THE LIAR

Extract from: THE LANGUAGE OF THIEVES AND VAGABONDS


Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...

The clock began its countdown on the night he was born - but I hear what you’re saying
What makes him so special, right?

They gave him a name he didn’t want
A name he didn’t ask for
A name by which he shall always be known and judged.
Sometimes the silence evoked by his name is deafening.

He tried so hard to make himself strong
Tried to be everything they wanted him to be.
Too fucking busy concentrating on his strengths
To notice his weaknesses feeding off them.

The fabrication of the Liar was the only way out.
This was his trump card - his ace in the hole.
By creating the Liar, he would eventually
And inevitably,
Lie to himself and finally become honest.

Nature has a cruel sense of humour.

The odyssey began innocently enough.
Plagued with the trials of school, he became strong.
He sure showed them.
The liar was a smart cookie.
Swift and crushing with his blows,
He waltzed through the tests as though he had written them himself.

ROAD TRIP (1)

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK: 1994
It must have been snowing for about six weeks now. The residents are in control and the guy that drives the snow plough is the most important man in the world today - and he’s done a great job. The roads are clear enough to get to a club. We find ourselves at the aptly named Lost Horizon. Shit, who would have ever thought of putting a bar here? I get asked for my ID at the door. For some reason I still have my passport on me. Its five bucks to get in and the beer is free all night… life is swell.

The joint is full of guys who either have Judas Priest t-shirts on or lumber shirts. It occurs to me that most of these guys probably work in the lumber yard. The barmaid is cool… really cool. She’s more than willing to talk to these two wandering gringos from out of town. Let’s re-cap. She’s blonde, the beer is free, I’m in New York. I am so in love with myself right now.

JJ tries to convince the DJ that he should play the new Wildhearts single “Suckerpunch”, and she asks me if I want to go to a Harley rally with her tomorrow. She says she’ll take me on the back of hers and J can ride with her brother. She writes down her name and address and phone number. I put it safely inside my passport and say I’ll call her in the morning. Suckerpunch rumbles through the club and everybody stops to listen. I get asked if I am in the band, it almost crosses my mind to say I am, but life is treating me so well tonight… why would I want to be in the Wildhearts?

Outside later, we get a stack of Hershey’s from a petrol station and make hundreds of snow angels in the street with the guys in lumber shirts.

I get up early the next morning to make plans for the day. Hunting down my precious slip of paper is easy, I must have slept with it in my fist. I light up, pick up the phone. I unravel the paper. At the top she has written her name:

Maureen.

I sigh, put down the phone and go back to bed.

Nobody in real life is called Maureen.

PALM TREES AND OTHER WORLDLY SUNS

Extract from: THE LANGUAGE OF THIEVES AND VAGABONDS

Palm trees and other worldly suns
Sit in the palm of my hand.
Can you slip through my fingers
Like the sands of time?

Twitching shoulders let the globe drop at my feet and the animals in the zoo weep with sadness. The jackals push their mental accelerators to the metal and plastic tombs rise in their eyes, but I won’t cry anymore for there is more to life than this.

They raise their nostrils and smell the sex that everybody wants but cannot touch.

Paper boats and Cuban cigars tell no stories at the riverbank
The fuckers hang up on you every time
Levi’s fit the bill but to live and die in Levi’s is not the greatest crime.
Open your eyes for while we are busy dying, another world still turns in our heads.

LOVE STORY

I had a meeting early yesterday evening and in a moment of (insert random emotion here), I decided to take Rhiannon to see Taylor Swift at the O2 afterwards.

I've not been there before - having long ago sworn myself off arena shows following a stunningly poor Aerosmith/Lenny Kravitz day out back in something like 2000. For what originally began as something of a white elephant, the O2 is actually a pretty neat venue. It has its 'faults' that's for sure - the force-fed advertising is way over the top, it's totally sanitised and more like walking into a television than a venue, the food is totally out of this world price wise (£6.50 for a 'large' hot dog?) and they have a weird view on the terminology 'good seats'.

