buzzes like a fridge

salut, my people

you can call off the search party. i have been found. my disappearance can be attributed to the slovak republic's reluctance to heed the demands made of it by the twenty first century. i don't have much time to write today so i'll fill you in very quickly.

an old friend of mine from back in the day (because i feel this to be the night of my existence) came rather suddenly to visit me. given the 'reg' affair and the curious increasing tension between myself and stampfer i decided it was best to get out of the house for a while.

this friend of mine, who will remain anonymous for reasons of complete nonsense and absurdity, is a south african national. now, south africans are known for oppressing masses but also for having no rights of passage in the modern world but a quick voyage around the internet revealed that of the most accessible places for us to visit outside of the UK proper the ones with mutual visa abolition agreements with south africa were ireland, gibraltar and, oddly enough, slovakia.

we were wrong. or more accurately, the slovakian website we found was wrong. slovaks demand visas for south africans and while i could have cruised through passport control in bratislava and left my friend to fend for himself i do posess a degree of loyalty. plus i've always wanted to see what happens when illegals get detained on entry into a country.

well, the slovaks simply locked us up and starved us for fifteen hours before putting us on a flight back to london. there was no interrogation. following on from that we toured the music festivals around the country and here i am.

apologies for the poor correspondence, i'll ignore any hatemail that was sent prior to this posting.

peace in our time
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Nine Rooms updates every Tuesday - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey

ending for a teen drama

you'll know what i'm talking about. dawson's creek, party of five: i was a teenager not so long ago, you know. and yes, i harboured a fascination with the genetically fortunate young residents of whereverville and their complicated, intertwined lives.

at the end of every episode you're given a chance to reflect on what you've just watched and feel for the troubled and cerebral youths of whereverville, with their perfect complexions and abundance of spare time despite financial hardships. and while you watch whoever laying on his bed, looking at a framed photo of whoever else and the scene cuts to whoever else walking along a boardwalk set against a breathtaking backdrop, you're treated to the heartwarming melodies of the new single by the band whose record company is part of the same media giant that bankrolled the production of the show...

yesterday 'the reg' appeared. i was alone at the house and busying myself by layering guitar tracks onto one another in a bid to create some kind of synergy between the sounds i'd produced earlier in the day. the mac was whirring and being unco-operative, processing the tracks when the doorbell went, a terrifying gonging sound that reverberated through the house. the trouble with stampfer's place is that there's no peephole and because the door seems to have been designed to withstand a direct hit from a soviet icbm it's pointless asking who's there.

my stomach wrenched and breath quickened as i turned the handle and braced myself for an encounter with wes and no less than three of his boys, all wearing baseball caps and proudly displaying a large percentage of their underwear over the tops of their trousers.

but my gut untwisted and twisted again in the other direction as i saw, tanned and smiling 'the reg' and a timid and equally tanned looking tatiana alongside him.

'hello tatiana'.

she whimpered a reply and i looked back to the disingenuous grin on 'the reg's face. i could tell he was anxious to just get his things and leave. i haven't seen tatiana for some eight months or so. we had a fiery relationship based on a mutual liking of ecstacy, sex and aphex twin. things between us ended when i set off to mozambique for three months and contact was lost. i had formed an opinion of her as a like-minded person, with the same leanings towards obscure thought and culture but she had somehow found nature's most fearsome parasite: 'the reg'. a common criminal. illegitimate and barely literate.

'your phone's been ringing' was all i said with the sort of composed cool but subtly seething demeanor that you'd see in an al pacino character
'oh', he laughed 'sorry about that mate... i just had to vanish for a while, you understand'.
'wait here'.

i went in and retrieved the box of his posessions. i told him to take the stuff out as i needed the box for an item of consumer electronics that i was selling on ebay. i flashed tatiana a pitiful look and the two of them strode off down the driveway. just as they reached the road and just as the mac finished its arduous compilation of the various guitar tracks and the completed, unified song started playing, she turned around to give me one more look before disappearing forever, the mournful, poorly-arranged sound of guitar music ringing in my ears as i stood there and watched.

