Thirteen things I should have blogged about in June but didn't

The Stone Roses reunion and how I was convinced it would never happen.

Pendulum have split. Skrillex has been riffing on Miles Davis with The Doors. Is Justin Biebpipe now the future of dirty-bass dubstep?

How best to avoid tax if you're a pop star - without having to pay those stiff-shirted accountants. Mattresses are go!

Are Muse still alive? Yes, the news says they are: look, there they are competing with Usain Bolt in the Olympics. But are they really, or are they zombies as we all suspected?

Now they are no more, how to make your own Swedish House Mafia track using the contents of your dishwasher and a hammer.

The latest Squarepusher (pictured) album.

Radio 1 playing hip hop in Hackney. Whatever next? Radio 4 having some actual comedy? Humus not having all that extra crap like peppers in? JEEZ.

Maroon 5 finally get a UK number one single after eight years of trying. Why *this* is the day that music died.

Pop is dead. CDs are dead. Rock is dead. Noise is dead. Dead is dead. This sentence is dead.

Does 'bon' really mean 'good'? Really? I ask Bon Jovi, Bon Iver, Simon Le Bon, Bono and Boney M. And when I say "ask", I mean "leave rambling, drunken messages on the answerphones of".

The latest Clark (not pictured) album.

Why I should have gone to see NKOTBSB and how I think they should have got together with PSB and LMFAO and played YMCA.

A review of the UK number one singles so far this year a.k.a. me weeping into the tortured carcass of a buffalo looking for meaning in a once-great culture and only finding deflating stomach gas.

A whirlwind of collaboration: the 3hundredand65 story tweets

I've been turned into art. I am Damien Hirst's pickled shark. I am Damien Hirst's bling skull. I am Damien Hirst's Last Supper (he may not have done that one).

There's a thing called 3Hundredand65 where an illustrated story is told in a year's worth of tweets. We all get to do a day: in my case, I tweeted fifty days in where I stripped the protagonist of his clothes and covered him in tea. No doubt the 364 other authors may take the story in a different direction.

And what authors. My comrades-in-365dom include Chris Addison, Ian Rankin, Stephen Fry, Bill Bailey, Irvine Welsh, Jonathan Ross, Neil Gaiman, Tim Burgess, Clint Boon, and many many more. Oh and plenty of unknowns like me too.

I found it a strange experience because I'm very picky about my writing and who I work with. So for example, in my tweet I killed off a whirlwind that was annoying me only to have a whirlwind return in today's tweet. And you find yourself compromising with other people's writing styles... well, not compromising... collaborating.

Having your tweet turned into an illustration by the immensely talented Dave Kirkwood (an abstract of which is included in the above picture) is another level of powerlessness you get with true collaboration. Sometimes that leads to tweeters trying to lead the illustrator on with their tweets - as I did. 'I'd like this, this and this in my illustration, please!'. This whole project is fun, liberating and surprising.

If all that wasn't enough, you can now find me on 'Collaborate', a limited edition print featuring all the authors from the first three months of the project. My name is listed, and if you're wondering which is my speech bubble, it's the good looking one. There'll be a meet-up in a Manchester pub next weekend too, where no doubt the print will be on sale. (Edit: here's the poster about that.)

3hundredand65 is raising money for the Teenage Cancer Trust, who provide specialist services to young people diagnosed with cancer. The project is all about raising a profile, so if you're vaguely in the orbit of the planet "celebrity" and you haven't signed up yet, get in contact with 3hundredand65 and become one of the tweeters.

And yes, that includes celebrity modern artists and their chopped-up fishes.


Further Fats: We Were Spending Precious Time

The Fat Roland fiction anthology

Here's a new thing. I've plopped out an anthology of short fiction.

Adropiean Galactic Lego Set Blues contains 20 of my stories, including the first UK printing of a piece that was commended in the 2011 Manchester Fiction Prize. It also contains dozens of photographs and illustrations.

The idea had wandered around my noggleblock ever since James Henry self-published a children's fantasy novel and Steven Baxter mused about a monkey. Then Bad Language asked if I had anything to sell at their Manchester Independent Book Market stall and I turned myself into a one-man publishing house.

It does mean I've spent the last million days hiding from this blog so I can make sure all the pages are made of paper and not of penguins, and that the text is made of letters and not of lycra.

I haven't gone through a self-publishing service nor a proper publisher: it's all my own work, my own money, my own imprint - even though a small publisher did offer to publish it for me (thank you kind publisher, you know who you are!).