Having said that, for a show like this, they make things incredibly easy for you. The tube stops outside the doors of the venue, the video screens are a masterpiece of technology, the security is efficient but not like "we" know security at all and having experienced it, wouldn't actually be that bothered about waiting outside while the kids went in to see a show by themselves.

It was odd - and a world away from getting your ears melted off by White Zombie as a participant of a 500 strong crowd in a venue that should have only let in 200 at the most.

I like songwriters. Always have. I was brought up on songwriters like Elton John, Carly Simon, The Faces... so appreciation of what's actually good or not, is deep engrained and Taylor Swift can write a tune. I dare say there will be more than one or two of my rock pals who will think I've lost the plot, but she's good. Really good. When you've written a tune that 50 million people know all the words to, then you have the right to voice an opinion.

So, for what was actually a bonus birthday present for Rhiannon, it actually turned into a bit of a revelation for me. She can sing, play guitar properly - and even though it was delivered with machine like precision (not that far removed from a Kiss show when I thought about it), it was a damn good show. I'd go again - if pushed - but I'd give my right arm to see her in a smoky club with just a battered old acoustic. Then we'd be talking.

I even considered writing a full-on review of the show, but I might just have been tired when I got home.

PROPHECY

Come on down motherfuckers and take a long hard look at the Black
Soak your eyeballs in my god-spit cocaine and twist in the melodrama
I’m hungry for the love that makes us all freaks, sheiks and angels speak
When I ask questions - just announce the real names for the Gods sake.
Is there enough pain here for you?
Can you trace the intensity to a time when we have met before?
Are you damned enough yet to cry alone as she turns her back for a countless time?
Are you disillusioned enough to recall all of the reasons you left us behind?

They guest list me for the last supper.

Figure I’ll bring my wit, good looks and charm along for the ride but
Windswept and interesting just got bored and blown away.
It’s a bad move but it’s a certainly a step in the right direction.

I give you broken bottles across the face
Crutches for the out of place
Chairs for the dying, prayers for the weak
Soul seeking missiles to destroy the meek
Tell me:
How is the prophet of the nation?
Are we broken enough for true damnation?
Plastic insects inhabit my walls
And the humble are down where the money falls.
The war with myself rages on
In like a bullet at #1.
I’ve got paper, forms and private eyes
While high society buries higher lies
My children stare with eyes both glistening
WHile no-one cares the Gods aren't listening.
Lock the Nazarene inside his grave
Surf the helpless bastards tidal wave
The holocaust rages through my minds
Can you give me two good reasons to stay behind?
When Death announces now’s our time
I know who’ll be standing first in line.

But my head is in a different place
Tell me do you recognise my face?

LIKE A STONE

I've been "away" for a week or so in la-la land finishing up Tattoo Dynamite (still got a couple of days left with it), making sure my revamp of Skin Shots was exactly as I had it pictured in my head (and it is - it's killer and it starts hitting the shelves tomorrow), gearing up for the 200th edition of Skin Deep (she's a monster) and fulfilling my part of the uber-event that is Tattoo Jam (don't ask... it's huge!)

So in a word, just too damn busy to blog. Throw in some general design work on The Ballad of the Goat Faced Boy (Mark's work on this is turning into something really special), a dose of the flu that won't go away, finishing up my final edits on Black Dye, White Noise (which I might even be happy with now) and to be honest, I'm fucking shattered. Have found some moments to do this at the local pool as the monkeys demanded swimming and bacon sandwiches to follow just because it's Thursday.

Obviously I am sitting at pool-side and not actually in the pool.

There have been a few 'down tools' moments though, the best one probably being at lunch today when I had to walk away and ended up outside in the sun with the first volume of Joe Hills Locke and Key. I've avoided it for the longest time and I'm not sure why. Anyway, it got read in about half an hour and it's quite easily one of the best graphic novels in years. Gabriel Rodriguez gets better with every stroke.

