Virgin Knee Geria 01.10.08

so virgin knee-geria, yeah that name will stick in my head like its been carved into my head with a blunt swiss army knife by some ex reckie who fought in the forgotten war.

so i make check in, this only after i had to deal with miss customs who is lying flat back slumped in her chair doin her nails,looking like jabba the hut. i aint sh*ttin you.

anyhoo i make a bee line for the departure lounge, well if you can call it that.so im reading this book, boo hoo.its about boo.com, an online start up that made billions but went crashing after its directors drank and partied it all away in 6 months. thats rock n roll i tell you.

the flights delayed for 45 minutes for refuelling, thats always gotta be a good sign, i mean afterall a full tank is a happy tank. im strapped in my seat, and ive memorisd safety procedures

so then this lame oke, literaly lame is slumped in his chair, after deliberating for 2 hours and after the sun had set, it was decide to wheel the lad off. bada bing. start your engines mr 767.okay now at the best of times im a frightened flyer, ive got loads of miles under my belt, but at 30 000 feet and dropping that don't count for much.

its a 50 minute flight and it rocked, as in like an ice cube in a glass of ice cold coca cola, this thing bobbed and weaved like muhammed ali.

anyhoo i was biting the seat..hard

it was ten minutes to land, but i just didnt notice the plane dropping slowly, then bang the floor of the plane drops.sweet gsus is it now that im gonna die while munching a muffin. an aside, the airhost says, 'cake or beef roll' , i went cake, these things are so dense the palestininans could use them as rocks, but boy these things taste a lot better than a rock.

so now im wanting to squeeze a tear outta my eye ball, then the pilot, the irish batsard with only a learners licence, starts pushing the thruster away from him(now i have no knowledge of flying but from what ive seen on tv, when the plane starts diving it means the pilot is pushing the controls away), i start slipping out of my seat, my knees up my nostrils cos im in economy(no leg room), sh*t in stowage starts shifting forward and im praying to kingdom come, okay so i stole the bottle of coke from the guest house when no one was looking, but hey.

anyhoo we're now racing hard i can imagine to get from 30 000 to 2000, in like 3 minutes.there's cloud cover and the light is flashing like in a horror movie but without the snakes. the landing gear cluncks out, the winds blowing at nauticle knots, im convinced im gonna die and i just see the front end of the plane rushin towrads me in a flame big enough for a marshmellow on a stick.

we then start leveling out but the wings are wobbling and im not sure the pilot was perfectly parallel to the run way, sweet mary jane.i was rattled. the planes wings, im praying, dont scrape the ground. sha wing the plane hits that runway hard like me after mike tyson b*tch slaps me. we skiddoo, onto that run way, and the pilot gooi's anchors, turns left and parks that amercian liner.

im alive, they say its gonaa rain but ill survive.

dan ger, a russian bear hunter and master swordsman who is happier with two feet rooted to the earth (but the pilot action figurine of the russian can still be bought, plane sold separately)

Sean Ghonnerea (Sean Connery) 15.10.08

Like a 1970's low budget, B-grade made-for-tv nigerian soapie so was my first journey into Lagos, Nigeria.

A 2 prop plane-a magimix with wheels and wings, to Lagos from Accra, the take off as brief as drawing a short straw. it was the smoothest ride I'd ever taken. the mountain of an airhostess as gentle as a daisy offered me a box of nibblies. I was as happy as a frog in a sock until…..

Lagos, it sounds like Lego, but there's nothing fun and primary coloured about this cesspit. And you certainly wouldn't wanna receive Lagos wrapped under your Christmas tree.

As I awoke with cold sweats to the humdrum of a diesel powered generator, I couldn't pinch myself out of the nightmare, cos I was living it. When we dream nightmares, they're probably set in lagos- lights, camera, serious action.

