Joey Standton

buzzes like a fridge

2006-08-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-08T03:27:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-18T03:04:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

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

thievery corporation

2006-06-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

it was, in fact, around the time that the shuffled music hit on the downtempo electronica of thievery corporation that i realised my feet had been bare all morning. it's unusual for me to be without shoes on my feet for that long. the need to have my feet covered at all times is the somewhat unfortunate result of having a severe childhood allergy to the venom of the honey bee.

i couldn't and still can't find those shoes anywhere. i only ever own one pair of shoes at any given time. this is for reasons of minimalism. too many grown men own too many pairs of trainers that look almost identical to one another, a cultural phenomenon that puzzles and sickens me. the other day i saw a pair of adidas trainers whose undersoles had been manufactured by 'good year', presumably with the same rubber used on their tyres. so, not only do i get the satisfaction of adidas quality but can rest safe in the knowledge that my footwear is capable of dispersing 800 kilopascals of water on those rainy london days when i'm running along mountain roads, taking tight turns at 60mph.

anyway, digression is one of the top five killers of reader concentration in britain today so, i'll move on. i think the point i was getting at is that the soundtrack to my shoeless awakening proved to be somewhat ironic as i am now convinced that thievery is involved here. i don't lose shoes. especially these shoes. i managed to track these shoes down through the japanese friend of a guy i know who photographs men naked, for a living. his vocation is irrelevant but amusing and in spite of his unfortunate profession he'd somehow found a pair of original onitsuka tiger trainers from the 1980's.

for those of you reading from the backwaters of africa or lancashire, onitsuka tigers were the forerunner to what is now known as asics. the reason i wanted to own them is because they are rare and were handstitched by a diminutive japanese man for an italian athlete who was competing in the 1988 olympics. when the runner opted for locally produced mizuno shoes, the little man decided to keep them. until about eight months ago when i got hold of them for a price that will remain undisclosed at this time. needless to say, these shoes are special to me, not least because i don't want to walk around london barefoot.

i was due to meet up with wes and 'the reg' to conduct some business and visit a couple of old friends up in north london, but with the change of circumstances i had no choice but to invite them round to casa stampfer. wes had a new cap today and entered through the giant front door, wringing his hands and swaggering as if he'd been on the receiving end of some kind of medievil anal torture. apparently that's a very 'street' gait. stampfer emerged from the kitchen with a poorly disguised look of complete disdain and thrust a marigold gloved hand in wes's direction. it's without exaggeration that i tell you he looked like a complete twat.

wes was around long enough to conduct our business but i made cetain he left before he got the chance to steal anything. 'the reg' arrived just as wes was leaving and the two of them pretended not to know each other. it's by pure co-incidence that 'the reg' is armed with a special talent: that of picking locks. i once witnessed him pick the lock of holiday inn hotel room door using nothing but the wax endings of his shoelaces. i told him my problem...

now, i don't mean to get all agatha christie on you but the evidence is pointing to claire, in the case of the onitsuka tiger theft. during nick's shambolic thai meal she took a distinct interest in my shoes.

yes, they're rare
yes, they're probably somewhat valuable

surely it's also no co-incidence that her room is the only one in the house that is locked. i led 'the reg' to the door in question, passing a bemused looking nick stampfer in the passageway as we went.

it took fifteen minutes for 'the reg' to give up. "it's these victorian locks, you see... they're too hectic". i ushered him out the house so that i could gather my thoughts. "sorry bro, but thanks anyway for...", the sound of his voice attenuated as the huge door slammed to a close. i like that door.

anyway, i write to you now shoeless. i have a cake in the system which should help me deal with the impending confrontation with this fiend, claire who is clearly some kind of weird kleptomaniac and only agreed to be part of this circus because it's an easy score.

she's probably got ghandi's shoes in there, too.

oh, before you go i should tell you. i applied my theory of pulling american women last night. i'd been meaning to test it on gina and it worked yet again. whilst passing her in the corridor i put the theory into practice: (saying something remotely eloquent) + (speaking in a remotely exotic accent) = (success with american girls). try it, you accent doesn't even have to be convincing. i think it's got something to do with the romantic aspect of their televisual upbringing, like the 'love boat' element or something.

more later. fire and brimstone.
- joseph

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

not quite chada

2006-06-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

you have to laugh really. stampfer suffered another fit of paternalism and arranged for all us residents of his occult household to have a 'nice sit-down meal together'. i eat. it's unfortunate, as i consider eating a gross misappropriation of my hard(ly) earned money. but a sit-down meal?. i wasn't convinced i could be bothered but nick was really keen on this idea of his and he was bankrolling it so, why not? well, i'll explain why not.

i enjoyed a productive business meeting with wes. alan's been nagging me for more 'putting surface' for ages. the man is smoking like a rastafarian, but it keeps him happy and helps wesley buy those ridiculous baseball caps that he's convinced make him look like a pioneer of cutting edge hip hop.

so, with the help of wes and the good people at Cadbury's, i baked up some glorious muffins with which to unwind before/after nick's thai extravaganza. he's been telling me for some time about his specialist thai cooking skills and i wincingly admit: i was quite looking forward to it.

