Get home and wait for garden maintenance guy to arrive.
He’s due at 5:30.
It’s quarter to 7. No bloke, no phone-call.
Don’t you just hate that?
Just good manners alone would make me phone, never mind the idea that I might be able to make money out of it.
The urge to wait until 1am and then ring his mobile to ask where he is and when he’s going to arrive is very , very strong.
One thing i’m known for is my assertion that the comics industry aims far too low.
We’re content to supply the same old material to the same old (and getting older every year) audience.
I get heartily fed up of hearing the comics I love referred to as Indy, Alternative, Small Press.
Consider the real world; mainstream book publishing – lots of different genres, fiction, comedy, romance, crime, sci-fi, fantasy, biography etc etc.
Now consider comics – 1 genre dominates all others to a really unhealthy degree. The Superhero, pants tucked firmly outside trousers, is so all pervasive that most normal, regular people think all comics are superhero comics. But this is so wrong, Superhero comics are wonderful when they’re done well, but they shouldn’t be championed as all comics can be. Because the 99% of people not reading comics wont read superhero comics because out in the real world they’re reading fiction, romance, sci fi, fantasy, comedy, biography etc.
So stop trying to tell me that the latest [insert big Marvel or DC crossover / event thingy her] is the way forward to get more people reading comics.
It wasn’t 20 years ago and it isn’t now.
But the latest Andi watson book – Little Star – about two normal parents trying to juggle work, a relationship and a new baby – that’s mainstream. True mainstream.
Andi is a wonderful writer and artist and really deserves more acclaim than he gets. He consistently produces incredible work and is always on every best of list the staff at Nostalgia & Comics produces.
Andi Watson’s work is always available at Nostalgia & Comics Birmingham, try Breakfast Afternoon for a wonderful mainstream read. Then look at Little Star – easily the best book of 2005/6.
McDonalds:
McDonalds is suffering it seems from the poor financial climate and has to close restaurants. Personally, I think this is a terrible shame. Where will the people of Smith’s Wood find work now? There’s only a certain number of meaningless, imbecile proof jobs out there and there’s an awful lot of stupid people who need to fill them.
I have no sympathy with McDonalds at all. Horrible corporation with no respect for people or the environment. Remember this is the corporation that started out in India years ago still frying their chips in beef fat. India. Beef Fat? I know Americans are stupid enough to make that mistake but surely as a multi-national there was someone foreign on staff to point out this incredibly stupid cock up.
New music.
Having just cleared a backlog of video watching – I’ve come up for air after watching the NME awards for this year.
God help us all if that’s the best of the new music.
I must be getting old because it all sounds bloody familiar to me and i never really liked it that much the first time round.
Dear NME. You’re meant to be the cutting edge of music and your awards show is meant to reflect this. So why, oh why do you get that absolute twat – Russell Brand to present.
Please, please explain how a talentless fuckwit like that get onto our screens. Is that the level of comedy we aspire to now?
Pete Doherty’s just a washed out junkie joke & the other one out of the Libertines has a new band out that sound like a bad Levellers. (& that’s from someone who liked the bloody Levellers)
The New Streets single.
This is more like it
Now, unlike the rest of you people, I’m a fan of Mike Skinner, I even went so far as describing the last cd as poetry.
The new single’s getting a lot o airplay at the moment and I can’t work out whether it’s wonderful and playful or it’s just riffing off fog on the fucking tyne. Time may tell. I’ll still buy the album though.
The Royal National Opera….
They received in excess of £100 million over something like 10 years.
OF OUR MONEY.
I don’t object to giving money to the arts. Hell, I love the idea of giving money to the arts.
But why does the opera need this much bloody money?
Surely if any artform has enough bloody money, it’s opera. How many poor people do you see at the opera? Why do they need the bloody money. Have you see the cost of the tickets? In fact have you seen the cost of the bar?
How much money can you pay a fat women in a tent that means you’re not making a bloody profit?
Wacky Warehouses and the like……..
God I hate them. On the plus side they’re lovely for Molly and I can get a cup of coffee and a sit down.
But the shit you have to put up with…..
If you didn’t want children maybe you should have taken a little more care with contraception? Moronic parents with a pint in one hand and their mobiles glued to their ears whilst their 8 offspring wander around the wacky hitting my child. But heaven forbid the parent who points this out. The little chav devils can do no wrong in their chav parents eyes.
Of course, I say Chav parents, what I should have said was chav parent. Singular. Seemingly always singular. Which is not to say I have anything against single moms. But experience and observation lets me make some hideously sweeping generalisations about this.
Take, for example, the single mom in front of me. I’m assuming she’s a single mom of course. But she’s with a bloke and her child keeps calling her mom and him dave so it’s either step dad or boyfriend or she’s picked a really dumb place to have an affair.
Her: Chav, horrible, cheap chocolate brown velour tracksuit, hair pulled harshly back onto scalp, designer label clothes and shoes, two mobiles on the go constantly.
Him: short, shaven headed and having that vaguely threatening manner of a football hooligan in waiting. The sloping brow, the dull, lifeless eyes and the slightly disbelieving looks at anyone who flaunts their ability to read. Of course, the deciding factor is the crap birmingham city chain round his fat, corpulent neck.
Why do single moms always seem to go for this sort of bloke? Why do they always cling onto them in public, mauling each other with the same level of passion your laborador uses to greet you. Of course, after a little while this passion will transmute into violence and they’ll spend hours wasting police and hospital time.
And possibly worse are the Harbourne mums and dads.
You all know the sort….. just insert your own area (West Bridgford mums for Nottingham I hear)
Middle class or at least want to be, organic/ free-range / hand-reared bioyoghurt, alternative remedies, packed lunches of celery sticks and carrot puree, french at 6 months, violin appreciation classes from birth, that sort of thing.
Just go down to the Botanical Gardens and observe the playground, it’s all liberal attitudes and swirly chiffon skirts and desperately trying to outdo every other Harbourne mom there by signing your child up for Mongolian Yak farming courses or whatever is in-vogue that week.
They seem to find it impossible to discipline their children. At least the bloody chavs can’t be arsed. Harbourne mums are worse, they’ve made a conscious decision to neglect this rather important aspect of parenting…….
“Little tarquin doesn’t mean to kick everything he sees and run around shouting like a monkey on acid, it’s just his nature.”
Absolutely, his nature is to be an arrogant and aggressive fuckwit, just like his dad and an ignorant, pompous harpy like mommy.
And at least Chav kids are only running around MacDonalds causing havoc, Harbourne mom’s little angels run around the restaurants I eat in.
And that really wont do.
fictions 