The streets of Lagos are a pimply teen's mug after an over dose of Kay eF Cee. The san andreas fault pales in comparison to the crevices that tear this city's streets apart. Buildings are the canvas for the plumes of diesel bellowed from the chugging generators. the buildings are delapidated and havent been updated since the colonialists in their adventure hats picked up their gin tonics and set sail for mud island.

Traffic congestion is a flu inflicted kid with nose donuts(snot encrusted nostrils).alleviation comes in the guise of an okada, sounds like avocado but has absolutely nothing fleshy, fruity or green about it, and it certainly doesn't taste good with a pinch of salt. Okada's are modern day cowboys bedecked in kanye west goggles and helmetless heads. They're pilots, they're out riders. They're the pixallated enemy in space invaders. They're a necessary dr eevil. It's a taxi on a motor bike. They swarm in bunches, they take the high street and the low, they ride in formation, they're the Luftwaffe on wheels and they're scary as sh*t.

The city is a mosaic of black faces with white eyeballs densely packed together. each rummaging for a place in the overcast gray sweatiness that is Lagos. here everyone is trying to make a dirty sweaty naairah. the market, is truelly an African market, bludgeoned beasts, flies, hairy yams-it's the contents of Dammer's fridge, it exists on the streets of Lagos.

Highways are markets too- from toilet roll to meat roll, you can get it all. Highways are running tracks, highways are the pipelines of heaps of traffic.2 lanes are 6 lanes. Keep left pass on the pavement, pass over the car infront of you, then pass right over the pedestrian through the BRT lane, then cut off the ambulance, then mount the right pavement, then stop in the middle and buy a meat roll. It's the African jungle and it's survival of the ballsiest.

Lagos consists of 2 islands-Victoria Island, Lagos island and the mainland, all connected by shabir shaky bridges. The bridges swoop over murky bodies, dead bodies, of water that look abused and unfiltered. Local fisherman in home made boats with plastic bags knitted together to form masts, sail the seas plundering crustaceans.

i needed to pee the trauma of lagos down the drain, and it was a trip to Abuja, that relieved the tank.

Abuja is the capital city, custom designed for that purpose. it is rather beautiful- rolling green hills, litter free and at an 800m olympic pace. i was in and out of there in 3 hours, but id probably give it another scratch and sniff given the opprotunity.

Lagos opened my eyes wider on the state of Africa, i have no sympathy, i have no remorse, does the west really need to place a band aid over africa to heal her. i now know not. im glad to be back in africa, the south of.

Excerpts from an unfinished scratching:

Ice cold sweaty coca cola:

Lagos, ill take an ice cold coca cola, it arrives dirty as hell, the neck and mouth resembling a new deli public toilet. The bottle skinny, sexy, 350ml of pure joy , shafts of ice poking the top screaming for air. The coke emblem emblazoned on the side of the sultry elongated bottle, its dirty and worn as chafed leather. The perspiration of the bottle careering down the undulations of the chiselled bottle. The waiter cracks it open, rubs it down with a serviette

I'll take a straw thank you

Yellow brick road

i got to Lagos the other day, but there was no one to frikkin pick me up and every one always says make sure you have like a police escort and sh*t, anyhoo it turned out alright cos i got a ride with a taxi and i said to him, 'victor, im puttin my trust in you.", so thank goodness i wasn't kidnapped.

i got a huge room here with 2 double beds, what a lag, so i dossed in the one bed but it had a huge dent in it, then in the middle of the night i moved to the other bed, it was better, and then in the bath room i saw an empty packet for these long lasting s*x pills, eeuw

A rat in a hat

so the other morning i came into the boardroom where i work and there was this hectic smell, so i chooned 'there is a hectic smell' and i left the building, then the cleaners went in with a broom mopping about, the smell still lingered like a fat man to a steak roll. then with a bit of elbow grease the cleaner removed one of the ceiling boards and found a 16 kilogram rotten rat the size of a baby labrador in the ceiling void. oops i hope that chicken next door was real chicken.

Nothing here inspires, nothing is beautiful, nothing is sacred.

