So I have to wonder why I reacted so badly to watching the following unfold. Well, not everyone is blessed with having all people in their lives occupy trusted territory and pigeon holes all their lives, eh? And no, this is not the time or place to talk about that particular turn of events. Sitting here, I wonder whether I ever will on here. I don't know. It's important shit. I'll return to it at a later date but it's tough to talk out in public. Ach, it was probably because I spent all day listening to the delightful romantic sweetness of Mr. Hannon as much as anything else. Anyway, back to the job at hand:

Ok, the Afghan Whigs:
I thought I had this one pegged about three quarters of the way through, how having a "belt it out" woman backing singer seems to have evaporated some of the more disturbingly masculine elements of their live performance. Greg Dulli positively friendly and relaxed, not a suit in site apart from old Charlie Sheen* on bass. Fantastically tight, as always. What marks them out is their willingness to use basically funk drumlines and rhythms, then slap hard guitar and nastiness and screaming on top. They sound too good to be a rock and roll band, but they sing about stuff that's too nasty, and let's face it, in too mannered a way for the Rolling Stones loving 40 year old set to like them.

Like I said, I thought I had this gig pegged, that they're getting older, more relaxed with their talents, letting their musicianship speak for itself… they were fun, naughty, nasty, strong.. etc, etc.

Then there was the encore. You see, Mr Dulli had been drinking what looked like Scotch and water steadily throughout the gig. Gradually getting a bit lazier looking, a bit saggier on the stage. At the beginning of the encore, he sat at the front of the stage, goading the audience, being the naughty, slightly disquieting imp character… he looked at a girl he had given a cigarette to earlier in the gig.
"Here, come up here and sit beside me"
-ha, how funny… the girl of course gets up and sits beside him "What's your name?"
"Natasha"
"Well, Natasha… you're lovely. Do you want to sleep with me tonight?"
"Er…."
"I'm going to sing you a song now, would you like that? (pause…)Would you like to kiss me?" Ok - time out here for a second. Here is a man in at least his early thirties, slightly fatter ("bought and paid for" as he said earlier in the gig after slapping and rubbing his stomach), losing his hair at the front, drunk, leading the life of a lead singer of a respected band. The girl sitting next to him is about eighteen, from California, and is feeling very happy indeed to be sitting next to someone she admire as much as him. She ain't about to start acting like a sensible adult in this situation. Which is of course, what Mr Dulli *should* be doing. Or perhaps the other members of his band? His friends? Jesus… They kiss. She allows it to become a prolonged tongue sandwich. Suddenly this isn't quite as funny. The audience to its credit almost to a person shifts uncomfortably. "How loose are your morals?"
"well, you know, it depends…"
"…cos mine are pretty loose. How do you feel about three-way?"
-shut up Greg, this isn't funny. Shut up. Jesus Christ this is totally degrading I mean you're supposed to be playing this character, you're not supposed to *be* him…
"I'm going to sing you a song now, is that ok?"
-He starts singing some song, I assumed he was making it up as he went along but it transformed in to what appeared to be a well-known blues number. He sits down with her again at the end of the song, snogs her again, long. The way drunks at parties 'eat face' slumped in corners.
"Get her backstage and lock her in a room for me" he says, staring drunk-hungry at her. Leans over to another girl in the audience, snogs her. What the fuck are you doing?????
Backing singer woman: "Get her backstage" (girl's name now relatively unimportant. She's now been demoted from nice fun girl listening to him being an idiot to a groupie shag for the night - my skin is fucking crawling…)
Girl continues to sit at the foot of the stage, curled up in a huddle. Mr Dulli stands up to take the mic.
"Don't ask me what all that was about, because I don't know"
He's got a noticeable erection thumping in to the front of his trousers. I feel sick.
"Sorry Sharon, sorry" stumbling, drunk on the stage, he lies down for a second. Sharon though, is in America, isn't she? Gets up, The band play a storming version of "I could Never Take the place of your man". He staged dives, hammered, in to the audience, two or three times. At the end of the song, he reaches his arm out to the girl.
"Natasha?"
-she takes his hand. He leers at her, brings her over and leans in to the microphone. "Say goodnight, Gracie"
"Goodnight Gracie"
He walks her off, his arm around her shoulder. Back to what exactly? Hopefully a peck on the cheek after which he is dragged away by the band, slapped round the face and told to wake up and stop being such an almighty prick. Otherwise, a night of awful screwing with a drunk, arrogant bastard, flopping his way like a seal around a hotel bed then feeling like shit with the guilt of it in the morning. Still, it'll furnish him with a whole truckload more angry shame for future songs, eh?
Greg Dulli you're beyond contempt.

*It's not really Charlie Sheen, obviously. His name is John Curley (weirdly). He's very good. He looks absolutely and exactly the same as Charlie Sheen when he's wearing sunglasses.

A present awaited me at work. The new album by Neil Hannon, not officially released until Monday. It is magnificent. Some of it is a little "eh?" to begin with, but then.. oh, sorry. I'm about to gush like a thirteen year old child. Extremely smart lyrics, funny, nasty, clever-clever, music realistically streets ahead of ninety-nine percent of English bands and then this great, snide and grandiose way of singing. I am not in the slightest bit joking when I say that I could happily listen to "Promenade" literally all day, pressing "play" as soon as the album stopped. And, oh, "Your Daddy's Car", my lord, was there ever a more bittersweet romantic song? Even though he's written far more sincere, and far more devastatingly beautiful and orchestrated songs since… I go back to that song and think: bloody hell. That song is going to last forever.

So I listened to it obviously all day. *All* day. What can I tell you. "Generation Sex" - terrible title, the song gets better as you hear it, "Thrillseeker" - superb lyrics. I mean really very good indeed. "Commuter Love": simple, growing on me, one of those lovely gentle songs he does; "Sweden" - excellent stuff. Chonking great tune, nonsense of a song. "Eric The Gardner" - weeelll, this is the one slightly duff track. We'll see how it fares live. A bit of a - yes, I know what you're saying here but it's a bit too frivolous really. "National Express" - typically stupid, over the top, flirty nonsense with a great singalong tune. Completely fab. "Life On Earth": very European. Really very good indeed. I like these mellower songs a great deal. "The Certainty Of Chance" - oh, Neil…. They don't come back, you big eedjit."Here Comes The Flood" - phew. Blimey. Tough and beautiful, very nearly keeled over in the middle by that Dexter Fletcher bloke doing a voice over."Sunrise" - well, you know, it's a decent song trying to talk about things over there. It's good.

Fuck me, what a fucking seventeen year old muso thing to do that was…. Good lord…

So James was finally asked to leave today. I've never seen that happen to someone in "real life"… asked to clear his desk n'all. A bit freaked. I assume he was more freaked than he let on. As it was I think I was fairly banjaxed about it, despite the obviousness of it happening. Ach well... The strange thing was that Danny was in this afternoon to clear his stuff up, so he was a silent witness to the whole thing. Not that it was much of a whole thing really. Tony asked to see James, and for some reason, I knew that *that* was going to be the moment. Pretty strange stuff.

Pedal pushers are rubbish. They are more than rubbish. I mean, if skinny girls want to look like Audrey Hepburn then, whatever, but people are wearing pale coloured ones. They show off pale and uninteresting fat girls' legs… they draw attention to the other awful, truly terrible fashion horror of the summer - the… I can hardly bear to say it - Flip-flop, worn as a shoe.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGH

do you people not care about your ankles and toes or something? Or is it that you never actually walk anywhere anyway so it doesn't really matter? Fucking hell, they really look awful.

Different pain today. It was one of those rare occasions yesterday when 3 Nurofen was not enough to cure the misery of menstruation. It was a real rolling over the floor clutching myself, going to bed in my track suit bottoms and a fleece, eventually dropping off with sheer shagged out-ness at about 3ish.

Watched "Johnny Mnemonic" over the weekend of horror, as well as "The People Versus Larry Flint". Do you want to take guesses as to the better film? There's something definitely strange about Keanu Reeves. As he gradually fails more and more in life, he elicits a strange mothering instinct in women, as far as I can tell. Something in your heart warms to him, wanting him to do well, yet in a strange way, placidly accepting that he will fuck it up, yet again. It's not a visual attractiveness thing. I mean, he just… he looks like he's been cast adrift in this "acting" thing. He doesn't really know what he's doing, but he's a good sort, so he'll damn well try his best. Awwwwwww…

I hate my cats, they are cunts. I wish I could shave them both and get rid of all of their hair for a couple of months.

