This Is Not A Democracy

Most of you probably know I have hardly any contact with my family, so I don't know much about what's going on in my brother's life. I knew he was in a band called Digital Bob, but I did not know they'd actually been recording stuff and playing festivals and shit (even small festivals).

This is a video of them in the studio. Cristian is the first person you see.



I know my brother, and this whole thing absolutely smacks of his style. I can probably dig out recordings of their old stuff, from before he ever went to Uni, and it sounds like the same band, minus keyboards. He's had a huge part of writing this stuff, I swear it.

Their MySpace is here. This is their website.

Oh. And he kind of looks like Jake Gyllenhaal, sometimes (he's on the left). Also: he's been playing that same guitar since he was about 11.

I'm really considering sending one of my brothers' band's songs to the Decaydance thing.

They're all very early twenties, Mike and Cris at least (my brothers being Cris and Berti) are good looking lads. They're all insanely talented. INSANELY talented - in that all of them bar Mike are doing/did music degrees. Cris and Berti I can tell you are fucking amazing. I have memories of those kids being able to pic up any instrument you gave them and play it in maybe fifteen minutes.

Cris was always especially good at that.

I just messaged him on his personal MySpace to ask if they're still doing stuff together. Cris is at Uni in Devon, Berti just started in Coventry, and as far as I know, Mike and Conrad are still in Surrey - so it'd be hard. But they're all really good mates, so I think they were planning to get stuff back together after Uni.

We'll see.

But in the meantime, check them out. I think a lot of people on my flist would love them.

The thing I hate most about my mother, is the way my brothers are so fucking blind to the truth about the way she was.

Cristian is such a biased little cunt. Mum has spent years telling them how fucking nasty I was to her, and they believe it. He refuses to ever see anything from my point of view, even when he's said "Yeah, she's still like that".

When we were kids, my mum and her boyfriend - who used to beat her up in front of us every weekend - asked him and Berti if they wanted him to leave, and they said yes; and then they asked if I'd told them to say it, and they said yes, and it was a total fucking lie.

My mother is the sort of malicious bitch who can wish a child stillborn to spite the parents - and mean it - and yet to Cristian she's such a brilliant fucking parent.

Would I seriously have put myself through the last five years of basically having no family for my own enjoyment? Seriously?

I wish she was dead. I really do. I wish she'd fucking do what she's been promising for years and kill herself. It'd do the world a favour.

Things aren't so bad as I tell myself, sometimes.

And someone has found my Canadian ancestors in the 1911 census. Taylor Township is near Black River-Matheson, in Cochrane District of Ontario. It's remarkably cool. I emailed someone in the Mayor's office to see if they had any idea if the township was still known as Taylor, or what has happened to it.

It's very cool. When I get something solid I'll show my nan - it was her mum who was the first child in our family born there. She still has photos of the log cabin with them standing outside. It's really sweet.

I'd love to go there and get in touch with my heritage. Maybe I will. The only thing, is that it's in the middle of nowhere and I don't drive. I'd need someone who could drive to come with me. Maybe, if I find some people we're related to, Jem and Nan will come with me. Jem's a courier, so he's used to travelling long distances.

In other news, I've been saying my brother, Cris, looks like Jake Gyllenhaal for ages. He told me today that everyone else says it, too.

No one usually sees that sort of thing when I say it - so I'm feeling a bit smug at the moment.

Back to dreaded work, in the morning. There's a tube strike, so I'll have to go the other way and make sure I'm on the platform by 8.10am. I don't usually leave the house until after then! Not best pleased.

I've also been talking to Mary about taking on the design for The Camera Obscura. She protests that she's not a good enough webdesigner, but she's better than I am. Jane is too busy to finish it herself. We want something up in time for the release of Within, because there's sure to be a bunch of new fans appearing around then - it'd be nice to have something they can actually draw some information from, instead of the IMDb profile - because there's simply no detail.

Fingers crossed, anyway.