There's nothing soft, chewy or gentle about Lagos. If I never see her again it will be too soon. Lagos is the date you leave at the dinner table, you excuse your self to go to the bathroom and you just run, boy, ruuuuun.

so Oprah, next time you 'come home', stay in Lagos, then say 'im home'.

My humblest apologies for an uber late scratching, but it was rather difficult to scratch about a dump.

danel(the armaments leg of dan), a Russian bear hunter and master swordsman.

I have an ipod nano…who needs friends when you got an ipod

well what do you know, I found a pubic hair embedded in a Super C sucking sweet.

Blades of Grass 27.09.08

Being holed up in a sweaty, self-catered, brown carpeted, slipslops in the shower, cream coloured, s*x-stained sheets square box on a Sunday afternoon aint what I call a pleasant dream.

No action stories were ever written in a vacuum packed bubble, well, that's unless it said 'bordello' in red neon lights on the outside. And I needed action.

It was time for me to hit the streets of Accra,Ghana and get me dirty.

I wanted to blow some cash on the local economy and so it was to the local art centre that I honed my scope.

Getting there I caught a taxi. I had like 5 okes screaming to get my business, the one oke with bottle of beer in hand is offering me a ride. 'Gees boet, the least you coulda done was put the bottle down before bidding for my business'.

I hop into a bee coloured cab and soon I pull up infront of the market and being a white man in a dark country I was there to be f*ckin raped. It's like I was the f*ckin game winning bingo card in the retirement village Tuesday eve games evening. In the eyes of these craft sellers I was the golden Charlie and the chocolate factory ticket, the answer to all their dreams. If only they knew I left my wallet at home, (a dr evil snigger ensues)

Like f*ckin festerin maggots to carrion, I was overwhelmed by marketers even before id stepped out of the taxi.

They swarm around me like vultures to a fresh kill, hovering, taunting niggling at my limbs

Mike valentine introduces himself, a Ghanaian named mike valentine? Whatever. Anyhoo im kinda enamoured by the guy and he draws me to his store, his minions, all 15 of them in tow. one would have thought this was some coke deal but all I wanted was a frikkin wooden aeroplane, was that too much to ask.

These guys musta thought I was packin a 20litre snakeskin bag of unmarked US dollar bills, meanwhile I got some scrappy ghanain cedis that had seen more action than a cheap whore in pearl harbour.

Having burnt my cash on wooden carvings which this guy's father (he showed me a pic of him) had apparently chiselled with his bare hands, I needed to get outta the den, yes it was dan in the lions den-sounds biblical huh?. the bastards had left me with enough cash to get home, a few shrapnels of silver. Finally after wading my way through the heaps of crafty crud I made it out to the clearing. I sighed relief, when a friendly lad, Rus obi (his name sounds kinda Star Warsy) led me to the taxi rank. there I picked up a trotro, an oversized mini bus taxi a shoe box on wheels squared off edges,and like lil chocolates in a box we sat, except there were no lil pleated chocolate brown cups to separate us-big mommas ass cheeks enveloped me.

After extricating myself outta the cab and eventually getting to where I didn't want to go, it was time to take to foot in the opposite direction. The sun so hot began sucking the life giving brine outta me. I found myself in a position in which I coulda died. Soon id be seeing things-coloured elephants and moving mountains, then delirium would set in ,then my heart would be palpitating fast enough to turn potatoes into mash, then id wither away. Alas I endured.

After walking minutes, I asked if I could walk home and people said 'nooo, its too far, and I asked again, how far is too far, and they said no its too far. In my head im calculating 2 and 2 and its not equalling too far. So I begin marching down the main drag in a direction I generally know will lead me 'home'. So I ask another dude in a black and blue striped golf shirt and he says, 'noo, its too far, catch a taxi', but I tell him I gotta walk cos I got no coupons. So mr golf shirt, after chatting to this other guy in checkered table cloth red shirt then offers that his brother gives me a ride back home enroute to getting his Aircon fixed. It was legendary, it was crazy man, it was a true Hollywood, or Bollywood or Nollywood ending.

