Friday, October 14, 2005
Arse
Well! What larkage.
I'm putting this particular portly baby on hold for the time being. But you are welcome to snoffle your truffle-piggy way through the archives. And look at some pictures. Look! They're still being updated here.
Meanwhile... well, I've got washing-up to do, and plots to hatch as to how to earn enough money to buy a dishwasher. Although I sort of don't object to the eerie warm sensation of suds on gloves.
I'm putting this particular portly baby on hold for the time being. But you are welcome to snoffle your truffle-piggy way through the archives. And look at some pictures. Look! They're still being updated here.
Meanwhile... well, I've got washing-up to do, and plots to hatch as to how to earn enough money to buy a dishwasher. Although I sort of don't object to the eerie warm sensation of suds on gloves.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Poisoning pissheads in the park
In which Bee emerges from own innards just for a brief candlelit moment, being sufficiently assured of the real meaning of the word 'random' and her ability to utilise it correctly.
1) Work is good, but I am bad. I am behind. Some people are taking the piss ever so slightly, while others are being so meek and acquiescent that it makes me guilty. But it's OK.
2) The only thing more daunting than the backlog (oh, and the advertising debt) (ah, and my tenuous grasp of the state of my own finances full stop) is the New Big Project. Having met with him, pored over his documents and pictures of him of the sort that you normally only see on the news, in a situation from which few emerge alive - I'm pretty sure he's for real. I'm going to try and find him an agent, and then essentially ghostwrite what is a story that needs telling. I have little idea what I'm doing. But I've had enough lessons in seat-of-pants aviation, I think.
3) I realised afresh the other day how marvellous, and yet how brimming with oomska, the internet is. Having seen one of the most horrific and manifestly genuine pieces of film I've ever come across, I went from being sure I couldn't find its origin, to finding masses of information on the 1987 feature from which it was clipped, in about five minutes. Amazing. Unfortunately, spread liberally over the masses of information was the gluey paste of misinformation, by idiots.
"...clearly faked... corn syrup... it was drugged... they were just licking.... it was just playing with them... "
I was inclined to roam the pages, creating accounts, logging in and posting "You are all intensely stupid in a way that makes me quake for the future of mankind - although perhaps that was in fact the point the filmmaker was trying to make with this otherwise needlessly sensationalist scene about which he still refuses to comment. Yes, he may well have anticipated a slew of twits discarding their logic and dismissing the scene as staged, thus neatly demonstrating how willing we are to take leave of our senses in this dangerous, denial-of-intellect fashion. He may be a sadistic bastard, coward and megalomaniac, but I'd still rather have lunch with him than any of you hopelessly deluded lobotomy casualties. Even if he also refused to comment on what exactly I was eating."
But then I realised that that would be bailing out the Adriatic with one of those tiny coke spoons that they used to have attached to tiny bottles with tiny chains. And I suppose I was grateful to them for allowing me to have a little thinky: the last few years and the internet have fostered this new kind of inverse gullibility, whereby people believe wholeheartedly in the validity of nothing. They come up with the most incredible, convoluted alternative explanations for the most clearly, viscerally, baldly real things. The fear of being seen as credulous evolves into an actual pride in being seen as uber-cynical. It's usually couched in smug, superior terms, as if they've evolved beyond the need to question anything, or rather the need to believe the evidence of their own eyes (see also: Republicans, fundamentalist Christians, etc). I suppose it's the same mode of thinking as conspiracy theorising, but although it's about smaller and less significant things, it's somehow more troubling. It suggests this very basic and deliberate disconnection with reality - it's not the same as trying to make sense of something that gives you reason to doubt, it is an outright and offhand denial of the watertight.
I don't know, maybe I'm just particularly stung by that sort of idiocy because I need to justify my own occasional gullibility. Or in this case I was annoyed by the twatty revisionism because - well, it wasn't corn syrup.
4) Speaking of mindless violence - Romero's Land of the Dead was fairly worthy. It was a bit polished (and somewhat bowdlerised, apparently, only a 15 certificate) but clearly his work, something no one else could really pull off. It must be hard to invent/define/subvert a genre all at once, and then come back to it after everyone else has done a load more subverting. I do like zombie films, though, there's something so basic about the idea that there's only so far you can subvert it. It's nearly irony-proof. So there was the fat streak of comedy - outright and straight, not backhanded or clever-clever or smugly knowing or referential - and inventive ickiness and social satire. (I think 28 Days' Later's go at this irked me, because while British films want to avoid doing the Hollywood thing of over-simplifying and showing all the workings and asking "Do ya geddit? Do ya? See that? Do you see?", I think they manage to fall into that exact trap by trying too hard to avoid it. Maybe British films that fall short annoy me more than Hollywood ones that do, because British films have more to prove. But my gosh, don't they just know it? Note to self: write one, fall into all same traps, and then weasel out of it by claiming it was satirical. Fiendish.)
So, yes, it will inevitably disappoint both hardcore Romero purists and new audiences who can't understand why the hell a zombie would be trying to play a trombone, but I thought he acquitted himself very well. Managed to miss the Wright/Pegg cameos, but then they were covered in muchos gunk. (How I wish I had good pictures of myself from the two days doing the pub scene in Shaun - heh, 'Shaun', dahlings - they airbrushed purply necrosis and collapsed veins all over my face and arms and decolletage, and God help me, I thought I looked purdy.) Oh, and John 'evil yet hunky pocket Mexican' Leguizamo got his shirt off and did a little light chinning, which was such a pleasant sight that I forgot to even berate myself for not doing anything to tone up my own arms. (Maybe I should start lifting the dog. He makes a very funny groaning noise when you do it, which is incentive enough to knacker my back further.)
5) I'm in Scarlet this month, looking very pale and fuzzy and talking tosh about sex toys. Well, I stand by it, the Rabbit is rubbish. There's a picture of one on the site at an angle that really makes it look like it's giving two fingers to the world.
6) P's spawnlet is a bit worrying. I can hear him screaming now. He does that a lot. He is two, and I understand that this is a 'difficult age', sort of like a dress rehearsal for the years of puberty all crammed into a few months and turned up to 11, but kid ain't right. He bites. He nuts. With intense focus, apparently. Right in the face. I've never seen him smile or laugh. Note to self: remain committed to childlessness and own selfish drives for cash and fun and taut skin. (I knew there was a reason I chose to adopt a potential baby-eater and exercise tool. It's about time my subconscious stopped trying to sabotage my every chance of contentment and started looking out for me.)
7) There's an amateur porn site and forum, favoured by US military, that started a while ago to accept pictures from Iraq in exchange for free access to the T&A sections. There's a whole section - necessarily, really - for gory pictures. So, kind of, gore-for-porn. That isn't the express purpose, but that's how it comes out. Surprisingly, most of the US media hasn't covered it.