One day, I'd like to do something special with that man.

Currently listening to: Madina Lake Currently reading: Martin Beck: Murder at the Savoy Can't freaking wait for: Doctor Who to reboot

NINJA ASSASSINS

It was Eleanor's birthday last Friday. She bought herself a Wii. I am now a Wiidower.

The year that I bought the kids one for Christmas - which is about 3 years ago - I also picked up a WWE Smackdown Vs Raw game and spent Boxing Day evening with my shoulder all banged up and smelling of Tiger Balm after trying to hand Batista a Tombstone Piledriver.

Somebody must have bought me Call of Duty the following year I guess, because it's the only other game I own. So, I just spent half an hour having a quick look at it. It kind of went like this:

"You have been killed by a grenade."

"You have been killed by a grenade."

"You have been killed by a grenade."

I don't play Call of Duty anymore. Call of Duty is not cool.

Now I know why I never owned a gaming machine of any description. Choose Life.

MONSTER MASH (II)

John Kenn is a Danish dude who writes and directs TV shows for kids - in his spare time he draws monsters on yellow post-it notes to pass the time.

I draw monsters on yellow post-it notes now instead of painting monsters on gnarly landscapes. Drawing monsters on yellow post-it notes now instead of painting monsters on gnarly landscapes is cool.

(This Doctor Who quote will get really old really quick and the series hasn't even started yet).

MONSTER MASH (I)

Here's some neat nonsense that I found this morning. Artist Chris McMahonhas struck creative gold by picking up old gnarly unwanted landscapes in yard sales and then adding monsters to them. He calls them "involuntary collaborations".

Cool. I paint monsters now. Painting monsters is cool...

A RANDOM FIND

Flipping through my feedly um... "feeds" this morning, I followed a link of a link of a link on Cherie Priests blog and found this (left). That's what I call a book jacket design. Maybe you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but that's just the sort of thing that would stop me in a store and make me read the back.

It always tickles me that when I talk about book covers, people think you're talking about the cover image in isolation, but a book cover also consists of the font on the front that can destroy even the best of books, the blurb on the back which is more important usually than what's on the front - get that wrong and you've blown it.

But the one thing I've never understood is how publishers can get away with printing "the number one international bestseller" on the cover when what I'm holding in my hands is a first edition hardback. Is that from advance sales? If so, surely that just means the distributors are shit hot at their job regardless of what the book is like. It certainly doesn't make it a good book.

I shouldn't go down this road. I will say all kinds of things I may later regret.

Back to work...

MR SMITH AND THE BIRTH OF A NEW SPECIES

I thought I was seeing things - or maybe the little punk had fallen down a chimney or something, but while I was driving to the Post Office yesterday, a squirrel ran across the road in front of me.

Not just any squirrel - a Black Squirrel.

Thinking it was maybe a freak of nature, when I came back I did some research and would you believe, the damn thing is for real. There's a whole article about it here - how cool is that. Take that Grey's - see how you like them apples!

MR SMITH AND THE DEATH OF A MISCONCEPTION

Late last night, I was hunting around for something new to listen to in the car. In the absence of anybody of worthwhile substance having released any music I might want to listen to (what is going on out there?), I scoured the racks for an audiobook and came up with something I never thought I'd be into.

Everybody has heard of Ernest Hemingway - well, anybody with a scrap of a brain anyway. Having never read him before, I always had him filed under the heading of "classical American writer - probably extremely dull and for old people who like to pretend they're elitist."

I may have become "old" but I hardly think I'm elitist with my authors. Death In The Afternoon is simply captivating - its basic premise is 'observations on a bullfight', but the way he pulls his thoughts together, the way they flow onto the page, make it into something genuinely unique. So far, I've only whipped through the first chapter and I'm half tempted to go out and buy the book, but being as it's a Sunday morning, I'll just slip it on, listen to the rest of it and buy the book later (so long as I can find this cover, some of the others suffer badly at the hands of bad American book designers).

