noTHINGfaced ( Twitter - @noTHINGfaced)

Dear ____,

I have myself a little bit of a problem. It's late in the evening, on a school night and I can't sleep none. Probably a bad thing since I have to get up in the morning, first thing in fact but there you go. I aint sleeping so there's no point trying.

So that problem that I was going on about, you see I've bought this place recently. I bought it with the girl that I love and this would be the first place that we've owned as a couple, the previous place that we were living was my gaff. So this place is special. For those reasons. Except it's working out to be special for another reason, that reason being that I hate living here.

It's got all the hallmarks of a nice place to be, bags of character, lovely to look at, nice garden, lots of space etcetera, all the features that are there to make folk feel happy about, except its just making me miserable. I'm trying to keep a lid on it, because this is supposed to be a special place, its only been three weeks or so since we've moved in, so perhaps things will improve but I'm waking with the guilt knot in my stomach tighter than it was when I closed my eyes and I'm feeling increasingly guilty that I don't want to be here. I'm increasingly worried that I'm never going to want to be here. This isn't normal. Right.

When I consider the reasons why I'm not at home in our new home they come out piffling and trivial. It's on a main road, there's a lot of traffic noise, we can't have double glazing, there's no parking, there's no... rest, blah blah blah, sob boo hoo... And reading them back out loud (silently in my head, it is late after all) I'm embarrassed and uncomfortable with my savage weakness... After all, we find ourselves free of the shackles of neighbours, we can make as much noise as we like, I can play music with wild abandon without having to fret that the Denon and sublime Mission speaker combination that I have carefully crafted will disturb the slumber of my wall sharing neighbours... But I don't care. We can turn this idyllic 1700's coach house into something perfect and lovely, the ideal home for a young family... But I don't want to, not here. We have all the charm and oozing loveliness of the character property and the ownership there of in... And it's still leaving me cold... And it really shouldn't! It can't.

Getting a grip on myself, tutting introspectively, pounding back to the bed and sleep, once my eyes are closed the knot returns, tightens a little more and its back to square one, the guilt and the whisky.

There is remedy. I guess I will grow accustomed to living here, get used to how things are, acceptance of the very things that currently grate, annoy and irritate. I am proficient in the arts of putting up with things and getting on with it. We could sell it, but that would upset her, I really dont want to upset her... Yes, it's back to sucking it up, back to bed and back to the knot that's starting to feel too familiar and not at all reassuring.

So it’s been a little while since I updated this bad boy, the blog that is. Lilly Allen has spoken out against the dirty thieves that steal and take food from her table, downloaders or otherwise known as her fans. She spoke out, she got it all back to front, she got shot down instantly since she was distributing copyrighted work from her website then shut the blog down when people (with brains and the capability to think, the antipode of Lilly it would seem) called her out about it… Well, she cited not being able to cope with the abuse, though in reality there was little actual abuse posted… Anyhow.

We moved house didn’t we. I’m know sat in my front room watching people walk past my front window. It’s a strange thing living on a street (this is an old coach inn), its even stranger coming home and not being able to park outside your own house. This I absolutely hate! There is parking outside the house, it’s public street parking and thus I have no claim over it.

However, I do have double gates (that the coaches would have come through) and no one can park in front of them, there is no public parking. Is there any reason why I cant jump on peoples bonnets when they do park in front of the gates and block us in? I don’t think that its a bad thing, they took the risk in parking there in the first place. I try not to damage the car when rubbing neighbourhood cats arses on their windscreens and I never leave puddles when pissing in their fuel tanks. I am a reasonable man and I act with integrity and honour.

So, should you be down my way and should you park in front of my doors then I’m gonna find people to do stuff to your car.

In other news, is it true that spiders can cry?

I liked metal as a kid. Growing up in the north of England, attending the schools that I attended, hanging out with the kids that I hung out with, listening, or at least having an appreciation of the ‘long hair’ music was a pre-requisite. The fact that I was also listening to blues and jazz must go unspoken at this time.

Before we go any further we need to make a distinction as to what I mean by metal. I don’t mean the bushy, back-combed, spandex loving lady-boy freakness as exhibited by idiots like Faster Pussycat, Motley Crue, Guns N bloody Roses or Poison. No, that was definitely in the not for me section. Likewise I didn’t get on with hair chested, leather panted, studs and machismo crap like Man O War, Kiss (though they did have their merits), or others of such cheesy ilk. I was more about the grimy, noisy, waspy more punk edged stuff like your carcass’, Napalm Death, and the band of which I speak of today, Voivod.

