In the last few weeks, I've put myself on hip dating / befriending website Friendster at the invitation of someone I vaguely know. I suspect they wanted to make their numbers up – there's an uneasy element of a popularity contest.

Very odd, Friendster. You register a profile, describe yourself and your interests, upload a photo and let other people give approved Testimonials on what sort of wonderful person you are. And that really is it.

The London media adage of "any friend of yours is not necessarily a friend of mine" comes into its own here. Looking at Friends of Friends of Friends, I see lots of music industry types and proper pop stars who really should have better things to do. And some seem to be genuinely using it as a dating agency.

There's also lots of ex boyfriends and girlfriends happily extolling each other's virtues. "Here's my former lover – help yourself, they're a great catch." All very civilised. In a very hedonistic way.

I have deeply jaundiced and immensely unpopular views on Relationships, and am ashamed to admit that on hearing of Jude Law's divorce, my heart skipped a little. As if he'd be phoning me up the next day for a roll in a sandpit.

Unsurprisingly, I am rarely invited to weddings.

I'm not convinced Friendster will be more than a short-lived Internet fad as it's fairly limited (unlike LiveJournal), and the server keeps breaking down. But it IS less anonymous than LJ, which I naturally approve of. You're encouraged to be yourself rather than pretend you're a picture of a kitten.

The trouble is, all anyone wants to be is a picture of a kitten.

As an experiment, I've switched on the Screen Anonymous Comments option of this diary.

This was rather a difficult decision for me, as I firmly believe in free speech, anti-censorship, and not cutting the sound off when someone in the Big Brother house says anything vaguely interesting.

So I came up with a personal rule: I'll only censor completely anonymous comments that are unkind to my own readers. That doesn't happen very often, I know, but I want to ensure it doesn't happen at all. Everything else will go straight through, including any unkind comments on myself. Anonymous comments that sign off with a name will always be allowed, and are encouraged.

As this diary is a performance on the world stage, I'll lap up the hecklers, but am uneasy about meta-Altamonts. Throw milk cartons at me if you must, but leave my readers out of it, please. Goodness, that's the butchest thing I've said in my life. Badge-wearing Dickon Edwards Readers should be rewarded for their excellent taste and extreme physical beauty, and it's the least I can do for them. So that's why I've done it.

It's not so much <i>what</i> anonymous whelks of no woman born say. It's their anonymity per se. Anonymity is a waste of life, and has no place in the world of Dickonism, where identity is all. If you have something to say, why don't you put your name or even a nickname to it? Oh dear, I sound like John Leslie.

The only thing worse than anonymity is anonymous impersonation. I find "amusing" fake web diaries extremely unfunny, bordering on the devastatingly tragic. And that's coming from <i>me!</i> We can smell our own.

I'm referring to people pretending to be Michael Winner, or Alan Partridge, or <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=dave_rowntree">Dave From Blur</a>. Do these people <i>really</i> require impersonation anyway?

I'm mindful of that admittedly rather useful (and probably American) popular catchphrase for defining one's existence. The one with connotations of meeting St Peter at the Pearly Gates:

"So what do YOU bring to the party?"

The Impersonator: "Er… (looks at feet) someone else…"

"I see. Well, better luck with your next life. Next time, try and be yourself more. And David Dickinson less. It was quite funny at first. On second thoughts, no it wasn't."

I'm always intrigued as to which diaries on the Web come in for the most angry comments from strangers. Today, I came across a diary entry that's attracted all kinds of reactions: extreme abuse, extreme laughter, extreme revulsion, extreme sympathy, extreme suspicion of the author's veracity. Quite a feat. Warning: do not read if you are an easily-offended animal-lover, or a squeamish vegetarian:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/siamang/43717.html

Unable to sleep, unable to write, cursing the cheap pink fan I bought that only succeeds in redistributing London's hot air back into my face, even with the window open, I find myself thinking about Hobbyism. It probably doesn't help that I've also just watched the film "Adaptation", concerning as it does a writer stricken with self-doubt about his own talent, his own worth.

When strangers ask me what I Do, and they're not even a member of the Royal Family, I try to remain calm. Immediately my entire life is called into question. I am in the dock. I say I'm a writer, but my magazine pieces are very sporadic, and besides I'm just not interested, or more to the point very good at, being a Journalist. I'm more of a Book Writer, but I've never had any books published. Though that's mainly because the books are all unfinished, which doesn't help. I intend to do something about that shortly.

