Posted via email from Garlic Toothpaste

Hungry shoes ate a cracked wheat biscuit and surrendered to the tarmac. sweet prospect of hitch hiking waits on unknown a-roads. Irish times cross the border with frozen beef in the boot, you're a star, you're a star. From Newry to Carlingford on a summer's day.

John Barleycorn must die. The buses are all done. Belfast has gone. Say goodbye to the redbrick. Hallo green grass and the placid blue sea.

Gossiping and stepping up and around town, there are fishing boats and some dead ends. But it costs ten pence to have your things put in a shopping basket. We step out onto the harbour wall. This is a heatwave. Dublin is not far away. But the taxi driver cuts a mean city in two.

So is that a windmill an old church a fairy glen or the sight of our mother in blue? Grottos are two a penny here.

I take a tumble and bring out the pac-a-mac.

Sure its getting moist now.

Very moist.

So when I say go, we'll go. Ok?

GO!

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

Here is a little video I just made. 

It is part 3 in a very occasional series where I pick up a book and open it at a random page

 and read.

This one is from Techngosis by Erik Davis

I'm not very professional at reading and this was a first take, but it may be interesting...

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

Hampshire UNISON reports:

Yesterday library management began consultation with UNISON and the other trades unions over their proposals for the Library Service Restructure, which if implemented would result in a total reduction of 65.32 full time equivalent (FTE) posts. By now you should also know what has been suggested. These proposals are much worse than we had feared, and we are very doubtful that the Library Service can be sustained if these savage cuts go ahead. There is no doubt that they wil result in a worse service for library users and extremely difficult working conditions for those staff  that remain.

Posted via email from Garlic Toothpaste

I banged my head against a shelf in the darkness of the garden shed.

I didn't knock myself out but later that evening I began to suffer from mild concussion.

I felt anxious, I felt overwhelmingly and unusually tired.

The next day a headache kicked in and I went to a&e to see a doctor and make sure I wasn't about to 

have a brain meltdown.

So anyway now I am chilling at home and here is a very basic electronic track I just put together very quickly whilst feeling pretty spaced out.

  
Download now or listen on posterous

concussionfade.mp3 (4782 KB)

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

I recently became reacquainted with my old turntable.

So I decided to record some vinyl into a mix, well there is no mixing as I only have one turntable.

This was my first attempt from a couple of weeks ago.

It is mainly electronic music, but still has the Child Without An Ipod podcast flavour.

ie, there are some odd cheesy tracks as well as some classics. 

It is called London2Glasgow as those were the two cities I lived in during the 1990s,  

a time when I bought a lot of records.

I do have to get rid of some of my vinyl though, so if anyone wants that dreadful track with 

 the Police sample which is second last in this mix, just let me know and its yours!

Tecnical notes, I used a Behringer U-Control UCA202 to get the line in from my amp.

 It is a great cheap littlee usb soundcard. 

My old amp  has a bit of a static problem so there is a bit of hum, but not really noticeable.

I used Audacity software to record the music.

  
Download now or listen on posterous

london2glasgow.mp3 (38928 KB)

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

this is a lost page from my second website Matt King's Unbelievable Hype.

At the J18 demo in London there was a fake version of the Evening Standard being handed out.

I must have transcribed this article but I never put it online

EVADING STANDARDS

LONDON, FRIDAY 18 JUNE 1999

The Final Act Of Enclosure

One cold winter morning in 1997 Lord Simon, Minister for Competitiveness, awoke to find bio-activists in white coats in the back-garden of his Islington residence collecting samples of his pot plants and tagging his petunias with bar-codes. This was the day that Lord Simon was travelling to Europe to sign a directive allowing the caring, compassionate biotech companies to patent plant strains with engineered genes - of course for the 'good of mankind'. This was a huge leap in the concept of patents. No longer did companies or entrepeneurs have to invent something to patent; under the new concept, pioneered by the US and forced on the rest of the world by the WTO(World Trade Organisation), engineered strains of plants and animals could be converted to private property rights. Almost overnight life became an 'invention', a commodity, a product.

Extravagant claims spin their way through the corridors of the biotech industry and, amplified by large sums of PR money, out into the public domain. On the other side the financially challenged NGO's and direct activists scrape together their resources and challenge the biotech giants head-on.

But on the ground are farmers, who depend on strains of plants that have been gradually and painstakingly selected over about 10,000 years. The focus of the biotech giant's attention; the 'Third' (and majority) World. India for example, is home to some of the greatest genetic diversity in the world, much of which is found in their valuable crops as rice.