This day was the worst experience I've ever had to endure while shopping, I became a stereotype, and I hated it. It's the exploitation of the tourist, it's a world wide phenomenon. But in the end happiness was the winner.

keep scratching my furry friends, from a relieved russian bear hunter

Barak Banana 23.08.09

My dream came true, to work and travel.

but when the fairy god mother said 'be careful what you wish for, it just might come true', I shoulda listened-Africa was not on my radar.

After 6 hours and 2 viewings of Horace Hears a Hoo i dropped in to dark africa (it was night time).

me and about 20 two-toned button-shirted Saffers emerged outta that Boeing 737. on disembarking the vacuum-sealed aircraft, my jeans and t-shirt immediately sucked on me like a fat leach to a gangrenous limb. This place is humid as hell, sweaty as the underside of a west African equatorial fried egg.

Kotoka airport a low slung edifice emblazoned with 1970's way-cool white neon cut out letters, the 'O' and the 'A' short of a fuse, opens its standard hollow core doors to greet me. Entering the terminal, this musty grand ma smell klaps me in the face. Fans blowing the sweat off my brow leave a salt mine behind. I'm in a Hollywood movie of the 70's, but this isn't true after I ram myself into a wall

Remnants of the African Cup of Nations tourney , when the hell that was i don't even know, hang from the blistered ceiling.

I stand in a queue, this big black guy in army kit, looking like he's gonna start a revolution stamps my ink stained passport.

I stroll across the linoleum pasted baggage area, snatch my sack and head out into new territory. Outside the terminal I emerge into the reception area, into the bowl of arrivees surrounded by the festering taxi drivers eager to bundle me into their cab and hold me for ransom.

but there I see my name on glowing billboard-fat khoki marker scratchings like fly sh*t reminiscent of my name on A4 fullscap with lines and margin, punch holes included. Its ben and he's my salvation. He takes my bags-it's all I've ever wanted

My white hairy body is perspiring heavily, 'don't worry, you'll adapt my brother'...yeah whatever. what was the white man thinking when he colonised this place.

As we make way for my lodgings im overwhelmed.

Sweat stained pits, buttoned shirts, raga music, a black and yellow taxi, the wind blowing your eyeballs dry, where every day is a beach day, flapping palm trees, soiled roads , dense green bush, long green grass that you can get lost in, and heaps of that African crafty sh*t.

-this is west Africa, this is Ghana.

scratchings from a questionably african lad

a russian bear hunter

chicken catchatorie 21.03.08

Scraping , shlurping the last bits of residue at the bottom of my chocolate milkshake, I still managed to suck up a bit of flavour at the bottom end of the summer.

Ant Ger,(his real name) and Dan Ger (his Hollywood name), made the journey outta suburbia to emmarentia dam, a public park, at night, in the rain. I think tony Maloney was scared of encountering a pack of man-eating banshees, but I chooned him to fear not, for I am the Russian bear hunter.

we went to indulge our ears with the rip rifling riffs of a sapling of the once salami purveyor family, dan patlansky. This oke, the height of a sergei bubka pole vault, and strewn with the gangly hair of krusty the clown, could wield his fender nimbly. His caloused tips extracting squeals, roars and metallic thrusts out of the catless gut. As the rain came a pouring down and patlansky played his melody, the halogen lights beamed us into sur-reality.

The 21^st March was the day the world came to Alberton-a hairy, crusty mole on the backside of f*cked up southern Africa.

My coke fest expectations were those of licking a dogs balls. Sweaty, unpleasant, and rather salty. this coke fest was none at the coffee table, credit cards and blow. This was pure unadulterated euphoria. My expectations were totally severed, a head in a jam jar.

