Month: August 2002

Jamie S. Rich is the Editor in Chief for Oni Press consistently one of the best publishers in the comic book market. I had the pleasure of meeting Jamie at Bristol Comic Con a couple of months and he is a really nice and genuinely funny guy. Oni have just republished his first and indeed only novel to date with added illustrations from some of Oni’s and indeed the industries talent.

Cut My Hair is a coming of age tale (aren’t they all!). Mason is a 19 year old boy growing up in his own little world of music and girls. Jamie’s love for music shines throughout the entire book, unfortunately most of the references are lost on me, the music is from before my time. It even had to be pointed out to me that the title of the book is from a Who song. All in all a very enjoyable read slightly let down by the uneven ending, but it works.

I have a time machine in my flat, in my bathroom to be precise. It also doubles as a shower. Every morning I have a shower pretty much first thing. I started noticing a while ago that while I did not take any longer in the shower, my showers were getting longer. This confused me somewhat. When I was simply taking a shower, I use to be in and out of the bathroom in 10 minutes flat.

These days when I have a shower it is always much longer than it seems. When I get out of the bathroom I find that 20 or even 25 minutes have passed and I’m always expecting it to be no more than then.

Having given the matter some thought I have come to the following single logical conclusion. My shower is in fact a time machine. Every time I step in, I move forward in time, usually about 10 minutes. Of course with such great power comes great responsibility and I will endeavour to use this power for the benefit of world peace.

There is a JJ72 song that I’m listening to at the moment, Desertion Its a quieter slower song than their normal fare and it works really well. Meg has a great line on her site which has stayed with me since the first time I read it. It is “For optimum viewing, come over to my house and look at these pages on my monitor.”

I’d have something a little different. In order for anyone to really have the experience of what I am thinking, how I am feeling or even as basic as what my mood is, you need to be listening to the same music I am as I type this. Without this your missing something important, something which words just can’t convey even if I post the lyrics.

For example, if I posted some lyrics from Iggy Pop’s The Passenger sure you might now the song, but I could be listening to his original version as you are hopefully familiar with or I could be talking about the much harder metalised version he does live every now and again. Trust me these versions mean different things.

Music is everything, it is not just the soundtrack to life, it is life. For anyone to have a grasp of anything I write you need to be hearing what I hear. Sometimes it is random, whatever Winamp decides is next on my playlist, other times it is a very certain double click bringing the right tune to me at the right time.

I wish I had the power to bring you a soundtrack with this, that there were no worries about bandwidth or copyright or the such. That each and every time you read something off this page you could hear what I heard when I wrote it. Wouldn’t that just be a great technology? Wouldn’t that just be an education for some of you? 😉

I can’t do it I’m afraid, I hope for the day when I can, for the time being you can just get the lyrics of this moment:

Impressions of life

Confusion is rife

I have this urge to just sit here and type stuff. I don’t quite know why.

Karma police
arrest this man,
he talks in maths,
he buzzes like a fridge,
he’s like a detuned radio.

Karma police
arrest this girl,
her Hitler hairdo
is making me feel ill
and we have crashed her party.

This is what you get,
this is what you get,
this is what you get,
when you mess with us.

Karma police
I’ve given all I can,
it’s not enough,
I’ve given all I can
but we’re still on the payroll.

This is what you get,
this is what you get,
this is what you get,
when you mess with us.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew, for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew, for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself.

*sigh*

I hate this tit for tat shit. I guess I’m never going to get away from this problem. I dealt with it for two years and it looks like I have to deal with it for as long as I work here.

I guess I could change that easy enough. Can we say knee-jerk?

It would be nice to work somewhere where…I don’t know what exactly but where there wasn’t this great dark cloud permanently following me around would be a good start.

I was just thinking to myself on the bus this morning that I had not updated my C.V. in a long long time. Signs and portents?

“Alex is a geek’s wet dream”

I can but grin and wait for her to come online for some good natured abuse.

is everyone else so smart? It seems like where-ever I look these days there are people far more smarter than me*. Its not always a nice feeling

*Work having many exceptions to this

I want to go and see the Matisse/Picasso exhibition at The Tate Modern and there is a West End play (Sleuth) I actually want to go and see. I have no idea who I am anymore at times. These things don’t interest me. I have no interest in art and I have no interest in theatre. I don’t know why I want to see the exhibition at the Tate, with the recent crime/detective reading binge I’ve been on, Sleuth sounds like something cool to see. Although having just done a quick google to get some details I see that seats are over £44 and the next level are tier 2 for £28. Thats a tad pricy. Reconsidering now. I can get 8 crime novels for that or 4 decent graphic novels. I guess I’ll think about it some more.

I wonder whats changed? Thats kinda a stupid statement, its obviously me, I wonder why.

***
On a whole other note…motherfuckers. It has just been pointed out to me that the extras (an entire discs worth) in the 2-disc set of Lord of the Rings…are not going to be included in the 4-disc release in November. I’m going to have to buy the fucking thing twice. *sigh*
***

and on a whole other whole other note, this months FHM has the lovely Elisha Cuthbert on the front cover. Elisha is of course Kim Bauer from the excellent 24. This is a good thing 🙂

Now that is how you do drama.

I love the internet. I typed in 5 words from the song playing and within 5 seconds I knew it was Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits.

There are just some programmes which should not be allowed to have ads.