Basmati is the champagne of rice varieties. It's distinctive aromatic flavour makes it a favourite in the US, Europe and the Middle East, netting India USDOLLARS 280 million in 1996-1997 and employing around a quarter of a million farmers. In september 1997 Rice Tec Inc ( a US based multinational) was granted a patent on Basmati "rice lines and to plants and grains". Their claim stemmed from a genetically altered strain. However it could ultimately extend to all strains of basmati rice producing the ridiculous scenario where basmati growers could violate Rice Tec's patent merely by continuing their traditional farming of rice.

In India, unlike in the US, patents on life are not allowed. However, under the WTO's trade related property rights regime (TRIPs) all signatories are due to unify patent laws this year - consolidating corporate (and Western) control over the genetic diversity of the world. 

Under so much pressure from the public one woders why the UK government is so keen to support the biotech irms in their race to gain control and intellectual ownership of the world's food supply. Perhaps the Minister of Agriculture, Jack cunningham's words on the recent BBC Panorama programme hands us a clue. As he sat in the spotlight justifying the use of Genetically Modified Organisms, repeating industry rhetoric he eventually hit in the key: GMO's are good for the British Economy. In short the share prices of Zeneca ( a British based biotech firm) are more important to our repreentatives in the government than the will of the people.

This is part of a wider process that has been taking place for centuries, from the enclosure of common land in England in the 18th century, to the claims now being made by corporations. From the local to the global, things that once belonged to all of us are being transformed into exclusive private property. Today a few powerful institutions are, in some sectors, virtually eliminating small business and securing all trade for themselves, turning public streets into guarded shopping malls, and life itself into a profit-making venture.

Matt King's Unbelievable Hype
The J18 Homepage

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

Hey People, Get Ready To Relax.

____________________________________________________

   Hi there. Sorry I have moved server.   please click here to go to  http://freeweb.digiweb.com/arts/webking

Well you know things are strange. Crosswinds my server for this page have speeded their act up, so I may use this page for a more relaxed laidback kind of vibe. So for serious pretentious arty bollocks you can go to that digiweb site up there. But if you wanna stick with me you'll get a regular update of rambling sprawl straight from the centre of London. So you can Email me at Mattyking@hotmail.com

Latest update 2nd of December 1998: Well my lovely Grandpa died the sunday before last. So I have been with the family up in Liverpool. He was a great man. You would have enjoyed meeting him. He was born in 1912 in Foley st, London. He lived in Fitzrovia, London, but spent the summers in Saint laurent a small village in rural France where his Father was from. His mum was a loving cockney. So as a child he was surrounded by his singing parents. He learnt all the French and Cockney songs of the time and he could still remember them eighty years later. At the age of 15 he became a cook on board the Cunard ships. The Mauritania took him to New York. He also travelled to many other parts of the globe on these ships, at a young age. This travelling stayed with him until the last years of his life. Anyway he wrote lots of memoirs about this early period of his life, and maybe I'll get permission to put it online because it really is worth a read.

CHECK OUT THESE LINKS!!

CYANOSIS
This is a page with some seriously fascinating essays for all you poetic-genius nutters out there.
SYSTEM-ZERO
This is the homepage of Cyanosis and also has unhinged arty stuff from San Francisco. 
NETWORK 23
This is a techno/direct action/drugs/arts/fun/reclaim the streets kind of site with minizines spreading across the UK and the world!!
t0 PUBLIC NETBASE
This is a large site based in Vienna with many fascinating essays written by some deep thinkers.

This is a live regularly updated picture of downtown sydney. My pals Matt and Hayley are there.

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

Yeah, back in the early 90s we were buying cd bootlegs of smile and reading fanzines like Beach Boys Australia to find the latest news about poor old Brian Wilson who was being held under the care of Doctor Landy. Affectionately known to us as Wilsa, I made this cover inspired by a book that was being written at the time.

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

I made this birthday card for a friend using the wonderful magical images I was finding online. 

In those days you could download 64k intros which were 3d demos and then gaze in awe at the cool visuals 

that would fit into such a tiny download. 

I remember downloading lots of pictures of sunsets and lightning bolts.

Classic visionary art by Blake and Hieronymous Bosch were alll the rage.

Plus people were doing their own  digital airbrush art, many of them influenced by narcotic intake.

Anyway I think this is pretty cool and I remember knocking it together pretty quickly.

There is also a pic of me in there somewhere.

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste