Darlings, it's been half a year. Okay, so I say 'Darlings' as though there's more than one of you. I should say 'Darling', but that would imply that there's one of you. Which there isn't. Basically this is me talking to me. But I am a darling. So, Darling, welcome back! Mwah mwah.

So technically I remain a graduate student since I haven't yet locked down that little detail called a PhD. But .... (drumroll).... I - have - a - ****FUCKING**** - job. Not actually a fucking job, which technically I could have had at any time, and from which I would have clearly made several million. No, it's a FUUUUCCCKKING job. Yay me. In the current British academic environment, this is cause for celebration indeed. And it's not luck: nothing to do with it. No, it's all down to talent. And hard work. And sheer graft. And raw brilliance. And let's just not mention that first born roasted and fed to Robert Winston, ok?

Anyway, this blog is not about me, but about my fantasy greed. So here is what I'm having for new year:


No! Not Angela's milky lady parts! And she's already got a pearl necklace perverts, so sit the fuck down!
I'm talking about the German language. That's right, the language of the gods of perforated ear-drums and off-kilter eroticism. So let me admit straight off: nothing turns me on like an umlaut, unless it's ein scharfes S. Oh yes: ein scharfes S. Now change your knickers.
I really can't be bothered with learning languages. It's not laziness, just the wrong kind of brain. I try, I do, I do, I do, but I never get past the point of thinking that it is sufficient to say `Sprechen Sie Engelisch'. Which makes teaching German at Oxbridge a bit of a challenge. I'm kidding! It's Harvard. Gotcha!

What I want is to wake up on Christmas day fluent in German. If I was really rich, this could be quite easily achieved by bailing out the Euro on condition that all Germans spoke English but called it German. Sponsors, do form an orderly queue.

Psssscht.

Ok, so let me just throw up some scenarios:

1. You're drunk or high or just having a common-or-garden manic episode, and you're at a party, and your mouth is opening and closing and words are streaming out, words which form sentences like: 'My dad is so hot' or 'And then we spent two hours trying to hook the condom out' or 'There's nothing like the feel of hot jam on bare skin'. And you want, more than anything, to SHUT THE FUCK UP, but there's a beast inside you more powerful than the fear of mere humilation and ostracisation, and it's only when you finally catch yourself saying 'Two girls one cup: haven't you always been curious?' that you summon up the strength to bite off your own tongue and spit in the punch.

2. Your friend is drunk or high or just having a common-or-garden manic episode, and you're at a party and she is saying all of the above things, and you watch the horror spread across her face, and she's begging you with her eyes: Stop me! Stop me! Kill me now!

3. The person sitting next to you is on his eighth consecutive attempt to explain the power and spirituality of the Lost finalé, and you are this close to slapping him through the face and screaming: 'Everybody's dead = biggest fucking loser cop-out with the possible exception of It Was All A Dream, so get over it you GNOME!'.

4. You've just made it to the front of the queue at the bank, when the guy behind you says, 'I'm sorry, I'm in a huge rush and I just have to make a quick cash deposit'. And because you're a nice guy, and don't think thirty seconds is worth getting upset about, you go 'Sure, be my guest'. After which he dumps a shoebox of pennies onto the counter, and quips: 'I have no idea how much is here, but I've been saving them up for a year!'.

If you recognise any of these scenarios, here is the answer:

This, my friends, is a tranquiliser gun. All you need is a good, fleshy site, either in the leg or arm of your own body or that of a friend/stranger, and all your problems will be over for 45 minutes to an hour. You wouldn't even need to turn your head. Someone getting up your ire in the next seat? Don't even put that magazine down! Just reach into your coat, pull out your Little Helper, and psssscht ... naptime, mofo. Kid having a tantrum in the middle of the movie? No need to stop eating that delicious popcorn! Just slide Little Helper out of your garter belt, and psssscht ... naptime, mofo. Can't believe that you're mumbling drunk and coming onto your supervisor by unsuccessfully attempting to eat a pork pie suggestively while his wife watches on? Take aim at your own thigh, and psssscht ... naptime, mofo.