I sometimes say I'm a Professional Being, that I've had my photo taken by magazines in clubs for just being me, and even taken to lunch by the editorial staff of one style mag to dish out my Philosophy Of Dickonism. But it rarely results in a proper piece, because I have no Product to plug.

Well, I do: Fosca. And myself. But neither Fosca nor I have a bullying PR person, so I am effectively nothing. No one will listen to you if you don't have a PR person. Even Mr Christ was a client of Messrs Mark, Matthew, Luke and John Associates. Who also do Geri Halliwell.

As I believe Ms James of the late and strangely fashionable again Transvision Vamp put it, you are born to be sold. You just need someone to do the selling.

On top of that, it's all about PR timing as well. Articles, interviews and reviews have to be synchronised with release dates of Product. And then, if, say, the Radioheads have a new record out, everything else lesser gets cancelled or postponed. How to know your place, indeed.

It's the world where a single chart position much below #25 means Failure and being thrown off the label. All those people involved in plugging your music, most of whom you've never met and are likely to change jobs halfway through their sentences, so much money being spent without your say-so, everything depending on whether Mr Jeff Chins, 46, Head Of Music at Radio Snort, likes your singles or not. If he doesn't, you've had it. You're making music for no one but him. Which is, obviously, no way to make music. But that is the only Proper way to do it.

I tried being in that world once, with the band Orlando. The Proper Pop world in 1995 was a ruthless, masculine Britpop beast back then, too much for a fragile gossamer thing like myself. And it's clearly far, far, worse right now. When people, and this does still happen, stuff their demos into my hand and ask ME for advice on Making It in the pop world (stop laughing), I instruct them to go on one of those TV programmes and be prepared to sing some granny-pleasing old tune. Or be like The Coral, and make records that sound so completely akin to the hits of decades outworn without actually being cover versions, that it's impossible for Radio Q to NOT playlist you. People will always want the Old, but with the illusion of the New. That's a given. But what's the point?

I <i>could</i> try doing it all over again with Fosca. Hustle the right people until they give in. Stranger things have happened. One of the Headcoatees was in the NME the other week, for being in the same recording studio as Derek from the White Strokes. But my nerves couldn't take it, to be honest. And, the crucial difference this time is, I don't <i>care</i> about the Proper Music World anymore. It seems unfair to expect it to care about me.

So, the band I'm in, Creme Brulee, I mean Fosca, is PR-less. We couldn't afford one, as it is, existing as we do on earnings after the event rather than (as with Proper groups) before. Said earnings are all ploughed back into future band costs. Fosca makes a profit, but not enough of one for myself and my bandmates to do it full-time. We have to get by with jobs or benefits depending on how lucky we are. Recording dates and gigs have to be scheduled around work days. Sometimes people have to use their precious allotted holiday days for Fosca. I'm the luckiest one, surviving (just about) on benefits. The others really should nag me more, they've every right to.

Glen from Piano Magic once said to me, "The only good bands are the ones with day jobs". Where the lack of pressure to Succeed results in better music. That's a theory I don't entirely agree with, but the parable of Hear'Say is one that should be foremost in the thoughts of every contestant of Fame Academy.

I'm currently writing the rest of the third Fosca album. Which most of the Real World will never know about. Purely because Look Ma, No PR. We are a band on a tiny one-man cottage-industry indie label with no PR, no radio plugger, no tour agent, no press officer, no manager, and no millions in a marketing budget. Success is impossible, because you have to spend money to make money. We are, as far as the Real World is concerned, a Hobby Band. Hobby as opposed to Proper.

So why bother at all? If a job's worth doing it's surely worth doing Properly?

Well, as ever, it's partly the passive soul in me. We never hustle. For better or for worse. Shinkansen ask and pay Fosca to make records. Promoters invite Fosca to play concerts. At each gig we play, people buy our albums at the merchandise stall, so that helps us to do it again another day. And we get invited to play in foreign countries, which is highly recommended as an interesting way to kill time between now and the grave.

