Just venting. Just venting.

I have a lot of very bad things to say.

Firstly, the sentence above. Moronic. Childish but not child-like. Pure Apple Mac/Gap/MTV infantile regression of language posing as some kind of pop minimalism.

I have a lot of very bad things to say about art. It's clearly dead. Only the budgets remain. And the professional administrators who ensure that nothing remotely spontaneous nor surprising ever occurs in art again. It's their job to stifle, contain and restrict any artist hoping to just open up their minds and have a go. It's clear that all the colleges and galleries exist to provide jobs for people who like conferences and their holiday homes in France.

I have other very bad things to say about art. Recently I've noticed a trend in the arts recruitment notices I get by email; presenting the new trend of interns.

This shoddy american idea seems to be the current mainstay of theatre companies, experimental theatre companies, art galleries and the like. Basically it involves recruiting somebody to come and work for you for free. Purely for the experience and networking that it provides. You can network with other unpaid art proles and collectively moan about the hideous anal pedants who administer your respective arts companies. They'll continue to complain about how much it costs to pay a nice old man from the village to check their holiday home out once in a while. You get to turn up, take care of all the paperwork, not smoke, not drink, not have an original idea taken on, and basically you'll walk away feeling not at all like the cunt that you've become. Interns take note, you are a laughing stock in the eyes of decent normal people who would never swap hard cash for the chance to suck up to somebody who can fill in an arts council grants form.

Some other very bad things I have to say but not about art.

The government is considering fining young people who choose not to stay in education until they're eighteen. Fantastic idea. When economies start to flake out due to them consisting of dot com bullshit and unheralded lending by banks, then we'll not only have a generation who have studied for jackshit, they'll also be smarting from being criminalised in the course of that pointless pursuit. Fucking genius. They'll love you and will show our nation nothing but the respect and mercy that you've shown them.

It doesn't stop there, the nastiness. The new curriculum for three to five year olds is being put in place. So it seems that from the age of three to the age of eighteen, you are owned by the education system. From thirty six months of age you are tested and subsequently classified, you are compelled to attend where they say, when they say, and whilst there you must do what they say. There is a short list of what you may study, and there are no exceptions to this short list. All the people dealing with your education must ensure that you comply with a timetable of learning and experience which has been decided by a committee of people you will never meet. You may not always be protected from harm whilst at school, but you have no alternative but to attend. Failure to comply with these orders may result in either you or your parents receiving a criminal record. There are no circumstances other than serious hospital treatment, which will allow you to spend any part of your childhood beyond the control of the education department.

And this is for your own good.

I have other bad things to say but it's late.

Picture of me. March Hare Stylee.

This is how I'm doing.

Let February lie in the past.

Please God I'm empty. February takes more than it's fair share of toll from me. I've been strip-searched, violated and humiliated by this month, a hefty price for passage into the year proper.

Well 2007, year of the golden pig, may yet be one of those good ones, we just don't know. But crikey, February has made sure I don't get to March, that month of ever-lightening rain skies and piscean birthdays, without having my collar well and truly felt.

I'm empty, they've pilfered every last cigarette and all the loose change from the purse of my inspiration. They've ripped pages out of my memory and left me dull. I'm leaving February behind as soon as I can.

All the travellers talk of April being the cruellest month, but February taught April everything it knows.

It's with great relief that THE IMPOSTUNE has posted a new addition to his blog. I had been accused (unfairly) of silencing him with my childish blackmailing. It's not true. He's just been busy trying to finish off his extremely-complicated-lengthy book which sounds like it's taken a hefty toll on his literary stamina. With all due respect, he needs to finish it and move on.

I can reveal the cover of this new work here in a WORLD EXCLUSIVE.

The Radio 3 Curse

I suffer from a Radio 3 curse. Radio 3 is a british radio station devoted to classical music. In the daytime it's nasal shrilly songs in german, at night it's nasal shrilly songs in german until ten when it becomes nasal shrilly chants from patagonian exiles, backed by Brian Eno and Bhoutros Bhoutros Ghali on vibraphone.

