(i'm not doing something 'exciting' and 'cool' with the num6er six 6y the way; a letter on the key6oard of my laptop has stopped working.)

thank you to everyone who came to this thing tonight.

i had a really good time.

everything was okay.

everything was 6etter than okay.

if you came: thank you for coming. thank you, thank you. if you didn't come, 6ut may6e almost came, 6ut something happened: please come to the next one.

i filmed it. i'm going to make a short film and post it on here later in the week.

i don't think i'm going to film any of the other ones.

the sound of the camera turning off was loud and distracting.

i'm listening to 'Stay Positive' 6y The Hold Steady.

if i was going to write an al6um review of it, it would just 6e something like: "okay then: *****"

each time it finishes i feel a small moment of panic 6efore i can press the play 6utton again.

i had a really nice time this evening.

the reading night is tonight

it's the opening night of THIS tonight.

please come if you live in manchester. 8pm. _asment _ar, Trof, Deaf Institute.

(i just found out that a key on my laptop has stopped working -- the key to the right of V on the key_oard. i don't know what to do. it seems like something to panic a_out a _it, may_e, _ut i think i'm going to save panicking a_out it until after tonight.)

the hold steady - hot fries

does anyone have an mp3 of the song 'hot fries' by the hold steady?

i've entered the search 'hot fries hold steady mp3' into google maybe once a week for the last year or so. there's just one broken link and pages with the lyrics.

i remember it was available for download from their myspace page about a year ago, but it was at a time when i didn't have my own computer to download it onto. then it disappeared.

i will paypal american dollars or english pounds or post you something or whatever you want in return for you emailing me this mp3.

here is a video of them playing it live:






**update**

wow. someone emailed it to me. thank you. i didn't think anyone would actually email it to me. i feel like my faith in the human race has been restored. that sounds sarcastic, but i'm being honest. i'm listening to it right now for the third time. if anyone wants me to email them the mp3, i will happily do so. i think i'm going to turn my gmail 'signature' to an attachment of 'hot fries'. i feel indebted and excited. thank you, thank you.

Sombrero Fallout

i just re-read Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan. i'm writing a short thing about Richard Brautigan for the next Transmission.

"I hate you!" a seventy-one-year-old woman shouted at a total stranger, somebody she had never seen before in her life, and then she punched the person, who was an elderly man, right in the balls. He dropped like a stone to the street but was able to open the package he was carrying and take out a lemon cream pie that he had just purchased at the bakery and shove it into the old woman's knee.

"Pervert!" she shouted down at him as he lay there grinding the pie into her knee.

(which is another way of saying: i don't know what to write on here. i feel confused right now by the idea of 'maintaining a blog'. i feel like i have nothing to say, except 'i like Richard Brautigan' and 'i have things forthcoming, that i will link to on here, when they are either online or in a magazine or whatever.' this will change, probably. tomorrow, maybe, i will write a long, involved account of going to the supermarket, or a bad poem, or something.)

out of office auto-reply:

i'm away for about five days.

i saw a film called 'A Complete History of my Sexual Failures' at the Cornerhouse which i'd highly recommend.

best regards,

Chris Killen

these things came in the post at the weekend:

KGB review

a while ago, Lee Rourke asked me if i'd write a review of the KGB reading i went to in New York.

here it is.

i originally wrote more, not about the reading, but edited it out. now it just reads like a 'straight' review.

the photos went well yesterday. my gigantic hair managed to blend into the background somehow.

Brandon wrote a really good thing here about haircare.

reading night now booked + etc.

people from Manchester, please write "go to the new Trof off Oxford Road (basement bar) at 8pm" legibly in your diaries in the space for Tuesday 29th of June. i don't know how you'd do the link bit. improvise. but that's the date and venue for the reading night i'm helping organise, anyway. it now has a facebook group, a myspace page, and a blog, although there's not much on any of them yet. but if you use facebook or myspace, please join/friend us and we will keep you reminded. we have some good stuff already penciled in for the first night. hopefully it's going to be monthly. more info TBA.

