ITEM: Quite amused to see a new book come with the blurb ‘read it with the lights on’, because I guess reading in the dark is such a done thing nowadays.
ITEM: Another new book comes with the title “William Shakespeare, Vampire Hunter”, following fast in the footsteps of “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” and “Queen Victoria, Demon Slayer”, and a whole plethora of similar titles. At times it seems like just about any and every historical personage you care to name has been involved in combatting the forces of evil, to the point that the whole thing is becoming trivialised.
None of which, of course, can detract from the splendour (and craziness) that is Fist of Jesus.
ITEM: It seems like every time I pop into the cesspit that is Facebook writers are complaining about reviewers and how standards have fallen.
And yet when I read further invariably the reviewer getting hauled over the coals is somebody posting on Amazon or Goodreads, which is the equivalent of me claiming that horror fiction nowadays is badly written crap and to prove my point quoting from half a dozen self-published writers while ignoring Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, and anyone else who can construct a sentence without tripping over their own syntax.
I may have made this point before. It gets old.
ITEM: Latest spam email to tickle my funny bone comes from an entity named CasualSextMatch and with the Subject header ‘want a new toy boy’.
Yes, well. Possibly they think I have worn out the old one.
ITEM: While round TAG’s (The Actual Girlfriend) yesterday I caught some of Most Haunted and an idea came to me for a new reality TV show, Celebrity Most Haunted in which ordinary members of the public have to figure out which dead celebrity they’re being haunted by.
I recoiled in shock at the perfidy of my own imagination, but then realised the concept had a certain horrid sense of inevitability to it.
Including celebrities seems to be de rigueur in just about every show that gets made nowadays, so I guess it’s only a matter of time before even death won’t keep these mostly fatuous twerps off our TV screens.
ITEM: The Tories get into power and yesterday we have a budget that hits the poorest, and there’s a vote on fox hunting pending.
That didn’t take long then.
Anyone for a quick chorus of ‘Your true colours are shining through’?
ITEM: Last Saturday I went to the Students’ Degree Show at Norwich University College of the Arts. About the only thing that caught my eye was a giant multi-coloured statue of male genitalia which they’d hidden away in one of the basement rooms. I wanted to take a photograph, but it felt a little too obvious.
Over in the main building there were some rooms on the top floor that had an ‘advisory content’ warning sign up, though in the event I couldn’t figure out what the hell we were supposed to be concerned about. The most controversial thing I saw were some photographs of rubbish in a rural environment. Perhaps they’re concerned that easily influenced youngsters will turn into litterbugs after seeing the show.
No warning sign for the giant cock and balls though, which I find strangely reassuring.
Afterwards I joined TAG and family for the Lord Mayor’s Parade, but it was really too hot for comfort and, as I didn’t know what party the mayor belonged to, I wasn’t sure if I should cheer or boo when he went past.
ITEM: Tomorrow I am going to see this:-
I may even go to the seaside first.
For your part, you may feel jealous.
Trumpetville 