From one angle, it's just too perfect - demonstrating that for the grotty little oiks stomping about in US desert gear, there's little difference between laughing at an eviscerated Iraqi and wanking over some readers' wives. Sex - violence - ersatz imperialism - fetishisation - wanking. All of human life is there, and all that. In fact, there's one shot that manages to combine the two most basic drives - half-naked woman, leg blown off by landmine. Great. But then from the other - well, they have to make jokes to get through the traumas for which they have not been prepared (or which they've been trained not to even acknowledge, having been nudged into states of kill-em-all psychosis), and yada to infinity. And of course the Public Has A Right To Know. I think war supporters should probably have a good look at what's going on, just as I'd gladly submit to looking at films from abbatoirs and face up to the fact that what I'm eating was once living, but ultimately that's neither here nor there nor anyfuckingwhere. But certainly it's not going to do a lot for the image of the Americans in Iraq, nor for the faint hope that most of them can or will differentiate between innocents and insurgents.
Although from what I gather, it doesn't take a lot to turn one into the other - the people are pissed off.
8) Yep, story definitely needs telling. At least I know I have the stomach for it, if not the knowledge - although that's not what I'm needed for, he needs me to work on the raw material until it's readable, which is what I'm good at. For some reason I can look at almost anything that the likes of Rotten have to offer and, while I'm by no means beyond shock and similar reactions, I haven't seen anything I've had to look away from yet. If you don't count the bit in Land of the Dead where one zombie crushes another's head under his foot. Ridiculous. And shameful. But I started to dare myself once, probably after being forwarded something by some ohmigod thisissoooosick merchant, to look at real nastiness, and found that I could handle it - I think it's partly because of that constant writer-brain that detaches itself and observes voraciously. The morality hardly comes into it for me - although if it does, that becomes subject to the same scrutiny. Is it wrong for me to look at this head on a fence which really looks faked but apparently isn't? Why? Discuss. Worraworraworra.
Of course if you're a medic - or in the military - then this detachment transfers itself into real life. (I'm sure I'd run puking and screaming from a broken arm, let alone a corpse.) And if you don't have the writerly fascination and inquiring mind, maybe your brain does just say "right, the area you want to process and store this in order to retain mental stability is this one - Node 392, controls humour, ball-scratching and winding spaghetti around fork with use of spoon". Writers wouldn't be much use in Iraq. But I must continue to question the implications of sending nationalistic, binary-minded thugs to a wounded country where it's hard to tell one shifty-ass Haji from another.
Oh, apparently some of 'our boys' from Lancaster are being posted out there. On it goes.
9) I don't have a 9.
1) Work is good, but I am bad. I am behind. Some people are taking the piss ever so slightly, while others are being so meek and acquiescent that it makes me guilty. But it's OK.
2) The only thing more daunting than the backlog (oh, and the advertising debt) (ah, and my tenuous grasp of the state of my own finances full stop) is the New Big Project. Having met with him, pored over his documents and pictures of him of the sort that you normally only see on the news, in a situation from which few emerge alive - I'm pretty sure he's for real. I'm going to try and find him an agent, and then essentially ghostwrite what is a story that needs telling. I have little idea what I'm doing. But I've had enough lessons in seat-of-pants aviation, I think.
3) I realised afresh the other day how marvellous, and yet how brimming with oomska, the internet is. Having seen one of the most horrific and manifestly genuine pieces of film I've ever come across, I went from being sure I couldn't find its origin, to finding masses of information on the 1987 feature from which it was clipped, in about five minutes. Amazing. Unfortunately, spread liberally over the masses of information was the gluey paste of misinformation, by idiots.
"...clearly faked... corn syrup... it was drugged... they were just licking.... it was just playing with them... "
I was inclined to roam the pages, creating accounts, logging in and posting "You are all intensely stupid in a way that makes me quake for the future of mankind - although perhaps that was in fact the point the filmmaker was trying to make with this otherwise needlessly sensationalist scene about which he still refuses to comment. Yes, he may well have anticipated a slew of twits discarding their logic and dismissing the scene as staged, thus neatly demonstrating how willing we are to take leave of our senses in this dangerous, denial-of-intellect fashion. He may be a sadistic bastard, coward and megalomaniac, but I'd still rather have lunch with him than any of you hopelessly deluded lobotomy casualties. Even if he also refused to comment on what exactly I was eating."
But then I realised that that would be bailing out the Adriatic with one of those tiny coke spoons that they used to have attached to tiny bottles with tiny chains. And I suppose I was grateful to them for allowing me to have a little thinky: the last few years and the internet have fostered this new kind of inverse gullibility, whereby people believe wholeheartedly in the validity of nothing. They come up with the most incredible, convoluted alternative explanations for the most clearly, viscerally, baldly real things. The fear of being seen as credulous evolves into an actual pride in being seen as uber-cynical. It's usually couched in smug, superior terms, as if they've evolved beyond the need to question anything, or rather the need to believe the evidence of their own eyes (see also: Republicans, fundamentalist Christians, etc). I suppose it's the same mode of thinking as conspiracy theorising, but although it's about smaller and less significant things, it's somehow more troubling. It suggests this very basic and deliberate disconnection with reality - it's not the same as trying to make sense of something that gives you reason to doubt, it is an outright and offhand denial of the watertight.
I don't know, maybe I'm just particularly stung by that sort of idiocy because I need to justify my own occasional gullibility. Or in this case I was annoyed by the twatty revisionism because - well, it wasn't corn syrup.
4) Speaking of mindless violence - Romero's Land of the Dead was fairly worthy. It was a bit polished (and somewhat bowdlerised, apparently, only a 15 certificate) but clearly his work, something no one else could really pull off. It must be hard to invent/define/subvert a genre all at once, and then come back to it after everyone else has done a load more subverting. I do like zombie films, though, there's something so basic about the idea that there's only so far you can subvert it. It's nearly irony-proof. So there was the fat streak of comedy - outright and straight, not backhanded or clever-clever or smugly knowing or referential - and inventive ickiness and social satire. (I think 28 Days' Later's go at this irked me, because while British films want to avoid doing the Hollywood thing of over-simplifying and showing all the workings and asking "Do ya geddit? Do ya? See that? Do you see?", I think they manage to fall into that exact trap by trying too hard to avoid it. Maybe British films that fall short annoy me more than Hollywood ones that do, because British films have more to prove. But my gosh, don't they just know it? Note to self: write one, fall into all same traps, and then weasel out of it by claiming it was satirical. Fiendish.)
So, yes, it will inevitably disappoint both hardcore Romero purists and new audiences who can't understand why the hell a zombie would be trying to play a trombone, but I thought he acquitted himself very well. Managed to miss the Wright/Pegg cameos, but then they were covered in muchos gunk. (How I wish I had good pictures of myself from the two days doing the pub scene in Shaun - heh, 'Shaun', dahlings - they airbrushed purply necrosis and collapsed veins all over my face and arms and decolletage, and God help me, I thought I looked purdy.) Oh, and John 'evil yet hunky pocket Mexican' Leguizamo got his shirt off and did a little light chinning, which was such a pleasant sight that I forgot to even berate myself for not doing anything to tone up my own arms. (Maybe I should start lifting the dog. He makes a very funny groaning noise when you do it, which is incentive enough to knacker my back further.)
