http://www.the-folly.com/2009/09/writers-block/
According to Robert Sheckley and Ben Aaronovitch, anyway.
Think I am going to have to try it, otherwise I will be stuck till kingdom come laughing my socks off at Charlie Brooker's account of his visit to the Concrete Menagerie in Northumberland and sipping lukewarm, nose-curling coffee of the day in Starbucks whilst listening to Nathan Barley dingwad lookalikes and their adorable totty-bint girlfriends burble on and on at great length and considerable tedium about Beyonce being up the duff.
Bloody hell words, why won't you come? You bastards know I have a deadline looming, so naturally you do a runner. While I rummage round for you under the sofa, you're hanging out with the odd socks down the bottom of the laundry basket. Just wait till I get my hands on you! You lazy shiftless buggers have a lot of catching up to do etc etc amen (cont. on p. 94).
Monday 29 August 2011
Friday 19 August 2011
The horror, the horror continues
Well, I did warn you.
A quick trawl of Google under 'Anders Behring Breivik' proves that we probably won't be forgetting about Norway's notorious spree killer any time in the near future.
This article from the Guardian includes brief excerpts from his diary:
It is seriously chilling to read of his preparations for the atrocities, whilst all the rest of us around the world had no idea of his existence, let alone his plans, so were helpless to intervene.
What was I doing at 12.51 pm on Friday 22 July 2011, just as Anders completed his manifesto and e-mailed 1,000 copies of it to his contact list before setting off on his fateful self-styled ‘mission’?
Drinking a mug of coffee whilst watching excerpts from Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes, if I remember correctly.
On the other hand, it is definitely well-established fact that many medieval knights did indeed abstain from sexual and romantic relationships while preparing for and engaging in their campaigns and quests. Even today, many sports players follow the same practice to enable them to focus their minds and energy before a big match.
And these silly nongs seem to forget that a great many medieval knights and modern sports players are what they would glorify as ‘Alpha males’, who would doubtless be wading up to their plums in prime pussy once they have finally won their great victories. So if Alpha males don’t mind going without poontang occasionally and it doesn’t seem to end up harming them or inhibiting their efficiency in other areas of their lives, stop bloody whingeing on, you Betas!
I love the detailed description of the sort of humdrum, depressing sex-life a Beta male can look forward to with his girlfriend/wife. Makes you wonder whether the author of this particular comment is basing it upon personal experience.
I also cannot get over the hideous way in which all these men (that’s what they seem to be, from the tone of all these comments here) never fail to denigrate and despise the very women whose vaginas they are all longing so desperately for improved access to. So you disapprove of Anders for committing the most unspeakable violence simply to impress women? Okay, fair enough – but do you really think the best way to boost your own attractiveness to the opposite sex is to slag us off in writing?
Well, obviously! No woman wants a pathetic, wimpy Kitchen Bitch who can’t get it up for toffee. All the ladies go gaga for vampire-werewolf-neo Nazi spree murderer psychopaths who slap them around for not serving the dinner on time. None of these sad losers has apparently bothered asking a real live woman what exactly she does and doesn’t find attractive in a man. No woman in her right mind would go within five hundred thousand miles of Spike and Angel from Buffy, Dexter – or Anders Behring Breivik.
I agree wholeheartedly with Pharyngula that Breivik’s so-called ‘manifesto’ does sound very much like ‘an obsessively fussed-over set of rules for a nerdy fantasy role-playing game’, only Breivik was convinced that it was all for real and so ‘charged off to murder people’ – with two vital caveats.
Firstly, I am convinced that Brian Masters is right when he describes Breivik as a committed ideologue. The main reason he spent so much time and effort in researching and writing this 1500-odd page monstrosity is because he sees it as an extremely serious endeavour. In Breivik’s mind, what he has written is an urgently needed plan.
No way can Breivik either recognise or admit that his views might strike most people as, at best, seriously worrying extremism, and, at worst, what Pharyngula calls ‘outrageous crackpottery’. He himself probably believes that he is a brilliant intellectual theoretician, perhaps the only person currently alive in Europe possessed of the necessary courage and vision to devise the radical ‘solutions’ ‘needed’ to solve the continent’s ‘problems’. (Though Pharyngula is right to pull him up for some particularly ropey scholarship, as per his discussion of Richard Dawkins.)
Like Masters has pointed out, if anyone has already told Breivik that the vast majority of people across the world do not regard him as the Great White Hope of Europe like he had been hoping – indeed, the exact opposite – I imagine he probably would be totally mystified and bewildered by such a violently antipathetic response. In his own mind, his ‘theories’ are so obviously ‘right’ in every respect that it is we who have the problem, not him. If we cannot see his ‘great achievement’ for the ‘monumental breakthrough’ he ‘knows’ it is, then we are all a load of ungrateful clunts who’ll be first against the wall when his version of the revolution comes.
According to this recent report from the Daily Telegraph, the prison staff and shrinks have lost no time in confronting Breivik with the brutal facts.
Secondly, it is a tragic fact that not everybody in the world regards the man as evil/mad/sad. Quite possibly most, if not all, these supposed colleagues of his will turn out to be nothing more than figments of his imagination. Indeed, I bloody well hope so. However, in the final analysis it won’t matter a jot whether they are or not - because there are plenty of vicious-minded extremist thugs out there (plus a few nutters with serious delusions of ‘grandeur’ and the odd inadequate who’s just about ready to go postal) who are now ready to become his ‘followers’.
Breivik may claim that he hates Hitler for letting Europe down through his ill-conceived and ineptly executed policies (no mention whatever of marmolising over 6 million people as a direct result of them, you note), but he wouldn’t exactly go round complaining if his own manifesto ends up gaining even a tenth of the following of der Fuehrer’s Mein Kampf.
He wants us to come and join him in his ghastly game. Before we do that, we need to know what the game is, how to play it – and why it’s so important to support him. So he’s very kindly written us the manual, just like a good Dungeonmaster would do.
And if we follow Breivik’s own method of ‘reasoning’ further, he would no doubt tell his potential followers that it’s really handy if both experts and the public dismiss your writings as the ravings of an unabashed fruitcake – because then you can easily persuade them not to take you seriously. This will cause them all to massively under-estimate the threat that you and your plans truly pose. While they leave you in peace to talk to the trees, you can quietly get on pursuing your various nefarious objectives.
See, this is just the sort of stuff he wants:
Thursday 11 August 2011
And now for something completely different
After all the ghastly and depressing news of the past few weeks, we probably all need to pause for a moment to get our breath back with a bit of light relief.
In her masterwork Eating India, Chitrita Banerji explains how to cook what she refers to as 'the most incongruous combination' of ingredients in Parsi cuisine.
The recipe is called wafer per eeda - which roughly translates as 'potato crisps with egg.'
Here's how you make it:
1.) Saute a load of onions and green chillis in some oil in a large frying pan.
2.) Open a bag of potato crisps.
3.) Chuck the potato crisps over the top of the onions and chillis.
4.) Make a few holes amongst the pile of crisps.
5.) Crack eggs into each hole.
6.) Keep cooking until the eggs are properly set.
7.) Serve.
Apparently the Parsis are such fans of eggs that they love to eat them with absolutely anything and everything they can lay their hands on. When Chitrita learnt about this dish, it sounded so bizarre that she couldn't wait to try it for herself.
She describes it as 'an eye-popping experience, reminding me once again that texture is the dominant element in any cuisine originating in Gujurat'.
For my part, I would far rather use my spare time to test out wafer per eeda than writing a barking mad manifesto.
In her masterwork Eating India, Chitrita Banerji explains how to cook what she refers to as 'the most incongruous combination' of ingredients in Parsi cuisine.
The recipe is called wafer per eeda - which roughly translates as 'potato crisps with egg.'
Here's how you make it:
1.) Saute a load of onions and green chillis in some oil in a large frying pan.
2.) Open a bag of potato crisps.
3.) Chuck the potato crisps over the top of the onions and chillis.
4.) Make a few holes amongst the pile of crisps.
5.) Crack eggs into each hole.
6.) Keep cooking until the eggs are properly set.
7.) Serve.
Apparently the Parsis are such fans of eggs that they love to eat them with absolutely anything and everything they can lay their hands on. When Chitrita learnt about this dish, it sounded so bizarre that she couldn't wait to try it for herself.
She describes it as 'an eye-popping experience, reminding me once again that texture is the dominant element in any cuisine originating in Gujurat'.
For my part, I would far rather use my spare time to test out wafer per eeda than writing a barking mad manifesto.
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