The alternative to Radio 3 would be one of those many stations where audio output can be described as ceaseless aural chum. The effect of the barking infantiles on these stations, and their limited "playlists" is like having the crust of cold sores grated into your tea.

So I'm happy to listen to Radio 3.

But whenever I turn on Radio 3, the curse intervenes.

I turn on the radio, and there's nothing. Turn it up...a slight hiss. Turn it up a bit more and..buhh duuhhh de durrrhh!. That's right, I've turned it up just as Shostakovich has decided to suspend the entire orchestra in woody silence. Just as I turn it on there's nothing for about two seconds then the entire orchestra bows, blows, bangs and parps a cacophony to shatter kidneys.

Sometimes the Radio 3 curse waits until the end of the piece being played. It might be one of those wonderful warm romantic pieces from the late nineteenth century, before the bolsheviks could commission orchestral music. In this case I get to hear the sweet sinewy violin motif that whisps it way towards the final elegant note. Then...Well, that was lovely wasn't it (breathe sigh phlegm-sounds) That was ..I get the Radio 3 announcer at volume ten, always a complete shocking misery.

It's not much to complain about in a world of poverty, disease, strife and corruption, but it bugs me. Thank you for reading.

So I went to the pyschiatrist and the psychiatrist says..

So I went to the pyschiatrist and the psychiatrist says..that I'm suffering Major Depressive Disorder (of severe severity) and that I'm also suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (In the top 20% severity).

Well I had to laugh. In an instant I'd overtaken the bipolars and the agarophobics of the world and been given my own "mental" throne from which to declaim the world as cruel and forbidding. Brilliant.

This mean that I can now shoplift, drink excessively or frequent parlours given over to hideously obscure fetishes, without incurring any condemnation that might stick. Brilliant.

It also means that if I'm feeling really selfish or obstructive I can just pull out my psychiatrist's report and wave it in the faces of those who oppose me.

This really is my Willy Wonka golden ticket. Quite remarkable good fortune. I recommend it to you all. This place I'm in could quite possibly be the only sanctuary left for the dilletante and the permanently immature. Nobody expects the psychologically damaged to hit this month's sales targets, I promise.

You don't have be mad to avoid work and spend your life indulging every last febrile whim that strikes you, but it helps.

The only problem being of course is that I'm deeply affected by the contents of that report, to the extent that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. I had an inkling that something wasn't right when I noticed that I'd spent the last year playing games on a computer and talking to myself for an hour every night in the kitchen, usually about three am.

There had been other clues too, that this report was getting close to the mark. Firstly that I'd been unable to enjoy anything deeper than a funky advert. Also, I'd stopped drinking completely, too depressed. Further signs were spread amongst the numerous abandoned literary works that simply would never be completed. An interest in my professional life seems as alien to me as aliens living in an alien world doing alien things.

I have MDD and PTSD because one crisp September day last year, I watched two people who I love without limit plummet face-first onto a concrete path.

That last bit wasn't a joke.

The long and wound-up road...

Oh dear. The McCartney roadshow of revenge and counter-revenge rolls on, shrieking and lashing out fit to bust.

Poor Heather Mills, poor old Pensioner Paul, poor us too, for having to endure this eastenders-type misery amidst what seems to be a total lack of grace or understanding.

Enter Stella McCartney. She has a face that could electroplate hummingbirds from fifty feet. She has a list of contacts that could sway every newspaper,magazine and charity ball towards instantaneous loathing of any individual she chooses.

Poor Heather Mills didn't stand a chance. From the outset she was always going to be " Dad's end-of-life crisis ", a blot on the perfect celebrifamilia landscape. If there's any doubt that Stella Mccartney is the Lucrezia in this opera, then take a look at her collections and ask yourself " Honest craft? Or the lucre of connections?"