5) I'm in Scarlet this month, looking very pale and fuzzy and talking tosh about sex toys. Well, I stand by it, the Rabbit is rubbish. There's a picture of one on the site at an angle that really makes it look like it's giving two fingers to the world.
6) P's spawnlet is a bit worrying. I can hear him screaming now. He does that a lot. He is two, and I understand that this is a 'difficult age', sort of like a dress rehearsal for the years of puberty all crammed into a few months and turned up to 11, but kid ain't right. He bites. He nuts. With intense focus, apparently. Right in the face. I've never seen him smile or laugh. Note to self: remain committed to childlessness and own selfish drives for cash and fun and taut skin. (I knew there was a reason I chose to adopt a potential baby-eater and exercise tool. It's about time my subconscious stopped trying to sabotage my every chance of contentment and started looking out for me.)
7) There's an amateur porn site and forum, favoured by US military, that started a while ago to accept pictures from Iraq in exchange for free access to the T&A sections. There's a whole section - necessarily, really - for gory pictures. So, kind of, gore-for-porn. That isn't the express purpose, but that's how it comes out. Surprisingly, most of the US media hasn't covered it.
From one angle, it's just too perfect - demonstrating that for the grotty little oiks stomping about in US desert gear, there's little difference between laughing at an eviscerated Iraqi and wanking over some readers' wives. Sex - violence - ersatz imperialism - fetishisation - wanking. All of human life is there, and all that. In fact, there's one shot that manages to combine the two most basic drives - half-naked woman, leg blown off by landmine. Great. But then from the other - well, they have to make jokes to get through the traumas for which they have not been prepared (or which they've been trained not to even acknowledge, having been nudged into states of kill-em-all psychosis), and yada to infinity. And of course the Public Has A Right To Know. I think war supporters should probably have a good look at what's going on, just as I'd gladly submit to looking at films from abbatoirs and face up to the fact that what I'm eating was once living, but ultimately that's neither here nor there nor anyfuckingwhere. But certainly it's not going to do a lot for the image of the Americans in Iraq, nor for the faint hope that most of them can or will differentiate between innocents and insurgents.
Although from what I gather, it doesn't take a lot to turn one into the other - the people are pissed off.
8) Yep, story definitely needs telling. At least I know I have the stomach for it, if not the knowledge - although that's not what I'm needed for, he needs me to work on the raw material until it's readable, which is what I'm good at. For some reason I can look at almost anything that the likes of Rotten have to offer and, while I'm by no means beyond shock and similar reactions, I haven't seen anything I've had to look away from yet. If you don't count the bit in Land of the Dead where one zombie crushes another's head under his foot. Ridiculous. And shameful. But I started to dare myself once, probably after being forwarded something by some ohmigod thisissoooosick merchant, to look at real nastiness, and found that I could handle it - I think it's partly because of that constant writer-brain that detaches itself and observes voraciously. The morality hardly comes into it for me - although if it does, that becomes subject to the same scrutiny. Is it wrong for me to look at this head on a fence which really looks faked but apparently isn't? Why? Discuss. Worraworraworra.
Of course if you're a medic - or in the military - then this detachment transfers itself into real life. (I'm sure I'd run puking and screaming from a broken arm, let alone a corpse.) And if you don't have the writerly fascination and inquiring mind, maybe your brain does just say "right, the area you want to process and store this in order to retain mental stability is this one - Node 392, controls humour, ball-scratching and winding spaghetti around fork with use of spoon". Writers wouldn't be much use in Iraq. But I must continue to question the implications of sending nationalistic, binary-minded thugs to a wounded country where it's hard to tell one shifty-ass Haji from another.
Oh, apparently some of 'our boys' from Lancaster are being posted out there. On it goes.
9) I don't have a 9.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
And
it's suddenly winter and I feel like an invalid. Bah.
Computer is sick unto death, but thankfully it only appears to be that the fan isn't working, and hasn't been for some time, so it's been valiantly struggling on. Only the occasional vaguely frightening POOOMPF of auto-cutout and black screen.
I wrote a very long post the other day and it's the only one I've ever kept filed away as a draft. It did have some interesting stuff about the time I got trapped on a fairground ride for an hour which I may still salvage. After that it just drove off the path into some kind of nonsensebog where it remains mired, for shame. But really, given how infuriated and bored I am with myself, it can't make for anything but boringly infuriating reading. So consider yourselves spared. For now. Buahahahahah.
I'm probably not helping myself by reading 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' - wonderful because it's beautifully written (and unlike many books which intimidate me out of my tenuous sense of myself as a writer, the prose is of a sort which I dare to imagine I could one day produce), and horrifying because it seems so awfully likely. The thought that every psychotic killer was given birth to by someone doesn't put me off children - I don't think I've ever had a maternal instinct flit across my psyche's big me-screen even for a second - but the fact that you might just give birth to a person you don't like and who doesn't like you certainly reinforces my plan, or lack thereof. Since I am strongly inclined to think I'll never have a child, you'd think I'd be 'safe' to read a book like this; but it is getting to me on some level.
Aside from anything else, I think children are too easy to fuck up, through no fault of your own. They're even easier to fuck up if you're careless or selfish and know damn well that you are, yet can't face up to that and try to cover yourself, wearing parental clothes and saying parental things and making parental gestures, for the sake of appearance and so that you can sleep at night. Anyway - the main character in 'Kevin', the mother, is the sort of successfully self-contained individual who has nothing to gain from motherhood, and should never have been talked into it. This is probably what bothers me - the completeness and relentlessness with which she sees everything that makes her real to herself, everything she is happy with and proud of about her self-made self, just being sucked viciously down the drain. The kid won't breastfeed but he latches on nonetheless and drains her of everything else. Clinging as I do to my sense of self as if it's the only rubber ring in the Atlantic, the description of this loss fills me with a visceral aaargh.
I might make a decent adoptive parent, all full of righteousness and self-sacrifice and trying to fix or at least hold together something discarded by someone else - the stakes are just too high with someone who's come out of your own body. But I think I'll probably opt out altogether. I might be a lot better at it than some, but that wouldn't be good enough for me. It just about works with the dog, and he's at least mostly unaware of my worries that he's not happy. I'm not sure I'd want to inflict myself on anyone so porous as a small child who's unable to walk away. I can't predict how I'd react with enough surety to make it worth the risk, for them. God knows I feel bad enough if I shout at the dog, as I did this morning when he was frightening the crap out of the post-person. "It's alright, he's just making a lot of noise, he doesn't bite," I assured her. "That's what they all say," she replied with all the high-horsey senselessness of a - well, the same streak I've found running through a lot of people here.
