BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

There's something about spring that brings out the sensitive, thoughtful side in me - fear not reader, it does exist. Sure, you may be raising a libation to Lord Ganesh, but old elephant head hasn't done much for me - my kitchen sink is currently blocked, and no doubt I'll have to go through the humiliation of watching a plumber scoop bits of pasta shell and onion skin out of the pipe - while making him endless cups of cha!

And yet, where I would normally turn this into a rant and cuss plumbers into the ground, I am able to sit back and take a sip of the espresso of reason - I simply couldn't be bothered to pay all of 99p for one of those plughole filters, and now, having already wasted three quid on pumping bleach down the sink to no avail, I face much shame and expense. Still, it's a learning curve.

It seems that bloggers are all feeling this vibe as well, declaring love for one another and tipping hats as they pass. So, allow me to indulge and spread the love among you on my sidelinks. For anyone of sound mind and reason, I apologise sincerely for this sentimental dross and promise to make the next post really fucking vicious.

"Uncarved"

I first discovered Uncarved while surfing the net for "weird monkey sex". This brought me to an Uncarved review of some magazine about drugs and spirituality. It wasn't until a few months later that I contacted John to purchase a second hand copy of Richard Allen's 1977 pulp novel "Punk Rock" (which should have been titled "Confessions of an NME Journalist" - absolute gunk if you wanted cartoon violence with punks rucking teds, but sublime genius if you want a long-haired 'new wave reporter' running around London and pulling women whose post-coital remarks include "Did you choke Linda Lovelace?" The scene where the hack discusses the merits of Des O'Connor with a record company A&R man is hilarious, it's easily one of Allen's best).

Like 99% of his readers, I assumed John was a white rasta. But having met him, I am glad to state that this isn't the case. I will always remember that night when, persuading him to have one more drink, he enacted some sort of psychic self-control technique (no doubt learnt from years of hanging around with OTO types) and announced "You've just wasted 10 minutes trying to get me to have another drink when you could have said something interesting". Of course, I should have pointed out that if he'd just had one more bloody drink like a man, we wouldn't now be on 11 minutes of inconsequential babble - but there was something weird about his eyes, readers. Like you could look beyond those spectacles and see burning coals.

I don't know. You an altar boy as well - and it all ended in colossal squid worship. Your mum must be so ashamed.

"LoveEcstasyCrime"

I believe Rob has the dubious honour of being the first person to ever leave a comment on BTI. These were the days when anonymous commenters would pretend to be Susan Fassbender's son and take me to task for dissing her ropey one-hit wonder "Twilight Cafe". Rob is the blogosphere's John Peel, championing unknown blogs, then wisely moving on when they get too big for their boots.

He does a lot of drugs and writes Anarcho-Dadaist poetry and, according to rumours (mostly emanating from Chantelle Fiddy), he is enormously endowed


"Dubversion"

Dubversion was like the equivalent of that bit in that Clash reggae workout when the voice crackles in halfway through and snaps "Let's have you out of there" and Joe Strummer retorts "Don't push us when we're HOT!" Unfortunately, he has ditched blogging, reasoning that it's for nerds and that real life is preferable. I work in a building where people squeeze into lifts, press their own floor buttons, and stare straight ahead like juju zombies, terrified of eye contact. That's how fucking groovy "real life" is!

Dubversion also runs a club that I keep meaning to go and check out, but these days, Streatham seems so very far away.

"K-Punk"

I first met Mark when we and the lady who runs "Infinite Thought" went to see the premier gig of renowned power electronics outfit THE SEA SPARROW. A man in a white lab coat with a moustache and combover started messing around with some oscillators and creating the most godawful racket. You couldn't escape the noise, some girl began crying and begging the man to stop. "THE SEA SPARROW!!" the man hollered into the microphone. "SPARROW OF THE SEA!" I had my fingers in my ears, gritting my teeth, desperately trying to prevent my eardrums from imploding, as Dr IT sneered at my weakness. "NUKE YOU ALL!!" the man howled.

No, hang on, I've got this wrong - we went to see Sutcliffe Jugend, Kevin Tomkins' renowned comedy act. This was the gig where a girl was wandering around the audience with a swastika armband and "WAGNER WAS RIGHT" scribbled on bits of paper safety-pinned to the back of her jacket. Me and Mark and Infinite Thought wrote 'reviews' of this night, which later caused a bit of a stir on the Whitehouse Yahoo Group, with some SJ fan casting aspersions on our recollections! The cheek! Said individual then advertised his own website, called "Sutcliffe Power" (look, if you can't take this seriously, get out) where he posted a "proper" review, which ended with the immortal words, "Truly a triumph" - itself about as cliche'd as songs called "I Never Met A Woman Who Didn't Deserve To Die".

