As of 21st August, 2014, I adopted the practice of saying exactly what I felt needed to be said when engaging with others through social media, and then not saying it, deleting the words I had written in the comment box, the email or whatever, having copied them to a notebook document on my word processor. This, I find, has saved a lot of arguments because it gets it out of my system without my having to point out that the person with whom I am attempting to communicate is full of shit. It also leaves the other party free to continue subscribing to whatever bollocks inspired my response, but let's face it, a drooling fuckwit will usually continue to be a drooling fuckwit regardless of whatever you may offer by way of illumination.
I have taken great pleasure in composing some of the responses which follow, and I find many of them entertaining in their own right even when I've forgotten who or what inspired my comments. Perhaps you, dear reader, might also take some pleasure from this golden treasury of unlabelled passive-aggressive wrath and sarcasm, or perhaps not. I don't know. I've had my fun, and that's the main thing.
I didn't say that he was a monster or that his argument was illogical. I said that he was talking shite, because, in my view, he is talking shite in this case. I tend to dislike it when people talk what I would personally regard as shite, and this is an emotional response, and apparently one that isn't unique to me. Emotional, illogical responses need to be taken into account when delivering suggestions as to how the rest of us should live, as Dawkins seems to be doing with some frequency of late. I could suggest that dismissing the general response to this thing as off-the-cuff righteous indignation seems to imply indignation pursued as an end in itself, the views expressed by that indignation being views that don't ultimately matter.
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Just get rid of anyone who identifies themselves as a Doctor Who fan. It's not like they ever contribute anything. As with a certain fat Nazi of our unfortunate former mutual acquaintance, you sit with one in a pub and it's like trying to talk to somebody over a long distance telephone connection. They're not all there. They're broken. You can't expect logic or anything of real worth from them.
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Ugh look - I didn't really sign up for this much work given that I barely have time to do my own stuff. I have about seven-hundred fonts on my PC. Just name something and I'll see if I have it.
I should possibly make clear that once I've saved the image of a book cover, I can't just unsave it and move stuff around in the event of the beautiful faces of wonderful Chinese people being obscured by text. I have to start again, gouging images out of those horrible Microsoft documents, resizing them, pasting them in the right place. The first time I did the cover it took about two hours. The first revision was about forty-five minutes, and further revisions will be about the same, so I need to know exactly what you want me to do before I do it, and whatever those Microsoft documents are, whilst they may be fine for sending images I can copy and paste into something better, their appearance depends on whose computer they are sent to. For example, on my PC your latest cover is five pages, the images on the first two, then The Dream Diaries blah blah blah, then the back cover blurb on page four (and this isn't a failing of my PC because it's fairly new and is located in America which is the superior country).
Please, please, please consider downloading GIMP which is free, would allow you to do the covers yourself, and if you can cope with Microsoft I'm pretty sure you could pick it up fairly quickly. Seriously, it takes about half a day to learn most of what you need, and you'll have absolute control and will be thanking yourself forever.
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Nowhere does he say that people choose to be mentally ill - quite the opposite in fact, in addition to his repeatedly stating that he makes no claim to understanding the condition. The choice he talks about is specifically suicide which is an action made by choice in so much as it isn't simply some autonomic function. Show me just where he states anything which suggests either he believes mental illness to be itself a choice or that he considers himself an expert on the subject?
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Excepting Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation, obviously.
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That said, having come to the end of one box of screws and having had to open up the box purchased at Lowes, I have to say Lowes definitely offers a better quality screw.
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Blimey - for some reason I thought the semi-famed horse brass garment was a relatively recent acquisition.
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This is what happens when people don't read books and watch too much crap on television.
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I met Alan Moore in Coventry, which is technically outside Northampton, although admittedly not by much.
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This is the sort of thing that scares me too, although apparently it's different in my case because my understanding of any given subject tends to be based on what I think I think about it rather than what I actually think about it, according to Ben Watson before I blocked him through fear of the devastating power of his words.
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I dunno, Dave. I've been in Texas three years and I still have yet to suffer a sudden craving for Chips Behaving Badly. That said, you might be surprised at the quality of curry available in San Antonio.
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I don't know. Even back in the bad old days before I realised I'd been giving out the benefit of the doubt with such force as to incur a hernia, I always found Mr. Tibet distinctly fishy by some terms I still find difficult to define. That he didn't inspire trust is the closest I can get it, and I never worked out what he actually did that invited such devotion from frowning types in the first place. Apropos of nothing, it turns out I was born in the same town as Crowley, so (spooky face, raised eyebrow) woooo...
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I've also gone with Netflix (plus our package thing has Hulu and the Amazon one to cover a lot of the stuff Netflix lacks) but then it's got so I hardly watch moving images anymore; but, like Abby, I am very picky about the other media. I actually won't read eBooks now because I dislike the experience, there are still plenty of paper books I want to read, and someone who has "published" an eBook, hasn't actually published anything so far as I'm concerned.
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They've always done that. I'm sure I remember election broadcasts from just before Bliar got in which sounded weirdly like they were promising that the only real way to secure a change from the misery of the previous fifteen years (or whatever it was) was to vote Conservative.
