Harvey Milk was a gay rights activist and pro-small business populist politician who was murdered alongside San Francisco Mayor George Moscone at their local City Hall in 1978. He is now also the subject of a Gus Van Sant movie starring Sean Penn called Milk. Despite the usual slew of rave reviews and award nominations that are a part and parcel of productions with the financial clout to hire celebrity leads, the film is a turkey. With a running time of around two hours it is way too long and left me bored shitless. The movie is full of clunky devices, such Milk recording his life story on tape just in case he is assassinated, something he apparently did but that nonetheless comes across as completely contrived in its celluloid anti-realisation.

Listen to all your mp3s, cds, records and tapes one after the other without a break and without sleeping. This won’t work unless you have enough music to keep you up for days on end. You may eat as you listen. Sit on a toilet for 24 hours without moving and with a pillow case over your head; don’t sleep and while you’re on the john shout the word “Ling” at least 10 times a minute. You may urinate and defecate as you do this. Stand in front of a mirror, blow a raspberry. Repeat until you attain enlightenment. Take a tube train from Morden to Camden Town, and never return.

I’ve known Paul Buck for years and the other day I went to see him do a talk in which he covered his entire career as a writer, from a recent true crime book to his involvement with heavy weight French theorists back in the day. While Paul has endless tales about the innumerable highbrow chancers he has known, when we spoke after his presentation I asked him about The E… List: Notorious Prison Escapes, and specifically whether my relative Ray “The Cat” Jones had featured in it. Paul said he had covered Raymond Jones. I’ve never met Ray but he is one of my mum’s many cousins and my uncles like to talk about him.

Oh why do I get myself into these situations…. the gorgeous Jane Lewty asked if I’d contribute to a book on porn. Since Jane moved to the USA to take up an academic post there I haven’t seen much of her, and I figured if I said yes to the sex assignment it would mean we’d have to meet for a drink or three when she was back in the UK for vacations – to discuss the progress of my paper of course! However, having failed to write a word so far, I was forced to blow Jane off when she was in London for the winter solstice….

A dream with some commentary. “I travel to Berlin at the behest of my friend Mario who is something of a cultural impresario. Mario fails to meet me at the airport and I can’t get him on the phone. I call Stiletto and Kirstein and hang out with them instead. The next day I manage to meet up with Mario. He’s been on a bender and doesn’t feel like making the TV interview he’d flown me over to do happen. He says it can be postponed for a day or two. I tell him I have to return to London that night.