Maybe I've just got a naff sense of humour, but I felt like starting a tribute band called British Midland and doing a cover version, titled "I Never Met A Woman Who Didn't Deserve To Fly". Anyway, I haven't actually explained why I LURVE K-Punk. Put it this way, when I first looked at his blog, a post about the nature of courtly love, I didn't have a clue what he was on about. Now I look at K-Punk, and find I understand most of it. I have either picked up snippets of theory, or Mark's dumbed down since - either way, it works for me.

"Breaking Ranks"

It's not on my links but Dave Stelfox is a great bloke

"An Idiot's Guide To Dreaming"

This is the only MP3 blog I ever bother with, mostly cos my home computer was on dial-up (it's since blown up) and I couldn't download most of them. You know when people make up fake records and you wish they existed? I still want to get his imaginary TG football anthem 12" with Sleazy and Cosey standing outside Anfield with a kid hanging upside down from the gate (or something like that).

Loki once kindly sent me a CD-R of an experimental composer mix, but when I played it it was blank. Either this was an extremely satirical take on avant garde posturing, or, carried away by the joy of drawing funny squiggly designs over the disc, he forgot to actually burn anything on it. Anyway, I've always kept quiet about that as I didn't want him to feel bad or obliged to do me another one. And people call me "heartless"!!

"Psychbloke"

Oh, here we go. The troublemaker who got me slung off CINESTATIC (plc). There's no rational reason for me liking this blog. I think "Dr Who" was the poor man's "The Prisoner" (incidentally, my dad once met Patrick McGoohan in a pub in Mill Hill) and I never watched "Lost" - however, I would regularly read his posts on these subjects.

Apparently Psychbloke's wife's pregnant now - I dunno. You'd think he'd try to keep it in his pants. I don't see many other husbands losing control and trying to have sex with their wives - when her bump shows, he'll have a lot of explaining to do to the neighbours. No doubt there'll be a few catcalls of "PERVBLOKE!" as he dodges a hail of rotten tomatoes - oh hang on, the Puritans died out nearly 400 years ago! I don't know why I'm getting so confused today.

"The Measures Taken"

Owen is a thoughtful and incisive young man. In a way, he reminds me of me when I was 25, albeit in a sort of parallel universe where I didn't binge drink or go out with a mad mullah. I think it only takes a cursory glance at his blog to realise he'll achieve excellent grades in his Master's degree.

My advice, as an older man to one younger, is to keep your feet on the ground but never stop reaching for those stars. Learn to cook a good Irish stew - it's a constantly evolving cheap dish, and one day it may save your life. Learn to wire plugs - when the lights go out and your student flatmates start dragging out the candles and complaining that they can't host their Pasolini DVD-a-thon as planned, simply promise to change the fuse for them, in return for a quid apiece. In this way, you can go down the pub and enjoy a pint on them, while they revel in a mindless orgy of Italian arthouse and electrical ignorance.

"Kid Shirt"

If the West Country blogs are like "Kelly's Heroes", Kek is a cider-sozzled Donald Sutherland, lazing around on his tank in the baking sun. He used to draw pictures for "2000 AD" which, although not as good as "Action!", was a pretty good comic, until Nemesis The Warlock went all serious and they started bringing in unadulterated shit like "Zippy Couriers". 2000 AD mutants had brilliant 'punk' names, like Dobie Zitch.

However, I do solely blame Kid Shirt for encouraging me to buy a Wolf Eyes CD, which was crap.

"Shards Fragments and Totems"

Now, this I want to see - a blog about sharp suits. Why ever not? Oh no, you all want to talk about yer bloody Sunburned Man or yer Wounded Nurse, even though a gang of schoolkids blowing harshly on plastic recorders and shouting "THE SEA SPARROW!" (I can't get it out of my head now, sorry) would sound sweeter.

I need to know what suit looks best! Come on, spill the beans. The days of me sticking on a black furry Russian hat and overcoat, going down to the local pub indie disco, drinking vodka and trying to chat up student nurses by yelling "ARE YOU BLOODY COSSACK?" in their faces are numbered - I turn 30 in a few months' time, and need to know how to dress to impress. Perhaps if one of you bleeding philosophers had lain off the Deleuze and Gabanna for one post, and written about something practical, like how to unblock a kitchen sink, I wouldn't be facing a nightmare beyond words! Let's have some more practical blogging and leave the music criticism to the...to the...THINGS!

"Bunnywelt"

Although Jim Bunnyhouse is extremely lazy, and only seems to blog when he's promoting one of his own DJing events, I quite enjoy the minimalism of it all. A sort of blog about....nothing. Like this, only with a moderately famous person writing it. And of course, there's a highly sinister link between Kosmiche and Sylvanian Family toys.

