid-for MP3 download service. Apparently, record labels/copyright management agencies are much more willing to reach deals with with on-line music firms in Russia, and they’ve got an impressive catalogue of material there. Much like with emusic, I’m looking at them thinking “there has to be a catch”. The deal’s not as good as emusic’s but I’ve signed up for a gig’s worth of data, mostly because I wanted one track that I can’t get anywhere else, but I thought I’d just see if anyone knows anything about the legality of it before I go hunting for other stuff on the site, and hoover down a shitload of MP3s that aren’t as legal as I thought…

My brain has been kicking an idea around for a while now. It is not an idea I like one little bit, and I can’t let go of it, and I’m starting to get massively, massively fucked off with it. The idea is this: write a novel.

This is a shit idea. I don’t do long prose, because I’m shit at it. But I have reached the point, after some 18 months of kicking it, where I am forced to concede that if ever I am to do something with MARLOWE it won’t be a comic (or at least, not any kind of mini-series of the sort one could pitch as a previously unpublished writer). But I don’t want to sit on it. So I need to make it into something else. Something where I can place different demands on the thing, and make it another sort of beast, while still exploring the themes I want to. And the only form I can find that would make it something fit to see the light of day is to write it as a novel.

This doesn’t just suck because I don’t want to write a novel, by the way. This sucks because it means a totally different approach, a complete re-thinking, and, most crucially, it means doing a fucksight more research than I needed to for the comic. My head has Betrayed me. I must kill it. Or at least talk myself out of writing a novel.

Yes, I’ve got consumption again. All I need is to start noncing about in a big frilly shirt writing poetry and getting into fights, and they’ll be mistaking me for a romantic poet. So, in the spirit of cultural critique:

“Frontline” by The Newcranes. Guitar and accordion drive Midlands crustyrock from the early Nineties. Nostalgia exercise. Levellers-esque, eaither with a greater sense of whimsy or just dodgy songwriting. “This love was made in heaven/This love was so divine/But now instead of sweet white wine/It tastes like turpentine”.

“Gravelands” by The King. Belfast-born Elvis impersonator doing covers of classic rock tracks in the style of, well, Elvis. Annyoingly, I see that I apear to have an older version. With less tracks. And it cost more. Arses. But it’s ace, so that’s ok.

24, Series 1 & 2. Already seen series 1. Hadn’t seen Series 2, and am coming up on halfway through it now. And getting slightly tired of the plot twists as two minutes two the hour. So far, I think there have been two episiodes that haven’t had them, and that’s just because they’ve managed to set up a character’s life being in peril about ten-fifteen minutes earlier, and keep them in that state for the rest of the episode. Also, am completely failing to give a fuck about the sub-plot with Kim. Can we just write her out of the next one, please?

The Man Who Sued God. Adequate Billy Connoly vehicle, weighed down by gross sentimentality in places. Enough good moments to mean that I didn’t feel I wasted my fiver, but one that could easily wait for video.

Pirates of The Carribean. Decided to see it again. Enjoyed it just as much the second time around.

New coffee grinder. Finally bought a burr grinder, for the making of better coffee. I fully endorse this product and/or service. Now I just need a decent espresso machine…

I’ve lost my mobile. If you’ve been trying to get hold of me on it since Saturday, that’s why you’ve been failing. I should be sorting out a new mobile in the next week or so, but until then, e-mail’s your best bet, or my home phone, if you’ve got that.

Several of my American friends have posted about going through the new season’s TV schedules, planning their viewing. Aside from trauma that people do this (not just them – I just find the notion of watching enough TV to have to plan it ghastly) it reminds me that a new season of The West Wing is about to start, which means episiodes for me to download. I’m a little worried about this, as Sorkin’s gone now, and I’m nervious about what they’ll do with/to the show. So I’m skimming the spoiler sites, looking for hints about what’s coming, and am pleasantly surpirsed to see that Gary Cole (American Gothic, Crusade) is apparently joining as a recurring cast member.

As for the plots – well, it’s early to tell, especially since the first few episodes of season five have to deal with the enormity of the end of season four, and can to an extent, coast on that, but I think I can see some of the new angles in the hints. I don’t think it’ll be bad but I can see how they’re skewing away from the politics-driven stories, toward character-focused stuff. On the one hand, a bit gutless, but on the other, perhaps it’ll be less liberal-propagandist (not that I mind that, being a big old bleeding-heart myself, but it’s a bit heavy handed at times), and I like the characters and actors enough that it’ll keep my interest for a while. Whether it’s enough to remain the only TV show I give enough of a fuck about to download/schedule time around, I don’t know.

Feel like I ought to update this thing, but have largely nothing to say. It’s been a nice few days – the heat’s back down a a level fit for people that aren’t made of leftover lizard bits, and there’s a breeze off the river that’s made up for the office’s lack of decent air conditioning. If only it was like this all summer.

Weekend plans call for barbequed meats tonight, drinks with Ross et al tomorrow, and not a lot for Sunday.

Feel like I’m becoming complacent. Nothing new on the horizon, and I’m not too bothered by that fact. I’ve fallen into a comfortable rut. This is usually my cue to do something deeply stupid, so watch this space over the next month or two to find up what inventive scheme I come up with to cause myself work and stress.

There is nothing happening. I demand entertainment. Therefore, in an attempt to entertain myself me, I demand that you reveal unto me your embarassing personal secrets. Or other people’s, I don’t care. Just as long as they’re good. Be as anonymous as you like.

You’ve probably see a few of these before – hell, I may have linked to them myself, but these are the things that are making me laugh by the simple fact of their existence this morning:

• Lava Dome Five – godzilla porn.
• Lords of the Rhymes – Beatbox gollum.
• Vegan Erotica – wherever there’s a sex-niche, there’s someone filling it. A lack of acceptable BDSM gear was not something that has previously occured to me as problem of the vegan lifestyle.