Why oh why oh why did I install new sound drivers? Now I know what music sounds like to deaf people. Because I am dim, I can't remember what version I had previously, so now I have to try all past drivers until Winamp decides not to remix everything Kit Clayton-style. This would all be remedied by the purchase of new soundcard - I have my eye on the Audiophile 24/96 but it will have to wait for new computer. Bah humbug.

Catspew - yes, I am turning into Victor Meldrew: I have a cardigan, and in an attempt to stop Jesus freak neighbour parkling in front of our window (which blocks the light out) I am considering editing the New Internationalist NO WAR! poster in the window to say NO CAR! instead. Bah humbug.

The US military has been making itself popular in Iraq by shooting protesters who apparently threw stones at them. God knows what would have happened if they'd had pointed sticks. Or sharpened guava halves.

Yeeeeeeeeeeah. Mmmmm tasty biscuits and it's nearly teatime. There's no news - though I have been writing lots of tunes which will see the light of day when they're all finished. Meanwhile there are two new tunes on mp3.com one of which contains uncleared Charles Bronson sample.

Weird freak neighbour upstairs has dug up all the grass at the back of the house and put chalky dogturd coloured gravel down (badly) instead. When she got round to asking me whether I thought it was a good idea (it's not her land), I expressed my bad ideaness but she went ahead anyway then asked me if I wanted to pay for it (?) while reminding me that she'd spent £150 on weedkiller for the back of the house (which is about 5 square metres) and would I like to contribute to that (?). The most expensive weedkiller L and I could find was £12.99 - so not only has she spent a lot of money on weedkiller, it's about as effective as watering the weeds, cos they're still there and have been for at least 3 years. So not only is she a scary Jesus freak but a terrible liar. L and I spend a lot of time bitching about her in the hope she'll hear. If she does hear, she'll know we plan to sow grass seed in her gravel and water it while simultaneously encouraging cats to crap in it. I'm thinking of breeding a strain of super-resistant weed and planting that.

Anyway. Today's nice music is Crayons by Manitoba.

Back to school today. Bunch of arse. If I was rich enough, I'd just bugger off somewhere, write music and draw pictures. Although that wouldn't bring in the bananures.

New tune here (mp3 - apologies to those still stuck with dialup), strange time signature but nice gravel/tin tray noise. Have dumped tune with Charles Bronson sample on mp3.com so it may appear in a few days...so I don't get done by my own webhosts, the very nice people at Averdata.

As for Syria - well, is there going to be a nice US-'friendly' buffer zone for Israel? No good will come of it. Isn't the US harbouring Timothy McVeigh in prison somewhere? Isn't he a terrorist? Or am I going too far? Not as far as going to Damascus. Is the US government actually genuinely paranoid, or is it making its citizens paranoid so that they endorse whatever imperialist move Mr Bush is making this week? The unfortunate thing is, when America gets attacked again (which would be no surprise), nobody will be asking why - instead they will be saying 'well, what did you expect?' Doom doom doom.

I daresay once the Iraqis stop their orgy of looting and get round to rebuilding their wrecked country, they'll find it's been sold to large American corporations. At least my particular large American corporation has no designs on Iraq. As far as I know. No need for photocopiers in Iraq. Although I guess the CIA could do with a document management system to deal with all the information they've found about Iraq's nuclear/chemical/biological capability. They did find some, didn't they? Surely.

Today's 10 pre-bed songs (well, some of them are songs):

1. Hell Interface - The Story Of Xentrix
2. Jake Mandell - Undersea Sanctuary
3. Hrvatski - Marbles
4. Lali Puna - Rapariga da Banheira
5. Manual - Velvet Sunset
6. Refree - Susto o Muerte
7. Man With No Pseudonym - Option B
8. Opiate - Below Minus 9
9. Migala - El Ultimo Devaneo
10. Sigur Rós - Agaetis Byrjun

Glasses make everything curvy.

Been listening to some (apparently) very cool stuff: Boom Bip, Hrvatski, Raja Mushtaq, Susumu Yokota - and I finally got hold of Gas' Oktember EP. Hurrah! Now I can drone myself to sleep.

What I don't understand is Autechre, one of the most influential and respected modern electronic groups, but their music just does nothing for me. And another thing. 'World' Music. L is more ranty about this than I am but I agree with her - it's the most dismissive category of music there is. Say you listen to Khaled and then The Tsinandali Choir, completely different in style, roots and influence, but still lumped together under 'World' Music. Rubbish.It's as if 90% of the world's (note lower-case w) music gets put into some sort of waiting room until it's sufficiently westernised to be 'elevated' from its World Music melting-pot into something that's acceptable to poeple who think the west should have a monopoly on music. So there.

