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A six-year-old boy emerged from a New York lake last
with a rabid otter hanging on to his back and legs by
his teeth and claws. Lifeguards had to wrestle it off.
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Saw New Zealand's foremost digi-bongo-acapella-rap-influenced guitar-based bongo-funk folk band Flight of the Conchords last night - massiv venue at Reid Hall which was a bit different from the Late Show in the White Belly two weeks ago. God they kick ass. One of them even turned up in LOTR which is interesting, although the fact that he now has mildly disturbing fansites dedicated to him is not. Slaughterhouse Live earlier in the evening, bloody brilliant - haven't laughed that hard in a very long time.

Bruises gone. Replaced by sand rash. Oh well. A gang of us went off to the beach in C's car yesterday to get away from Edinburgh. I use the term "beach" lightly as when we got there it was high tide, there was the creepiest fun fair I've ever seen and it was cold and grey. Still there was cavorting and general japery so that's alright then. I went swimming for some reason - I hate the sea. Why? We headed off to get food afterwards; being Sunday natch every pub was down to elderly toasted sandwiches so we had a bizarre meal in what appeared to be a converted aeroplane called Bar None. London! Paris! Milan! Kirkcaldy! Hum. Meals were two for one for some unknown reason - we figure C or P chatted up the waitress - so we dined like kings on Chateaubriand and King prawn thermidore. As you do when you're poor, clearly. It was really good to head out of the city for a bit, I know what we're doing isn't exactly taxing but it's still knackering and just to see some greenery without a flyer being shoved in your face was ace. Hope of the states tonight, should be interesting.

Wow. Just seen one flew over the cuckoo's nest at the Assembly Rooms - you can see why it's sold out, it's absolutely incredible. Mackenzie Crook as Billy was just spellbinding and the set was immaculate. Wow.

Been a good few days actually, a lady from Sweet TV came up to us when we were flyering on Friday and asked if we would be interviewed! Ace! Charlotte had tickets for Will Smith and Helen couldn't do it so i ended up sat with a boom on my knee outside the Hotel being tormented by bagpipes. Adding to the general star feeling, two women came up to me and asked if they could take my picture as they'd been taking photos of all the shows they'd seen and didn't take one of ours. Wow again! Yesssss!

Saw Keiretsu last night at the Underbelly - played a BLINDINGLY sweaty set during which I had to step outside for a moment or risk drowning in my own body fluids. They're playing the Belly Dancer there again tonight, half ten, be there. I can't wait to sweat some more - obviously.

If you're up for T in the Park next year and want cheap tickets, go here and pick them up at this year's prices. Ltd time only though so get a move on!

First part of the Fringe diary is up - incidentally Jerry Sadowitz = tosser. But then again who's surprised? But then again, wouldn't you be a tosser if a slightly inebriated girl came up to you and asked if she could take your picture? Well, hum. Takes away a piece of your soul - Jesus.

Woo hoo! From threeweeks.co.uk...

Two Women and a Chair
Not Now!
Theatre! Theatre! This is an enjoyable look into the clichés surrounding theatre and in particular the audition; as Sartre taught us, Hell is - other actors. The 4th wall becomes a mirror, and the audience is cast into the role of the voyeur, director, judge. As the characters unravel we are treated to a slow, at times funny, at times desperate, revelation of the stories behind the stereotypes as the clichés turn into real people. The stage becomes a personal place, you partake in the twists and turns and delight in their admissions and insecurities, growing into your role as they go on and you come along. Until the 4th wall is thoroughly shattered. But hey, in the end it's only theatre, isn't it?
C central, 6-30 Aug (not 15), 2:30pm (3:15pm), £7.50 (£6.50), fpp 188
tw rating: 3/5
[fh]

TWO WOMEN AND A CHAIR ***

C CENTRAL (Venue 54)

"THE lady is cool and remote and a total bitch; the servant is calculating, cold and a total weasel. All in all it has the makings of a great lesbian love story."

This, declared by Kat (played by Kat Brown), is the tongue-in-cheek synopsis of a play for which she and another aspiring actress, Helen (played by Helen Macfarlane), have arrived to audition for. Only - there’s nobody else there. No director, nothing, nada. So they wait, and wait, and wait a little more. To pass the time, they talk. Unfortunately, though, they don’t have much in common: Kat is a tough-talking power-bitch while Helen is a droopy, drippy daddies-girl. They are bound to hate one another, and they do.

Michael Olsen’s play is cleverly plotted: two women are stuck in a room together, the tension gradually mounting as they wait to audition for a play about two women stuck in a room together slowly going mad. Brown is particularly convincing in her role while Macfarlane perhaps has the misfortune of playing the less charismatic character of the two.

