Been waiting all damn year for it to get to summer and as I sit here typing it's too wet outside to even go up the shops to buy some more cigarettes. Guess that's the price we have to pay for living in dear old Blighty, but it sure is a pisser. Still, I had my faith restored about the 'state of the scene' over this past weekend, LOVEJUNK did a couple of shows including a gig in London with the HARD ONS and it was just a ton of fun, plenty of people showed up and I ran into lots of friendly faces, sold some zines, and got to see SERVO for the first time, who were really great and nice people to boot. You should definitely check out their Crackle alb. Although talking about albs, of course the LOVEJUNK one is nowhere near coming out yet, to say Phoenix are dragging their heels is a slight understatement. It's getting close to a year ago that we recorded the damn thing and at this point we haven't even had a sniff of a test pressing or rough artwork, let alone any kind of contract, and six weeks of constant e-mails and phone messages has been pretty much met with a wall of silence. Totally frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, everything zine-oriented has been held up around here lately since a huge hailstorm blew up me modem and shorted me scanner, and it was weird how it kind of brought everything to a dead stop, and kind of worrying that losing a couple of pieces of equipment pretty much put life on hold for a week or two. Got me thinking about how reliant I am on this so-called modern technology, a position I never thought I'd be in and one that I never wanted. It's really hard for me to imagine what life would be like without all the luxury we have of computers, TVs, stereo systems, all that electronic junk, it's like when older people harp on about what they used to do in their day, how they actually had conversations with each other and found fun in the open air when there would only be, like, one person in their locale with a TV and occasionally they'd crowd round to watch some old crap like the Queen's speech or something. How the hell would I be able to survive that?? But then no doubt in another fifty years there'll be so many more technological advancements that it'll be amazing how we managed without them. Already digital television makes analogue TV look like the first BBC broadcasts of the 30's or whatever.

Without these electrical and technological breakthrus all bands would be skiffle, all zines would have to be hand-printed and everyone would have to cycle to gigs. That'd suck. But then of course there's a further series of prices to pay just for the handy availability of power, land gets destroyed, people get exploited, media companies exert more power and influence than probably most political parties…as usual with life at the end of this century you have to take the Golden Grahams with the Golden Nuggets.

And it's still freakin' raining….but hey, let's not get too down about things. It's of course a lot better to be alive right now than it was even thirty years ago, that is if yr lucky enough to live in Western Europe or the US of course. Are there more problems in the world these days, or is it that we just get to hear about them all in up to the minute, 24 hour news broadcasts? Was life a more satisfying 'hands on', personal experience before we got trapped into our own worlds of disembodied telecommunications and boxed-off homes, often too afraid to go to the 'wrong' parts of town at night? Probably not, not really. Ask yr folks about what it was like before you were born and there were just as many problems, just as many murders, the same old crap to get thru, it's just that with the passing of time things back then suddenly seem somehow idyllic, like Suez and Vietnam and that 10 hours 'til destruction cold war oceanic stand-off never happened. When we get to be 50 or 60 (assuming we all make it) we'll probably romanticise about how great life in the 90's was, maybe not even thinking too much about Iraq or Kosovo or homelessness or corrupt, power-hungry multinationals taking a dump on the planet but instead marvelling at the electronic highway and fast food and live televised footy coverage. Can you imagine what it used to be like at the start of the decade when there wasn't constant live televised footy?? See, I'm doing it already!

So I guess things aren't so bad really, for all the ills in the world there are also a lot of plusses, and so although the rain outside is trying its hardest to bring me down it's not working, there's still bands and gigs and CDs and 'Seinfeld' and 'Neighbours' re-runs with Kimberley Davies and footy and baseball and zines and delicious Quorn & mushroom pies. Not that I'm trying to be too flippant or anything, but you know what I mean, we'll probably (hopefully) never know real hardship living in this country, never lose the freedom of speech, the freedom of saying whatever we want or writing whatever we want, never be shepherded into concentration camps or put into prison for being a punk rocker. Makes a blown modem seem pretty insignificant really, makes the supposed 'divisions' in punk rock look just a tad unimportant, we could all be living in some far-flung, snow-covered Russian woods for chrissakes, or stuck in some oppressed Chinese farming community where there's nothing to eat and not even the first clue about what's happening in the outside world. Or worse, 'Planet Of The Apes' could come true.

Although life is more about what yr given than what you make it, more about where yr from than maybe where yr going, it's still gotta be better than having no life at all, you just have to buckle up for the trip and make sure you hold on when yr going thru the good bits. Broken TV? Messed up modem? Knackered phone? Guess they don't really matter that much after all, not when we all have the ability and potential to help somebody out, fall in love, offer a stranger some kindness, walk down the street looking as 'weird' and trashy as we want, swear at politicians, march against the city (that was smart), eat raisin roundies whenever we want….although I have to go to the dentist and attend a New Deal interview over the next couple of days, that's not so good….ah, life….what are ya gonna do?
Fuck this rain, I'm going to get me fags.

Tard