Thinking about it later, I thought - firstly, why wouldn't she take my word for it? What possible reason could I have to tell her that my dog doesn't bite if he does, and might bite her, meaning that she would be hurt and I would be in serious trouble? Do people here lie automatically, saying that something isn't their fault even when they're on the brink of inevitable and inexorable exposure? Doesn't the still-just-about posh voice and um, dishevelled appearance count for anything? Secondly - oh, I was pathetically offended on another level than this basic mistrust of my word (I hate to be taken for dishonest about anything, ever). I am hellbent, generally, on finding things to say that no one has ever said before in quite the same way. I do not say things that "they all" say. I do not! I'm a true original! I do not submit to generic judgement, you fucks! How dare she!
I'm so looking forward to returning to London, where people still think much of themselves and look to gain points and do all the fantastically irksome things Lancastrians do, but, y'know, differently.
Ah me.
But now I'm cheered having just discerned a 'Golden Child' reference in a Kanye West song. Heheh.
Computer is sick unto death, but thankfully it only appears to be that the fan isn't working, and hasn't been for some time, so it's been valiantly struggling on. Only the occasional vaguely frightening POOOMPF of auto-cutout and black screen.
I wrote a very long post the other day and it's the only one I've ever kept filed away as a draft. It did have some interesting stuff about the time I got trapped on a fairground ride for an hour which I may still salvage. After that it just drove off the path into some kind of nonsensebog where it remains mired, for shame. But really, given how infuriated and bored I am with myself, it can't make for anything but boringly infuriating reading. So consider yourselves spared. For now. Buahahahahah.
I'm probably not helping myself by reading 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' - wonderful because it's beautifully written (and unlike many books which intimidate me out of my tenuous sense of myself as a writer, the prose is of a sort which I dare to imagine I could one day produce), and horrifying because it seems so awfully likely. The thought that every psychotic killer was given birth to by someone doesn't put me off children - I don't think I've ever had a maternal instinct flit across my psyche's big me-screen even for a second - but the fact that you might just give birth to a person you don't like and who doesn't like you certainly reinforces my plan, or lack thereof. Since I am strongly inclined to think I'll never have a child, you'd think I'd be 'safe' to read a book like this; but it is getting to me on some level.
Aside from anything else, I think children are too easy to fuck up, through no fault of your own. They're even easier to fuck up if you're careless or selfish and know damn well that you are, yet can't face up to that and try to cover yourself, wearing parental clothes and saying parental things and making parental gestures, for the sake of appearance and so that you can sleep at night. Anyway - the main character in 'Kevin', the mother, is the sort of successfully self-contained individual who has nothing to gain from motherhood, and should never have been talked into it. This is probably what bothers me - the completeness and relentlessness with which she sees everything that makes her real to herself, everything she is happy with and proud of about her self-made self, just being sucked viciously down the drain. The kid won't breastfeed but he latches on nonetheless and drains her of everything else. Clinging as I do to my sense of self as if it's the only rubber ring in the Atlantic, the description of this loss fills me with a visceral aaargh.
I might make a decent adoptive parent, all full of righteousness and self-sacrifice and trying to fix or at least hold together something discarded by someone else - the stakes are just too high with someone who's come out of your own body. But I think I'll probably opt out altogether. I might be a lot better at it than some, but that wouldn't be good enough for me. It just about works with the dog, and he's at least mostly unaware of my worries that he's not happy. I'm not sure I'd want to inflict myself on anyone so porous as a small child who's unable to walk away. I can't predict how I'd react with enough surety to make it worth the risk, for them. God knows I feel bad enough if I shout at the dog, as I did this morning when he was frightening the crap out of the post-person. "It's alright, he's just making a lot of noise, he doesn't bite," I assured her. "That's what they all say," she replied with all the high-horsey senselessness of a - well, the same streak I've found running through a lot of people here.
Thinking about it later, I thought - firstly, why wouldn't she take my word for it? What possible reason could I have to tell her that my dog doesn't bite if he does, and might bite her, meaning that she would be hurt and I would be in serious trouble? Do people here lie automatically, saying that something isn't their fault even when they're on the brink of inevitable and inexorable exposure? Doesn't the still-just-about posh voice and um, dishevelled appearance count for anything? Secondly - oh, I was pathetically offended on another level than this basic mistrust of my word (I hate to be taken for dishonest about anything, ever). I am hellbent, generally, on finding things to say that no one has ever said before in quite the same way. I do not say things that "they all" say. I do not! I'm a true original! I do not submit to generic judgement, you fucks! How dare she!
I'm so looking forward to returning to London, where people still think much of themselves and look to gain points and do all the fantastically irksome things Lancastrians do, but, y'know, differently.
Ah me.
But now I'm cheered having just discerned a 'Golden Child' reference in a Kanye West song. Heheh.
Monday, September 12, 2005
70 - 100
70. Of all British mammals bats are the brilliantest.
71. Of all suspicious junk muck you can stuff into a Kong to keep a dog amused for ten minutes, Webbox chubs - like a big processed sausage thing - are the disgustingest.
72. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha hahahahaahaahaaa.
73. Hem.
74. No but he's an arse and he had it coming.
75. Mmmmm. Pie.
76. It's great when people protest by means of pie. It's such a classic gesture, and it demonstrates quite clearly that you are not a lunatic and you do not wish anyone any real harm. It's not like red paint. Or manure.
77. Although Kilroy was totally overdue for that.
78. What are those people called who protest the Turner Prize every year. Mealy-mouthed little whingers. They miss the point utterly. Utterly utterly. Whoops, there went the point, faster than the speed o'sound, nnnneeeeeeoooowwwwwwwwwm, right past. It doesn't matter that Turner painted proper pictures, proper pictures that look awfully nice to us now - he was just as controversial in his era as the modern artists are in this one. Hence, it's named after him. Hence, no one gets it.
79. But most of the time no one gets anything.
80. Almost makes you wonder why anyone bothers.
81. About anything.
82. Ever.
83. Oh well.
84. Oh look.
85. More lovely Barratt housing, then.
86. The new Kanye West album is pretty good, sounds a lot like the mellower bits of 'The Black Album'. Except for 'Gold Digger' which is the greatest tune to ever be frustratingly too short on an album and to have to be bleeped on radio.
87. The Grauniad has gone 'Berliner' - not quite tab-sized but smaller than broadsheet.
88. It cost £80 million to do it.
89. What could you buy for that?
90. It is always, always surprising when the seasons start to change.
91. It is never ever surprising when Bush says something unbelievably crass and devoid of any shred of understanding.
92. Although it should be. Then there might be some outrage from other quarters than the usual.
93. Belfast has gone nuts. For fucksakes.
94. There is too much about which to be sad.
95. And loads more about which to be entirely indifferent.
96. By way of anasthetic.
97. It's the anniversary of Anthony Perkins' death today.
98. General anasthetic is like your head filling up with green water.
99. It's not unpleasant.
100. Oh dear, look.
101. Now what?
Another picture, I think. Or two.
71. Of all suspicious junk muck you can stuff into a Kong to keep a dog amused for ten minutes, Webbox chubs - like a big processed sausage thing - are the disgustingest.
72. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha hahahahaahaahaaa.