And messy work it was too: I had pages and pages of scribbled and half-scribbled illustrations, some of which you can see in the picture below. Apart from the cover to Quickies, I'm not exactly known as an illustrator, so I feel quite nervous about having my pencil scribblings out there.

The Manchester writing scene is full of people pimping their anthologies: many of the books are excellent. I hope mine furrows its own wrinkle among the others. Adropiean is, hopefully, dark and funny, bemusing and absurd, a little adult and a little childish.

I think it would be a nice thing to own. You can order it through my fiction writing site Italic Eyeball.

You never know. I may well get back to writing about Squarepusher and Autechre and James Blunt soon....

Tsssch. New things. They get in the way sometimes.

Further Fats: The Italic Eyeball site

All of our pop stars are dying

Death, O where is thy Sting? He's out the back playing a zither. (I Corinthians ch15 v55)

It's bewildering and terrible how many celebrity musicians we have lost in recent times.

We're galled. We hammer our fists against the wall of death, our favourite pop names in mispelled graffiti. It's so easy to ask why. Why do people die?

Well, I've found the answer. David Cameron.

Think about it. David Cameron siezed power here in the UK in May 2010. Before then, there hadn't been any significant pop music demises for years. But with Cameron's stone-dead face looming over the despatch box like a rubbish cloud, all the chart stars we love have passed beyond.

If you don't believe me, here's a list of sad losses from May 2010 until yesterday.

It's hard not to read at this litany of sadness then look at David Cameron's gravestone complexion and not begin to wonder...*

- Donna Summer (damn you, Cameron)
- MCA (Cameron again)
- Davy Jones (Cameron)
- Whitney Houston (why, Cameron, why?)
- Gerry Raffety (Cameron's fault)
- Hendrix (have you no shame, Cameron?)
- Mike Starr (Cameron)
- Bert Jansch (there's no stopping Cameron)
- Ari Up (for goodness sake, Cameron)
- Aaliyah (Cameron)
- Malcolm McLaren (blame Cameron)
- Teddy Pendergrass (Cameron's guilty)
- Johnny Cash (stupid Cameron)
- Sparklehore (Cameron, Cameron, Cameron)
- All of the BeeGees (cause of death: Cameron)
- Captain Beefheart (Captain Cameron)
- Loleatta Holloway (oh Cameron, not her)
- Guru (killed by Cameron)
- Michael Jackson (at the hands of Dr Cameron)
- Thin Lizzy's timpani player (Cameron)
- Tom Chaplin from Keane (there's no end to Cameron's destruction)
- The Wanted (can anyone stop Cameron?)
- Roy Orbison (Cameron, public enemy number one)
- Sonia (you can't stop Cameron from deathing you)

* list may contain inaccuracies

Further Fats:: A piffling statistical analysis of the 27-club

Battles Dross Glop spot the difference quiz

On the left is the glorious, scrumptious cover for Battles' Dross Glop, a collection of 12" remixes of their 2011 album Gloss Drop.  The remixes feature twiddles from people like Hudson Mohawke, The Field and Kode 9.

On the right is the same album cover with ten changes. Can you spot the difference?

Simple, really. Ten differences in the right-hand picture. How hard can it be? Circle the answers on your computer monitor.

Don't feel you have to squint like Godzilla stalking a really fit flea. Click the picture (or here) for a proper big version, which you can then download or resize or print or whatever.

Want the answer? See here.

Happy difference-spotting!

Further Fats: When I first discovered Battles in 2007

And you do stop: Adam Yauch, writing and the toffs

It has been one of those weeks where I've been tempted to tape up my hopes and dreams inside a bin liner and brick them to the bottom of the Mersey.

Firstly, there was the tossbag of political moisture that was local election day. I've always been politically astute: I cried when John Smith died, I proudly voted against Blair Blue-Balls in 1997 and I've attended several counts in musty old town halls.

However, because Nick Clegg broke the entire of politics in 2010 by saying he was the progressive alternative then putting a bunch of Eton toffs in power with my vote, I don't believe in our system anymore*.

This picture shows pretty much how I felt about walking into a pointless polling station and being given pointless bits of paper. Still, my favourite (and mad) new Twitter feed, Manchester's drunk mayor, is giving me hope.

Secondly, the Hounds Of Hulme album has reached tug-o-war phase. I can't tell if a track is good anymore. I might as well dip my head into the washing-up and listen to the forks piercing my eyes. It's nearly finished, though, and you should like the band's Facebook page for news**.