And today I had an email confirming that <a href="http://www.rockacola.com/music/artist.asp?artist_no=19100">our 2002 album, "Diary Of An Antibody" has just been released on license in Taiwan</a>. A friendly Canadian who resides over there has this to say (with apologies if they're reading this):

<i>They have done a fantastic packaging job. You might also be pleased to note that, although I live in a fairly small town in Taiwan (there are a grand total of 4 record stores in my entire city), there were no less than 5 copies of "Diary" prominantly displayed on the front rack of my small local store… There were also 5 imported copies of the original Shinkansen26 "On Earth To Make The Numbers Up" in the section next to 5 more "Diary" CDs. I was absolutely floored (I never found your CDs this easily in Canada, for pity sake!).</i>

So it's possible Fosca could be Big In Taiwan. Or at least, Vaguely Visible In Taiwan. We were invited to play a festival over there recently, but had to turn it down due to a big disease with a little name. As Mr Prince once put it. But it's likely we'll go there soon. And that, too, helps with the Justification of Fosca.

Also, I'm pleased about Fosca existing at all. Everything we've recorded, as the saying goes, brings something new to the party. At least, in my head. I'm immensely proud of "Storytelling Johnny" and "Rude Esperanto" in particular. If I hadn't written those songs, I'd be impossibly envious of the person who had.

I can't deny I'd like to be on the PR Radar a bit more than I am. But that's really for me as Dickon Edwards. Forcing Fosca on the current UK music scene seems harder than ever. With no PR and no desire to hustle, it's pretty much impossible. It's no good just making The Greatest Album Of The Year. You have to hire someone to tell people this fact as well. And then get the "buzz" going. With the right "angle". And so on. I used to believe in All That. Now I just find it boring and would much rather listen to The Supremes or The Smiths or Galaxie 500 for the 738th time. The Darknesses? The YeahNo YeahNo YeahNos? Well, I suppose they're All Right. If you like that sort of thing. Guitars, drums, heigh-ho. If you insist. If you say so. Can I go now? I'm nearly 32 and there's still so much I have to say, and have to do.

But enthuse about Richard Marsh's "The Beetle", or the new Alan Bennett play, and I will sit up and take notice.

So it's just as well I'm happy with Fosca's part-time, no-pressure little world. It's just as well that the current music scene has less interest for me than ever before, especially if the feeling is mutual. One thing's for certain about the new Fosca album. It won't sound like anything else around right now. Purely because, I haven't <i>listened</i> to anything else around right now.

The only CD I've bought this year, aside from the Hidden Cameras, is <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0563494352/qid=1059798068/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_3_5/026-8463195-2166843">"Ladies Of Letters"</a>. Patricia Routledge, Prunella Scales. Marvellous.

I've just found a batch of CD singles and promo singles by my old group, Orlando.

No idea if anyone wants them. So I've put them all up on eBay, at 99p each.

Any unsold copies will go straight into the crusher the second the auction ends.

I've just realised that a search for "Orlando" on eBay results in a multitude of items connected with some actor or other. So here's the link to my auctions.

Currently fearful of the forthcoming film, "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen". Or, "LXG" as the poster people like to annoyingly call it.

I’m an admirer of Mr Moore and Mr O’Neill’s comic, and indeed am currently digesting an excellent book about the comic, called <a href="http://www.monkeybrainbooks.com/Heroes_and_Monsters.html">"Heroes & Monsters"</a>. The comic, set as it is in an 1890s alternative universe where everything fictional is real, is full of references to Victorian literature, some of them so obscure that it takes this secondary work to collate them all.

For instance, this is what "Heroes and Monsters says" about one panel in LoEG Vol 2:

<img align=left src="http://www.thefourthrail.com/images/features/0902/loeg3panel2.jpg"></img>

"The giant beetle in the vacuum tube is the Beetle, from Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897). In that novel, a shapechanging Egyptian princess, who can take the form of a giant, malign beetle, a beautiful androgyne, and an old woman or man, pursues a vendetta against a British M.P."

<p><p><p>So naturally, I had to track down that novel, with much thanks to Mr Amazon zShops.

The film version doesn't bode at all well. Not least because Eddie Izzard actually turned it down. Which must mean it's not as good as "The Avengers". Gulp!

Something that particularly vexes me is the inclusion of Dorian Gray, which is fair enough, but they've clearly tampered with the whole point of Mr Wilde's character. In the book, Mr Gray is blond and clean-shaven, a perpetually boyish Adonis.

So what do you reckon, Dear Reader? Will Hollywood be faithful to this description? Will they refrain from just sticking poor Mr Stuart "Queen Of The Turkeys" Townsend in a silly dark wig and goatee, in the hope cinekids won't notice it's not Johnny Depp?

<img src="http://images.zap2it.com/ltvimages/images/240/stuarttownsend_leagueofextraordinarygentlemen_240_001.jpg"></img>

No.