This falls cleanly into the hands of something I've been chewing over a lot lately. As I (think I) said some time back, I was going to record some of my spoken word material and throw it out there as free podcasts. The kit is all set up and I've had a few trial runs at it - it sounds pretty good to be honest (even if I do say so myself) but having listened to a lot of similar concepts, it appears to me that only the Americans can do this properly. From Henry Rollins' Nights Behind The Treeline to old Bukowski and Kerouac material that I've hunted down, spoken word only sounds authentic when Americans do it. I rather suspect that sometimes, even if the content was not so good, it could sneak through the defences on those grounds alone.

Now, not that I'm comparing myself to Gaiman, but I have some of his spoken word material here and it sounds like an English bloke reading a story. Which is exactly what it is - and that's fine, but it wasn't really what I wanted to create. I've checked against some other non-Americans as well, and they all sound - well, just like people reading out loud. I can't put my finger on why I find the American way of creating spoken word so authentic - or maybe cool is a better word. Maybe I should stop analysing it, get it done, put it out there and let everybody else decide.

Then, if it generates less than stellar results, I'll get one of my American pals to do it for me. Then at least it will sound good in myhead.

IN WHICH MR SMITH TAKES PART IN A LAZY SATURDAY AFTERNOON

…and things move along nicely. Mark and I (look at that - proper English!) have a meeting on Monday in London. Finally, The Ballad of the Goat Faced Boy moves along like it has an engine instead of some solid walking shoes. With a launch date, proofs in progress and both of us hitting on it at every available opportunity, we're both really excited about the way things are going. I rather suspect Mark will be bringing along his ideas for his steampunk project too. I'm looking forward to that - I've never written anything that wasn't born from my own head. It might actually make a refreshing change to deal with some people who will behave.

My big box of tricks finally arrived from amazon this week as well. That super-saver delivery is all well and good but it doesn't half take a long time when you're in a hurry. While I was waiting, I caught up with Billingham's Tom Thorne in Bloodline. a nice piece of work it is too for a London based crime drama. Anyway, I'm halfway through the Martin Beck series - if anybody has any recommendations for kick-ass crime I can plough my way through in a month or so, let me know. It's probably worth noting here that I've pretty much done all of the obvious hence why I moved on to Scandinavian authors.

So, without my books, I've been "reduced" to watching the remainder of season two of Life (which was much better than I expected it to be), caught up with The Killing (deserving of every single award it ever won) and dived in and out of a Wire in the Blood box-set that I found knocking around. Maybe I should have just got some sleep - but sleep is for girls. Right?

Talking of which, the girls came back from holiday this week, so this weekend I've got the pair of them. As I sit here typing this, we've decided to have the best Saturday ever by eating our favourite sandwiches and crisps along with a Frijj milkshake while we watch all five episodes of Torchwood: Children of Earth - back to back. I know, I can be such a TV whore sometimes, but it's raining hard, they're tired and I have things to do, so I think it's acceptable. We'll get back on the horse tomorrow and kick off with a visit to the pool, but for now, Captain Jack is just what the Doctor ordered.

A few weeks back, somebody forwarded a link to me about a new web project. It's a really cool idea and if you're into this sort of thing, you should probably go and sign up and get your own name before somebody else pinches it. It's here: https://about.me/ and it's just about the coolest social networking hub I've seen - even though it's still in beta. Everybody on there already has made a real effort with their pictures and it's really locked down tight so you can't really mess it up. Mine is here: http://about.me/sionsmith and what you see is what you get. Cool pic, brief biog and a bunch of icon-driven links to all my other places. Long term, I can see it working really well. If you've got something to say and a good presence on the web, give it a go, otherwise you might find it's all bit pointless and you might as well stick with whatever network of choice you're currently with.

