"I write books to relieve myself of pain. That’s the prime motivator to write. Period." ~ Bret Easton Ellis

"The most distinguishing feature of the man was his Mohawk hairstyle, which was raised with the help of a "hair gel" of plant oil and pine resin, imported from south-western France or Spain. This may attest to trade between Ireland and southern Europe in the fourth and third centuries BC, before Roman influence was brought to bear on the Celts of Iberia and Galicia (Spain). This could also suggest that he was wealthy, as few others would have been able to buy imported cosmetics."

Brian Fallon's other band.

Easing into Monday.

Watching Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line.

"By the final cut, all footage of the performances by Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, Jason Patric, Viggo Mortensen and Mickey Rourke had been removed."

"The Thin Red Line has become an English figure of speech for any thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack. The phrase has also taken on the metaphorical meaning of the barrier which the relatively limited armed forces of a country present to potential attackers.

Philippe Halsman & Salvador Dalí , In Voluptas Mors, 1951

Watching 800 Bullets. I was disappointed with Perdita Durango but I've heard good things about Álex de la Iglesia so I thought I would give his films another go. So far so good.

"Oh fuck: The Internet is still here."

Wait for it.

The Flaming Lips + Lightning Bolt, I'm Working at NASA on Acid

Watching Álex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango. Like Lynch's Wild At Heart it's based on the writing of Barry Gifford, however unlike Wild At Heart it's decidedly B-grade. In his first English speaking role Javier Bardem's accent is annoyingly terrible.

Arctic Monkeys, Brianstorm

Can't sleep. Watching André de Toth's Crime Wave.

Currently watching Lynch's Wild At Heart. It's based on a book by Barry Gifford who, unfortunately, seems to have fallen out of favour.

"This is a snakeskin jacket! And for me it's a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom."

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." ~ Marcel Proust

He wrote this when he was 16.

The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud

As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets
Nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews,
Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons. 
When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with 
The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Into the ferocious tide-rips
Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children,
I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas 
Never endured more triumphant clamourings

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves 
Which men call eternal rollers of victims, 
For ten nights, without once missing 
the foolish eye of the harbor lights!

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
The green water penetrated my pinewood hull 
And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains 
and the splashes of vomit,
Carrying away both rudder and anchor.

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem 
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, 
Devouring the green azures; where, 
entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;

Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums
And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight, 
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music
Ferment the bitter rednesses of love!

I have come to know the skies splitting with 
lightnings, and the waterspouts 
And the breakers and currents; I know the evening,
And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
And sometimes I have seen what men 
have imagined they saw!

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled 
with mystic horrors.
Lighting up long violet coagulations, 
Like the performers in very-antique dramas 
Waves rolling back into the distances their 
shiverings of venetian blinds!

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows
The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
The circulation of undreamed-of saps, 
And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!

I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells
Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows, 
Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans!

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas
Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers
In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles
Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds!

I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps
Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm
And distances cataracting down into abysses!

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, 
skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin
Fall from the twisted trees with black odours!

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes.
- Foam of flowers rocked my driftings
And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow 
sucking disks toward me
And I hung there like a kneeling woman...

Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls
And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds,
And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage 
Drowned men sank backwards into sleep!

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether, 
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up;

Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky 
Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious, 
Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot,

Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity,
A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort, 
When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows 
Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;

I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance
The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and 
of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets!

I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor: 
- Do you sleep, are you exiled in those 
bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? -

But, truly, I have wept too much! 
The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter: 
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours. 
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the 
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons,
Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants,
Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.

"Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself!" ~ Jean Cocteau