We, that was one RoLo, Feedy and Ane in the Hay, stood in the cheap seats. The day, hot and dry. The dust forming stalactites up our nostrils. it was a spelunkers dream.

I won’t mention anything before like 4pm, because it was totally sheeite.

The first of the international bands arrived on the platform to the shrieks of teens- tonsils red and clanging.

3^rd rock from the.. uh I mean 30 seconds to Mars, a flash in the frying pan, a one hit wonder. They’re fronted by jay leno, uh I mean jared leto-a once rather respectable actor. But here he was rendering me sleepless in Alberton. The band were my sleeping pill. their syrupy, rehearsed rock made me ill at the bowels.

JL did surprise me however. Aside from his notorious yoddling he managed to turn ape man, mounting the scaffolding, and running a rampage through the hysterical crowd. For this act I gotta give him gambling coupons.
But as the crowd screamed ‘we want more.’, I responded with , ‘please not again.’

The Kaiser chiefs, the Kaiser f*ckin chiefs were an absolute cracker. They’re pure britishers, and I love them. Their eclectic form of rock/ pop rubs me up to blister. They’re so f*cking well oiled. Their beat is an eclectic ball of coloured plasticine. The Chiefs predicted a riot, but all they got was a b*tch slap across the face with an 18 inch cilbasa from the sober crowd. the spectators were Zombies in a b-grade movie. lacking lustre they were numb to the ripping riffs of a relevant band.

I didn’t need a receipt for services rendered by this band cos I wasn’t gonna ask for no refund. ai,

As my BP dropped to a lowly 80/100, I cracked open and chugged a half litre of ice cold coca cola. And as the sugary brown nectar slippy slided its way down my bone dry gullet, chris cornell and his trio of mega guitarists played the pulsating theme track to my salvation. After hearing Chris Cornell, I’m pretty sure, Jared Leto went home to his mommy with his head hung in shame and his thumb in his mouth.

Cornell, his chain saw voice and trio of guitarists are alchemists turning pure rock into musical gold. The world stopped spinning on its angled axis. It stood still and began beating a different rhythm.

Piet the hunter and his Martini managed to clothe us in stealth suits. And there we were in the golden O, the whole in the donut. It was gum boot territory but we didn’t give a rats rectum. And there we stood as our vision pixellated and we were no longer living reality. The Muse had radioed Huston and had landed.

Muse are gargantuan. They’re lightning, an epileptic fit. The kind of energy this band exudes mimicks a 7 year old high on red juice. They’re outta this world, they’re playing in a different league in a different galaxy. This rock band makes stonehenge look like a pebble. The back drop to their gig-the flashing graphic and imagery were psycho-delic, their music morphing animation. we drooled a flood. this trio of musicians sent us into a frenetic chemical eruption and blew us away splattering our senses onto the windscreen of our lives.
This gig was no archaeological dig, it was a lesson from a real school of rock.
Cry me a river

Korn, was some bone to chew on. I didn’t know until this day.

The bass, f*ck me, the bass, ripped at the apple core of my being, fragmenting my innards. The bassist slapped that guitar across the face of a back chatting teen. It was gigantic. The lead singer, dreaded and wearing at scottishers kilt, was a quart on the pint of a stage. His jeckyll and hide voice left me stunned, exposed and gaping. His eerie bag pipe blowing was a powerful exitude to a mind blowing eve.
Korn played it’s hibernating Goths like the piper of Hamlin the mesmerized rats.
They were the R50 note I found in my jeans 2 weeks after I’d rode them.

The day was long, I was ravenous-my stomach began waging war on my other organs. But the music was all the nutrition I really needed.

I believe I shoulda been born in the 60’s, to live through the great rock age, the age of real music when a guitar solo could move ones bowels to tip a richter scale and then finally end it all after Michael Jackson’s Thriller album.

That was a 12 hour session comparable with anything I saw in the Old World. It was phantasmagoric. I liked it like a lolly pop.

