9/9/9

Some people seem to be slightly bemused by the fact that today's date is 9/9/9. I'm not quite sure why this is, as thanks to the continual process of time, it was bound to happen at some point, in the same way most other number have been triplicated in the date beforehand. If you are the sort of person who sees repeated numbers as some sort of omen, then why would you choose today's date to get married anyway? 999 signals the emergency services. I can only assume that if today is the day you choose to be wed, that you are expecting a large trellis gate to impale your partner or for someone to fall of a cliff face and have to be rescued, while an overly dramatic theme tune plays and an annoying BBC presenter pretends to be concerned. There is meant to be some sort of numerical significance to today's date, and in Chinese and Japanese mythology the number 9 is meant to be love and bad luck respectively, so I would suggest that no Chinese people turn up to Japan today looking for love, as everyone else will be in hiding. What everyone has screwed up is that its not 9/9/9 anyway today. Its 9/9/09. That 0 makes a rather large difference and by ignoring it you are denying thousands of years of existence. Even then, its only 9/9/09 in the Gregorian calendar. The Islamic calendar says its currently the year 1431, which means both that today means even less to them, and also that they developed the internet and things way before anyone else, which is a smart thing to do. 'We invented the interwebs in the 1980's.' 'Yeah well we invented it in the 1300's'. They win. I wonder if I should book my diary using the Islamic calendar. I think it might just allow me to walk around in a suit of armor all day and should it ever be questioned I'll just explain that its perfectly acceptable for the time period I'm in. It must be a nightmare for them syncing their iPod's up to the iCalendar on their macs. On the Hebrew calendar its currently the year 5770, which means they probably have time travel and stuff. Or at least they would do by now if they didn't turn all the 'leccy off every Saturday.


Today has no real importance to me. I was meant to get my hair cut but I got up too late and now can't be bothered. That's what 9/9/9 signifies for me. I'll say it out allowed in a German accent and that means 'no, no, no', assuming that I will do very little all day once again. Yesterday was more productive than Monday, or at least it was up until I went to visit Tom and Nat and spent an evening just drinking tea, and listening to Tom discuss the bowel movement that nearly killed him. This was the discussion that greeted me as I entered his flat, before Tom had even said hello. While I appreciate it when friendships are on the level of comfort that hellos and goodbyes are disregarded as needed, it was still a little much to be informed off dangerous turds as soon as I arrived. Still after this story that I won't go into detail about, despite Tom's insistence on explaining all moments of the incident as many times as possible, we had a nice evening of tea drinking and playing ancient Sega games on the Xbox. Its amazing how far technology has come nowadays when you look back at the old games I used to enjoy. Since then they've developed games where the buttons actually respond to you pressing them, the graphics don't just look like a pacman ghost has vomited pixels on the screen and the music doesn't sound like an angry dog jumping on an old Casio (keyboard that is. The watches made very little noise when jumped on). There was already some discussion about next year's Edinburgh shows which almost made my ears bleed instantly as the conversation started. I must make a concerted effort to forget the Edinburgh Fringe exists, at least until October. In fact I will start now. What Edinburgh Fringe festival? Exactly.


Few things must happen today. I have to send lots of polite messages to people saying they can't come and do Fat Tuesday. I bloody hate running a club sometimes and when you can't book everyone in the world is one of those times. I have received a stupidly huge amount of emails and facebook messages from people asking me to book them. Some of them did it very recently, some of them have cancelled on me several times and so go to the bottom of the list, and some of them have only done two gigs and believe they should be on the same line-up as award winning acts. Mostly, they are all people I like, but I also know what the Fat Tuesday audience like, and they don't always like what I like, so I have to book carefully. This is not normally understood by other acts and so I generally lie, say I will book them at some time and never ever do. Basically though, if I haven't called you then its unlikely you'll get a spot at my gig. And yes, I'm a horrible man for doing it. But still today must be spent being horrible. After all that I have to go and pick up a tent from Niki and Rosie who are being very kind and lending me one for my festival ventures this weekend, and finally after all that I'm going to watch Derren Brown either succeed or fail at doing this:

http://bit.ly/UPPsC

I would like to suggest that the significance of 9/9/09 may be that we have to burn Derren at the stake on accounts that he is definitely a creation of evil magic. If he fails then he gets to live. Of course I doubt you could actually burn Derren. I'm sure he'd somehow persuade you to set fire to yourself before floating away in a black bubble and starting lightning on some desert plains because he could.

Before all of that though, I have to call 999 and tell the emergency services its their day. I'm going to keep calling until all the services have been told. I think they'll really appreciate it. I may even start by sounding in a lot of distress and saying ' Help....help....help me say congratulations to you all!' Or ' I'm stuck......I...I'm stuck trying to tell you how ace you all are!' I think they'll love it.