25/07/98 - Day off. Minneapolis.

I'd just like to stick my tongue out to all the net sceptics out there. "The internet is an over-hyped pile of rubbish that's only good for porn."

Yeah well I've heard that a million times and it's a load of bollocks.

I woke up, I logged onto the Vegetarian's guide to America' and I found the Minneapolis page. It listed the top 20 restaurants with veggie dishes in town and each one had a map to click on and a star rating. Try getting all that info on the telephone on a local call number. I don' think so. I ate a delicious veggie meal and didn't have to wait. Naa naah. The 'Ribfest' is real.

The Jamaican taxi driver from yesterday wasn't crazy. Minneapolis is holding a festival in praise of ribs. There is a whole portion of the city centre cordoned off for rib stalls. Inumerous tents shelter huge skillets continually cooking dead pig bones. The city is voluntarily rejoicing in the eating of pig ribs. People have driven in from out of town to eat pig. Whole families are here. Baseball capped fathers eat ribs with their freckled goofy teethed children sitting on their shoulders . . . eating ribs. The smell is making me sick. There's a giant inflatable pig to welcome the carnivorous horde. The pig is smiling and holding a plate . . . of ribs. This place is all fucked up. Each stall has it's 'Ribfest' trophies on display. Large sporting trophies on ornate stands with little silver and gold pigs at their pinnacle. Huge things, five feet tall. I have to get away from here. I've stepped into an episode of 'Sliders' without noticing.As I swiftly exit the Ribfest area of town I am confronted by another horror. Beach volleyball. These sick bastards have gone and brought in tons of sand and nets and crowd seating for inland beach volleyball. The living embodiment of Hell has manifested itself in downtown Minneapolis. Twin towns? You betcha. Twinned with Hades. Thousands of half asleep working stiffs are milling around a state sponsored bloodfest and they have to heighten the depravity by adding tan happy nuclear family types playing beach volleyball? Satan is at work in Minneapolis. It's the epicentre of evil for the Mid West. I say kill two birds with one stone. Eat the beach volleyball players and you still get to have a Ribfest. I'm a fair man. You could give them a sporting chance. Line them up after the game. Give them three chances to live:

"1 - What do the 13 stripes stand for on the American flag? . . . No? Next chance."
"2 - What's the square root of minus one? . . . No idea? last chance."
"3 - How many sides does a dodecahedron have? . . . No?"
BLAMM!
"YOU'RE RIB MEAT!"

Maybe I'm being a little extreme. I know, I know, I need professional help. I can see the CNN special now:

"LONE PASTY LOOKING ENGLISH GUNMAN KILLS HEALTHY TAN AMERICAN KIDS CELEBRATING NATIONAL MEATHOLIDAY."

They'd start with a character profile:
"He was a loner sinceschool days. Other kids would be playing team sports while Jonathan would be smoking marijuana alone in his bedroom and listening to brainwashing punk rock music."

Then they'd move onto a summary:
" Obviously this hideous crime was a cry for help, Jonathan just wanted to be one of those healthy happy meat eating kids but he couldn't be because he was a pinko-lefty weirdo and so he had to destroy the thing he craved."

And of course the obligatory comment from a next door neighbour to finish the piece:
"He was such a quite man. He kept himself to himself. You would have never thought that he was a homicidal maniac. We used to let him baby-sit the kids."

Atnight we console ourselves from the beach volley ball and dead pig revelry by getting hammered. It's not big or clever, but we have three (count them, three) days off in a row and here we are in the heart of a pig slaughtering state holiday. So we invite ourselves to the very accommodating record company representative's house, drink his booze, play his stereo loud and then leave. I don't think we broke anything and his girlfriend was still smiling as we left so we must have behaved ourselves.

The weird bit: when I got up the next day I found a picture of a KISS painting (see pic) on my camera that I have no recollection of taking. I think it was from the record company guy's house, but I can't be sure. Very strange. What does it mean? You wanted the best, you've got the best.