So I’m at my regular art class finger painting the night away. Some kid, a 14 year old tyke, is going on about his fledgling rugby football career. ‘geesus h Christ’, I belt, you train 6 days a frikking week?.’yeah he says, looking stunned at my Oscar wining reaction. ‘We’re in the gym 3 days and 3 days we’re chucking ball’. There’s dead silence-‘so how much do you bench press?’he inquisitively asks. ‘I stare blank, my brain function ceases, I look at my right arm muscle, he looks at it too. “oh, he retorts”.

Thanks for listening. the Russian bear hunter, master swordsman and 5^th member of the Fantastic 4.

Ah what id do for sunny day in the park a Frisbee and a Scratch.

go on give it scratch

granola bars 16.12.07

Do you eat a 1 kg of cadburys chocolate at once?no you eat it in small chunks. This `like a greyhound to a furry rabbit so kick started my december 'summer' vacation.

cornwall beckoned, it was number 8.0 on the list of places my blue-inherited eyeballs demanded attention. , and having clicked our heels 3 times, the great south western who flung dung us into st ives aka stevies. Cornwall was to be a journey of discovery,. It was to reveal the flesh of the peeled banana.

St ives is the size of your baby toe, hemmed on 3 sides by ocean. It's a surfers paradise they say. the only barrels I saw were filled with beer.
We crash landed in a plumbers crevice of a b&b, and the grunts and groans of Frankenstein next door left us screaming looney tunes. Stevies is an art colony painted in rich yellowed roofs, tiny slim roads, bleached houses, knobbly cobbles and golden pastries. Burrowed mid hill sits the Barbara Hepworth house-creaky wooden floors, shards of stone and blunt sculptors tools and a treasure cove of rich sculpture revealing a masterful woman.
We crisscroseed the wall, cornwall like the tartan on a hairyscotsman's kilt.
St Austell, even if it read its own biography wouldn't have known itself once the now famous Eden Project, the fragmented eye ball of a common fly, grew out of a once abandoned china clay mine. The bulbous cellular organism siddles hard up against the edge of the clay pit like the greenest of soon-to-erupt pimples. The skeletal structure vacuum packed in hexagonal ETFE air-filled cushions envelops two alien environments-a tropical equatorial sweat-in-your-shirt air bubble and another bulb which left us feeling like being crusty croutons in a cheese fondu. The project finally came to fruition after the seed was sown in the hummous of my brain. I could feel it touch it, photograph it.this magazine article didnt need recycling.
Penzance, Cornwall, was a dream, plays were scripted on it. But yes it was all a dream. Like congealed fat to a bloodied artery so was Penzance.

Me and my sweet tooth made headway for Lands End. single roads hemmed on either side, jagged edges and a plunge to your death. We were there and it was deserted. we strolled and rubbed rocks, braved the ripping winds and tea-ed at 3, bus 17 was the last bus home and we were on it, but we disembarked at Mousehole-a nostril hair of a town, but an enchanting hair indeed. She is no larger than 3 paces of my size 8 Caterpillars. Her Christmas lights pranced at sea, on shore and on hillock.

The battered fish and chips clogged my arteries but it was abuse I smiled upon.

St just had been circled with a fat koki pen, initially we weren't sure why. St just was as worn in as a pair of leather underpants, and as gray and miserable looking as a decaying corpse but she harboured a jewel, no not the bowl of oats I scoffed but landscapes rolling, mended walls, beaten foot paths, an icey breeze and old england.
My eyes journeyed, indulged themselves in all sorts and reflected an emerald landscape. Cornwall she was, Cornish but not corny.

