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Rant

About Neil

(Also Known As: Overrated Writers I Hate #1. Maybe.)

I have no idea whether or not the allegations against our beloved, saintly Lord Neil of Gaiman have any validity. It wouldn’t necessarily surprise me, but I’m happy to be on the fence.

However, it’s not the worst time to indulge my view about his character and his work. I believe the two, being more or less inseparable, are best summed up with the word charlatan. I’ve spent 30-odd years being astounded (and quite disappointed) by the amount of praise and gushing idolatry directed at this insufferably smug, annoyingly fey, all-appeasing goon. His work is, without doubt, amongst the most shallow, meaningless, insincere and vacuous ever to be published to significant acclaim.
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A Farce, You Say?

Hmmm… haven’t felt much like writing on here for a while. Real life gets in the way sometimes, have had a really, really weird three weeks, sometimes very depressed and generally disorientated.

Well, the move to Brighton happened. And about five seconds after, I realised it was a total, fucking mistake. You can’t begin to imagine what an amazing mind-fuck that is. This is what happens if you’re stuck in a too-expensive place on your own—you don’t think things through properly.

How can I detail my problems with Brighton? *sigh* Let’s try a bulleted list…

* I actually have friends in London.
* I miss them.
* It’s not as quick/easy to get to London as I deluded myself.
* It’s even harder to get to anywhere else in the country. Travel from here is just a total pisser.
* I got shit on by a bird for the first time since I was about seven years old within a couple of days of coming here.
* The coastal winds are utterly vicious, especially at night.
* And the nights are cooooooooold.
* Spiders and woodlice and bugs generally… lots of them. Everywhere.
* Nothing resembling a ‘proper’ city locally.
* Most of the buildings are ancient and in a shockingly awful state of decay. Even the really expensive ones. Double-glazing hasn’t been invented here yet.
* Living in an ancient, conversion-job building with a shared entrance and paper-thin walls really sucks. I don’t want to know when someone in the floor above farts, but I pretty much do.
* This Hobbit-hole won’t even allow a single divan through its doors. I still have neither a proper sofa to sit on or a bed to sleep on.
* Fresh coastal air, yes, but tons of earthy dirt and grime and dust nonetheless. Everywhere. Poor pooch Fred had a totally black belly within a week of being here.

And on and on and on. Think you get the idea. Brighton’s a beautiful place to visit, but man, living here is another matter entirely.
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White Space

Let’s talk about ambience. It’s by way of a ‘sort-of’ criticism of this house. It’s not a major problem, but what interests me is how so many people appear to disagree with my viewpoint.

Most of the walls are white.

Worst of all, for me, is the living room being all-white. I’m countering it to some degree—I’m filling as much wall space as I can with original artwork and prints. It improves things a lot. (Okay, so I might move. But the new place will 95% probably have white walls too, and I’ll be dealing with it the same way.)

I hate white walls. To me, it lacks atmosphere—it creates a feeling of sterility. Some people call it neutral but I call it sterile. If I had the autonomy to repaint this place, the living room would be a subdued purple or a reddish-brown. Whatever you hang on a wall like that really pops out, pleasingly, and the backdrop is so much warmer and friendlier.
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The Big Buzz

Oh, for the sake of balance: there is a huge, fuck-off Sainsbury’s round the corner. The clothes are rubbish and the Sound & Vision selection is about as tokenistic and paltry as you’d expect, but the food on offer (it is ostensibly a food store, after all) is nice and extensive.

And they sell Cote d’Or chocolate. *sigh* There goes the blood pressure again, but what the hell. I like it. It has a pretty little elephant on the wrapper (also embossed on the choc segments). The noir variety comes in 70% cocoa and nuclear-strength 86%. I’ve given in to temptation twice. I was awake for days.
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Want Some Fat With Yer Grease?

Another thing about London (well, this small pocket of London I’m in right now): fish and chips. Like, where?

I don’t have fish and chips often. A handful of times a year. But occasionally one does get the urge. And this is especially true if you can’t have said meal. In the approximately local vicinity, there are loads of eateries. Millions of them. Bazillions. But no fish and chip shop. What’s that all about?

By far the most common kind of eatery, around here, and perhaps London generally (I mean the cheaper bits of it, to be honest), is the fried chicken bar. You know, the one that offers stuff ‘just like’ KFC only half the price. Which is quite neat, because for half the price you get twice the calories, twice the cholesterol and twice the artery-hardening grease and fat!
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Milk!

One thing you London types don’t understand at all, and for completely different reasons us Brummie Provincials find hard to grasp, is the milk thing.

I really miss milk in glass bottles. Back in the stix, even if you didn’t have it delivered, you could stroll to your local corner shop, et voila, bottles of milk! Glass bottles. Loads of them.

London’s too ‘trendy’ and ‘high-speed’ for that. I have the most corner-shoppish corner shop you ever saw in your life down the road, but… no milk in glass bottles. It comes in plastic bottles. Very small ones, medium ones, huge ones. All plastic.
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The Kids Are In Charge

Ho-hum. Opening of Parliament today, I see from the spectacle on TV. Isn’t this a summation of everything that’s wrong with politics? A grotesquely opulent, debauched waste of taxpayers’ money just to mark the mundane event of our overpaid politicians’ expensve holidays being officially over, and the reading of a speech by our outdated, superfluous, pointless, costly ‘monarch’ that she didn’t even bloody well write herself.

In a word: disgusting. I say this every year.

And worse than disgusting, fucking childish. Here we have a fellow given the nom de plume of Black Rod. Dressed as Widow Twanky, he goes up to the doors of the house, which, of course, ‘symbolically’ slams the door in his face (as he represents the monarchy) to declare their independence.
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The Internet is Fucked Up

Major annoyance of recent weeks: spammers using this domain as their return address, meaning I get all their bounces. It’s happening to quite a few people lately, apparently. I had it once before about a year ago, but on a much smaller scale (i.e. fewer bounces, for whatever reason).

I don’t know what the point of spam is. No one I know gives it the time of day. It’s a festering, parasitic nuisance and, I tend to think, a singularly ineffective method of advertising. More than anything else, you have to figure the people doing this are the saddest bastards on the planet—so much effort for shit that no one ever reads.
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And The Lost Plot…

Hmmm. Just watched Lost. Did see all of series one and found it reasonably entertaining, but only about four episodes so far of series two. (I missed the Doctor Who finale too! Not watching nearly as much TV lately. Maybe not a bad thing.)

Anyway, Lost is worrying me. Some of this episode was getting a bit preachy. I think it’s an aspect that’s always been kinda there, but not annoyingly so. What I’m starting to think, though, is that if this slow-moving show ever reaches some point of conclusion, the obvious potential outcome—they’re all really dead and stuck in some limbo; they finally get free and head off for Heaven/Hell—will be the one they go for.
Read More »And The Lost Plot…