Hmmm...Blogger seems to work much better with IE (boo! hiss!). I got rid of Mozilla (the BBC's java ticker kept crashing my pc) and got Netscape 7 instead, which doesn't like links very much. So I'm back with IE. Which would be ok if IE's gui didn't look like it was designed last century. I'm not sure whether I can complain about it being produced by Microsoft, given I work for an equally large American mega-corporation.

I've written a new tune which I can't put on the net cos of uncleared sample (Charles Bronson in Once Upon A Time In The West) but it's nice and electro cos all the melody (if you can call it that) is written with CR8000 congas - they make good bass sounds too. Yes.

My eye infection (which is now clearing up) means I can't wear contact lenses for another 3 weeks. My sight is so bad that when the nurse at the hospital asked me to read the letters on the eye chart, I had to ask her where the chart was. So, I have to go and get glasses today.

Wibbot has gone awol again.

Not only have I got the pox, I've got an eye infection. So, I got up at 5 this afternoon, went to the desolate eye hospital in Windsor where blurry doctor poked about in my eye before prescribing me steroids and antibiotics. Now my right pupil is hugely dilated and I look like a pop-eyed goon, so I stared at lots of people in Tesco on the way back. Pity I couldn't see their reactions.

I've still got the pox. Have also found out that my £2 worth of Premium Bonds (purchased in 1973) has won me the huge total of £0.

Apparently the best insight into Bush & Blair's murderous jolly is provided by Russian military intelligence which is published on the web in unlikely example of Glasnost. Which makes me think it all might be rubbish. Still, once the media succeeds in portraying the average Iraqi as being meekly thankful for having his country invaded, Mr Bliar's position is secure: 'Look - they like being invaded - we give them bread and stuff. Only because we blew up all their bakeries though.'

While Mr Bliar is busy trying to get the UN to have a role in rebuilding (i.e. paying for) Iraq, Bush & Co. are quite happily setting up Jay Garner to rule Iraq. Jay Garner is an ex-Army general who is now president of a weapons technology firm. I'm sure the Iraqis will be heartened to know that their new leader provided the technology which killed their families. He looks like a cross between Ronald Dumsfeld and Jeffrey Archer, which can't be good.

Still, I guess the Iraqi people are looking forward to their freedom, though it'll probably mean they can now work for $1 a day making Nike trainers. Who will probably be proud of themselves for helping the devastated Iraqi economy while the oil money reduces Bush's war debt.

The US military's 'daring' rescue of Jessica Lynch looks to me like a PR stunt to prove that the army's not just a killing machine. In a curious twist, she even comes from Palestine (not that Palestine) as if to plant the subconscious notion that yes, Mr Bush cares about Arabs (and women, the working class, the underprivileged, geese etc.) too. At least Fox News' Brainwashing Department could have a night off, anyway. Apparently she may have been tortured. They must have found her trussed up in an orange boiler suit with a blindfold, kneeling in the corner while the Iraqis wrote 'unlawful combatant' on her file.

The Labour party candidate rang me up last night in the middle of my peas to ask me who I'd be voting for in the forthcoming local elections, which caught me on the hop a bit and I was forced to say 'not Labour, because your leader thinks it's a good idea to kill Iraqi kids' or words to that effect. When asked who I would be voting for instead, I said it didn't matter much to me. No doubt she thinks that if Saddam Hussein was a candidate I would vote for him as easily as anyone else.

I don't like politics, I like ranting. And biscuits.

I've got chicken pox! Surely I'm far too old for that sort of thing. You can watch it unfold on PoxCam. You sick little monkeys.

However, being ill has not stopped me ranting about war/Bush/Rumsfeld/Blair/bananas. I see that the kind of freedom which the US government wishes to bring to Iraq is already in motion for American citizens in the form of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003 in which the police seem to have got away with having no accountability at all. I'd love to know what the Arabic for 'sunsetted' (no, I didn't know 'sunset' was a verb either) is. Perhaps the war-profiteers at Autonomy Corporation (nice Orwellian touch) would like to tell us, seeing as their software apparently decodes terrorist email. And all terrorists are Arabs, are they not, Mr Bush? Dimwit. The US Department of Homeland Security uses this magic software, which is a nice little earner for Autonomy. Could it have anything to do with the fact that Richard Perle is a director of Autonomy? It's like already having four before you've even tried to put two and two together. So I guess Mr Perle is rubbing his hands with glee - he bangs on for years about how the US should invade Iraq (Clinton was too busy playing his sax to do it, so Bush was 'elected'), then he makes tons of cash out of it when it finally happens. He can probably afford to resign.

Mighty Scotland have lost to mighty Lithuania. Still, at least the Germans drew.