Whoever has their finger on the button

Just a quick message to whoever out there knows where the internet, the actual internet is stored.  If you are reading this and you have access to the very console or apparatus or motherboard where the internet is transmitted from.  Please, please give the thing a quick bash on the top.

Kim Jong-il at the Electric

I meet Kim Jong-il at Notting Hill Gate station. He’s late and blames it on the circle line, that old chestnut… He mutters that if he ran the place he’d have the entire circle line staff and their families shot at dawn. I laugh nervously. I have decided to take him to the Electric Cinema since he is a man accustomed to the finer things in life. We walk down Portobello road and he stops to buy an antique “My Goodness, My Guinness” advertisement poster. He points out every CCTV camera and praises the government for the excellent levels of surveillance he has seen in this country.

I am excited to be watching a movie with a man whose passion for cinema extends to kidnapping a foreign film director and actress to build up his local film industry. We are watching “Revolutionary Road”, I fear it is a little too middlebrow for him. As we settle down in our plush leather armchairs he pulls a bottle of Krug out of his holdall and hands me a plastic cup. He pops it skilfully during a noisy trailer. Throughout the movie he makes smug little observations about the poisonous evils of capitalist society. The movie finishes and I get up to leave, he doesn’t move. I ask him if he’s coming, he doesn’t reply. I leave him sitting there; he seems to be weeping silently to himself.

A Perfect Storm with Davíð Oddsson

I arrived in Reykjavík around midday and happened upon a small shop on Posthusstraeti where I bought a T-shirt with "skipstjóri" emblazoned across the front.  By the time I got to the old harbor, there were only a few fishing boats showing signs of life and I chose what appeared to be the finest vessel and advanced towards it with antipodean optimism.  The owner introduced himself as David Oddsson.  I told him that I had an innate gift for fishing.  He looked at me skeptically - I took no exception to this, having never fished in my life - before shaking his head at the prospect of submitting me to the arduous and physically demanding responsibilities of a deck hand.  He shook his head, clicking his tongue, then said "I know a captain when I see one."

The sun was setting as we set out against the tide with one of Reykjavík's best pylsers in each hand, Oddsson gritting his teeth against the wind and gathering poetry in his head like a storm.  The sky was filthily overcast, fostering the sort of pathetic fallacy that for millennia has lent pregnancy to paganism.  I thought I spotted a mermaid off the starboard side and told Oddsson so.  When he raced to peer over the left side of the boat, I realized my mistake and called "PORT, PORT."  He clamboured beleagueredly back over to the right but the apparition had evaporated.

It was after midnight when the storm hit and we were both asleep in the depths of the vessel.  I made my way up on deck where I was soon joined by Oddsson, in a nightshirt.  I asked him if he had seen the film 'A Perfect Storm' and he admitted regretfully that he had.  I said that I hadn't seen it myself but had been markedly intimidated by the trailer.  He nodded, constructing in his mind a semblance of the preview out of half-recalled highlights.  The immense wave, Mark Wahlberg's beard.  We returned downstairs and hid.

Changeling with Khomeni

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni happened to be sitting in front of me during Changeling.  I accidentally kneed him in the back of the neck as I arrived late, which probably contributed to his not enjoying the film.  About halfway through, I commented to no-one in particular that Angelina would probably look better in a hijab and Khomeini, turning around smiling, agreed with me.  After that we were friends and we waged a malteaser jihad on some Hasidic Malkovich fans in the second row.