Ambush dream

Sleepy girlfriend trying to remember what she was dreaming about this morning:

"It wasn't a nice dream - it was an ambush dream. Turned out Captain Kirk wasn't my friend after all. Hold on - I was Captain Kirk! Oh, no, wait - I wasn't."

Not a word of this is exaggerated for comic effect.

Duke Luke

I've written here before about my vast affection for Luke Haines, the evil rock genius behind The Auteurs, Baader Meinhoff, Black Box Recorder and a slew of bonkers solo albums. His new album, 21st Century Man, came out last weekend and the neighbours have been treated to it on a deafening loop ever since. I seem to remember my girlfriend shouldering her way out of the front door laden with overflowing suitcases around about Wednesday. She's left a letter, probably about how much she likes the album.

The problem with loving Luke Haines is that so few other people do, and despite everything he does being packed with melody and intelligence he can be a challenging prospect to the uninitiated. Alexis Petridis of the Guardian brilliantly described him as "a lavishly gifted songwriter, but never a man likely to dazzle onlookers with the bewitching symmetry of his features". His voice can be harsh and reedy on the first listen, and the humour in his pitch-black lyrics is an acquired taste (as shown by the banning of Black Box Recorder's first single, Child Psychology, from UK radio for its chorus of "Life is unfair / Kill yourself or get over it").

Haines gives every impression of being happy to be a cult concern. By the end of The Auteurs he was already resigned to not getting his due credit on songs like Future Generation ("The future generation will take me to their heart...the next generation will get it from the start"). He also takes a patrician approach to fan relations, which is either admirable or suicidal depending on whether you're his biographer or his accountant. The forum on his website used to be a brilliant place for his cabal of dedicated followers to bicker over top 10 lists of b-sides. Rather than nuture this ragtag platoon of committed product purchasers, he took umbrage about complaints over a solo tour featuring no band and a 30 minute set and closed the forum down, although not before announcing a "Whinger of the Month" competition ("The winner will receive a prize of Luke Haines playing a set in their living room/ stone they live under. This prize is not optional. Haines turns up whether you like it or not. He will play an excruciatingly short set".).

But if you do get the bug and starting exploring the back catalogue there is so much depth and quality to get immersed in. I suggest either Baader Meinhoff (a concept funk album about German terrorism filled with brilliant pop tunes) or - why not? - the new one as being ideal for the newcomer. The epic title track is below - go on, give it a go:

Mr Mop

The flat had become disgraceful. A few weekends away and the darkening evenings had halted all forms of domestic management. So I got up at 8am and started cleaning. And carried on cleaning. Floors were mopped, bathrooms were scrubbed, the fridge was audited (the prize find being a jar of ancient sun-dried tomatoes that had turned into candy floss). I was being so sensible that I even emptied the hoover bag without the usual mushroom cloud of filth erupting over everything I'd just cleaned.

My girlfriend was banished to the spare bedroom with a bin bag to start working through the tonnes of unwearable clothes that, as an inveterate hoarder, she insists on filing in a growing pile in the middle of the room. Progress was made, although I expect to be finding items from Topshop's summer 2004 collection hidden at the back of cupboards and under the bed for the forseeable future.

And now it's all done. We celebrated with a large brunch only slightly ruined by me following her every move around the kitchen with a dustpan and brush. There's still 3/4 of the weekend left and I've achieved so much already. That tricky debut novel should be polished off in time for Come Dine With Me.

Web £2.0

The newspaper industry is in a rare old tizzy at the moment. As the Evening Standard chucks caution to the wind and goes free, desperately hoping that coating London in a sodden blanket of gratis copies will give advertisers the chronic horn, Rupert Murdoch has kangeroo-hopped in the other direction. Old lizard-face apparently blames the internet for the modern expectation of news being on tap for free (as opposed to, for example, his decades of competition-slaying price wars) and will soon be charging for his paper's websites.

As the mack daddy of modern media mogulling he can, of course, do what he wants. Good luck to him, although I wouldn't pay a penny for any of his sites. But what if my beloved guardian.co.uk wanted a piece of my pie?

To say I love the Guardian website is an understatement. Tooling around its endless nooks and crannies is the purest form of addictive contentment. At some point in the last few years I've convinced myself that eating pomegranate daily is crucial to my short and long term health, to the point where if I miss a day I start to feel genuinely uneasy. The same goes for my mental health and the Guardian site. To put it another way, if I ever end up in a Tom Hanks/Cast Away situation on a desert island, all that will remain of me (aside from a half-eaten basketball) will be crude images of the site's masthead daubed in blood and tears on all the palm trees.

As befits a newspaper group run by milquetoast liberals, the paper doesn't actually make money. Once the hessian office windfarm and free copies of the Female Eunuch for the cleaners have been paid for they'll need to find some dosh from somewhere, and I imagine at some point it will be the site. So fine - just tell me where to send the blank cheque. If anything, it might weed out some of the more tedious Comment Is Free contributors who pop up under the blogs, endlessly whinging and slagging each other off (whilst getting hysterical if anyone slags them off in return). A typical exchange is:

Shithawk1976: Oh God, another Guardian blog about Big Brother? I've never seen it. I thought this was supposed to be be a quality paper???!?!!!

Sir Gavin of Burpsalot: IF YOU DON'T LIEK IT WHY BOTHER COMMENTING??

Shithawk1976: I'll comment where I want to. And the low brow nature of your reply has only confirmed my prejudices about all reality TV and the sliding standards at the Guardian. Good day.

Sir Gavin of Burpsalot: this comment has been removed by a moderator

Waiting for quad

Yesterday I spotted this almost demonically self-fulfilling headline on the BBC website: "Are nervous women cyclists more likely to be killed?". The main problem for nervous drivers is the vicious cycle of being permanently liable to panic and do something catastrophically stupid, and the knowlegde of this making them more nervous. The BBC suggesting that the grim reaper is in the passenger seat can only lead to ladies across the country hysterically veering into oncoming traffic, off bridges and through busy zebra crossings.

I speak as a nervous driver myself. I don't remember if it took five or six attempts to get my license but, however many it was, the process beat out of me any residual enthusiasm for motoring. I did vroom about for a while but hung up my string-back driving gloves after an ill-judged trip through match day traffic to see a Nottingham Forest game that left a car full of schoolmates visibly ashen. I've not turned an ignition key in anger for about 7 years.

Luckily, one of the many ways in which living in London retards maturity is eridacting the need for a car but there's a revving, chugging cloud on the horizon. In November I will be at a stag do where the eyebrow shaving and mooning will stop for a brisk bout of quad biking. I couldn't be more uneasy if the BBC ran the headline "Are nervous Gareths more likely to be ground into the mud by the enormous chassis of an upturned quad bike?". It's inevitable that I'll perform the full Brian Harvey and run over my own head. And if by some miracle Saint Jeremy Clarkson answers my prayers and I survive, the relief will be short lived as within hours I'll be having my balls shot off in a hail of paintballs. Which idiot invented the stag do?