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED

We live in the country. I mean, the COUNTRY. If you look at my house on google maps, there's a little cluster of four cottages and we're surrounded by a radius of, I would say, two miles of fields in all directions. It's beautiful - and comes with it's own wildlife zoo. Sometime last year, I recall posting about the rats that turned up in the garden. Luckily late last summer, the cats at the farm had some kittens and now that we have four badass mogs kicking about the place, we no longer have rats. This, believe me, is a good thing. The cats however didn't deter a stoat from killing the two giant rabbits that one of our neighbours had. I don't know why the stoat has never been interested in our godzilla rabbits. Maybe they're bigger - one of them bit me last week trying to get some food out of my hand and man it hurt.

Anyway, a few days ago, we saw a little mouse sitting in the middle of the floor while we were watching TV. He looked very well fed - lending some gravity to Eleanor's theory that yes, the guinea pig food had been going down faster than normal. He's actually quite a pretty mouse and every night we've heard him rustling about, no doubt searching for tasty morsels consisting of house wiring and whatever else mice eat - anything he can find probably. So, the day before yesterday, we put all the guinea pig food into plastic boxes in the hope he would go elsewhere for his daily bread.

Last night, neither of us could be bothered to cook, so we bought some pizza. Eleanor left a couple of crusts on her plate and put the plate on the floor and within seconds, the little mouse ran out from underneath the sofa, grabbed the biggest crust on the plate and disappeared back under the sofa with it. Brave! Sofa was moved, crust was binned and there was no sign of our little friend... until about 2am this morning when Eleanor found him sitting on her bedside table chewing the corner of her book.

I'm quite reluctant to poison him because he is actually quite a sweet little thing and he's only looking for easy food - and then she spoke the words out loud that I had only been thinking.

Maybe it's not the same mouse.

So today, I'm going to get a couple of humane traps along with some poison. I'll give him a couple of days to get in the box and if he's smart, I'll release him into the wild, otherwise it's the tasty looking arsenic laden corn. I'm not sure that the humane trap is all that kind though. It will make us happy but those cats will find him in no time at all and that will be the end for him.

I just hope there's only one of them.

DAYS OF MAGIC, NIGHTS OF WAR

8.20am? What kind of unholy time of day is this?

I spent quite some hours last night working on Fox On The Run - the teleplay idea that drifted into my head about 6 months back. Screenplay makes it sound like it should be a movie, but it's not. It's out and out 9pm Monday night, BBC material. For anybody who writes TV for a living, I salute you. The hardest part of writing/constructing an hour long drama is trimming the fat when the fat acts as an insulating layer for the important parts, but then I guess the trick is to disguise the fat as muscle. I know what I mean… and if you've ever written anything in your life, you'll know what I mean too. I don't think I'll ever write a screenplay that's intended for the big screen. What would I want to go and do that for? It's good to know that you're not alone in the universe at times like this - I find myself in good company from Mr Moffat who recently sent this through space and time on his twitter feed:

"Been stuck on a scene ALL DAY. Solution: a monster attacks. After seven years writing this show, you'd think I'd crack that a bit quicker."

When was the last time you went to the cinema and came out having the feeling you truly watched something groundbreaking? If you're thinking about it, you're blown already. Most films at the moment just seem to scrape by, but they sure as hell don't spit thunder and lightning whatever they're about. I'd probably have to go back to Fellowship of the Ring to find a class act worth tolkien about - and before that? Man, I'd probably have to go back another ten years to find something. TV on the other hand, is wiping the floor with cinema - and you can say what you like about the BBC, when it's hot, it's on fire. Yeah, yeah, the TV licence is a pain in the ass, but certainly not more so than road tax. I get far more out of the BBC than I do the freaking Highways Agency. ITV also pumps out some pristine commissions when it's not tossing about with sport - Marchlands dug a hole to my heart very fast!

Not at all sure how I jumped onto that track, but it's written now. Post and be damned.

IN WHICH MR SMITH DISCOVERS A BRICK WALL

Yeah - I hit it and I hit it hard. Friday night, I decided that to look at one more tattoo - no matter how good - would be one tattoo too many. Talk about overload. I'm currently juggling two magazines and two books for the Deep Suite and as much as I love it, I really needed to do something else for a little while, so I fell back on my two favourite things and overdosed on them. Hard.

I picked up a copy of Henry Rollins' Smile, You're Traveling (Black Coffee Blues book three) on Thursday. Finished that. You can always rely on Hank to deliver the goods when you're in a hole. Then I hit the next Martin Beck - The Laughing Policeman full on as the next two books in the Martin Beck series will be here soon (see previous post, I think...) and should be done with that sometime this evening. Somebody once asked me how it was possible to enjoy a book when it was read so fast, but I don't think I'm a fast reader at all. I just choose what I sit myself in front of and don't sleep very much. Five hours a night is plenty... isn't it?

As much as I like reading, sometimes there's nothing like wallowing in front of the TV. Inspired by getting to know and love Martin Beck and his Scandinavian meanderings, I thought I should check out The Killing that they've been screening on BBC4. Wow. It's top notch but not for those who like things to move quickly. If it moved any slower, it would be filmed in real time - which is kind of how Martin Beck is written, so I guess it's a Scandinavian thing. Is Denmark a part of Scandinavia? It is now.

This weekend, I have also caught up on Fringe, Californication, Supernatural and am also about halfway through season one of the now defunct show, Life. I missed it first time around but it's pretty neat.

The weekend hasn't been totally without work. I've dug out The Ballad of the Goat-Faced Boy and Broken, given them both a lick of paint and sent them packing to their, hopefully, new co-owner for a good looking at. It's about time they both saw the light of day.

Anyway, I haven't had a shave for about two weeks now. Not cool. It's gonna take quite some time...

HOLLOW VISION

A few days ago, I decided it was time to get my eyes tested again. I used to wear glasses for driving (it always helps to have things moving at speed in sharp focus) but about six years ago, having gotten out of the car and put my specs on the seat, promptly sat on them when I got back in the car and snapped them in two.

Since then, I figured I could muscle on without - and I have. But since I've started driving a whole lot more at night, I've found that everything glares like a rocket - prompting me to say 'old person' things like "don't they make car headlights really bright these days".

Which in fact, they do. Those halogen feckers are the worst.

Anyway, I found that they're pretty much exactly the same as they were the last time I went, but no matter how much I begged and pleaded when it came time to choose some frames, they would not give me the ones that they test you with. They're just brilliant - they look just like those worn by Ichabod Crane and are out and out, total steampunk.

Disappointed. I suppose in the real world, they're not that practical, but I know for a fact that they wouldn't break if you sat on them. Somebody should start making them for sale on the market. Seriously.

IN WHICH MR SMITH BREAKS HIS PROMISE - TO HIMSELF

At the beginning of February, I promised myself that I would not buy any books at all this month, and instead, get on with writing in the time that I usually read.

As you can see from this lovingly prepared book grid, this didn't happen. Worse still, this is just a snapshot of one day of shopping on amazon. It's early days yet, but I have re-promised, with my fingers uncrossed to try much harder next time.

...and you know what else? Once upon a time, I couldn't wait to get my hands on an e-reader. Didn't care if it was Sony, Apple or Kindle (except for that original Kindle which I really didn't want anything to do with based on its Fisher-Price design). In the last six months, I have totally changed my mind. I've seen people on the train with their e-readers and all I see is people staring at a leather bound "something". Meantime, they are able to look across the table at me and see exactly what I'm reading - and I like that. I have come to realise that I like holding stuff. I like the art of the cover. I like stuffing it in my pocket, giving it to my sister, browsing the racks and obviously (duh!), I like how they smell.

