Having heard the Cerys Matthews cd more than once I am forced to revise my opinion. It is much better than OK, it's bloody good. Good songs, well performed, nothing earth shattering but it leaves you feeling happy, who could ask for more?

Why I love the internet, part 101, Disinfopedia

Bugger me you have to try Gnod, just for a laugh. It is supposed to recommend books and music and suchlike based on information you give it. I told it I like Crumley, Pelecanos and Evanovich, and it suggested I check out some guy called Mantec. Looking further I discovered this chap writes fantasy novels, which is a genre that leaves me completely unmoved.
The music recommendation made more sense. I put in Flaming Lips, Wilco and Cerys Matthews and it suggested Super Furry Animals. At least it was somewhere in the neighbourhood.

I nipped off from work to travel 20 miles to buy some meat. I wanted some beef fillet, and the last time I tried to buy some in Cwmbran I genuinely lost the will to live. Anyway a nice old lady served me.
"Do you have any beef fillet," I asked. She looked at me as if I was an idiot and pointed to a tray full of the stuff. " Oh," I said, " I mean in a piece". "Yes," she said, "how much do you want" "er, dunno," I replied, and sort of gestured. " How many are you feeding with it," she asked, and I said "4".
"It's very expensive, it's that much for a pound," she said, pointing to the ticket, "and you need at least 2 pound".
"That's OK," I said, "so long as it is a nice uniform thickness, as I am going to wrap it and roast it and I can't have one end cooking quicker than another"
She gestured me to follow, then called a bloke over and told him what I wanted. He went away and came back with a beautiful big thick piece of fillet. He sort of marked out a piece in the middle and suggested that would just about do the job, I agreed and he cut it, from the middle. I tell you it is a beautiful piece of meat and I am well chuffed.
As I was paying the lady asked if I was wrapping it in pastry; "no," I said, "I will soak some porcini in wine, roll the meat in thyme and rosemary, smother with the mushrooms then wrap with pancetta." Bloody Nora, she told another old lady what I was planning then a general discussion on things to do with a nice piece of fillet ensued; involving the whole bloody shop!
It was a nice interlude in an existence that lately is being characterised by chuffing misery, which made a change from the idiot in Sainsburys who insisted that I didn't want fillet I wanted sirloin. The same Sainsburys who still haven't dealt with my complaint from some weeks ago.

Test your sexuality.

I had good day yesterday, which I may or may not detail on me other blog, next week. Twice though, early on, then much later on the people I were with said how education can be a curse and that if they hadn't educated themselves they would be much happier, as they would be happy to settle for less. We went around and about this sort of logic all day long really, most animatedly in a pretty shit hot Cuban restaurant in Islington where we enjoyed a very leisurely lunch. I thought about it again today when someone commented that I had become so cynical that I don't even pretend to be interested or motivated at work anymore. I said it would be an insult to my own and everyone elses intelligence to pretend otherwise; I would be marking myself out as a happy idiot, unable to see what is staring him in the face. I only mention it because it seems that we should all try a bit harder to be happy.

Cale says he is "still fascinated by the emotional curve of my journey from Wales to New York and back again. When I return to the Amman valley, it is as if to the bosom of a friend. That friend floats in the language and seduces me with each translation."
The above quote resonates with me, not because it relates to a place barely 40 minutes drive from where I sit, but because I recognise that it doesn't matter how long you live in a place, how much you identify with a place or how much you connect with a place emotionally or intellectually, there is only one place you can call home, one place you truly belong, even as you cease to belong there and even as you come to find it unrecognisable, and that is where you grew up.
Which is a long winded way of saying the bloody Guardian has a good interview with John Cale. I don't know if he does Tai Chi for 3 hours a day but he seems a bit more centred than Lou Reed.

Mikey Delgado tells George, straight: "That Bush and Blair mate. What planet are they on? I watched the breakfast time news and I know old Bush is a laugh like, with his bullshit about fighting the war on terror, and how he looks like an old-time druggie and he’s got to think about how to move his tongue to say whatever crap it is he’s saying. But when you see him on telly you just want to give him a shake don’t you? And tell him "Look George, for fuck’s sake, I know I was fucking crap in school mate and I know I ain’t the sharpest knife in the box, but come on, shape up, we’re not fucking stupid. You’re starting to take the piss, mate."

Man, I need this t shirt, as does this dude. Ta very much Desultory Deturgescence.

Hmm, Rapacious Dissertation sounds like a crap name for a blog.