Plays about auditions make for entertaining Fringe viewing, and there is the uncomfortable feeling that there maybe a hundred Kats and Helens freely roaming the streets of Edinburgh right at this very moment.

Zoë Green, The Scotsman

Bruise count now stands at 41 - I am beginning to think that Charlotte is abusing me in my sleep. Lots of Durham folk coming up today which will be nice, Fringe diary is being sent off today so check d21 soon if you are interested. I met famous people! Oh yes!

Jings. Edinburgh kicks a quite extortionate amount of ass. Weekly diary will be going up on d21 so apologies if I don't slavishly write down every word on here but quite frankly it's knackering. And I'm a lazy, lazy child. Have become a shameless starfucker in that have taken to obtaining autographs in my fringe diary, something I swore I'd never do. But hey, I'm doing lots of things I never thought I'd do up here! And not in a bad way.

Popbitch news of the week - look away if offended easily.

Pet Shop Boys have remixed Rammstein's new single, Mein Teil, which means "My Cock".The song is about the recent cannibal case but written from the viewpoint of the dying man. The chorus goes, "You are what you eat And you're eating my cock". The video has torture scenes and a bandmember killing an angel after a blow-job. Nice.

Mildly troubling - there's a ceilidh going on just out the window and a forest of children carrying large instruments have suddenly sprouted and are now playing along. Not literally outside the window, or rather yes. By the Gala. Go now and see for yourself.

Oh my! What an amazing looking show! Quite clearly the person that doesn't go and see this incredible piece of theatre deserves to be cast out from society and made to hunt for yams in the wilderness. Or strung up by their ankles. There's a scary thought now. Was sunny, now it's not. That's about all of interest. Other than the fact I can now cook without fear. Excellent.

Oh yes! I am no longer to be inhabiting a cardboard box next year! After two days of bag lady/ tramp/ mistaken lesbian status, R and I are to become the proud owners of a rather sweet little flat that has the obligatory 70s carpet disaster (bless). I managed to lose many, many items of usefulness including my new best friend alias the Cardiff pocket a-z which was glued to my nose for most of Sunday and Monday and somehow mysteriously disappeared along the way. Much hilarity involving near misses with lamp posts ensued. Only down side is we have to slog all the way back down to glorious Wales on Friday for ten minutes of form signing - bloody agencies.

Things are rotten and slightly cadaverous at present. That feeling at the end, beyond the end of something where nothing can be rescued and you've been pointedly (or worse, unpointedly) replaced in terms of friendship, but obviously a long time ago. Ironic then that this slightly sickening feeling comes about on a day when the sun is blissfully shining and everything should be happy and dandy. Once my bank explains itself obviously. I'm in the mood for doing something mildly self-destructive so I think I will take myself off for a picnic and the pub. I said mildly!

*phew* what a day. Having solved the "sleeping on a park bench" prolem of crashng somewhere last night by staying with C and the Ruff thesps somewhere near Cheltenham,my unfeasibly sleep deprived good mood was marred ever so slightly by the utter buggery of trains. Damn them. R and I slogged round Cardiff with assorted baggage trying to flag down an internet cafe without success before incurring americn wrath by diving into Virgin and payng exorbitant amounts for house hunting. Having managed to find our way t the most purple hostel imaginabel, turns out that an implausibly be-lycra'd cross country meeting was going on all over the city so we have ended up in a ridiculously priced double room the size of a small box. This would be survivable if one of the guys who showed us a house this evening hadn't casually asked if we were looking for "one room or two". Check out the lesbian action my friends, we are shining examples of type it seems. Hum... No real joy with houses as our ardour was cooled by a ) odd landlords and b) creepy neighbourhoods so we're flying of again tomorrow to find us a house before teatime. Will try, will try. In the meantime, the purple hostel is more fun than the evil pub hotel...

incidentally, saw Before Sunset yesterday - never saw Before Sunrise (Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy) but it wasn't really necessary seeing as how you could pick up on what happened in the last film through flashbacks. Absolutely beautiful film, felt like I was floating on a dream for two hours afterwards. Go and see it, you won't regret it.

Um, hello Michael Olsen. That was a bit embarrassing really, don't worry - not a word is going to be changed and Edinburgh will naturally love it. Lovely to not quite meet you, we'll pass on reviews as and when.

Oh dear...

Just what every voracious self-interested reader wants to know - just exactly how literate am I? Take the rather wonderful books are my friends quiz and find out - am such a book geek...