besitos
- joseph
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Nine Rooms updates every Tuesday - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey

across the universe

tina lives in berlin her voice so seldom on my machine it's here tonight and i'm on the market and when i'm on the market words move fast and wild clouds move thin between us like a skin like a salty skin...

the preceding statement has no bearing on your existence or mine. in fact it is not a statement of my own but that of someone i will never know.

i've been on another plain of consciousness for several hours now. how i got onto this plain i will leave entirely to your cynical and speculative minds. how decadent i am; how primitive.

in this state i engaged gina in conversation, paying strict attention to the movement of her lips and the rapid beating of her eyelids. women blink twice as much as men, scientists monitoring the blinking habits of the fairer species would have us believe. it has nothing to do with a more pressing need to moisten their eyes. no. it's because the more they blink the more we notice their eyes. it's part of the game.

gina's family situation is, well, fucked up. at least it is when measured against the national average of family situations in which most people at least know who their family is. i know my family. i know my parents with their fierce disliking of ethnic minorities and their even more ferocious disliking of one another. perhaps gina is blessed by her genealogical anonymity.

i listened to the sad story of her exasperating search for her lineage. i wondered if her skin glowed like that when my pupils weren't dilated...

still no sign of 'the reg'. his phone has finally lost its valiant battle to stay switched on. i've put his posessions in a box that once housed and protected an item of consumer electronics that has long since been sold, presumably on ebay.

at this point in time 'the reg' may be dead. perhaps wesley caught up with him and dispatched him in the brutal manner that his gangster facade demands. wesley certainly hasn't been round here. i can't be thinking about this now. i cannot allow the life and death of those with whom i am acquainted to affect my already delicate psyche. not on a day like today when the music is flowing through me and skewing reason into the beautiful warm ignorance of youth.

my love to you all
push it
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Nine Rooms updates every Tuesday - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey

serendippity dawg

i'd like to apologise for my absence but then i don't really owe anyone anything. there's a fairly reasonable explanation for it, though. most of the last two days has been spent combing east and south london in search of 'the reg' who vanished from casa stampfer without and warning and without any of his possessions. emptyhanded transience defies logic. even kerouac had a change of underwear with him. the reg left without his stash, his meager clothing and his mobile phone.

now, don't mistake my ramblings here for concern. i care about 'the reg' enough to only know him as 'the reg'. the problem i have is that his mobile phone has been going off regularly, filling my room with tinny sounding white stripes tunes. i haven't listened to any of his voice messages but the texts are disturbing enough. even then, why should i care? it's not my problem if 'the reg' owes money, shagged someone's missus or beat up a traffic warden. the problem is with the last of the messages received.

it came from wes and disturbingly (and slightly amusingly) read:
"game is up bruv. givn u enuf time. enuf warning. now i fckin do u"

read into that what you will... if you're able to read it at all but those of you familiar with my previous writings will know that wes has seen 'the reg' at my home before and it's a matter of time before he comes here, bringing trouble with him; trouble that i don't need, i mean it's bad enough that someone nicked my shoes for fuck's sake.

so, the hunt for 'the reg' continues. i need him to take care of his situation with wes before the situation comes to me.

as a garnish to this absurd situation, i saw gina arrive the other day with a vaguely familiar looking woman. i greeted the stranger with a cocked eyebrow and a reciprocal look of 'where do i know you from?'.

it then dawned on me, some hours later, that it was the hatbox woman i saw on the tube a while ago. gina, with whom i shared my saliva recently, is not only a friend of this victorian relic but claire told me that gina reckons she could be her sister! imagine that, hey? i may yet get to explore the mind of the hatbox carrier.

why in the hell would you have THAT many hats with you at any one time?

many questions, some vengeful dealers, little time, no patience

Peace and love
- Joseph
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Nine Rooms updates every Tuesday - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey

hooved

so, after feverish bidding for my own shoes they were suddenly withdrawn from ebay with under an hour left of the auction. i haven't given up on those trainers but i have found more-than-suitable replacement footwear. they caught my eye from behind the murky glass of one of covent garden's second hand stores. they're actual retro footwear and beautifully decorated by hand. i'll try get a photograph of them to put on here. they're a bit hippie but represent an era when expression was limitless and the line between lovely and unlovely was blurred by the enlightened haze of the acid movement.