Tonight on "Big Brother's Little Brother", Dermot O'Leary used the VERY American phrase "you do the math" entirely seriously. It's MATHS over here, Mr O'L. Plural.

So I can only assume that particular catchphrase has officially entered UK English now. Along with "whatever", "go figure", "sophomore", "DUH!", and generally ending every sentence with that most infectious of bugbears among the UK young, Australian Querulous Intonation. The revenge of the convicts!

Please note, if your own accent, eg Australian or Liverpudlian, comes with its own built-in AQI, this is entirely fair enough. But I am referring to those with Southern England accents, whose newly-acquired AQI sets my teeth on edge.

As if every statement is a question?

As if the listener is an idiot?

As if they're not listening?

And it's even worse when they add "yeah", yeah?

"I'm just going out for minute, yeah?". YES! We ARE listening to you, honest!

Something that I think is of UK origin, but equally gets my goat, is people starting their retorts with the curious word "YeahNo". Make up your mind!

"YeahNo, like, as if, whatever, gutted, you do the math, DUH, go figure, yeah?".

This, then, is how all young people speak.

Well, an awful lot of them, anyway. The louder ones.

Am I going to succumb? As if.

Just don't get me started on "basically".

As I suspected, what should have been a celebration of Adam Ant couldn't resist upping the ghoulish ante. We KNOW he's got mental problems, so why not focus more on why he's famous in the first place, for the benefit of those unlucky enough to be under 30?

It featured Mr Morley and Adam's friends commenting on how sad it was that the media have concentrated more on his mental illness in a zoo-animal fashion, rather than on his work and place in cultural history.

This was a point made in a documentary that, er, concentrated more on his mental illness in a zoo-animal fashion, rather than on his work and place in cultural history.

How TV Works, Part 374.

Having said that, the non lets-look-at-the-loony parts and all the archive footage was marvellous. People need to be reminded of a time when anyone vaguely unusual and interesting like the exotic and beautiful Mr Ant was even ALLOWED to get anywhere near the charts, let alone constantly top them.

It was gratifying to see any vaguely serious documentary about him at all, away from the I Love Nostalgia clipfests. Perhaps this heralds a new trend of covering classics of British music properly? I'd love to see a decent doc on Edwyn Collins and Orange Juice, but I'd rather it didn't take Edwyn throwing a piece of a car through a Kentish Town pub window for it to get made.

For some reason, the narrator was Justine Frischmann from Elastica. Whose speaking voice has curiously become a lot posher since the Britpop days. When I say "become", I mean "reverted", of course. Actually, so has Damon Albarn's. In the recent film "Live Forever", archive interviews of him sounding like Ray Winstone are juxtaposed with recent footage of him sounding like Brian Sewell. I think this is in fact a good thing: once you hit 30, you stop trying to bevel down the edges of yourself in order to reach some mythical common ground of fitting in, and polish up who you really are, so if the world loves you, or doesn't love you, either way, it's for the right reasons.

Unless you are Neil Morrissey and Leslie Ash, who are unctuous ingratiation personified. The Adam Ant doc's ad breaks featured Neil Morrissey and Leslie Ash going to Homebase. At the end of which, I doubt there was a viewer who DIDN'T feel like going out and throwing something through a window, whatever their previous mental history.

By way of a curious parallel, the edition of Big Brother that followed began with the housemates dressed in operatic costumes, just like something out of an Adam Ant video. And then ended disturbingly with one of the housemates displaying violent psychotic tendencies for our viewing pleasure.

I was reminded of various parties of my teenage years, where, after sufficient alcohol was consumed by all, some boys thought it was extremely funny to grab girls and drag them along floors and down stairs and so forth. I usually left the party fairly quickly at that point. Ray from BB has done this on more than one occasion now. He's not a teenage boy. He's a fully grown man. The producers gave him a thorough talking-to afterwards, and all is apparently now forgiven. But I feel very uneasy about the man and would not want him to marry into my family.

I think, in my case, I've always been frightened of drunken men physically manhandling others out of "fun". In what way is it even vaguely amusing?

I feel terrible: headaches, dizziness, nausea, insomnia. Almost definitely connected to the heat: London is a stifling 29C today. It's just as well I'm not obliged to go anywhere on a bus or tube train, as I honestly think I'd pass out or be sick, or both.

My father suffers from extreme, paralysing migraines, which often get brought on in hot weather. So far I've appeared not to inherit them. But I've never reacted to hot weather <i>this</i> badly before, and am worried this is the start of that particular gene finally manifesting itself. I sincerely hope not.

