November 14

My time in America is running low. While I've been here I've done and said some amazing things. I think I am leaving the country in a better state than when I found it. Change has come to America. But now he is going home. Mr Obama, you are welcome.

Some guy showed my friend and I a book which tells you what your personality is like according to what your date of birth is. This is usually the part where the narrator says how cynical he felt, but then he looked up his own date of birth and was astonished at how on the money it was. Well that's exactly what happened. The only difference is that I wasn't that astonished because it wasn't really on the money. It was okay on some things and wildly wrong on others. For instance it said that, as somebody born on May 26, I am "proud of my status as the voice of the working class". The makers of the book were really sticking their necks out with that one. Who could that possibly apply to? Martin Luther King? Radio 5's John Gaunt?

The only part of the book's reading of me I liked was in the "faults" section, where it said I was "escapist and guilt-ridden". That's fantastic. I'm like Ronnie Biggs or Josef Mengele living in a Latin American timeshare. Why do my ghosts still torment me?

One more point about these books. These books are stupid. When they're assessing your strengths and weaknesses as a person they follow a formula: People born on this date tend to be x. But be careful as they are prone to x20. So, for example, if you're "fun loving", watch it because you are also potentially a hedonist, probably binge-smoking opium in Trump Towers right now. If you're "creative" you may also be obscure and introverted , prone to drifting off into your own private Twilight Zone for days. If you "enjoy the good things in life" you're liable to overindulge, if you're "organised" you're pushy and if you're "tall" they'll probably say you're impossibly gangly at times, freaking people out with your vine-like limbs.

That evening in a bar we met a group of people who travel around the country, painting and decorating aquariums and marine mammal enclosures in zoos. They always have work because at any given time, on any given day, there is always, somewhere in America, a penguin pit in dire need of a fresh lick of paint. They get to roll in and create a bunch of crazy, psychadelic designs all over the walls. I'm finding it hard at this moment to think of a better job. Even their van had enormous paintings of oceans and fish all over it. When Albert Camus stroked his chin and asked "what is happiness?" someone should have pointed to that van and shouted "That! That van right there!"

November 13

Went down to the university district - a big area built up around a single, long road. It's chock-a-bloc with young, wholesome students, all parading around in their University of Texas hooded sweatshirts. What worries me is that directly opposite the campus' main entrance is the regional Church of Scientology headquarters. It's so close to the university that if you were leaving class in a hurry and were to trip on the front steps you might very well fall and tumble into the open arms of a Level 8 Thetan.

Up and down the strip there are lots of grungy, scabby kids called "drag rats" by the locals. They are different from the normal kids. Drag rats sit around, ask people for change or cigarettes and cultivate a kind of brown mist around themselves. Something about them bothers me. It's not the fact they gather in large groups, effectively blocking entire pavements with their swirling vanguard of stray dogs. Drag rats wear tattered dungarees and have random clumps of dreadlock attached to their heads, but that doesn't bother me too much either. No, what bothers me is their smirking. They'll sit around and just smirk at people. I know what that smirk says and I'll tell you. That smirk says:

Look at me. I'm an outlaw. I don't conform to your corrupt societal norms and neither do my friends. We're one big happy family here. We ride together and die together. But you could never understand you rat, ratting it up in the rat race. Peace out you square.

Well I've devised my own smirk to shoot straight back at them if needs be. And if someone were to analyse my smirk they'll find that it says:

Get away. There isn't a single aspect of your life which I find admirable or enviable. As a group you disgust me. You are revolting and lazy. I hope that dog - the one which you've fussed over ever since it had the rotten luck to bump into you in a skip - bites you in the face while you sleep.

Drag rats are not to be confused with gutter punks, the very similar breed of semi-homeless bohemian waster found elsewhere in America. I'm not sure about the difference. I think it's academic. Like drag rats listen to grindcore and gabba techno while adhering to vegetarianism and anarcho-punk ideals, while gutter punks listen to industrial-crust techno and darkwave trance exclusively. If America descends into civil war - gutter punk pitted against drag rat - I'd be at a loss to choose a side.

My celebrity is growing like the bloodied, half-formed carcass of Uncle Frank in Hellraiser. Only today I was asked to appear in a documentary about rock music in Austin. It looked like a fairly small production crew so I can only assume it will get a worldwide cinematic release and some kind of limited, collector's edition DVD tie-in. I basically sat in a seat and explained clearly and fluently how I knew nothing about rock music in Austin. The director's face became quite sad as the full blast of my ignorance was unleashed. But hey. When you book me you do it for name value. Not because I'm going to add anything of intellectual merit to your project. I'm the Christopher Walken of Austin music documentaries. No matter how bad they are, I can just turn up half way through and make them better just by being there. Talking. And moving my eyes.