but enough cross-generational analogies. this is, after all, the zeros, the naughts, the o's, the 21st century.

alan scoffed at my new shoes but i've come to expect that and if you've gleamed any insight into this man's personality from what i've written then it'll come as no surprise to you either. alan's a strange cat, i'd go so far as to say 'queer' even but your culturally misguided minds will automatically associate that with homosexuality. and i can't rule that out as a possibility, but that's fine. it is, after all, the zeros, the naughts etcetera.

it saddens me really, that a man of obvious intelligence has to hide behind this distorted projection of an urbane and confident man-of-the-town when, at this point in time, the only mark he's making on human history is that he has, perhaps, the highest score on hitman 2 or virtua table tennis or extreme shuffleboard or whatever it is he plays on that ps2 for hours on end.

in other news, 'the reg' has been an expert fugitive (i'm starting to believe he's done this before) and has kept himself under the radar of the other species in this reptile enclosure. in spite of that, though, with my glorious new shoes i feel empowered to firmly boot his stalker ass out onto the streets of east london. don't feel sorry for him. this man is a fiend of the highest degree and one needs to be firm.

now with added cushioning
- joseph
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Nine Rooms updates every Tuesday - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey

versailles

a 'house meeting' has been called. this is like a tenants association meeting but mandatory, according to nick-the-dick. i can only imagine it's with regard to the escalation in tensions between the conflicting parties in the house, namely myself and that common thief, claire.

it's only just dawned on me that few, if any, of the no doubt avid readers of this journal have a clue who any of these people are, so let me tell you a little bit about nick stampfer for a start:

nick is a caricature of a stereotypical sitcom character in the midst of a midlife crisis. he's what jack tripper would have ended up being if "three's company" had got another ten seasons. he's earnest, though; (poorly) projects the illusion of being relaxed but behind closed doors you just know he meticulously files his bank statements and irons his underwear. am i making sense here? no matter what your culture, people like this exist and they have an aptitude for taking a storm in a teacup and turning it into a hurricane in an espresso mug.

i live with one of these people. what's more, i pay him for it.

nick doesn't know that 'the reg' is laying low here for a few days either. apparently 'the reg' is being sought by the constabulary for making 'repetitive and untoward advances' on an actress from a major west end production. i told him to stay quiet and stay out of sight but it's only a matter of time before one of the other denizens of this house of madness sees him walking around naked or trying to teach pigeons english.

i baked brownies for the occassion of our first 'house meeting' and i can tell you they're a success. 'the reg' and i will now be heading out to the tate modern to try and figure out how we can steal a jackson pollock without getting caught.

still wearing sandals.

- joseph
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Nine Rooms updates every Tuesday - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey

surreal estate

if your name happens to be 'watson' then, let me tell you, this is elementary my dear. regardless of your name, alias or moniker, i can tell you i was correct in my suspicions. the shoe thief is now certainly claire and despite being presented with the irrefutable evidence, she continues to deny any wrongdoing.

she's the person who, as a parenthesis to her tedious interest in my trainers, banged on about eBay for (insert your chosen deity)-knows how long. and now alan has found the things on eBay, no doubt whilst browsing second hand german porn.

now, either claire is truly the insane klepto freak i originally took her for or she's been framed in an elaborate, almost cinematic way. let me assure you that the former is the more plausible. no one in this house is smart enough to pull of a scam like that.

i really am fuming here. steaming, even but does that make me seem like a big pile of shit? maybe that's all i truly am... maybe that's all any of us are. although gina smells nice. i think she buys really expensive fragrances or something. she also told me in no uncertain terms that she's 'not interested in a relationship'. i looked down at my bare feet, hoping she'd look as well and remember the real issue here.

thanks, gina. i appreciate you allaying my fears that you were now planning our marriage.

she does smell nice though.

mustard gas and roses, as vonnegut would have it. dresden's gonna look like a mere burst water main compared to this house if i don't get my shoes back!

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Nine Rooms updates every Tuesday - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey