JUNE 29

THERE are a load more pics up on the Bits & Pieces pages, so take a look!

JUNE 28

CONTINUING this month's theme of flogging a dead horse, here's another page of Emric pics!

JUNE 27

A FEW people have complained about the pic of Emric's poo all over the kitchen floor. Sorry about that. And in way of an apology, here's a pic of a girl's arse cleavage.

JUNE 23

I GUESS it's safe to say there's nothing in the kitty...

JUNE 20

EMRIC had to go to the vet's today because he's been producing the kind of crap normally associated with an all-vindaloo diet. After being checked over and having blood and poo samples taken, Ev was going to pay when Emric - who'd been sitting on her shoulder - walked down her arm, onto the counter and proceeded to take a slash all over her. Then he started spraying poo all over the counter. Emric is the best cat in the world.

And here's another page of Emric pics, fresh off the camera and brilliantly cropped just for you!

JUNE 19

MEET Emric, the latest member of the family:

Emric's got his own page already - go here for a look.

JUNE 16

WHAT the hell is going on in our apartment block? I came home tonight to find this by the elevator:

JUNE 15

WELL, I think I can safely say it's been one of those days. From being a fairly straightforward we're-out-of-here-by-nine day to an absolute full-on bastard. Are you both sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll begin.

First off, the motorbike chase. I got an email saying "Are you watching the chase?" What chase? Turns out there's some guy on a motorbike doing 130mph down the freeway and heading towards Burbank, with the obligatory 15 police cruisers, police helicopter and news helicopters giving chase. Oh crap, don't let him crash or be caught there as I've just done page one and I don't want to redo it. Luckily for me he speeds straight through Burbank and by now we're all watching the live coverage on the telly. Unluckily for Ali, he enters Glendale, shoots down the main street and into the parking lot of the Galleria Mall, where the coppers and choppers lose him. He's most likely dumped his bike and helmet and cleared off into the mall. So the office is kicked into action; a reporter's sent out, there's a desperate attempt to reach a photographer, and, unluckily for Ali, it looks like her pages are about to be ripped up.

I go outside for a ciggie about an hour after this and the sky looks like they're doing a remake of Apocalypse Now - there's helicopters everywhere, circling round and round beaming pics of a car park live to the TV networks who are outdoing themselves in the amount of speculative bullshit they're desperately filling the time with. The mall's been put under lockdown, police officers find the guy's bike but there's no sign of him. Three hours later he's still not been nicked. Looks like he's legged it. Nice work fella!

And then it got more interesting - at 8.40pm an email comes in warning of a 7.0 earthquake in the ocean off San Francisco. A tsunami warning's been issued and everyone's crapping themselves, especially after what happened in Indonesia. The warning extends from Alaska down to Mexico, so I guess they're not hedging their bets. With our apartment being 50 yards from the ocean I called Ev to warn her and she wanted to know what she should do. I tell her to head for higher ground, or to come up to Glendale which is far enough inland to be safe. Again the TV news was a triumph of speculation and utter bollocks, as they can't cope if the story doesn't involve some stupid celebrity. To cap it all, in the middle of telling us we could all die they cut to a commercial break! (Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against American TV news - I just think it's shit).

With Ev trying to force Madoc into his cardboard box (note to self - line it with razorblades) to bring him up to the office the news comes back on and luckily the warning's been called off and things eventually return to normal. Ev decides to stay in the apartment and stops trying to force Maddy into his box. I thought my suggestion of stunning him with a large brick didn't warrant the reaction I got.

Sorry about the length of this update, but I'd just like to spare one more minute to thank the wankers who decided to close the offramp to the 5, meaning I had to drive through some of the shittiest, dangerous suburbs of LA in order to get home tonight. I'd also like to thank them for providing two (2) diversion signs along a six-mile diversion, each scientifically placed to the nano-millimetre too far from a light source to be any sodding good. And thanks for sending me past Dodger Stadium, an area best described as "don't go there, just don't".

Thanks again. You tossers.

JUNE 14

AFTER fannying about for ages I've finally put up some of the photos I took in the UK. They're of a ruined church near Tintern Abbey in South Wales, which we visited back on May 12. Click this link NOW!!

JUNE 12

THINGS I really have to get on with:

- Add another 16 words to the dictionary.

- Finish the Grand Slam page.

- Sort out, crop, post and write about all the pics I took at home.

- Write the Biography page.

- Split up the Bits & Pieces page and add more pics.

But in the meantime here's a photo of some cats!

JUNE 10

Why do animal adoption agencies insist on setting up in the street? Don't they know the effect small cute animals have on Ev? We nearly adopted the kitten below, but we really don't know how Madoc would take to having another cat in the apartment.

Then Ev spotted the puppies:

Luckily we managed to escape before the animal population of our apartment increased from two to 200.

JUNE 8

SO I'M driving home down the 710 at twenty past midnight tonight and just coming up to the exit for Willow Street when a rat runs across the freeway in front of my car. Seriously, a rat. Cats and dogs running across the freeaway at past midnight I can handle. But not a rat. I mean, there's been a dead dog on the centre median of the southbound 710 near the PCH exit for about a week now. That I can handle. But not a rat.

AND I'd just like to thank the driver of the white SUV who was kind enough to drive approximately three feet behind me for a few miles with more lights on the front of his vehicle than a spaceship from Close Encounters. Instead of pissing off other road users, why don't you just get "I HAVE A VERY SMALL DICK" tattooed across your forehead and save the rest of us the hassle? You stupid prick.

JUNE 5

I spotted this today so grabbed a couple of pics:

JUNE 3

THREE updates in three days? People might get the impression I like doing this. Last month, Mike and I took the long way to work via Firestone Boulevard. Always looking for an excuse to put a page of pictures up, I took the camera and the results are here. Go on, click it - you know you want to!

JUNE 2

WELL, I've finally seen Star Wars Episode III - Another Billion in Lucas's Bank Account and, to be fair, it's actually pretty adequate. True, it does star Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader (meaning the next time I see Vader in the original trilogy I'll just think, "It's that whiny little twat in a cool outfit") and it is written and directed by Lucas himself (a recipe for disaster on a par with putting a pyromaniac in charge of a fireworks factory, said factory being next to a petrol station and across the road from the local gasworks) but on the whole the movie was fantastically mediocre. There are, however, a few things I noticed, so I put my anorak on and compiled this list:

- So all the Clone Troopers have New Zealand accents, but by the time Star Wars rolls around they're all speaking Yank?

- Christopher Lee - whose onscreen time is roughly 48.3 seconds - acts Hayden Christensen off the planet and into a galaxy far, far away.

- General Grevious - what was the point of him exactly?

- Where did R2-D2 get all those gadgets, and what happened to them in between the toy commericals/previews and Star Wars?

- You can't stand that close to lava!

- Yet again, Lucas proves to the world that he can't write a shopping list, let alone a movie.

- Ian McDiarmid must need a good osteopath after carrying the entire film for 150 minutes.

- So what, do women give birth in a week in the Star Wars universe?

- How many different kinds of wipes did Lucas use? What is this, a PowerPoint presentation? When can we expect the wipe-your-arse transition?

- What the hell is a "youngling"??

- And last, but definitely not least, Vader's "NOOOOOOOOOO!!" Why not just get him to shout "KHAAAAAAAN!!"?

JUNE 1

AS I said last month, you can tell how classy your apartment block is by the number of shopping carts dumped in it. However, there's another way to gauge class - by the kind of stuff people leave next to the dumpster:

Not forgetting, of course, the ubiquitous trolley: