I bought a new pair of heaphones which make my head look enormous. Also enormous is Ulrich Schnauss' new album, A Strangely Isolated Place, which is now the best thing I've heard for months (sorry Nautilis).

Off to Scotland on Tuesday to see aged grandmother, so L has been busy taking photos of our flat for her to scrutinize. She may recognise the clock my dad 'acquired' from one of our neighbours nearly 25 years ago. Came home from shopping to find freaky Jesus neighbour lurking on the stairs, ready to pounce on new occupants of the top floor flat (who haven't moved in yet) - she'll be roping them into her sub-Titchmarsh plans for the 'garden' (i.e. she does what she wants to it and they pay for it). They won't want anything to do with her once we tell them how noisy she is in the toilet. I have my Victor Meldrew mask at the ready.

My legs hurt. This is because I walked the 7 miles to L's chiropractor with her - then I played Proper Football, during which I ran about another 7 miles. Still, L got her back fixed and we won 7-1.

At school today I looked for nice houses to buy in Andalucia. Nice ruins for €21,000. Anyway.

Odd choice of pre-bed music tonight:

1. Tenpole Tudor - Wunderbar
2. Laibach - The Great Seal (arf! arf!)
3. Astrobotnia - Sweden
4. Galerie Stratique - Frozen Lakes
5. Alphawezen - Into The Stars
6. Alphawezen - Electricity
7. Kettel - Life Nine Sky
8. Akufen - New Process
9. Arpanet - Wireless Internet
10. Nautilis - Mend (this is the best thing I've heard for months)

Mostly As

I got this. Now everything sounds bigger. Great. Can I be bothered to remix the 70+ tunes I've written? (clue: no). Oh well.

Went to doctor's today. They've got to xray my chest. I told them I didn't keep anything in it, but they wouldn't listen. Mind you, I wouldn't complain if they found a hoard of pre-Roman coins in it, that'd be nice. I'd better go to bed, as being up since 8am has addled my brain.

Today's pre-bed music:

1. Kettel - A Novel In Key
2. Industrial & Marine (who?) - Mud & Sand
3. Lisa Germano - All The Pretty Lies
4. Spokane - On The Stair
5. Hrvatski - Schnee
6. Aspen - This Will Ruin You For Other Men
7. Prefuse 73 - Busy Signal
8. Ewawoowa - Kirsch
9. Boards of Canada - Red Moss
10. Viennese Black Chamber - Hollow

I am being held hostage. Apparently my blog isn't 'inciting' enough.

Ho hum. Borley Rectory site appars to have died. Never mind, I scared myself enough just thinking about it.

Poor old Mr Blair. He won't be worried about being the Worst Briton, he'll be raking in the cash from Iraqi oil if 'his' new resolution gets through. I'm sure somewhere in the dim past somebody said the Iraqis wouldn't have to pay for the reconstruction of their country. I guess Mr Blair will just have to use the cash to pay for the NHS/public transport/John Prescott's two Jags. So, unsurprisingly, it looks like after being shafted by Saddam for 35 years, the Iraqis will now be shafted by Bush's 'interim' government. This gives the US about a year of running Iraq, at the end of which they will have enough of 'their kind of guys' in place to ensure long-term Iraqi submission. Ridiculous. But that's just a theory. Honest.

More Boards of Canada weirdness. I reversed Dandelion to hear the melody (which is really difficult to make out the wrong way) but there's all sorts of dodgy subliminal messages (and dodgy theories to go with them) on A Is To B As B Is To C. I hope the Hand of Baigent hasn't had anything to do with it.

Meanwhile, I have been listening to Kettel. Crunchy. Somewhere between Brothomstates and (whatever happened to) Plone.

New tune here, which sounds (to me anyway) suspiciously similar to the output of Herrmann & Kleine. Maybe I should give up trying to be original...

The Arcadian Cipher has had to be put on the back-burner for the past few days while I finished The Great Escape (Gestapo suspects RAF officer POWs are hoarding tunnel-making goods. Gestapo officers duly search POW huts. While they search, RAF officers steal their hats, coats & pistols.), but now I have to prepare myself to be exposed to extreme tenuousness and fervent speculation.

Watched The Usual Suspects again. Didn't understand it again. Benicio del Toro made me laugh again.

Most Haunted on again tonight, cue more wide-eyed people gasping "what was that?" then grainy camera shot of a bit of net curtain. Still, it's better than anything on the BBC, beacon of quality programming. Now I am going to disturb myself by looking at the Borley Rectory site I just found.

Watched The Mothman Prophecies again. Doh. Though I think I might sleep with the light off tonight.

Helping my sleep will be the turgid written-in-Araldite mibbling of latest Rennes-le-Chateau dumb-fest The Arcadian Cipher. The authors have obviously read everything they could find about the whole sorry tale and decided to write a book even worse than the existing bumf. The hand of Baigent can be detected as early as page 3 of the introduction (But why Arcadian? And what code?). A cursory glance through the index reveals the usual suspects as well as Saddam Hussein and a - no doubt shadowy and enigmatic - bloke by the name of 'Mr Lawrence'. Of Poussin's Et in Arcadia Ego they ask; And why is one of them wearing no footwear at all but is unshod on the harsh earthen surface? Eh?. Although if Baigent had been there he'd have written 'Why indeed?' after it. Silly people.

L and I have become convinced that freak neighbour upstairs is a witch (She looks like one!) because we've had such a run of bad luck since we argued with her about the garden that we think she's put a spell on us. We keep losing things and things keep breaking and we're a bit paranoid or maybe it's cos of The Mothman Prophecies but who knows?

Anyway.

Jack Straw - "There's no list, and Syria isn't on it"

Mr Bush has declared victory over the Iraqis and the war is over. Luckily Ari Fleischer was on hand to clarify that the war wasn't over 'in a legal sense', because obviously that would mean that all the POWs would have to go home and not get deported to no-rights Guantanamo Bay or exported to US-friendly countries where torture is legal. Also, if the war is 'legally' over, it would require the US to stop looking for Saddam (clue: he's in the index of The Arcadian Cipher) and they don't want to do that, because they need him alive as a pretext to invade Syria/Iran/Saudi Arabia/anyone who might be sheltering him. Actually they probably don't care if they're sheltering him. The Israeli Ambassador to Washington has already called for 'regime change' in Syria and Iran. That should be pretext enough for the Bush Administration.

Meanwhile, back in music land, I have attempted to create some sort of consistency in my tunes (other than them being consistently mediocre) by trying to fit them all together so that they flow nicely. When they're all done (I'm aiming for 25) you might get them all for free.

Well, in addition to my sound drivers not driving soundly, my website got hacked by some comedy Brazilian kids with really bad English. Luckily Averdata twigged before I did and moved everything, so 48 hours and 2 nameserver changes later and it's back, hurrah!