Okay, okay, I know this is lazy blogging, but the Google search results that lead people to my blog remain the most amusing thing in muh universe. The current top ten searches, which are getting a bit solid now so I may not do this again, are as follows:

28: butt
18: biondino
11: wipe
10: arsenal
8: shots
5: emma
5: men
5: byrne
4: sinister
4: fags

So it looks like "butt" is the overall winner. Do I really talk about it that much? I'm more of a leg man myself, you know. Mmm, calves...

However, current searches that have tickled my fanny include:

masturbating girl bike
wipe your butt -wet -poopie
i'm stuck my skirt
thora birch hips
2002 email of bog boys in u s a
sexy italian football commentator
illegal pony girl net - this one was from google.de - figures...

And my current favourite:
everything about rabbits having babbies

Awww.

Feeling a bit headachey and despondent this morning, I decided to pick a tune or two from my mp3 collection (which has barely grown since the demise of Audiogalaxy - now that it's been a while, are there any other places beyond KaZaa Lite that I should go? Please?) to cheer me up. And, like an arrow fired by Kevin Costner (or even at Kevin Costner - I like to think that nature's immutable laws would bend just this once to hit him right in the baws), I headed straight for Letter from an Occupant by the New Pornographers.

AM I A ROCKIST?

Yours worriedly,
Mark

I wonder if I can get an entire post out of my cough? Hack snort splutter (death rattle noise) hawk (hcchGGrGGcssgg) SNEEZE hack sniff (swallow) hack. Dribble.

In the chemist yesterday I was persuaded to buy cough pastilles. Great. Only thing is, they're for daytime use only..

Chemist: ...but they won't help you at night.
Me: Oh, right. Night's when it's most irritating, you see.
Chemist: Yes, of course. I could give you Covonia, but... no.
Me: Oh? What's the problem?
Chemist: Well, it makes you drowsy.
Me: I can probably deal with that seeing as it's night-time, thanks.

I celebrated my logical triumph with a crate of Grolsch*. Only £11.86 at Thresher, beer fans! Though I got the last case, so ner ner.

*anyone following this link will notice that you have to (pretend to) be 18 to even LOOK AT this site! Think of the riches it must contain! Um, except it's not ready yet. Schtop indeed.

Finally, something worth blogging! From a Nova Scotia restaurant - thanks to Kim from ILE for the link:

Extra props to anyone who actually *uses* the alphabet they design - try the Alphabet Synthesis Machine, which takes a seed glyph drawn by the user and evolves an alphabet around it. It's quite something.

This is too cool - an excellent internet pub quiz, primarily for British viewers (but the rest of you should try it too, especially the anglophiles). I'll be curious to know what the other members of the Highgate Posse get - please leave your results in the comments box :)

I seem to be dreaming in primary colours.

I had two bizarre and slightly unsettling dreams last night, both of which would have been unremarkable had it not been for the colour schemes. The first dream involved my parents walking through a park, when a young bloke, 17 or 18, covered them both with yellow paint. I took him aside and tried to figure out what the problem was; he claimed he'd heard they exploited their workers and were therefore enemies of the people and legitimate targets.

Hmm.

Secondly, and even more oddly, I found myself standing at the side of a football pitch, watching a team of Italian legislators, all wearing royal blue outfits and standing on royal blue grass, celebrating the success of new amendments to existing laws by running around, arms outstretched, pulling their shirts above their head, kissing each other, etc. "Section 23a of the Agricuture and Fisheries act has been reneged! Hurray!" Curioser and curioser.

It does, however, make me nervous about the no doubt impending red dream. I don't like blood much.

Whoot! I might be on TV!

Popbitch has revealed that UK TV svengalis are thinking of making an equivalent to The Osbournes, featuring ex-Duran Duran hunk Simon Le Bon and family. As those of you who know me will already be aware (as I bang on about it so much), I live right next door to the Le Bons! Double whoot!

So, if you see a leering baldy leaning out of the window of the flats next door, making moronic thumbs up signs and playing Belle and Sebastian at top volume, that'll be me.

(addendum: as far as I know, the Le Bons are the epitome of happy, restrained family life. Should be a blast)

Yay, a forced blog entry!

Largely because I feel I should get something concrete done today, now that football with Professor Paul over lunchtime is cancelled. Boo. I was getting all excited, reading the profiles of the players of AFC Wimbledon, and imaging my responses to the answers. Disappointingly, the best taste was shown by Joe Sheerin, ex-Chelsea star and great white hope, who rates Otis Redding. No-one else came close, though I suppose the Sex Pistols are okay. Three of the squad like the Spice Girls best. Gah, footballers. They'll never change.