73. Hem.
74. No but he's an arse and he had it coming.
75. Mmmmm. Pie.
76. It's great when people protest by means of pie. It's such a classic gesture, and it demonstrates quite clearly that you are not a lunatic and you do not wish anyone any real harm. It's not like red paint. Or manure.
77. Although Kilroy was totally overdue for that.
78. What are those people called who protest the Turner Prize every year. Mealy-mouthed little whingers. They miss the point utterly. Utterly utterly. Whoops, there went the point, faster than the speed o'sound, nnnneeeeeeoooowwwwwwwwwm, right past. It doesn't matter that Turner painted proper pictures, proper pictures that look awfully nice to us now - he was just as controversial in his era as the modern artists are in this one. Hence, it's named after him. Hence, no one gets it.
79. But most of the time no one gets anything.
80. Almost makes you wonder why anyone bothers.
81. About anything.
82. Ever.
83. Oh well.
84. Oh look.
85. More lovely Barratt housing, then.
86. The new Kanye West album is pretty good, sounds a lot like the mellower bits of 'The Black Album'. Except for 'Gold Digger' which is the greatest tune to ever be frustratingly too short on an album and to have to be bleeped on radio.
87. The Grauniad has gone 'Berliner' - not quite tab-sized but smaller than broadsheet.
88. It cost £80 million to do it.
89. What could you buy for that?
90. It is always, always surprising when the seasons start to change.
91. It is never ever surprising when Bush says something unbelievably crass and devoid of any shred of understanding.
92. Although it should be. Then there might be some outrage from other quarters than the usual.
93. Belfast has gone nuts. For fucksakes.
94. There is too much about which to be sad.
95. And loads more about which to be entirely indifferent.
96. By way of anasthetic.
97. It's the anniversary of Anthony Perkins' death today.
98. General anasthetic is like your head filling up with green water.
99. It's not unpleasant.
100. Oh dear, look.
101. Now what?
Another picture, I think. Or two.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
38 - 69
38. There was just no need for Coffee And Cigarettes to be made. It's a nothing. It's a nowhere. Except for Cate Blanchett's bit where she plays two cousins, which would make a good short on its own. Same goes for Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina which was at least sort of about something. Iggy Pop and Tom Waits are just wrong. RZA, GZA and Bill Murray disappointing. It wants to be this stylish ode to the inconsequential but it's just. . .blank. And self-satisfied.
39. The Descent on the other hand was quite something. Made by same guy who did Dog Soldiers, which was OK but had so much of the British-film disease, horrible cod-ironic macho funnies. The dialogue in The Descent was rotten in that stilted these-are-words-on-a-page this-is-a-British-film way but it gave way to some genuinely brilliant, genuinely horrifying horror. And it somehow managed to breathe new life into the whole 'it's your FRIENDS who are the REAL scary ones, maaaaan' rigamorole. It didn't flinch from carrying that all the way through, either. Some great unabashed visual references to Carrie. Just unexpectedly really very good. And incredibly gory.
40. Land of the Dead is going to have to be very good indeed to avoid lots of people whinging very loudly and boringly. They'll whinge anyway, some of them, it's just a matter of numbers and volume.
41. Horror fans aren't quite as bad as Star Wars fans but they can be awfully pretentious AND nerdy at the same time. Ick.
42. It's terribly sad that Nick Drake is dead.
43. And Elliott Smith.
44. He did it rather more violently. Nick Drake, you get the impression, just wilted and flopped and gently decayed without the light of approval to keep him going.
45. Music by people who've committed suicide or died in some tragic or semi-self-inflicted way may carry greater emotional resonance (although perhaps not where INXS are concerned - although 'Never Tear Us Apart' can sound quite wonderful), but the music of people who shouldn't be making music at all sounds even worse in the knowledge that these others aren't there to kick their sorry arses anymore.
46. To wit, Goldie Lookin' Chain should be turned out into the Antarctic in their fucking 'ironic' boxers.
47. Just acting stupid in a vaguely knowing manner does not count for biting satire. And it does not make you The Beastie Boys. And we are quite capable of snickering at a Welsh accent without being forced to do so in some faux-multi-layred way. The joke is that there is no joke. The drama is that there is no drama. Haw! Haw! Steaming knobheads.
48. There's no sense even getting riled about this.
49. They fucked their manager over when they made it big.
50. Cunts.
51. Idiotic, inane, smirking Welsh cunts.
52. It's almost impossible to do something like this without mentioning yourself, since everything you digest is filtered through your own critical faculties and whatever else there is through which to filter.
53. This doesn't make you terminally self-centred. It makes you, like, human, man.
54. Worse if you're some sort of critic or commentator, really.
55. And if you just watched The Doors.
56. Which is flawed but appropriately so, really.
57. It's giddying making all these bold statements without qualifying it with an end bit pointing out that it's only one person's opinion. This way, it all looks like Fact.
58. Here is a fact. Sort of.
59. The spider looks pregnant.
60. Doesn't she?
61. Baby spiders are amazing, they form this perfect round golden cluster like a Fererro Rocher and then they scatter like tiny beads.
62. This country's weather is so very mean-spirited.
62.1 I'm going to have to interrupt myself here.
62.2 I don't feel very well.
62.3 Quite surreal in fact.
62.4 Disassociated and nauseous.
62.5 It's probably fucking flu or something.
62.6 Fucksakes.
62.7 I need to spend more time talking to people.
62.8 And looking after myself, and drinking water, and etc.
62.9 Never mind.
63. Tara Reid's implants are terrible, but not as bad as her liposuction which was done by a lunatic with a Dyson.
64. There really is something amazingly calming and soothing about nasty, scurrilous, dead-eyed gossip.
65. It's a modern malaise.
66. Why isn't there a band called Modern Malaise?
67. Or Modern and the Malaises?
68. Anything's better than Juliette and the Licks.
69. Yes.
39. The Descent on the other hand was quite something. Made by same guy who did Dog Soldiers, which was OK but had so much of the British-film disease, horrible cod-ironic macho funnies. The dialogue in The Descent was rotten in that stilted these-are-words-on-a-page this-is-a-British-film way but it gave way to some genuinely brilliant, genuinely horrifying horror. And it somehow managed to breathe new life into the whole 'it's your FRIENDS who are the REAL scary ones, maaaaan' rigamorole. It didn't flinch from carrying that all the way through, either. Some great unabashed visual references to Carrie. Just unexpectedly really very good. And incredibly gory.
40. Land of the Dead is going to have to be very good indeed to avoid lots of people whinging very loudly and boringly. They'll whinge anyway, some of them, it's just a matter of numbers and volume.
41. Horror fans aren't quite as bad as Star Wars fans but they can be awfully pretentious AND nerdy at the same time. Ick.
42. It's terribly sad that Nick Drake is dead.
43. And Elliott Smith.
44. He did it rather more violently. Nick Drake, you get the impression, just wilted and flopped and gently decayed without the light of approval to keep him going.