So I've had to back out of attending an audience recording of "Little Britain", much to my chagrin. Initial reports from the front are excellent. Messrs Walliams and Lucas have their own style of grotesque character-based sketch humour coupled with a style of surreal wordplay that really doesn't exist anywhere else. And where else can you find Molly Sugden, Tom Baker, Giles from Buffy and Tim from Orlando in the same TV programme? A DVD is already being planned, and needless to add I'll be placing an advance order.

Still, I've been getting some Undone Things done. I've finally put a huge pile of dusty old music papers out for the weekly recycling van. Leafing through them was interesting: front covers for Heavy Stereo, Terris, Ultrasound and Three Colours Red. Much good did it do them.

Thoughts on the upcoming Adam Ant documentary. Tragic, After They Were Famous stories being good TV. Rod Hull, Gazza, and now Mr Ant. Nothing succeeds like success being "paid for" in Faustian terms. Schadenfreude is such an English quality for such a German word.

As promised, here's that photo by the American artist Sarah Watson of The Author In His Environment, as featured on a wall in St Martin's. Imagine it's flanked by similar images of London Men In Their Spaces, including Momus in a library and Dave Blur in his animation studio.

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/DICKONphoto.jpg"></img>

<img align=left alt="an Alaskan Moose, yesterday" src="http://www.alaskawebs.com/adsa/thumbnails/moose.JPG"></img>In an attempt to discipline myself and get The Undone Things in my life done, I have decided to ban myself from going out to any clubs or gigs or social gatherings for the time being. Or even going outside of Highgate. I hope people are understanding and, as ever, Don't Take It Personally. Which is fast becoming my catchphrase.

If I had the money, I'd do what Proper Writers do, ie lock myself in a shed or hotel room, or jet off to some foreign clime. Nothing hot, of course. Perhaps Alaska. Somewhere with moose. There, I'd rent a cottage away from urban distractions, refusing to come out until the Undone Things are well and truly done. So right now, I'd like to be treated as if I were in Alaska, and not Highgate. Hmm, I appear to have "Caroline Says" in my head.

In fact, Highgate is one of those odd parts of London that can FEEL quite remote. It's not so difficult. Not if you pretend the tube station and busy Archway Road (aka the A1) aren't there. Not if you concentrate on the crumbling gothic side-streets, labyrinthine leafy lanes, woods and parks and people getting lost on the way to the Cemetery (what else is Life?). And the slightly scary nocturnal yelps of the local urban fox could, in a sense, be moose-ish. In a completely untrue sense.

I've been treating this room too often as a Dressing Room in which I prepare for Going Out, and then a Rehab Clinic in which I recover afterwards. Nothing wrong with that, but all I've done recently, rather than doing the Undone Things, is just worry about the fact I still haven't done them yet. There's also the problem of when going out, people will ask you what you're up to. Next time I do go out, I'd like to say I've actually DONE the things I'm "currently working on" this time. As it is, I haven't been enjoying myself much at clubs and gigs of late purely because I know I'm avoiding getting on with the Undone Things.

My principal Undone Things are commissioned writing. Writing words and music for Bid / Scarlet's Well and Fosca, words for Smoke Magazine, and words for something else (non-musical) that I don't want to tell anyone about yet.

The other large Undone Thing is the clearing out of my surplus possessions, so being in the moose-bothering cottage in Alaska wouldn't help that anyway. It's an ongoing process, but I really don't want it to be ongoing much longer. I won't offer them on the web this time. Albums are a bit cumbersome to deal with in terms of picking up or mailing. Not when there's an awful lot of them. So despite my previous misgivings, it's off to MVE with everything that I can't put on eBay. Perhaps the staff will let me go out of the shop and wander around Notting Hill while they check the vinyl condition: that's the part I can't stand. The branch in Camden has a bearded man who kills my kind for our soft pelts, so I can't go in there any more.

I seem to have an awful lot of Ian Levine hi-NRG 12"s and compilations. Miguel Brown's "So Many Men, So Little Time". That sort of thing. Is that even worth taking to MVE? I recall buying them all for about 10p each in a MVE bargain basement as it is. Taking them back there seems the height of sarcasm. Or tautology. Tautology & Sarcasm – the OMD album title that never was.

One of Mr Levine's Record Shack compilations is a mispressing, amusingly, and instead features some version of "All By Myself" by an unspecified male ballad artist.