"Infinite Thought"

Dr Nee-na! Qwa qwa qwa dun qwa qwa .. She's the one with the pee-aitch-dee-he-hee... I think we all agree that IT's theoretical peak was achieved between June and November last year, when the lady who runs this highly esteemed and often plagiarised blog managed to take high brow Nietzscian (sp?) theory and export it to the masses via the medium of pictures of herself if she was made of lego and had pink hair. Sadly, the blog has become a bit frivolous recently, dumping the 'thought' for comical asides on the nature of fanaticism and Zupancic. Still, IT was one of the earliest blogs to link to BTI. Which is quite incredible considering that one of the earliest BTI entries was about Buster Bloodvessel challenging Skrewdriver singer Ian Stuart to a Big Mac eating contest in Kentish Town, only for the nazi to lose and have his poo surgically removed with a hoover in the Royal Free Hospital.

She's also deaf in one ear, and, I swear on my life, when I was a child, I used to have a badge that said "Make Friends With A Deaf Child". I also had loads of "Hector says - Help The Aged" badges. Jarvis Cocker might think he was clever to flag this charity up in 1997, but it was me who raised money for the noble cause in 1983, by doing a sponsored swim. Two laps for the fogies. Swallowed so much chlorine I turned green. She also has very nice furry boots and a rather effective right hook.

"Ritual Landscape"

Probably the best ever thing written about trains and the tube - in fact, scratch 'probably' - and so true to life you can almost smell the humid stench of boarding the WAGN during a downpour. Wouldn't it be weird if one day he wrote about some moronic passenger who was pissing him off - and it turned out to be YOU?

AND NOW...A QUICK BLAST OF 'BLOG HATE'

"Septic Grease Blog"

Why the pitiful Dave Dove, a long term critic of BTI, carries on knocking out shite about Dire Straits is beyond me. "Reggae - real music? Do me a favour" is just the latest in a stream of dismal posts dedicated to this sad old pedant's horrifically limited world view. "I told her I had a spare ticket to Mark Knopfler, but she still insisted that she was waiting for a friend to show up", the eejit drones. "Humour's the best way to a bird's heart, so I let rip a massive fart and shouted 'Kentucky Fried!' But she still wouldn't let me buy her a half. Who's letting all these lesbos into pubs these days?"

Dave, you are a cunt, and your claim to be "the new Woebot" is as unfounded and clinically insane as your assertion that "real music died the day Mike and the Mechanics split".

Right, back to Love..

"Electric Dreams"

En av den fa on-line steder De leser om kjempemessig squids, Kate Bush dra mental og a jaging en fisker med en kniv og bisarr barndomhukommelser morphing inn i avant garde spoekelser.

Som er imponerende, fordi om jeg lever med Norsk oelpriser, jeg vil sannsynlig akkurat sammenbrudd i gutter og grater.

"Woebot"

Yeah yeah, he's brilliant, etc. I don't know what else to say really, as we all know it, but thanks are especially due for alerting me to the existence of Phew, impLOG, Francois Rabbath (the coolest man to lift a double bass, beating that prat from the Stray Cats hands down) and Les Vampyrettes.

Nobody's ever called me 'fecund' before, and I'm sure that it'll be a long season in hell anyone does so again. I think what I like is the fact that you know you'll never be able to hear as many records as he has, but he doesn't make you feel like an idiot for it.

"Sweet Effay"

The first time I ever met Evil John Effay, he was herding terrified children into an MOT pit with a broom. When I woke up, I realised that what I like about his blog is...

Actually, I don't want to cause offence and I don't know how he's going to take this. This is all about blog love, OK? And I'm not in any way questioning his mental state (though liking Hawkwind is a bit suspect). And, look, let's all have a drink and a good laugh and all -

But am I the only one who reads "SE" and...er...can't help getting flashbacks of "The Shining"?

"Betty's Utility Room"

I think that Betty has actually stumbled on the correct way to blog, which is to make up fake "guest" posts.

I tried this once, with a fake contribution written "by Dickie Davies", which fell flat on its face and was about as funny as watching a man in a windswept cottage go beserk with an axe and chase his...anyway, she likes The Pop Group as well, which is an admirable quality in itself and the post about a man breaking into her and her bloke's room when they were on holiday was hilarious.

"Scrabbling At the Lock"

There and gone so fast, I seem to remember a blur of white light, a bearded, glum looking face, and a grey-red horizontal line across my vision.

"Silverdollarcircle"

If I'm honouring the dead, then I must give a shout out to Simon for some ace no-nonsense chat about grime, which almost made me wish I could be arsed enough to go out and buy loads of it. Plus, he seemed relatively sane. For a blogger, like.

So, that's it. I've extended my love. Just remember that, next time you say I never gave anything back to the blogosphere but just milked it for my own ascent to...ascent to...

I'm going to stick a breadknife in that cunt if he charges me 50 quid ("Boom boom!!" - Bored to Fucking Tears, Morden)