i wasn't disappointed. his pad thai tasted great, comparable to that from the chada thai restaurant in battersea, where i was asked to never return following a disagreement with the waiter over a mysterious bottle of £26 wine that somehow found its way on to the bill.

however, unlike the ill-fated meal at chada, stampfer's thai cuisine disagreed with my stomach with the same ferocity that i had disagreed with that deluded waiter. curiously enough i was the only member of our party who suffered this horrific food poisoning which, no doubt, led to stampfer suggesting that it might be my wes-infused cakes. i'm not so sure and took a brief respite from writhing in agony to urge him to 'fuck off and die'.

two hours of eternity passed before i felt capable of removing myself from my sweat-drenched bed and abandoning my faithful bucket, which fumed with the odour of poorly digested foodstuff. i decided that the only way to complete my recovery was to get utterly, hopelessly grilled. a special occassion, i removed from the wooden box under my bed a special blend known as 'durban poison' and made my way to the living room where gina and alan were in mid conversation about the merits of having a monarchy. i live with dullards.

crossers beamed with the delight of a deranged paedophile (is there any other kind, you ask?) when he saw what was in my hand and without a word he scampered up the stairs, i assumed to fetch his playstation console.

this was the first chance i'd had to indulge my intrigue since gina arrived. she wasn't massively forthcoming as we exchanged smalltalk, and all the while she looked at me with the same kind of fearful recognition that i'd seen in claire when i met her earlier in the week. not sure what that's all about but who knows the levels of weirdry that exist in the thought processes of the fairer sex. anyway, gina struck me as the sort of person who once thought she'd figured out the direction of her life but later became unsure. she seems to have a lot on her mind and i didn't want to pry, mostly because i don't particularly care and the last thing i need when my constitution has been amended by stampfers evil pad thai is a deluge of boring personal history.

alan returned with his beloved playstation and set about plugging it in to the absurdly large tv that nick had provided. i sparked up, took in, and offered to gina. she cocked her head and looked at the joint like a dog would a hedgehog and told me that she hadn't had any since college but she'd have a go.

her coughing echoed through the house and she fled to the kitchen in a flurry of hands before returning with a glass of water, a smile and eyes so narrow that you couldn't be sure there was anything in her eye sockets at all. she melted back into the seat while alan bogarted the joint.

suddenly the landscape had changed and there was a definite air of relaxation in the room. the three of us exchanged anthropological views. i said how weird i thought it was that, despite our sophistication and intelligence, us humans could not be trusted and had to be policed. gina commented that we were, essentially, still only primates driven by uncontrollable instincts. alan sagely uttered, whilst exhaling a stream of smoke, that we are the people our parents warned us about.

claire and stampfer had long since retired to bed and i decided to do the same, despite crossers' pleas for me to 'have a go on pro evolution soccer'. i was physically drained and mentally enlightened and sleep was definitely the best course of action. besides, i doubt we could've topped that hour-long discussion about the world we live in.

i left gina filing her nails, smiling to herself, and alan running around killing people or driving ferrari's or whatever.

they say you learn something new every day. i guess i learned that, despite being a fairly intelligent sort, nick stampfer is not to be trusted to cook a meal. i don't care if no one else fell ill, that eye-popping sickness can only be attributed to that lunatic's cooking.

if you die before my next posting, then have a nice life. otherwise, maybe i'll see you around.

Lost my shoes. Otherwise, feeling good.

peace and love
end message.
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Nine Rooms updates every Tuesday - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey

Wilkommen - Welkom - Bienvenue

2006-06-21T22:53:00.000-07:00

i don't know how many of the six billion inhabitants of earth have access to the internet but i would imagine there to be a depraved minority of people who take a keen interest in my activities in the foul smelling centre of the universe that is london.

wesley let me down at the weekend by getting arrested or killed or switching his phone off, so much of my saturday was spent trawling the streets of clapham north, looking for interesting people. that neighborhood has really been cleaned up. it's beautiful and irritating.

i also don't know how deep the victoria line is dug (which just scratches the surface of what i don't know) but it can't be too far from the earth's core. perhaps someone can post comment to this and explain why the victoria line is the noisiest and hottest tube line. for those of you reading this from internet cafes in tropical third world countries, you haven't felt heat. this is about three degrees hotter than a motherfucker.

to compound the irritation of a day wasted and too much time not wasted, i found myself wanting to destroy a woman on the tube. she sat there, dressed for church and looking far too regal for the underground, with no less than eight hat boxes of various sizes. eight. three less hat boxes lying there in the middle of the train compartment may have averted the near-disaster that occurred when i tripped and kissed that pale blue pole that millions upon millions of nose-picking tourists had been clinging on to all day. perhaps my reaction was a bit harsh but, seriously, who carries hat boxes in this day and age? and who says 'in this day and age' in this day and age?

speaking of luggage, the new female materialised at stampfer's. nick's taken to importing occupants for his weird mansion as most londoners simply find it too strange. nevertheless, gina intrigues me. all americans intrigue me. they have a natural leaning towards drama. i guess that's a bi-product of having been brought up by television. maybe a bit of drama is what this house needs.

wesley's just called. excellent. the boy cross will be pleased.

more later. you've reached the end of this posting.

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Nine Rooms - Gina - Nick - Claire - Alan - Joey