Extensive research (aka Google) tells me that an essential social tool like this one goes for around $500. I presume you can't just buy one on the internet without a license or something, which is sad, because I know my life is vastly impoverished without one.

A Crazy in Love

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I wasn't born the playboy son of a possibly crazy, certainly eccentric, but always interesting sunglasses-loving dictator / beloved leader of an oil rich North African country. It isn't my biggest regret - that prize belongs to the time I was this close to achieving level 15 Cleric (a.k.a Ladymagnet) in an extended game of D & D that began when I was eleven and ended when I started shaving, but it's a close second.

If I had been the son of a self-titled King of Forever and Master of Your Every Breath, I might have been named Titus, or Gaius, or Diophantus; basically any name of a classical commander would do, the effect being to throw into sharp relief the extent to which my louche and wanton lifestyle rendered me a flabby milquetoast with a fat wallet. Oh yes. I went there.

And had I been born Titgaphantus, I could have thrown a super big party this New Year for all my rent-a-friends, and this QUEEN would have been the headline act. Yes, ladies and gentleman, I want Ms. Beyoncé-Z, nee Knowles, to play a private gig for me.

I don't know why I like Beyoncé so much. It may have something to do with the fact that her songs rock so hard that I break into a contact dance-sweat from merely imagining an opening bar. And something to with the fact that she is foxy as a foxilicious foxaholic doing the foxtrot in foxytown. But also, I have the no doubt proto-stalkerish impression that we could be besties. She would be like, `Greedy, let's you and me hit the town and grab some drinks. That backup dancer is working on my last nerve, and I need to kick back and get my crunk on.' And I'd be like, 'Mmmm girl, you know it', and I'd teach her to do gin shots without crying, and she'd teach me to gyrate my behind like an electric fan, and her bouncer would hold me down when Single Ladies comes on so I don't drunkenly drop-it-like-it's-hot in front of two hundred people and spend the rest of the month wearing the hot flush of a shameover that will not die. Not that that ever happened, and yeah, before you ask, obviously Photoshopped. Shut-up.

So, this New Year, Beyoncé, appearing live at my place. After the stage, sound equipment, dancers, costume rails, dressing room and lighting rig have all been squeezed in, I reckon I can invite just one friend. First come, first serve, and let's go dutch on the $2million appearance fee, mkay? Also, you bring the 'Juicy Baked Chicken: Legs, Wings & Breast only, with fresh garlic, season salt, black pepper, and Cayenne pepper HEAVILY SEASONED!!' and I'll bring the gin.

Finally, here is her latest video which is perfection.

Start Spreading the Word

The last time I went to New York was on Boxing Day 2000, which, just in case anyone thinks I spent the 90s living mid-Atlantically rather than subsisting in my darkened bedroom indulging in light cutting and the fantasy that Alanis Morrisette knew my soul, was also the first time I went to New York. I had a pretty good time, not least of all because I was staying at the amazing and, at least then, newly refurbished (by Ian Schrager and Philippe Starck) Hudson Hotel.

I somewhat hazily recollect seeing some of the sights - MoMA, the Algonquin, Central Station, the Guggenheim, etc. - but the memory of that hotel overwhelms all the others. Perhaps this had to do with the fact that New York experienced the blizzard to end all blizzards that week, and so I was a kept inside a lot of the time (it was also my introduction to the endless hilarity that is American news: Stormwatch 2000! Snowmageddon!! Blizpocalypse!!!). Perhaps it was because one morning while lounging around the foyer trying to look fascinating while getting cappucino froth all down my chin, Goldie Hawn walked by in sunglasses and a fur bolero and fucking smiled at me. But probably it had everything to do with the fact that the Hudson Hotel provides a cornucopia of visual delights. Like this:

The acid yellow escalator of my dreams. I rode the shit out of that thing. And when you step off it? Romantic, whimsical fantasy land, combining the bygone glamour of luxury cruise ship travel with the ultra-modern. Maybe this is what first-class spaceships will look like?