This has brought on a wider malaise where I can't string one creative idea onto another. I'm performing 20 minutes of idiot fiction at Sounds From The Other City tomorrow (I'm not on the bill but honestly I am performing), but I've so little faith in the paltry new material I have***, I think I may request everyone sits in silence, crying. With forks in their eyes.

I know, I've still enough gumption to be able to plug my stuff here, but seriously... I'm bringing forks****.

And finally, the death of Adam Yauch. I used to be a pretty neat vinyl beatmatcher before the universe went digital, and I'd spin back beats to create new ones because that's what the Beastie Boys did. "Don't you tell me to smi.. Don... Don... Don't you tell me to smile..." 

The Beastie Boys (pictured, top) didn't just inform my musical world: they defined the universe in which I operate. This "Fat Roland" creature I foist upon an innocent world wouldn't exist without them.

In summary, I need a plan. And here it is. If I turn up at Sounds From The Other City tomorrow and find my slot replaced by the Beastie Boys featuring guest rapper Nick Clegg, I'm changing my name to Dorothy and moving to the Shetlands.


There. I said it. You can shorten it to Dot if you want.


* Why did I ever believe in the Liberal Democrats as a left-leaning force in politics? I'm such an idiot.

** Seriously, you should. The more likes I get, the less I'll bang on about it. Even I find this self-promotion tiresome, so goodness knows what it's like for you, you poor reader, you.

*** beware false modesty. I'm going to blaze it tomorrow.

**** I'm bloody not, because if I do, I'll lose them and I won't be able to eat pies.

Further Fats: "It's not funny"... the Beastie Boys cancer announcement in 2009

I'd advise skipping to reason ten lest you fall asnooze from my word vomming

I've been quiet in The Happy Land Of Bloggy, but it's not been without good reason. Here is a list of ten things I have been up to instead of wiping my word genius on your eyeballs.

1. Building a lifesize model of the universe from Plumber's Mait putty.

2. Starting a religion made of cats. It's difficult to make an abstract concept from a real thing, so I've had to build a robot that can bend reality.

3. Constructing a cellar for my cellar. I really felt my cellar was lacking somewhere from which to walk downwards from my cellar. Have been taking advice from moles.

4. Writing an extensive Wikipedia article about the 56BC FIFA World Cup, printing off the resulting page and making it into a papier-mâché football which I then burned.

5. Deleting words from the Oxford English Dictionary that we don't use nearly enough, such as "vine", "azure" and "micromelic".

6. Mastering the art of levitation, but cheating and so spending my time inventing an invisible table instead. Harder than I thought. The main material is fine, but B&Q don't sell non-see brackets.

7. Applying to Manchester City Council for planning permission to extend my brain. A bit frustrated that Ordnance Survey don't do detailed A4 site plans of the cerebral cortex. Embarked on a cartographic analysis of my cerebrum. On an unconnected note, also bought a dictionary.

8. Becoming Will.I.Am without the real Will.I.Am noticing.

9. Naming my first three children Boom, Boom and Pow. Not because of the Will.I.Am thing, but because that's the noise I make when I'm building a robot mole to transcend invisible reality using putty.

10. Making tunes. Which is kind of the real reason for this blog post, but you probably stopped reading ages ago so I might as well be farting at a cow for all this word vomming is worth. *I* stopped reading ages ago, and I'm the one tapping at the plastic letters. Oh the humanity.

The picture: click for bigger.

Further Fats: all 105 articles labelled "whimsy" (!)

In the next 24 hours, formula one will be changed forever

Well. Not forever exactly. But the deadline for my F1 Losers League is tomorrow (Friday) night.

I have no interest in cars or in sport, but F1 somehow commands my attention. I like the racing, the personalities, and the tight-fitting overalls. My interest in F1 has developed into a geeky passion, so for several years I have run a fantasy league with a difference: your team has to be the worst you can possibly make it.

Crashes? Get points. Car behaving like a wheelbarrow? Get points. Bad helmet hair? Get points.

You enter once and this lasts for the rest of the season. But the deadline is tomorrow night, April 13th, at 11.59pm BST, so you'll have to get a move on.

It's free and no-one wins anything. It is a loser's league after all. To enter, (1) you just choose one name from each Group here, and (2) think of a good F1 Losers team name. Email me and you're entered for 2012 (more details on entering, including the email address, here).

I would love lots of entries in 2012, although I only usually get a few. You should do it though, because it gives me an excuse to photoshop lots of silly picture captions.

In the next 24 hours, formula one will become infinitesimally different because, yet again, the F1 Losers League is here.

Further Fats: Save Takuma Sato! (in which I took a year out from doing the League)