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In case you were still wondering, I still have the comic and will send it to Charlie for the autograph as requested. I appreciate how you don't like to mess around with PayPal so I have weighed the parcel and will print out UK postage for it, because it seems a bit fucking cheeky to expect Charlie to pay for that (although expecting me to do so is fine apparently) following which I'll send it to him and he can stick it in the post for you. As I don't actually have a working printer myself, it seems I'm going to have to ask my wife to smuggle me into her office so I can print out the UK postage label there. With this in mind, and additionally considering the free cover art and everything, I'd say you're getting a fucking good deal out of me.
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I only see one in so much as, for example, I find it difficult to see a positive aspect to identification of enemies and scapegoats as a unifying cause unless one decides that fascism is fine.
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Yes, and I was quite surprised how little he bothered to reign it in when writing some of those earlier, actually-slightly-crap-even-without-the-xenophobia stories of dockside properties ruined by swarthy types coming over here, taking our jobs and summoning our fish monsters.
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I had a look at buying a fez recently. I used to have one but it was too small for my apparently massive rock-like head and I have taken to wearing a kaftan purchased in the city of Fez in Morocco (truthfully) about the house because it's ideal for the Texas heat, so I wanted to get a fez because it goes with the clobber and expresses my appreciation for both Laurel & Hardy and quite possibly Allah. I was actually just a teensy bit chuffing irritated by AS SEEN ON DR. WHO as suggested by every other online retailer, reducing a fine piece of traditional headwear to the level of a One Direction hoodie. AS SEEN ON LAUREL & HARDY I could at least forgive.
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Here in San Antonio we have a mall complex called the Rim (it's on the edge of town) at which one of the most prominent stores is Dick's Sporting Goods, so whenever we drive past we generally wheel out the same old joke about Dicks at the Rim. I should probably write and tell Cyril Fletcher.
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For some reason I don't seem to have read much which contains sex scenes, possibly excepting Isaac Asimov's puzzling attempts at introducing a frisson of sexuality. I can't remember if they actually made sweet lurve in the first Twilight book.
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It's Pepsi Cola. It's Rentaghost trying to be Star Wars. It's forty-five minutes of some bloke in a dark room holding a flashlight below his face and delivering meaninglessly portentous dribble through an echo box: THE SILENCE IS HERE, THE FUTURE IS DEAD, THIS ENDS NOW just like on every other crap unit-shifting mechanically-reclaimed drama put together by a BBC focus group. It once had charm. Now it's an extended Coldplay b-side.
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Sorry - I meant to expand a little but was interrupted. I objected to the proposed male to female gender reassignment of Todd in Against Nature on the grounds that the point of the male characters was as contrast by which the residents of House Meddhoran were specifically distinguished as female for reasons other than equal representation. Not that anyone cared. Anyway, I'd say unless representation is specifically the point, characters will generally require good reasons for being this, that or the other as their role demands (beyond keeping readers happy). My objections are more often that I'm tired of reading characters as imagined by white middle class university-educated English males who seem to believe that wherever you travel in the world, everyone will probably be a little bit like someone you knew from the drama department, and they will probably love 1960s English TV and The Smiths if you just give them the chance. See also Adams, Douglas.
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Never mind, because I have every confidence that Mr. Cameron and his friends will come up with one that's much better, and it will be jolly well British too, so no more tofu-scoffing lefties forcing us all to be dole scrounging lesbians. Good show, I say.
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This also explains why (trying to put this as diplomatically as possible) whenever I have a question requiring an answer more complicated than confirmation that the round peg does indeed go in the round hole, I find it better to ask someone who has read a book every once in a while. Sorry if that's made anyone have a sad.
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Actually, would you be a poppet and please desist from trying to shoehorn UKIP hot topics onto my facebook page or the facebook pages of my friends, or my messages inbox as though I won't notice or might be likely to pull a quizzical expression and remark hmmm - maybe that nice Mr. Farage really does have some good points, which kinda presupposes that I'm a bit of a moron and my profound hatred (which I don't feel is too strong a term here) for UKIP and that which it represents is derived from misinformation spread by devious cultural Marxists or whichever leftist windmill the party of the pound sign is pitted against this week? You may notice that since the last time we had this discussion I've refrained from sharing any of the numerous entertaining exposés in which UKIP councillors have been revealed as having a pathological hatred of Jews, the disabled, or whoever entirely because I have no wish for us to fall out. For similar reasons I tend to try to hold back in offering opinion on a certain children's programme. If it works for you, then that's beautiful, but please appreciate that I would rather be left out of this particular loop.
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I made one of these in 1983 when I was still at school with just one tape head (admittedly because that Laurie Anderson had been on the telly with one). I expect there were thousands of us who did the same thing.
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Very amusing, although I'm slightly disappointed with the YouTube comments. I was hoping for the more traditional thrust of Morrissey defence which generally asks just who Mr. so-called [name of artist] thinks he/she/they is or are, concluding with the usual claim that Morrissey has more soul sonic force in his fingertip/earlobe/lickle toe/sphincter than blah blah blah because he just has and that is a true opinion (etc.).