45. Music by people who've committed suicide or died in some tragic or semi-self-inflicted way may carry greater emotional resonance (although perhaps not where INXS are concerned - although 'Never Tear Us Apart' can sound quite wonderful), but the music of people who shouldn't be making music at all sounds even worse in the knowledge that these others aren't there to kick their sorry arses anymore.
46. To wit, Goldie Lookin' Chain should be turned out into the Antarctic in their fucking 'ironic' boxers.
47. Just acting stupid in a vaguely knowing manner does not count for biting satire. And it does not make you The Beastie Boys. And we are quite capable of snickering at a Welsh accent without being forced to do so in some faux-multi-layred way. The joke is that there is no joke. The drama is that there is no drama. Haw! Haw! Steaming knobheads.
48. There's no sense even getting riled about this.
49. They fucked their manager over when they made it big.
50. Cunts.
51. Idiotic, inane, smirking Welsh cunts.
52. It's almost impossible to do something like this without mentioning yourself, since everything you digest is filtered through your own critical faculties and whatever else there is through which to filter.
53. This doesn't make you terminally self-centred. It makes you, like, human, man.
54. Worse if you're some sort of critic or commentator, really.
55. And if you just watched The Doors.
56. Which is flawed but appropriately so, really.
57. It's giddying making all these bold statements without qualifying it with an end bit pointing out that it's only one person's opinion. This way, it all looks like Fact.
58. Here is a fact. Sort of.
59. The spider looks pregnant.
60. Doesn't she?
61. Baby spiders are amazing, they form this perfect round golden cluster like a Fererro Rocher and then they scatter like tiny beads.
62. This country's weather is so very mean-spirited.
62.1 I'm going to have to interrupt myself here.
62.2 I don't feel very well.
62.3 Quite surreal in fact.
62.4 Disassociated and nauseous.
62.5 It's probably fucking flu or something.
62.6 Fucksakes.
62.7 I need to spend more time talking to people.
62.8 And looking after myself, and drinking water, and etc.
62.9 Never mind.
63. Tara Reid's implants are terrible, but not as bad as her liposuction which was done by a lunatic with a Dyson.
64. There really is something amazingly calming and soothing about nasty, scurrilous, dead-eyed gossip.
65. It's a modern malaise.
66. Why isn't there a band called Modern Malaise?
67. Or Modern and the Malaises?
68. Anything's better than Juliette and the Licks.
69. Yes.
Friday, September 09, 2005
25 - 37
25. Sorry, but Jessica Simpson's arse.
26. Is a good name for a stupid band.
27. It's a good thing that Antony and the Johnsons won the Mercury, if only because on the night somewhere in England there was an ex-school bully, living in a shitty council house surrounded by horrid children, throwing stuff at the widescreen TV which provides him his only respite from the karmic misery of his existence.
28. Look at this. It is nervously brilliant. And time-consuming. And will keep you sort of sane.
29. Although QuickTime will probably bring out the homicidal maniac in you as you attempt to watch, but hey.
30. Eminem is still a genuine genius and should thus not be shot.
31. Craneflies should, though. With guns. Guns that shoot off all their horrid spindly legs one by one.
32. This week is the anniversary of the death of Tupac Shakur, and his music is as good today as it's always been.
33. The worst earworms are the ones to which you don't actually know the words.
34. It is handy to keep an earworm about your person at all times in order to override the uninvited.
35. An added bonus of the Blogger spam clean up (see no. 3) is that it will facilitate the composing of next-blog poetry.
36. All about PASADENA - pasadena maryland
Top northern virginia wedding coordinators
I'm going somewhere else for awhile. Someplace dry. I'll be away for a week.
arrow truck sales
j'aimerai bien avoir une time machine aujourd'hui....
ProjectorHome Theater ProjectorInfocus
I love you, I'm madly in love with you, so in love that this is getting ridiculous.
indiana refinance mortgage loan nprw
You mean he? As in the violinist? I think he could,
and I think he chose to play the note differently
intentionally.
You understand the Democratic machine and don't fight against it.
At this point I've completed researching our Automation candidates. Control 4 is it!
We are professional, effective, perm..
But surely this isn't the case with all like relationships, right? Can you be the weaker party and not be a masochist?
per ora non hanno bisogno, ma han voluto che lasciassi loro il mio numero per chiamarmi se han bisogno
Biggest sewing resource on the Internet
Ne faites pas attention , c'est juste un essai les kid's.
I'm appalled at my own naivete, and staggered at the breath-taking lack of scruples.
37. Higgledy-piggledy
Emily Dickinson
liked to use dashes
instead of full stops.
Nowadays faced with such
Idiosyncracy
Critics and editors
send for the cops.
26. Is a good name for a stupid band.
27. It's a good thing that Antony and the Johnsons won the Mercury, if only because on the night somewhere in England there was an ex-school bully, living in a shitty council house surrounded by horrid children, throwing stuff at the widescreen TV which provides him his only respite from the karmic misery of his existence.
28. Look at this. It is nervously brilliant. And time-consuming. And will keep you sort of sane.
29. Although QuickTime will probably bring out the homicidal maniac in you as you attempt to watch, but hey.
30. Eminem is still a genuine genius and should thus not be shot.
31. Craneflies should, though. With guns. Guns that shoot off all their horrid spindly legs one by one.
32. This week is the anniversary of the death of Tupac Shakur, and his music is as good today as it's always been.
33. The worst earworms are the ones to which you don't actually know the words.
34. It is handy to keep an earworm about your person at all times in order to override the uninvited.
35. An added bonus of the Blogger spam clean up (see no. 3) is that it will facilitate the composing of next-blog poetry.
36. All about PASADENA - pasadena maryland
Top northern virginia wedding coordinators
I'm going somewhere else for awhile. Someplace dry. I'll be away for a week.
arrow truck sales
j'aimerai bien avoir une time machine aujourd'hui....
ProjectorHome Theater ProjectorInfocus
I love you, I'm madly in love with you, so in love that this is getting ridiculous.
indiana refinance mortgage loan nprw
You mean he? As in the violinist? I think he could,
and I think he chose to play the note differently
intentionally.
You understand the Democratic machine and don't fight against it.
At this point I've completed researching our Automation candidates. Control 4 is it!
We are professional, effective, perm..
But surely this isn't the case with all like relationships, right? Can you be the weaker party and not be a masochist?
per ora non hanno bisogno, ma han voluto che lasciassi loro il mio numero per chiamarmi se han bisogno
Biggest sewing resource on the Internet
Ne faites pas attention , c'est juste un essai les kid's.
I'm appalled at my own naivete, and staggered at the breath-taking lack of scruples.
37. Higgledy-piggledy
Emily Dickinson
liked to use dashes
instead of full stops.
Nowadays faced with such
Idiosyncracy
Critics and editors
send for the cops.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
23-24
100 Things Not About Me (1-22)
Bien.
(I shall welcome contributions, by the way, not because I'll be short of ideas but because It'll Be Nice. Ah those fatal words.)
