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Friday, 27 April 2007
I am a book, fear me......
Very, very close to finishing the number 4 edit (is it 4? – I've lost count…) and panicking. Oh yes, it's shaping up altogether too much, getting to sound like a 'real' book – i.e. all of me and my baggage is being eased out as the boys ease into their roles and they no longer need me.
Each book is like giving birth all over again. Never expected that. And the fucking tears. Jesus Christ… what the hell are they about?
You know, this loss thing (grief thing, sadness-is-my-middle-name thing) is doing for me. I have enough problems trying to achieve world domination without trying to do it while on Prozac.
No, the loss thing mystifies me. I just didn't get this with Volume 1. I invariably cried at the end of Volume 1 with every edit, but that was it. But this baby.. it's the strangest fucking phenomenon I've ever experienced. Yet.
Part of me is very curious indeed to see Audience Reaction to it (always supposing I do), but a far bigger part is terrified of what that reaction will be.
I never really worried about parts 1 & 4 from a "Is this good enough?" viewpoint. When the first book was just about to be launched, and I lived in Orkney where people knew me, I did wonder (it was never really a worry) about how people would deal with me after I published "a book like that". But I never really felt anxiety about it. I believed it was a good book, well written and definitely unique. I felt comfortable that I'd done my job.
Volume 4 also has a concrete concern behind it, something to be anxious about. V4 runs a very real risk of being A Banned Book. I still haven't decided whether we should play the controversial card or keep very, very quiet indeed when we launch it.
I have a contingency plan if it does get banned, to publish it out of Holland, possibly Germany, where they are not so touchy about child pornography. But, of course, if it gets banned after publication, but early in its sales life, they will seize all the books and then I wouldn't have the money to redo it. So really we have to decide before we launch it whether we're likely to find ourselves being prosecuted or not. And legal advice is not really useful here as lawyers always err on the side of caution. They would simply tell me not to do it.
But I digress.
No, 2 & 3 have always been more uncertain. Of recent times, after splitting 3 into two parts, I feel a lot more comfortable with it. We have Skull Island and then The Road Movie. They read almost like two separate books, and they are in a way. A lot happens in them, they've got locations, fun things to do with tissue paper and scissors (kidding) – Hollywood will love them. There's a pitch in them and that's what you need selling any intellectual property.
Which leaves me with 2 – oh, poor little 2. I know I've said this before but I am still cresting that wave of insecurity with it.
I have actually considered (far too many times) skipping 2 and going straight to 3 but, realistically, it can't be done. There would be far too big a plot leap without it and anyway, when I think myself through the logistics of that I realise that there's a developmental stage missing. And I don't mean in plot terms either. Nobody in any of the later books is the same person that they are in Volume 1, and not because of what happens in Volume 1 either, which leaves only one answer – some kind of major shift occurs in 2 and none of the others will work without it. It's just a fact and no amount of wishing on my part will change it.
I know I've talked about my insecurity with my problem child volume in here before so I'm not sure if I've told you this, but Volume 2 is always, no matter how much I work on it, going to be "characters in search of a plot" for me. I described it that way to myself one day and it's stuck. And that was in Manchester as I recall, around ten years ago – longer, possibly.
And nothing's changed.
Do you have any idea how worrying that is?
If I think it's in search of a plot what the fuck will the reader make of it?
Dear God… the pain.
This is why, still, I have not exactly decided to publish it, not really accepted that it will be. I am simply in denial about it.
I have accepted it, of course. I'm just trying to pretend I haven't. Only today I was sat in Mr Scratchmann's office in a state of emotional disruption that is all too common for me. I was locked in with the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar, which I'd heard wafting up the stairs and realised what a fantastic soundtrack this would for a trailer for Volume 2. It was so in tune with Danny's state of mind that it could have been written for him. And the track? The song where Jesus is sitting in the Garden of Gethsemane (I think) and is singing, "Tried for three years, feels like thirty". Or words to that effect.
How fucking weird is that? What, in Christ's name (literally) does Danny have in common with Christ tired and broken by the burden of striving, knowing he's going nowhere but down?