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Perhaps I should point out that junior, who is eleven, is fixated on My Little Pony to some degree, and I have no problem with that. It's nothing to do with gender or being an outsider for me; it's the absurdity and exclusivity of focus. Would this thread have gone quite the same way were it obsessive adult fans of the Care Bears? I don't know, maybe it would. I'm nearly fifty and I feel like I'm running out of people with whom to have a decent conversation. I like to be able to talk to people who can converse with reference to things I don't know, or wish I had read, or wish I knew more about. I don't want to end my days surrounded by people who are just about able to quote something said on The Big Bang Theory, and that's as good as it gets. It's not snobbery. It's recognising that some aspects of culture are more complex than others, because they are. There is more going on in Plato's Republic than in a Godzilla film. They are not equal. I chose these as examples because I actually prefer Godzilla films, but I'm nevertheless glad to have read Plato (despite it being a somewhat dry experience) and am slightly annoyed with myself that I saw no reason to do so earlier on in life because I wasted at least two decades on inconsequential shite with logos attached.
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I liked Throbbing Gristle, thought about 99% of Psychic TV was drivel, and have generally taken the view that he was only ever as interesting as whoever he was stood next to at the time. Most of my impression of the man comes from having been in a band with a certain former Throbbing Gristle roadie, and I just got the impression of him being a funny guy but mostly a bit of a dick, albeit a very, very lucky one. The most entertaining thing about him since about 1983 is what he claims to have invented this week. Acid house, drum and bass, New Orleans fucking bounce - what hasn't he invented?
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I didn't really discover Godflesh until relatively recently, and then when I had a look on Wikipedia I saw he used to do noise tapes as Final, which was quite a shock as I definitely had tracks on a few of the same tapes as Final way back when. I've a feeling I may even have seen him live in the line-up of a shifting membership band called D.Mag 52 in about 1984. It's a small world.
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No, they're not difficult to find. Neither are the facts concerning nest-feathering ex-Tory MPs sneaking under the radar on the hey I like a pint and hate Europe, so I'm just like you ticket or capitalist carnivores creaming off massive bonuses for themselves whilst your economy goes into freefall, but it's easier to get votes by pointing at Muslims, dole scroungers and those people coming over here taking our underpaid jobs and thus fanning the flames of hatred specifically because it's easy than tackling anything which might make an actual difference at the risk of offending the nice man in the suit who might one day let us into his club if we just keep sucking his dick for long enough. Jesus. How hard is it to understand?
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Thanks to Jez, Michael, Mark, Ben and anyone else who has since replied with genuinely useful advice in that thread. I've tried to compose a note of thanks but am unable to do so without sarcastic retorts about how I might go about finding one of these so-called DJ shops (oh brave new world that has such things) given how it's all just cows and ranches around here, and me being but a simple lad who has never before bought one of these magic Mr. Twirlies.
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Pardon the thread necromancy - just got here and am thus backtracking down your page. Some points of agreement here: it reminds me a little of Middle Class Sound System as I believe they are called, from East Dulwich where I used to live and I'm torn between regarding their enthusiasm as healthy and admirable and thinking what a bunch of tossers, and that the probably ironic name really doesn't help. There was a white guy who worked at Catford post office with a Jamaican accent you could stand a spoon in, but it tuned out he had been adopted by a West Indian family and was speaking quite naturally, though I still couldn't help finding it odd. My pals at East Dulwich sorting office mostly ended up being the black kids because they had better music taste, were funnier, and were much less prone to kissing the boss's arse.
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Some years ago he lent me the novel of Whisky Galore, possibly assuming his own tastes to be more or less universal on the grounds of him being such a jolly fucking chap. He's younger than me, wears tweed, smokes a pipe, supports real ale, and generally conducts himself as though it's still 1940 and everything is still jolly decent. This reminds me of that novel of Whisky Galore, or what little I managed to read of it - fine at the time, but now appealing mainly to people who listen to The Archers, wax lyrically and frequently about the shipping forecast, and feign innocent Joyce Grenfell style confusion whenever you mention any cultural development occurring since the Beatles.
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Well, I don't know about you, but I've had about as much as I need. I have you on a custom setting so that you won't see half of what I post anyway, but facebook seems to decide whether or not this works on any given day. I'd rather not have right-wing propaganda on my page, but figured there might be some worth in your at least being exposed to views other than those to which you already subscribe, but never mind. The debate in which you berate my lack of worldly experience and tell me I've run away from this nation and that I should grow up seems typical of our friendship. Some years ago, as Royal Mail was imploding from within, I recall you phoned me up, and when asked how the job was going, I explained to you in detail how bad it had become and how I quite frankly felt like topping myself - and by the way one of the few mercies I recall was the EU law denying my employers the right to force me to work more than eight hours overtime on top of my forty hour week with the threat of penalties for delaying the mail if I didn't. Having listened to my testimony you spent the next twenty minutes repeating the same business management garbage with which my employers had justified the changes which had made my working conditions not only unpleasant but impossible. The lesson here was that you always know best, regardless, and you really haven't changed, and nor do I think will you ever change.
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