Kai is back today. Am I jumping up and down with glee? Well, yes I suppose. I've missed him enormously.

Bought the Unkle album. It's NOT THAT GOOD shock.

Pulled a muscle in the back of my neck while I was weight training last night. It's making me feel sick with pain, I can't move my neck without being in pain. I am in pain. In PAIN.

Only 8pm. I may get to leave before nine.

"Voyager" last night on Sky was the one with whatsisface… er, Tom Paris nearly sleeping with Bellanah (?) and then the mention of the Borg at the very end! Suddenly, it looks like a good show. You have to start thinking "at last". Well, to be fair though, it started getting a bit more interesting when they brought in "Q" for a couple of episodes. The one where Janeway thought she was dead was a pretty good one too. Really rather sad. I still feel twinges of acute embarrassment over having submitted to liking Star bloody Trek. Oh well. The nice thing about the early shows, although they were rubbish plot wise, they did a lot of intense bonding work, so you have a strong feeling as to why these characters will absolutely try to help each other and feel for each other. That's kind of nice I guess.

Much research today. Nice - I got to do a load of surfing. I've got to look at doing a course in Swedish. That's nothing to do with the surfing. I've just got to.

Amazon package today. Thank you Mr Visa Sir for my latest survival package.

Strange old day. Didn't do much, spoke to a lot of people… feel a bit… James'd out to be honest. So the guy is going to read the diary isn't he. So what do I say here…
What I say is, I want to move desks so I can get some work done every now and again.

I've got too many cinema reviews to do. Stupid girl.

Feel a bit ill. Bummer.

Asthma bad this morning on the bike.

Cait… tired… must.. make it home… must… feed cats…

Cycling up Charing Cross Road this morning, sweat dripping down my face, back, front, legs… you name it… a cool breeze blew for full on a minute at least. Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh…

Apropro of nothing, it transpires that Madonna was 40 this weekend, so unsurprisingly, MTV and VH-1 were using this an an excuse to fill the airwaves. VH-1 had a video of "the Girlie Show" in Australia. Wow. Not only did she look unbelievably beautiful (short white hair, lots of Gaultier type French stripe tops and trews, she looked nothing if not a tykey young boy) but she had created the most extraordinary performance piece. I don't think her art is necessarily in her songs altogether - well, I don't like most of them much anyway, but she seems to shine when she's actually performing them, bringing out the messages she wants from them. Warm, positive vibes to her for the playful pushy way she uses sexuality or rather, sexual gender attraction orientation ie: she seems to go for the sensual-is-good-whoever dollar, rather than the "I fancy blokes" trip. And for that - for a woman in her position to continually question and push those boundaries when she could quite easily do it all in private and who cares… hell, I'd shake her hand. And if she looked anything like she did in the gig I'd probably stand there in dumb awe dribbling, but there you go.

Fuxake. Just spent entire bloody afternoon of a stupid niggley design point. Sometimes I really hate things. Fakking hell.

Am determined to get home in time to go to the flicks. I know I can, I feel I can…. I can!!!!

No I can't. It's now half six. Well, maybe I can but I'll be utterly knacked so there's no point. Grumble, grumble….wasson TV tonight? Fuck all, apart from Voyager. Oh bollocks…

(In truth, readers, Cait took an enormous bag of videos, cd's and books to the Tape and Record Exchange yesterday. The bag was so heavy, it left bruises on her shoulders and her arms feel like lead. However, she did get one hundred Exchange Token pounds, so I don't know what she's whingeing about, moaning old wazook.)

I've got to do a "this is the type of flat that we want" list to send to Estate agents. Talking to my Dad yesterday, he said "Cait, you've got to buy!". Er, yes… have you got a spare five grand? Besides the "we can't afford to buy, don't be so stupid" thing, there's also the small fact that the housing market is not only stopping swelling, it looks like it might grind to a halt and start moving backwards… in which case as a first time buyer - hoo-fucking-ray. Also in which case I have to think - oh fuck, recession, make sure your job's secure, sunshine (what, like it isn't?).