Whilst I still see the commercial mileage in it - and will (hypocritically?) be releasing my own material as e-books as well as hardbacks and paperbacks, it's not for me at an ownership level. I'm sure it's great for students to carry around millions of text books in a handy package, great for those who don't want others to see what shameful crap you like reading and fantastic for particularly boring work materials if for instance, you are a chemist. But for me? Not today thanks. I have realised the folly of being able to say you are carrying 20,000 books around all at the same time. Why would you want to do that?

Besides, if I got shot of all my books, all I would have left in my house is a collection of Doctor Who mugs. So screw you world - I don't believe there's an app that can replace them!

PostScript: Actually, the Image Comics app on the iphone is a totally killer piece of kit - for me and them. It's the right sort of genre for e-readers, very clever in its delivery and I'm more aware of their collection and have spent more money with them than ever before in my life because of it... sadly, the same can't be said of Marvel and DC who seem to think it's fine to peddle me old and worthless shit in the name of saying "we're doing it". People really should pay attention to what's going on around them.

BADMOTORFINGER

Hmm. With £160 on a new back box on the exhaust and a looming £110 on two new front tyres before I've even started thinking about an MOT, I'm starting to think that maybe the Miley Cyrus option isn't such a terrible thing after all. But hey, wheels is wheels and they gotta be done!
And that's just my motor. Eleanor had to put hers in as well for some top flight brake and wheel maintenance and is currently looking at the top end of £300...

Gotta love those cars.

Smoking, smoking and er.. more smoking.

My car started to sound like a pimped up Chevy a couple of days ago. It sounds great but probably isn't very healthy - and after about five minutes, it's also a bit embarrassing. Some minor investigation using my closest neighbour for assistance (Vince, who now owns a Thai restaurant and I believe was one of the camera crew on the original Italian Job movie) revealed a hole in the joint of the exhaust as I suspected. Typically I can't find the guarantee when I had the whole system replaced a couple of years back.

So there I am looking for this valuable piece of paper and I glance at the MOT certificate and see that it ran out on February 1st. How did that happen? I coud swear I only got it done in October. Apart from the sexy sounding hole, I think it's still in pretty good shape - at least I hope it is. It has two lights and the wheels go around. Seems to be good enough for most other people on the road. File under pending.

I was collating some news for the mag this morning when I found a story about how Miley Cyrus is trying to shed her "child star" image by growing up very fast. Apparently, she's had a dreamcatcher tattooed onto her ribs - now, here's the best part of the story - allow me to paste the entire paragraph. The bold is mine and any typo's are theirs!

The "Hannah Montana" star, who's recently rumored dating her "So Undercover" co-star Joshua Bowman, was also seen smoking cigarettes in her car. She drove around town and managed to stop by a local tattoo parlor. She reportedly got the tattoo before the outing though.

Apart from this paragraph not making any sense at all, is smoking cigarettes in your car a sign of being a grown-up? I really hope so. I'll finally be able to tell my Ma that, regardless of what she thinks, I've been a grown-up for absolutely ages. And I have a tattoos. Just call me "old man".

The whole story is here - check out the part about her having "inked the phrase 'just breathe' on her other torso" - how many torso's has she got? If nothing else, this is a great example of what the internet should not be used for.

Right... let's find the telephone number of my favourite garage...

UPDATE! Further investigation reveals that it might actually be her fifth tattoo and the place I stole that paragraph from have got her tattoo placements all wrong as well - all of this nonsense pales into insignificance when we are treated to a good read about Miley tripping her face off on DRUGS - here!

MORE UPDATED! ...and then her dad got divorced because her mum had an affair with Poison's Bret Michaels, but no she didn't/yes she did/no she didn't... yeah but no but yeah but...

I think I'll take my car needing an MOT over this kind of hassle and day of the week.