And before an imprint of my butt cheeks on the train to London could rise to greet others, I was on a jet plane to Scandinavia.
Norway was as sweet as a freshly squeezed bee .the flight there saw me juggled around like a wee marble in a shoe box. And then one of those 'crazy-sweet-gsus-did-that-just-happen-to-me-scenarios kicked in. 'queue doodoodoo music, queue lightning and cracking thunder, queue airhostess with vodka dry martinis. This was an episode of the twilight zone and although I didn't audition, I found myself starring in a lead role-i sat aisle seat, and she window .She asked me where i was from, i mumbled Jozi, she belted Shlaap stad. She was travelling down south, shawowee so was i. next thing I'm riding back seat in a RAV 4 with 2 girls I'd just met. 2.5 hours later having carved the highways , bridges, frozen fjords and lakes of southern norway, we arrived at Statoil Petrol station. Nic, who I hadn't seen after 10 years of books id read, foot steps id taken and heaps of hair id snipped, was waiting for me. 'dude meet Tessa and Antonia'. he knew her. i was in the twilight zone, 'maestro play the closing credits.'that dvd, yea that dvd is in my classics collection.

Tvedestrand, Norway, the size of an hobbits out stretched arms, hugs the top end of a Norwegian fjord. Timber houses, a cobbled road, one pub and the most glorious holywood setting. The surrounding burch forests and idle glassy lakes are the scene for an oscar winning landscape in the category of most pristine landscape.
I aint no foody but when it comes to fish, im a grizzly to a salmon run. I endulged in the freshest of Norwegian salmon, the fleshy pink in all its form and glory on Christmas eve, on Christmas morn, the nightmare after Christmas, and the morning of our bus ride to Oslo 2days after Christmas.

I lived dangerously, it was the year of living dangerously and so i walked on ice, licked a frozen waterfall and emptied a boat stuck in ice. I met crazy norwegians, drank heaps of beer, and warmed me feet in the bathrooms.

Oslo, was a whirlwind and it rained tears. Edvard munch gallery saw me screaming at the ice Scream. Days are short and nights are long. Punk rock seemed outta place but beer has become furniture. The streets at night are for everybody, the canal walks and parks too.i found a nation that eats fish for breakfast, recycles and has a two button toilet flush system and i dug it.
And so I bid farewell to Nick and Hilda and jetted back to londinium, hello darkness my old friend..

ah so new years hatched itself like a premature birth. i landed up at this house party, kinda crashed it like ayrton senna into a wall at a 100 miles an hour. i pulled in with 4 beers, but punished 5. the year began well. and those massive pretzels were a dream munch.
Time ticked by and I bid my sweet tooth farewell. She was hurt, yog-hurt.

I finally left Europe, the Europe I so love, and having left my brain on a newly painted bench in Warwick street, Soho I flew into the middle east with sweaty palms. It was hot, i licked them dry.
Dubai is a transients non-destination, but i was destined to visit pepe p, a kid i studied with. An airbed kept me afloat in pepe p and laurens apartment. it was super high, this was no short book, it was 36 stories. i was scared to look over the balcony. my ears shut shop, but i swallowed.

Dubai defies the brains natural senses for a city. she is barry peppered with heaps of tall buildings. each one a toothpick trying to vie for a rack of teeth to please. pedestrianisation is detroyed and public space is bubble wrapped in air conditioned shopping malls. She is sprawling and densifying, she's growing upwards, longways, sideways, and often i could only say, 'no ways'. Who the hell plants a tree in the middle of the sea?, i palmed it off and said 'that aint eco-friendly'.
Pepe, a syrian and i drowned my disbelief in Tiki puka puka juice. By the end i couldnt see, that day old pizza was my saviour.

Dubai is totally westernised, her only culture is AB.the american injection has pulsed through the veins of the middle east. She is slowly stirring herself into the arabic batter. She didnt come raging into arabia with m16's, bunker bombs, hum vees and two miunute noodles. she merely strolled in with a mcdonalds double whopper in one hand, a super subway sarmy in the other and planted her flag. see , one 2 3, its that easy.

anyhoo
i came back stronger than a fired up fat man. This journey differed in many ways from my other escapades. It had mega highs, and low GIs. I was proud of the way my jeans worked hard and by the end of this uber journey they could stand up on their own.