A present from Sara! I got lots of presents today thanks to amazon deliveries and letters from Anna and folk. Post is a vastly underrated resource. I am single-handedly going to return letter writing to the forefront of communication. Once I found out where my friends actually live...

A rant about Two Women and a Chair, and fear.

Edinburgh is creeping ever closer. I say creeping, because if I say that it's approaching with all the finesse of an axe-wielding maniac then i just end up turning blue and making odd squeaking noises. We have two weeks to write 15 minutes more script. The director and co-star are at the other end of the country until five days before our first show. We have no idea what the hell to write 15 minutes about. Silence? I'm thinking we jack in the whole idea and just turn up a bit late and do it regardless. Oh dear, as I was getting frightened the sun went away - again.

---tangent approaching---
On the bright side, we have somewhere to live, which is a damn sight better than Cardiff where, er, I don't. I'm going down to have a look at a place this weekend which should be good - then again, when the hell has any house I've lived in been remotely normal?
---End of tangent---

The play is good. That's a bonus. Some of the blurbs in the programme have terrified me with tweeness. If you ever want an illicit insecure giggle, check out the performance theatre section. Then again, our entry has been butchered to the point where I have not the slightest idea what the hell it's about, and I'm in the damn thing! We're just to the right of Puppetry of the Penis' crotch, mmmm, just where you want to be on a hot summer's evening.

Mother Teresa...I had no idea I was such an all-round fabulous person...no, wait, I did but I didn't realise the internet would believe it too. Hurray for Ebay and general buying of things! Boo to Paypal who is no pal of mine. Down there with the people I met once and didn't really get on with very much.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Spiderman 2 - the greatest sequel ever? God bless Sam Raimi, and scratch the first comment, this could well be one of the best films ever. Bit too scary/ deep/ emotion-y for the kid contingent though and definitely not a straightforward popcorn chomper. Seriously brilliant. Go and see it and see what I mean.

What a simply delightful day - note for future reference, zoos are highly underrated. Today, children, I discovered bongos and congo buffalo, the latter deliciously tufty and generally wonderful specimens of what can be done with a bit of imagination and some excess fur. Bongos are not drums, nor are they drunk in the congo, um or otherwise. Stripey ginger okapi types. Excellent! Another tip for successful zoo going expeditions is to go with folk who know it inside out and work at Birdworld so they can tell you exciting facts about, er, birds. Only downside is that aforementioned folk will inevitably sneer at zoo's inferior bird keeping facilities and until you've been to Birdworld this can be quite confusing. Rock on congo buffalo! Oh yes!

Oh yeah: the Justin Grounds album is absolutely outstanding, as soon as his website is up and running head there but in the mean time you can email him at just@justingrounds.com and ask very nicely to buy one of his lovely 'Rise and Flow' albums. Very, very good, bluesy and folky and very special.

One thing I've learned today: carrying acoustic guitars is bloody hard work. Funnily enough, nobody looks at you oddly in the way that they do when you're carrying a giant mirror around (there was a perfectly good explanation for that.) It is at present tucked under my arm so it doesn't fall over as I'm terrified someone's going to tread on it. Hum. First sunshine in Durham for bloody eons today - the joy is overwhelming. A jaunt to Persephone is certainly on the cards if a) I can survive the journey home with guitar intact and b) it doesn't start raining. Damn it. Off home tomorrow, hurray!

Wow. So much for my plans for making shed loads of money - last week and Ye Olde Meate Packinge Factorie was actually fine: quite zen-like, no concentration required and perfect insomniac hours. This week however, it's supposedly a six am start which means yours truly waking up at 5, round about two to four hours after she's got to sleep in the first place. So mostly not working this week as a) can't turn up when wish and b) no more late shifts this week. hopefulyl working next week, please? Would do fun things but now have even less money than I thought and also lost my sixth bank card yesterday on way to see the rather good Fahrenheit 9/11. Ho-hum. Am writing articles I should have written weeks ago instead. joy!

Title for HP 6 has been confirmed as "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince". JKR: “The Half Blood Prince, is neither Harry nor Voldemort,” she says. “and that’s all I’m saying on that subject until the book is finished.” Sorry, but this makes me quite excited despite the fact Phoenix was dull and this one probably won't appear for five gazillion years.

Woo hoo! have reached 40th article on d21! I feel like I should have an extremely large cake or something. Will go to the pub instead I reckon.

Well, graduation was super fun - didn't rain hahahahaha! I am now living in a palace, suitably at odds with the fact my temp agency is packing me off to put sliced meats in little boxes tomorrow morning. The joy is uncontainable, no, really. Shrek 2 is great, go and see it if it carries on raining.