I remember first reading about Voivod in a bedraggled copy of Mega Metal Kerrang in the late 80s (is this magazine still in print)? There was a small article about these four dudes from Quebec who’d released this record called ‘Killing Technology’. They looked like I did in 1987, all scruffy clothed and angry and one of them even had half his head shaved (which was cool as fuck in my eyes during those days). I needed a copy of Killing Technology, I’d never heard them before but knew I had to have this record.

Two weeks later, after borrowing, begging and stealing the coin required I begged my dad to drive me to Hanley to the big bad metal record shop they had there where I picked up Killing Technology. My ears were never the same again. Punk, metal, prog-rock, noise, thrash, industrial and trash rolled into a seething angular punch in the face of music like I’d never heard before. I’ve not stopped listening to Voivod since. I’ve bought every record they’ve released since (14 albums I think, correct me if I’m wrong) and never looked back.

Sure, they had their shit years. First ‘Blacky’, the cool head-shaven bassist left, then they did some weird glam rock shit, then ‘Snake’ (vocalist) left and got some other knob in who did nothing to their sound and the final blow was delivered in August 2005. ‘Piggy’ the inspirational and unique (truly) guitar player lost his battle with cancer and sadly passed away.

To cut his short (and I have to get back to work) Piggy before his sad death recorded a laptops worth of guitar tracks and the band have released these in the form of completed songs, the latest release, Infini being the best example of a Voivod I’ve heard in many a years. Back to the good old days of Dimension Hatross almost. It’s a great record, it’s available from Amazon and you should buy it… Well, at least check out their Last.fm page, put away your preconceptions about metal, and learn something more about a truly great band.

RIP Piggy.

I gave in. I got a facebook account. I actually set it up for honourable reasons, the new phone can pull contact information such as photo's, birthdays etc. from facebook and I wanted to try that out.

I hate using my real name on the internet, I've been using noTHINGface since I first had access to dalnet all those many years ago (and then that shitty metal band used the same name for their brand of 'twat metal'). I tried to set up a facebook using the name noTHINGface, of course the aforemention shithead rockers had got there before me, tried noTHINGfaced instead. Again, facebook just made it real difficult to do anything. In the end I signed up using my real name. And that's when the troubles began.

First I sent freind requests to all the people who's contact information I wanted to store in my phone, these are friends and family, real friends and real family.

In a matter of seconds my gmail in box was screaming under the weight of friend requests from people from my dark and distant past. Well, it would be good to see what these people ended up doing, and it was. I was able to hook up with my old band mates and I really quite enjoy talking with these people.

There may be idiots amongst the many and one particular incident left a sour taste in my mouth, at least steadied my aim and gave me solace that people are still dicks and the internet is full of them. Nice.

So this will be the end of the facebook experiment. It wasn't all bad. Talking with my mates from the band was great, hope to stay in touch with them. Obtaining photos for my contact list on my phone, great. The rest, not so. End game.

... I'm loathe to put this under an Entertainment category but there it is. The other half is watching some TV programme on Channel 4 (UK), it's rather romantically called 'How the other half live'. It's a beautiful concept. A swarthy fatty family of well off people are played video tapes of a poor working class folk trying their best to make ends meet and get through days with a roof over their head. If deemed worthy enough then the puke sodden richies will sponsor the poor piss riddled poor-ies, give them money then show them what they're missing for not having enough money.

Sponsorship takes the form of bunging them a cheque for a couple of grand, letting the cameras in whilst they feign gratitudes for this gift of gold from the gods then duly whisked away to meet their bloated benefactors at a suitably sunny exotic location such as the Costa del Sol where they are patronised and picked at for both their and the viewing public's pleasures.

What a fucking nightmare concept for a nightmare viewing experience. I'm sat here crawling inside my own skin whilst the doting and suitably mournful narrator relays the terrible news that the poor people are going to have their legs cut off to pay for the bailiff fees that are coming round to repossess their homes whilst their saving angels sit back in their Jacobs armchairs, creaking fat bellies on supple leather and write off another cheque or two.

And they call this a documentary.

The horror show climax results in both families meeting, greeting and trying to appear happy with the fact that, essentially, the rich people have bought the poor people and now want to claim their reward; To show them the things that they will never have, can't have and are not entitled to. But hey, they should lick the grume from in between their alturistic gaut prickled toes just for letting them near their heated fucking outside swimming pool littered with dolphins that only speak rich and hate the very smell of family units worth less £200K per tax year.

Let the mournful piano music play on whilst the poor kids are shown around the laptops and bedrooms of their rich counterparts that in real life would cross over to the other side of the street and demand their personal aides throw clumps of dog eggs at them.

This is entertainment for the masses. This is a Channel 4 documentary. This is the fucking end of days. This is terrible.