i have to give the miniature keyboard back to its owner. i've been going on a 'miniature keyboard eBay bidding frenzy' over the last few days, and being repeatedly out-pipped. but tonight i won this type of miniature keyboard. i'm excited.

i listened to the Catching The Big Fish David Lynch audio book last night. thanks, Duncan. it made me want to try transcendental meditation. i can't afford transcendental meditation, so i treated it like i was teaching myself how to use a dodgy computer program without a manual, and looked it up on the internet. i found an appropriate mantra here and then sat on the sofa and tried to 'transcend' for about twenty minutes. i kept seeing horrible things. i don't think that's supposed to happen.

i'm going to London tomorrow to have publicity and book jacket photos taken. i feel apprehensive. i have very big hair and a strange facial expression most of the time these days, and i don't want to inflict those on anyone. it's too late to cancel or reschedule. i think i want to wear a printed out picture of someone else's face. if you email me a full-size photo of your face before 9am (UK time) tomorrow, i'll see if they might let me use your face selotaped onto my face for the photos. (probably not.)

also, there's a kind of short review of Paul Simon and a bit about the reading night on the Transmission blog.

my business cards arrived

[click photos for larger view]


[they were very cheap. they say something like 'get free business cards from Vistaprint.co.uk' on the other side]

internet writing 'article'

there is an 'article' about blogs now up on the canongate website. i put 'article' in inverted commas, because i was lazy and just asked some people to write descriptions of their own blogs and writing. the people listed won't be much of a surprise if you've already clicked on the names listed on here on the right, but maybe it might be kind of interesting to read those people describing their own writing.

manchester blogs and other links:

the manchizzle

mancubist

paint my album

i made a music video for a hefner song

watch it here.

gmail chat with Paul Simon

watch it here.

**update: someone gave it one star. **

Paul Simon

Paul Simon gets home and looks at the internet in the dark. Oh dear. There is nothing going on on the internet. Paul Simon says, 'Fuck Britain,' quietly to himself in his head and then makes a troubled, grinning face and goes into his gigantic kitchen and turns a light on and makes a special drink in his smoothie maker. He looks out the window at the worried black nighttime.

What is outside, Paul Simon?

Cats.
Wayward youths.
Gentle useless trees.
Jane Fonda.

Paul Simon thinks about Jane Fonda for a while. Oh god. He is pressing the button on his smoothie machine. Paul Simon is making a grape and dandelion and watercress smoothie. Paul Simon is making the smoothie and pouring it into a glass and taking a sip and thinking, 'Fuck all things good and true,' and then walking back into his gigantic living room with his laptop in it. The laptop is winking in the dark. Paul Simon turns the light on.

Paul Simon is still thinking about Jane Fonda.

'Jane Fonda is probably asleep,' Paul Simon thinks.

Paul Simon opens Windows Media Player and listens to Fidelity Wars by Hefner, instead of attempting an awkward phonecall to Jane Fonda.

'This is like my life,' Paul Simon thinks, occasionally, whilst sipping his smoothie and listening to Hefner.

Nothing is going on.
No one is making any money.
The nineteen eighties have been and gone.
The nineteen nineties have avoided you like a person at a party who is hyper-aware of your desperation and awkwardness.
CD sales have lost out to internet downloads.
Love is a doomed and ridiculous abstraction.
Darran Hayman, the singer of Hefner, is accidentally enumerating the catalogue of failures in your life.

'I want to destroy every album I've ever released,' Paul Simon thinks.

'This is an especially good one,' Paul Simon thinks. (He is listening to the re-issue of Fidelity Wars, to the song 'The Hymn For The Things We Didn't Do', which is a bonus track.) 'This one has nailed something.'

Paul Simon dips his index finger into his grape and dandelion and watercress smoothie and makes a little cross on his forehead with it.

'Jesus strike me down, if you exist,' Paul Simon says out loud. 'I am a non believer.'

Paul Simon sits in his gigantic living room, waiting for Jesus to strike him down, or for something new to happen on the internet. Outside, the night shuffles around like a senile old woman, and Darren Hayman is asleep in England, maybe, and Jane Fonda is asleep somewhere else, and nothing is going on, maybe, maybe, maybe.