So what I want today is to go back to the Hudson, and maybe also back to that little holiday in 2000. I had just turned twenty-one, and I went to New York alone. I had earned the money that took me there by myself, and I spent every evening by myself, eating in small restaurants when it wasn't snowing, very happily eavesdropping on New Yorkers discussing the countless pharmaceuticals on which they survived, then getting drunk at the bar, smoking (them was the days) and boring the barmen. Something about the futuristic, Blade-Runneresque design made my isolation acute, and I enjoyed it. I felt very grown up and pretty brave for a boy who grew up in a place so rural that we vacationed in God's armpit. And after three days, when the storm cleared and I had explored every corner of the hotel (including the über-masculine library and billiard room), I went out into a snow-covered Central Park domed in azure, and it was more beautiful than I could have imagined.

But, if you can't afford a time machine, a week in the penthouse would do very nicely:

Hudson Hotel, 356 West 58th Street. Single rooms from $175 per night. I couldn't get rates on the Penthouse, but Gridskipper estimates a piddling sum somewhere between $13k and $16k per night. Pocket change, no?

Dude Looks Like a Lady

I've always liked clothes that are androgynous; the trouble is, sometimes I mistake androgyny for plain old ladies' wear. Hence that time I went to a Patrick Wolf concert in gold lamé meggings and a rubber tank top. Ok, that's a lie. It was ZZ Top. I'm not cool enough for Patrick. Sigh.

Anyway, this right here is what I'm talking about!

It's a fucking romper, people! In shiny, shiny fabric, with breathtakingly angled shoulders. The sandals suck - surely this nightmare ought to be over by now, rather than infecting the feet of unsuspecting adonises (adoni?), no? And I am just never going to get with short trouser legs - which is not to say I don't own short trousers, because I do, because I spent years in the wilderness and had no friends and regularly ate cake batter for lunch and made bears out of belly button fluff.

But the part above the waist - I plotzed. It's from the General Idea by Bumsuk SS10 NYFW show, and there are other pictures where it's clear that the fabric has a broad, indented check, which I love also. I just spent half and hour fantasising about all the fabulous places I would wear this - 1. the library, 2. the graduate centre, 3. the library. Oh yeah. That bitch in Linguistics rocking her Annie Hall won't even know what hit her. BOOM.

Check out General Idea here, but be warned - the site will hurt you. This little number, or the nearest thing to it, costs like 400,000 Korean Won, which is £240, or two week's rent, to me.

And here's a little Aerosmith:

Ok, Consumerism, You Win.

So I'm not really into material things, which is lucky, because I'm fucking poor. But every now and again, I come across objects that are weird or amazing or amazingly weird or weirdly amazing (aren't you glad I picked just two adjectives), and I salivate like a rabid husky and think about knocking over old ladies for fast cash. Well, not really. I salivate more like a rabid chipmunk, because those are just the features I was born with, ok?

I'm a graduate student currently in penury, and, because the economy went the way of my childhood guppies (they exploded, but that's for another day), I'm likely to remain in penury until things get so bad that we start exchanging empty wine bottles for produce and I become the richest man on the planet. So I decided to blog about the things that get me wantsy. Maybe it's therapy. Maybe it's a comment on consumerism. Or maybe I just really hope people start sending me things. If you're both rich and generous (ha ha ha ha ha, I know right!!), you could start by commissioning Miu Miu to get their fucking act together and make these lovely-to-the-power-of-mental collars for those of us fashion-crippled by that pesky Y chromosome.

Yeah, that's right Keira; not even all that pancake can disguise your evident smugness at having got one over on me. You win the battle, lady...

So the collars come in a number of prints, including little sparrows and squiggly cats. But the naked ladies collar, as sported by nemesis over here, is obviously the big win. Some people have posted make-your-own tutorials, but I don't recommend it. First, it will look like shit, unless you are actually brilliant. Second, I will laugh at you, unless you are actually brilliant. Third, you are not actually brilliant.

I don't even know how I would wear such a collar; I'd probably just start cutting the collars off of all my favourite shirts. Which means that when I got over it, I'd be stuck with a lot of gross shirts with collars (I'm looking at you 2002, River Island loving version of me) and a lot of great shirts rendered utterly unwearable. So maybe poverty is my friend after all.