For the past few weeks I have been attempting to stick to a vegetarian diet. The roots of this were planted long ago when I decided to take more interest in where my meat came from and how it was raised. I stopped buying cheap meat in the supermarket and treated it like a luxury, buying only from sources that could assure me of their ethical farming methods. It’s a great deal more expensive, but was nicer and seemed considerably less like eating victims of torture. Out went the bargain bacon, the Pepperamis, the sausage rolls, the service station pork pies, and all the other convenient meat products. The fact is that no one, not even the producers of such products, can accurately inform you of what’s in them. You’re probably eating hooves, offal, gristle and bone most of the time, and I decided that wasn’t for me. So I stuck to the odd duck breast or steak from the farmers’ market, some good mince from the local butcher, things like that. Read more »
Posts Tagged ‘aidan moffat’
Aidan Moffat’s underlying health problems
I felt a bit rough last Thursday night but put it down to the incredibly long day spent exclusively with my son, which would be enough to wear out the toughest of tough guys. Probably just tired, I thought, and went to bed at about 1 AM – an early night for me – thinking I’d be fine come the morning. I woke up two and a half hours later, dripping in sweat and unable to breathe. Read more »
Scotland: there’s an ugliness at its very root. I should have stayed in Japan.
First impressions on return to Scotland after a 23-hour journey home from Japan via Paris and Amsterdam aren’t good. A mother swears loudly and aggressively at her toddler for dragging his heels slightly as one of the passengers walks through Passport Control and straight into the long arms of the law. Read more »
Aidan Moffat is away
Aidan Moffat’s in Japan on holiday. Fortunately, he has left the tour diary from his last days with his band, Arab Strap, behind. It’s a typical tour: old groupies, having all your stuff nicked, and putting your erection in a false vagina purchased in a German service station. He also got his friend Jenny Soep to give us some illustrations she did of the band.
Arab Strap Farewell Tour Diary 2006
by Aidan Moffat
Aidan Moffat’s written a song for you
Smash The Mystic Industry - by Aidan Moffat
My favourite book as a boy was The Hamlyn Book Of Ghosts, an anthology of eerie stories and convincing (to a child) snapshots of apparitions, and I studied every page. There was a chapter on Harry Price, the famous paranormal investigator and ghost-hunter, and I dreamed of growing up to be a Ghostbuster long before Bill Murray convinced me it would be the best job in the world. Like most young boys, I was obsessed by monsters and ghouls and I insisted that I be allowed to watch horror films at a very young age, becoming far too familiar with Hammer Horror before my tenth birthday – Peter Cushing was an early hero. Then there was my love of The Omen and its two sequels and, of course, John Carpenter’s Halloween, which I first saw as an eight-year-old and still remains one of my all-time favourites. Read more »
A Good Thing To Lose #9: Speaking to the dead
I miss my grandfather. We were extremely close when I was young, and I spent just about every weekend with him and Grandma. He’d let me stay up late and watch The Hammer House of Horror and The Wicker Man when I was clearly far too young, and take me for walks round Falkirk’s fields and along the Union Canal even though his replacement hip hindered him with a characteristic, cane-assisted limp. Read more »
Aidan Moffat’s still thinking about Jade Goody
The death of Jade Goody has had no impact on my life, nor would I expect it to have any on yours, unless you happen to be a friend or a member of the Goody family. It’s tragic to see any young mother die before she reaches her thirties, of course, and her loved ones have my sympathy. But I didn’t know Jade, we’d never met; what little relationship we had ended the night she was evicted from the Big Brother house, when – like all the contestants on the show – she ceased to be of any use to me. And while I didn’t keep up to speed with her post-BB life, it was impossible to ignore her recent, Max Clifford-publicised death. Read more »
The Donaldson Boy. A short story by Aidan Moffat
Dear Police,
This is a confession, although it is an anonymous one, so you may be inclined to consider it a boast. I can assure you that this is not my intention. As a woman of retirement age who has spent almost every available Sunday in one church or another, I can solemnly vow that I feel a genuine sense of remorse for my crime. Although, admittedly, these feelings are not so strong as to compel me to provide you with my name, because if I am to be honest, I also rather enjoyed the whole affair and I should hope that you have more important matters to attend to. Mine was a petty crime and thanks to your recent cost-cutting exercises in the area and a reduction in the number of local officers I expect you would have neither the time, nor the resources to concern yourself with the mere theft of a mobile telephone.
Aidan Moffat’s A Good Thing To Lose #4: Psychic Light
A Good Thing To Lose #4: Psychic Light
For some reason I’ve never turned to telephone psychics to help me overcome life’s hurdles. Oddly, it turns out all you need to do is black-up and you’ll be fine…
A Good Thing To Lose #3: OK! Magazine
I’ve been in close proximity to OK! Magazine many times before. My girlfriend, who is an intelligent woman, a Glasgow School Of Art graduate and undoubtedly my intellectual superior, is incongruously drawn to what she quite accurately refers to as “trash”. She seems to hold a preposterous passion for the likes of America’s Next Top Model and lots of other television shows that all seem to feature that bespectacled Chinese guy. Occasionally a friend will interrupt her viewing and pop round to drop off a pile of tatty, creased and out-of-date celebrity-obsessed publications that have apparently already been ingested to their full potential, this friend also seems to be an otherwise intelligent person, also an Art School graduate. I find it fascinating that evidently clever women – I’m sure there must be a few men who read these things too but I’ve genuinely never met any – can be lured into such fatuous, inane shit. What did some talentless starlet snort at the weekend? Who had sweaty armpits on the red carpet? Is their relationship on the rocks? I couldn’t give a toss, and I don’t understand why everyone is so fucking nosy these days.
Reviewing sex toys with Aidan Moffat
The Tenga Flip Hole, beautiful isn’t it?
Aidan Moffat has done many things, including being in one of my favourite bands. But, as with all of us, there are some experiences which have escaped him. Maybe they are too sordid, shitty or dull, but now, for Vice, he’s aiming to experience all those missed sensations of life’s gross tapestry. Why? Because ignorance is a good thing to lose. This week he begins with electronic male masturbation aides. Classy.