I'm off to watch the first home game of the season tonight (versus the mighty Chipstead FC, who either don't have a website or are all under 16, which is porbbaly the brutal truth). We've actually won our last two games, so confidence is high, and the atmosphere is party. Whoot!

[Watching "Police Stop 11", as an American cop shoots a traffic suspect in order to subdue him]

Presenter: ...so the police officer has no choice but to disable the suspect.
Mark: disable him?
Harry: yeah, disable him to death.

Please excuse if I come across rude
That's just me, and that's how a playa's got to be
Stay kickin' game with a capital "G"
Ask the peoples on my blog I'm as real as can be.

Another stop-gap post, as I can feel the rushing air created by dozens of once-eager readers stampeding away from my blog.

I haven't posted for a couple of days as I was enjoying LeicBlogCon 2002! with the divine Maddie, which, I note, she has already described on her own site. It was super fun, of course, with Maddie the ultimate party hostess with the mostest (grazes and bruises). As she also mentioned, one possible highlight of the weekend was going to see, out of choice, a rather small viking battle re-enactment. Several smelly men and portly girls in potato sacks and chain mail shouting Mary Whitehouse Experience-style insults at each other ("you know that Leofric the Unbearably Noxious? You know his armpits? That's you, that is"), before attacking each other with unseemly ferocity, cutting each others shields (and, in the case of the Liam Neeson lookalike, forehead) to ribbons and dying, unconvincingly. They were sweating pretty convincingly, though.

But now I'm back in London, wondering whether Robyn and Amy have got their own weblog yet or whether I'll be continuing to tidy up after them like a pair of over-enthusiastic and under-house-trained mongrel puppies. Keep 'em peeled for more housework/cycling/swimming-centric fantastic blog entries! Yeah!

I only came on tonight to see if anyone had posted any comments, but my reaction was positively Professor Frink-esque. Amy and Robyn, you're grown women! You're supposed to set an example to the rest of us!

In urgent, life-changing news, I finally found some root beer in England! Asda sell it, as brand called "Carter's" - any Septics out there who can tell me more about this fine concoction? Fwiw, it's not as good as the nectar I tasted at Megan Gerrity's (sp?) in Brooklyn. I bet that's what all the boys say...

p.s. hello, Jobby.

New update on Google search queries. Arsenal's league form of last season is being mimicked in the chart below, having overtaken "Butt" (I am surprisingly sad about this) to stand proud, firm and thrusting at the top.

This is probably losing its appeal pretty rapidly for you, the viewer, but it still makes me laugh in a childish, pathetic way.

8: arsenal
7: butt
5: biondino
4: sinister
3: mark
3: blog
3: muff
3: wipe
3: fags
2: peeing

I am a bit upset that someone should search for "arse biondino", though :(

My previous-but-one entry was originally intended as an aide-memoire, so that when I returned to blogsville I'd recount pithily, yet with a hint of pathos and more than a tablespoon of urbane wit, you'd find out precisely *what* about American teenagerhood I feel I missed out on. But I can't really put it into words without going off on one of my over-extended diatribes.

What's bizarre is that my longing isn't going away. If anything, it's getting worse - every TV show, film and book set over the water contibutes a scene or an entire plot to my growing mountain of desire to have an American childhood.

Books are the worst - reading The Basic Eight and Speak (massive snogs and unending gratitude to the Llew for her wonderful gifts) made me come over all over-emotional and slightly peculiar, and almost made me cry at the unfairness of it all. I kind of wish books didn't fuck me over so much, emotionally - I am almost scared to read new novels these days in the off chance that I'll spend a week depressed, besotted, in existential despair, all of which have happened before (assuming I have the slightest clue what "existential despair" means) and I'm not sure I want them to happen again, especially when I can't control how, why or for how long they manifest themselves.

(note to self: the reason you're not really a proper writer is because of travesties like the previous paragraph. Learn to use full stops!)

Anyway, I've lost my train of thought. Over to you.

Okay. I have just discovered, writing the post above, that Amazon has a new feature, called the Golden Box. Inside the box, you find five daily offers, only one of which you can take up. If you pass on it, it's gone forever.

Obviously, since these objects will be the hand-picked results of demographic information gleaned from your previous searches and purchases, they should, theoretically, say a lot about your personality. You'd think, right? Let's take a closer look:

Leatherman 69010103H Pulse
DeWalt DW935K 14.4-Volt 5-3/8" Cordless Trim Saw Kit
Old Dutch Dome Pot Rack, Graphite
Eastman Outdoors 38080 Stainless Steel Fish Fry Pot with Lid and Basket
Samsung DVD-P421 Progressive-Scan DVD Player

Verdict: I am SO not gay.

And it's been a perpetual regret.

Last night's pub quiz at The Shepherd's in Highgate:

Quiz mistress: Now this week's quiz is of medium difficulty - last week's was hard.
Random punter: You said last week's was medium!
Quiz mistress: The answers were hard; the questions were medium.

The Stevo-Foxy-Mazriella-Chu-Liz-Me team managed a respectable 4th=. Still can't think of the elusive missing letter of the Greek alphabet, though. Oh, Psi. Duh. We had BIG ROWS (well, Daplyn and I did, anyway) about what to call ourselves. "Isobel Campbell, 400 Metre Hurdler" was UNFAIRLY abandoned, and we ended up going with "The Homeless Cheese". Which to me sounds like a Weezer offshoot band, but there you go.

Anyway, some pics:

Today's update of my Google referrals list shows the consolidation of butt at the top of the chart. Hurray! However, there's a late charge being made by this week's number two, who weren't even a contender last time round. And I don't even support them...

6: BUTT
3: arsenal
2: peeing
2: biondino
2: wipe
2: fags
1: parakeets
1: toothpaste
1: shaving
1: workshy

For the first time since a visit to the tate Modern a couple of months ago, I indulged in some A!R!T! yesterday at the exhibition of Gilbert and George's "Dirty Words Pictures" at the Serpentine Gallery in London's trendy Hyde Park.

It's a fairly small exhibition, 26 photo montages from 1977, the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. The artice linked above gives much more detailed background info than I could manage (not to mention a more knowledgeable and worthy artistic criticism).

And it rocks! I've said countless times I have barely any understanding of the language of art, and I clam up whenever I try to describe my feelings towards it. But this show made me feel disturbed and amused, but more than anything, at ease. Familiarity was a constant factor, both relating to the viewer's own experience at to repetition within the images themselves. The dirty words themselves were possibly the least powerful images shown, reminiscent of juvenility among the seriousness of each tableau.

The presence of Gilbert and George in each picture gave a personal context to each, but each time they were represented differently, as benign deities or put-upon proletarians.

But more than anything, one of the primary emotions the show encouraged in me was nostalgia. I was 3 years old when the photographs were taken, and the tone and content of them conjures almost-forgotten images from the greatest depths of my memory. Thick-rimmed spectacles, old-fashioned signposts and a plethora of Austins, Rovers and Wolseleys - almost memories I can't be sure I have myself, but rather may have picked up from images of the 60s and 70s. Still, the slightly flat, depressing nature of the urban environment reminds me of how 5-year-old mark perceived Wandsworth in, say, 1979, and it had probably the most striking effect on me.

As an effort to capture a point in time, both specific and vague, the show works wonders. It doesn't heavy-handedly force the viewer to take up every intended reference point, but successfully melds the scopophilic desires of the audience with the intentions of the artists. I know I should concentrate more on the hard-hitting comments the exhibiton makes on decay, oppression and privilege, but all I can do is respond in a personal way.

Whatever you think of this drivel, if you're in London and can get there before the show ends on September 1st, then give it a go. It's free, it won't take more than half an hour, and it's a lovely place to see art.

I'm getting concerned about my reputation. My latest Google referral (incidentally, bottom right of this site I have introduced the Google search tool, so you can spend even more time on your favourite BiondinoBlog!) was for "chutney+ferret". Sigh.

Which is why I think I need a manifesto. A certain Mr Iron Man posted the following to a message board, and I think it pretty much sums me up to. It also sums up Christian (see below). So no messin'.

"Hey! I'm iron man. I have bad tattoos. I'm just a simple guy! I'm iron man. I'm rugged. I know what the ladies like. I'm pretty suave, cause, well, I'm iron man. I've never heard that band, but I know they suck and are gay. To me, if something or someone sucks, that means it or they are gay. I'm a little older and wiser than you guys, and I know not to get bent out of shape over the small stuff. But I do like to criticise and belittle people at every opportunity I have. You know me and love me! I'm iron man. I like to go fishing and post pictures of myself all the time so the ladies can *swoon* over my manliness. I'm pretty manly. I don't like girly stuff. Girly stuff is for fags and girls. And gay girl fags. Speaking of girls, I like to ingratiate myself to all the girls because I'm a little bit of a ladies man. After all, I'm iron man. I'm funny and rugged and I live out in the country. I'm a man's man. I'm iron man."

I saw my old university friend Christian last night. He has decided to take it as an insult that I don't mention him in every blog entry, and challenged me to do just that. After all, why should Sinister have a monopoly on this blog (and don't say because nobody else reads it)? Therefore, Cecchi my old chum, this entry is devoted entirely to you.

Handily, when I went over to his place last night, I took my NEW DIGITAL CAMERA with me to show him. He's a gadgety kinda person, and I felt everso slightly smug that he was cooing over the toy like grown men do over Greg. Naturally, in order to demonstrate its efficacy, I took a couple of pictures of the divine half-Italian adonis, who thoughtfully declined to put his shirt back on the whole time I was there. V homoerotic. Here he is looking like a stud, with only a hint of manboob spoiling the tableau.

My gracious readership is encouraged to comment on this photo - Christian has been feeling left out lately, bless, so feedback, offers of dates etc. would, I'm sure, be warmly welcomed.

Driving through Lido:

My father: You know, you never hear the boop any more.
Me: you mean the horn?
My father: Yes - years ago the Italians were horning all over the place, but not any more.

Any inferences made from this conversation are due to the warped mindset of the reader and have nothing to do with this weblog or its management :)

The fad for comparing anything and everything may have died a death (probably a good thing), but for those of you who couldn't get enough of amihotornot.com could do worse than go here. It's Yahoo's compilation of comparison sites - mildly entertaining if you've really not got anything better to do with your time.

Fabulous news!!! Thanks to the slightly startling genius that is Piggy, I have discovered that I have, after all, been hunted down by Google. Among the searches that led to me are:

do+parakeets+have+eyelids+that+close
fat+girl+peeing+archives
how+to+wipe+butt
how+to+wipe+your+butt (an important distinction, I think you'll agree)
"child bearing hips"+butt (okay, so who's the butt fetishist? Is it you, G?)
girls+shaving+there(sic)+muff

and my personal favourite:

fags

Bearing in mind that there were only 9 Google requests in total, I'm extremely pleased with the sordid prurience that has led people to my blog :)

Looking back at my holiday notes (how pathetic!), I've glumly realised that much of what I wrote down isn't remotely interesting. Do you care that BBC World's weatherman is called Everton Fox? For some reason this struck me as a good name.

Talking about BBC World, there's a new entry in my "sigh, if I can't have Thora I wouldn't mind a bit of..." series. Her name is Sevan Bastajian, and she presents computery stuff on the aforementioned channel. She's a cutie! All smiley cheeks and youthful perkiness. Unfortunately, I can't find a pic of her on the web :( So big shouts to anyone who can...

One tech article the lovely Sev (sigh) presented was on a new internet service called Shazam. The idea is simple: if you're out and about and you hear a piece of music you like, but you don't know what it is, you phone Shazam on your mobile, hold the phone up to the music source for 20 seconds, and bingo! They send a text message with the name of the artist and track - which you can then purchase through them, natch. Clever, but useful? Hmm, not sure about that, but they're still testing at the moment, so if anyone gives it a go, let me know how/if it works.

LATE NEWS: There is a pic of Ms Bastajian on the BBC World site, but other than a passing resemblance to Natalie Imbruglia (also yum, let's face it), it's not the greatest photo. So keep sleuthing...

Standing on the top deck of the ferry, heading away from Lido di Venezia (it's the long, thin island in the bottom right), and watching the sun rise over my ancestral home, I found myself smiling, at peace with the world. I am thinking, with joy and anticipation in my heart, of what I can write in my weblog when I get home. As the boat steams past Sant'Elena, Giudecca and St Mark's Square, I find myself daydreaming to myself about the quips and anecdotes I'll recount when I'm sitting in front of my PC in squally south London.

It's a bit sad, really.

(the title of this entry comes from the unique feeling I noticed when on the ferry - the slightly discomfiting sensation of having my eyelashes being blown sideways. Try it with a hairdryer or something, it's weird.)

Ho. I'm back from abroad. Hi. Make yourself comfy.

I'm too crap to remember stuff, so I wrote down all the interesting (sic) things I wanted to recount. But you're going to have to wait until tomorrow, as it's now after midnight and three pints have done hitherto unforeseen things to my mental faculties. I would say "hic", if I could spell it.

So, until tomorrow! I feel strangely nineteenth century. How odd?

*This is absolutely true. He was! And very polite he is too, a charming young man with old-fashioned manners. Unlike that Gareth Gates, he's a rude bwoyee.