1. What's not to like about the Kaiser Chiefs?
2. Patty Hearst had this great t-shirt that said 'PARDON ME'.
4. Channel 4 showed the Streetcar episode of The Simpsons tonight (complete with 'defamation' of New Orleans) because they are not especially bright like that. As offensiveness goes it's probably on a par with asking the friend of a large lady when the baby's due out of large lady's earshot, but still.
3. Blogger is planning some kind of a community spam-sweep soon - click on next blog (not here, you can't, there's a thing in the way) until you find a blog that is not about angst or drugs or life but rather curiously filled with linkslinkslinks to thingsthingsthings, and flag the motherfucker. Repeat till eyes fall out. A good idea.
4. No one seems to be able to agree on whether or not bumblebees sting.
5. Perhaps they can't tell a bumblebee from a honeybee to start with, and should not be allowed to go out without supervision.
6. This isn't cheating.
7. Nor is this.
8. This is, though.
9. The Onion is still funny but Private Eye is definitely flagging.
10. Organic fair trade hot chocolate is more expensive but worth it, since it actually tastes of chocolate and sends you wafting gently into peaceful, righteous slumber unblighted by dreams where you wake up several times convinced giant crawly things are crawling on the pillow. And Spar sells it. Which is bizarre given Spar's laughable disregard for anything approaching nice food.
11. The old butcher whose shop is next to the Spar has died of a 'brain bleed or something', according to big ole northern busybody in said Spar.
12. This is sad.
13. But was inevitable.
14. This is a bit like playing the yes-no game.
15. The yes-no game is very hard and pointless. ('The book of love is long and boring/no one can lift the damn thing', etc.)
16. Any pointings-out of glaring and ironic errors already made would be a great thing. In fact, the imposition of new rules might be fun.
17. Science has still not been able to pinpoint precisely why we need sleep.
18. But we do - the effects of not sleeping are, well, death and more death, ultimately.
19. That shit's worse than crack.
20. And ketamine. Which is all over the news this week as the newest most scariest deadly drug, but this is five years old. Ahhh, look at cutey little Conor McNicholas who now oversees publication of that crappy music mag. Il est un goof.
21. 'Ketamine' is a lovely word, isn't it? It's like a girl's name. "Ketamine, darling, would you mind popping to Waitrose for a butternut squash and some Aqua Libra?"
22. David Duchovny's son is called Kyd. Poor fucker.
(I shall welcome contributions, by the way, not because I'll be short of ideas but because It'll Be Nice. Ah those fatal words.)
1. What's not to like about the Kaiser Chiefs?
2. Patty Hearst had this great t-shirt that said 'PARDON ME'.
4. Channel 4 showed the Streetcar episode of The Simpsons tonight (complete with 'defamation' of New Orleans) because they are not especially bright like that. As offensiveness goes it's probably on a par with asking the friend of a large lady when the baby's due out of large lady's earshot, but still.
3. Blogger is planning some kind of a community spam-sweep soon - click on next blog (not here, you can't, there's a thing in the way) until you find a blog that is not about angst or drugs or life but rather curiously filled with linkslinkslinks to thingsthingsthings, and flag the motherfucker. Repeat till eyes fall out. A good idea.
4. No one seems to be able to agree on whether or not bumblebees sting.
5. Perhaps they can't tell a bumblebee from a honeybee to start with, and should not be allowed to go out without supervision.
6. This isn't cheating.
7. Nor is this.
8. This is, though.
9. The Onion is still funny but Private Eye is definitely flagging.
10. Organic fair trade hot chocolate is more expensive but worth it, since it actually tastes of chocolate and sends you wafting gently into peaceful, righteous slumber unblighted by dreams where you wake up several times convinced giant crawly things are crawling on the pillow. And Spar sells it. Which is bizarre given Spar's laughable disregard for anything approaching nice food.
11. The old butcher whose shop is next to the Spar has died of a 'brain bleed or something', according to big ole northern busybody in said Spar.
12. This is sad.
13. But was inevitable.
14. This is a bit like playing the yes-no game.
15. The yes-no game is very hard and pointless. ('The book of love is long and boring/no one can lift the damn thing', etc.)
16. Any pointings-out of glaring and ironic errors already made would be a great thing. In fact, the imposition of new rules might be fun.
17. Science has still not been able to pinpoint precisely why we need sleep.
18. But we do - the effects of not sleeping are, well, death and more death, ultimately.
19. That shit's worse than crack.
20. And ketamine. Which is all over the news this week as the newest most scariest deadly drug, but this is five years old. Ahhh, look at cutey little Conor McNicholas who now oversees publication of that crappy music mag. Il est un goof.
21. 'Ketamine' is a lovely word, isn't it? It's like a girl's name. "Ketamine, darling, would you mind popping to Waitrose for a butternut squash and some Aqua Libra?"
22. David Duchovny's son is called Kyd. Poor fucker.
(alright ONE more)
Intermission
The crappy old cinema in Lancaster still has one of these, between the trailers and the film. They last about 40 seconds. It's a nice gesture. One amazingly scratchy, noisy graphic that flashes up - screaming ENJOY THE FILM OR WE KILL ANOTHER ONE or similar - lifts its tattered hem at the end to display the fact that it was made, on a computer the size of Twickenham, in the year of my birth. It's these little things that tickle me. Everything's so fucking blandly perfect now, or striving to be blandly perfect, or slouching in doldrums at its own perfect blandness, that it's cheering to observe crappy old shit still doddering along.
Suitably clueless woman on the latest Channel 4 papfest about dog troubles (Reality Happens And Hilarity Ensues etc). Four German Spitzes - just looking for a suitable picture but every single site I find is setting my sight back another decade; why are people happy to own such ghastly-looking websites? Pixelsick. Anyway, they're like small Samoyeds or giant Pomeranians.
. . .
Like Paris Hilton's dog?
. . .
Look, they're like absurdly fluffy blow-dried overbred foxes with bright beady eyes and evil fangs, 'kay? 'Kay.
Yes, so this woman has four of these of various colours and a couple of mongrels in a semi near Birmingham + long-suffering alarmingly Deliverance-esque hubsbad and neglected teenage boy. And all of the dogs swarm constantly around, constantly barking, all the time. The woman feeds them icepops, and rushes to buy them ice-creams from the van several times a week. The dogs gather in the kitchen to shout even more at 1.30pm, because this is when she gives them tea which she makes for them, with milk and sugar. They never get walked. They are all hopped-up furry frickin freakdogs.
The trainer - who was basically the same awful spindly bint as on all the other Channel 4 "look at your life you dirty/overweight/frumpy/incompetent lump, for shame" shows in a wig - pointed out that she was a rotten dog owner. On this occasion you had to agree. I object to all the stuff about bettering yourself through public humiliation - especially the one where they tell women they look like shit and should have a little facelift, with the glacial female presenter and the jovial male voiceover, that enrages me - but here, the things that were being said actually needed to be said.
