Dave’s Logs

Planes for Dummies

Tue - 10.5.2004 by Dave·3 Comments

A few essential lessons learnt the hard way about getting on a short-distance European flight from London. Placed here for the benefit of those who might suffer from the same level of brain-cell degeneration and lack of common sense as yours truly.

Obvious Point #1 Booking the last flight of the day, out of a dead-end airport is not a good idea.
Obvious Point #2 Putting any trust in the airline claim that said airport is “within 30 minute reach of central London” is even less of a good idea.
Obvious Point #3 Not factoring in a heavy Murphy coefficient when calculating the estimated time required by the journey to the airport, is a downright asinine idea.

Anyway, you get the picture…

This is the first time I miss a plane. ever. Well, except for last year, when I misread the day on my ticket and missed my plane by a full 24 hours.

This one was the first I could actually hear taking off from my arriving shuttle bus…

Obituaries

Sat - 10.2.2004 by Dave·Comments Off

Damn, Robert Doisneau and now Richard Avedon (others too)… Bad year for photography.

Then again, neither could be said to have been cut in their primes, but it’s a loss all the same.

You know you are getting old when you start spotting familiar names in first page obituaries every other day…

Tell Godzilla I’m coming (back)…

Fri - 10.1.2004 by Dave·3 Comments

Despite my past as a nazi war criminal, my many arrests for international drug trafficking and convictions on multiple counts of felonies in more than 13 US states, the Japanese consulate just granted my new visa without so much as a personal interview.

I tell you, they really do let anybody in, these days.

今日領事館はかけた：新しいヴィザをもらいた！もうすぐ日本に返る。

Back in Gay London

Wed - 9.29.2004 by Dave·Comments Off

Just when I thought Tokyo might be an expensive choice of a city to live in, all I need to do is go back to good ole blighty to realize that 800 yens is a cheap price for a drink compared to the 10 quids you’ll have to cough up at your average semi-hip London tavern. And the worst part is not the price, it’s the sudden and sad realization that I don’t care so much about mindlessly spending in a day what I used to live on for a month less than ten years ago, in the same city.

Granted, that warehouse we occupied was mostly… “rent-optional”. and candles do not make for high utility bills…

Marseille

Mon - 9.27.2004 by Dave·3 Comments

Go South

Sat - 9.25.2004 by Dave·Comments Off

South is the way to go… good riddance Parisian clouds, Bonjour Mediterranean sun!

Getting there was something else…

Suffice it to say that, a close second behind French universities in terms of administrative bondage and institutionalized pointlessness, comes the French national railway company (SNCF).

Those who know both may start suspecting that I only do all this because I enjoy pain and suffering. Which might be true, though I’d rather it be mixed with a fair amount of sensuality, leather and eye-pleasing nakedness, certainly not inflicted by a bunch of middle aged counter zombies wearing faded green suits and stern faces. Or worse yet, involving getting whipped into submission by an army of cold faceless iron machines supposed to be spitting our tickets for a train departing exactly 4 minutes and 30 seconds later.

Please Hold the Line

Tue - 9.21.2004 by Dave·4 Comments

I am told that, were I to leave this page untouched for more than a few days, all you ritalin kids, invested with the attention span of your average lab rhesus monkey, would leave this oasis of hipness and insanely cool writing for the next happening spot in the blogosphere, expunging it from your bookmarks without ever looking back, you ungrateful sons of a jackal (I am also told that it’s bad manner to refer to your readers as the progeny of a desert carrion-eating pest, but I assume that, if you have been voluntarily subjecting yourself to my laborious grammar and approximative metaphors so far, you are of the masochistic kind, so I guess that makes it ok).