Trainer hauled ridiculous idiot woman to a Dogs Trust shelter to point out where her dogs would have to go for rehoming, if she continued to act like an arse with them and the neighbours continued to complain about the incessant noise. Woman flees the room weeping. I was surprised. The place looked lovely. There was a distinct whiff of Ikea about it. Far from where I picked up K, which was all concrete and wire and cold and forbidding. She'd obviously never been in a shelter before - odd, since she had a couple of mutts as well as the pedigrees. I did think for a second that she was one of those hoarders whose compassion blinds them to their inadequate personal circumstances, but these were expensive pedigree dogs she'd been collecting so they hadn't exactly been in dire circumstances. So fuck that.
She sort of got her shit together in the end. The trainer was pretty awful in the meantime, reminded me a lot of the behaviourist from hell who informed me that I wasn't up to adopting a dog like K. The trouble is with many of them is that, knowing they have the measure of dogs, imagine that they know human psychology just as well and proceed to patronise the living shit out of you.
Kaine has been pretty resilient, really, except for the whole murderous-intent thing. I hesitate to assume he's happy, but he isn't depressed. As a pet, he is barely viable - I don't get to enjoy taking him out for runs, which is about half the point of owning a dog and more than that for a lot of people. As a beast unto himself, though, he's fine. And I keep on checking that he is, keep on checking myself for selfishness, for hanging onto an animal that would be better off elsewhere. But whenever I imagine alternative lives for him, most of them are already over.
(I did used to give him tea dregs occasionally, but not now. Actually I do let him lick out yogurt and dessert pots. But a whole ice cream in a cone. Stupid people.)
I think I should experiment with not actually writing about the dog, or about myself, for a while. It'd be revealing. Post-rate would plummet, and so would I, into another new well of self-analytical GUILT. Heh heh. It's only what I deserve for not appreciating my own voluminous worth. I think it's a good idea. So! before I start:
- Everything people think about dogs is true, what they do for you, how staggering it is, and try as I might to stop marvelling at the purity and beauty of the relationship and to shut up about it because it's fucking nauseating, ah jist cannae.
- Bloggers do those '100 things about me' lists and they can be cute and funny or they can be mundo stupido. I don't think I could muster one, even if I were inclined. Do I pass some kind of personality test for that, or am I just crap at lists? I love a good list, though. Anyway, I could do '100 things not about me'. Although that would leave a loophole for me to write about the dog. Shit. OK, '100 things not about me nor the dog although other dogs are allowed'.
Right. Rules. Oh, it's fucking late and I meant to get an early night. But this is important.
No use of first person
Mention of friends and associates is permitted
No mention of items belonging to me or clothes or anything like that
It can't all be about television
No it can't
Non-contemporary stuff is fine
And statements in form of question
And questions that could be taken as rhetorical but don't have to be
And nonsense and seriousness
Um
That'll do it.
After this action shot, no more for 100 sentences.
Wheeee.
Suitably clueless woman on the latest Channel 4 papfest about dog troubles (Reality Happens And Hilarity Ensues etc). Four German Spitzes - just looking for a suitable picture but every single site I find is setting my sight back another decade; why are people happy to own such ghastly-looking websites? Pixelsick. Anyway, they're like small Samoyeds or giant Pomeranians.
. . .
Like Paris Hilton's dog?
. . .
Look, they're like absurdly fluffy blow-dried overbred foxes with bright beady eyes and evil fangs, 'kay? 'Kay.
Yes, so this woman has four of these of various colours and a couple of mongrels in a semi near Birmingham + long-suffering alarmingly Deliverance-esque hubsbad and neglected teenage boy. And all of the dogs swarm constantly around, constantly barking, all the time. The woman feeds them icepops, and rushes to buy them ice-creams from the van several times a week. The dogs gather in the kitchen to shout even more at 1.30pm, because this is when she gives them tea which she makes for them, with milk and sugar. They never get walked. They are all hopped-up furry frickin freakdogs.
The trainer - who was basically the same awful spindly bint as on all the other Channel 4 "look at your life you dirty/overweight/frumpy/incompetent lump, for shame" shows in a wig - pointed out that she was a rotten dog owner. On this occasion you had to agree. I object to all the stuff about bettering yourself through public humiliation - especially the one where they tell women they look like shit and should have a little facelift, with the glacial female presenter and the jovial male voiceover, that enrages me - but here, the things that were being said actually needed to be said.
Trainer hauled ridiculous idiot woman to a Dogs Trust shelter to point out where her dogs would have to go for rehoming, if she continued to act like an arse with them and the neighbours continued to complain about the incessant noise. Woman flees the room weeping. I was surprised. The place looked lovely. There was a distinct whiff of Ikea about it. Far from where I picked up K, which was all concrete and wire and cold and forbidding. She'd obviously never been in a shelter before - odd, since she had a couple of mutts as well as the pedigrees. I did think for a second that she was one of those hoarders whose compassion blinds them to their inadequate personal circumstances, but these were expensive pedigree dogs she'd been collecting so they hadn't exactly been in dire circumstances. So fuck that.
She sort of got her shit together in the end. The trainer was pretty awful in the meantime, reminded me a lot of the behaviourist from hell who informed me that I wasn't up to adopting a dog like K. The trouble is with many of them is that, knowing they have the measure of dogs, imagine that they know human psychology just as well and proceed to patronise the living shit out of you.
Kaine has been pretty resilient, really, except for the whole murderous-intent thing. I hesitate to assume he's happy, but he isn't depressed. As a pet, he is barely viable - I don't get to enjoy taking him out for runs, which is about half the point of owning a dog and more than that for a lot of people. As a beast unto himself, though, he's fine. And I keep on checking that he is, keep on checking myself for selfishness, for hanging onto an animal that would be better off elsewhere. But whenever I imagine alternative lives for him, most of them are already over.
(I did used to give him tea dregs occasionally, but not now. Actually I do let him lick out yogurt and dessert pots. But a whole ice cream in a cone. Stupid people.)
I think I should experiment with not actually writing about the dog, or about myself, for a while. It'd be revealing. Post-rate would plummet, and so would I, into another new well of self-analytical GUILT. Heh heh. It's only what I deserve for not appreciating my own voluminous worth. I think it's a good idea. So! before I start:
- Everything people think about dogs is true, what they do for you, how staggering it is, and try as I might to stop marvelling at the purity and beauty of the relationship and to shut up about it because it's fucking nauseating, ah jist cannae.
- Bloggers do those '100 things about me' lists and they can be cute and funny or they can be mundo stupido. I don't think I could muster one, even if I were inclined. Do I pass some kind of personality test for that, or am I just crap at lists? I love a good list, though. Anyway, I could do '100 things not about me'. Although that would leave a loophole for me to write about the dog. Shit. OK, '100 things not about me nor the dog although other dogs are allowed'.
Right. Rules. Oh, it's fucking late and I meant to get an early night. But this is important.
No use of first person
Mention of friends and associates is permitted
No mention of items belonging to me or clothes or anything like that
It can't all be about television
No it can't
Non-contemporary stuff is fine
And statements in form of question
And questions that could be taken as rhetorical but don't have to be
And nonsense and seriousness
Um
That'll do it.
After this action shot, no more for 100 sentences.
Wheeee.