And that question precisely contains the answer, like all good mystical gobbledegook. Danny is tired and broken and knows he is going nowhere but down. (Is there an inappropriate dirty joke in there?)
So I sat there, goosepimpled, out of it, angry, feeling that trailer I was writing in my head, feeling Danny (and there's another dirty joke), and tearing up like the worst drunk in a pub singing Nobody's Chi-uuuulllld.
Tragic.
I think this is partly the problem. Volume 2 makes me so uncomfortable I think I'm kicking straight into Henery family mode – thou shalt not make others uncomfortable. Thou shalt give them plot not pain. Thou shalt give them locations not loss. Thou shalt give them literary flag posts not blundering around in the fucking dark screwing anything that moves because then you might fall over your own shadow and you'll know you are still alive.
The Henery part stopped at 'thou shalt not make others uncomfortable', by the way. My family weren't big on literature - let's not blame them for things they didn't do.
Funnily enough this anxiety of mine doesn't extend to my resident band of anti-fans/haters. I fully expect them to be fine-tooth-combing these blogs in anticipation of fault-finding Volume 2. As a matter of fact I've given them so much ammo in here over the past few months that they don't need to read the book at all to make a fairly accurate 'criticism' of it. Of course, it would actually be a critique of my neurosis, but I doubt if that would stop or embarrass them.
No, I actually feel an odd kind of quiet confidence about that, knowing what they'll say, the conversations they'll have amongst themselves. They've never surprised me yet.
My anxiety is more for the hardcore, hardliner fans. Is Volume 2 too big a shift? Is the absence of Himself too big a strain on it? Are they too addicted to Himself to live without him? Are they, in short, as fellow-obsessionals of Danny's, too vulnerable to want to experience Danny's loss with him? Am I going to make them too uncomfortable, too aware of what they no longer have? Am I doing the thing no creative wants to do and alienating my readers from That Which They Love?
Do I worry too much?
God, yes.
It's not my fault (she wails). I'm in this shit, day after day, wading around in pain, trying to make it worse, trying to make sure Danny's suffering hits its low points hard enough to chip your spine, that enough of his raw flesh is scourged, that he's cruel enough to everyone who fails him, by whatever miniscule degree gives him the right to torment and torture those around him. IT DOES YOUR HEAD IN!!!
Sorry, I'm shouting now. Deep breath.
And of course in Volume 2 there is That of Which We Cannot Speak. I have alluded once to The Big Shiny Present in here. I am frustrated beyond measure that I cannot discuss it with you, for obvious reasons, but you have no idea what a fragile, tiny, delicate, fraught thing this little secret is. It is like some kind of super-sheer Xmas bauble of super-fine antiquity and rarity. It is so tenuous and crushable and has the destructive power of four 9/11's.
Oh, it's the biggie. It's the tie-breaker, and you have to read (presently) 848 pages out of 903 before you get to it. I just drop it on you, literally, out of nowhere. No warning, no run-up. One minute it isn't there, next it is. This Big Shiny Present, or Monstrous Horror, depending on your point of view (and you will have one, believe me), is really going to separate the sheep from the lambs.
When I visualise the book being read I always see one of two scenarios;-
Jill and Jodie on a split screen, both reading the book at the same time. (J&J have been with me longest, hardest. They were my first. It figures I would visualise my first. Don't you?) They are engrossed, Jodie, hand hitting bottom in the empty popcorn bag, feet wrapped up in a blanket, Jill stirring a pot with one hand, with the baby on her shoulder and the book propped up on a wine bottle. (Why do I have both of them with food? Sorry girls.)
They hit The Big Shiny Present. Jodie scrambles up onto her knees and does a weird back-off across the sofa, holding the book and shaking it with sheer disbelief – can't be. She has to tell someone. At that same precise moment Jill sticks the baby in the sink and puts the pot in the high chair. They both dash for the phone, they screech to a stop. No, they can't. They keep this up for maybe fifteen minutes then they phone each other and get an engaged tone. Life's cruel like that. SO they run out into the street and tell a complete stranger – they got A Big Shiny Present. The stranger is understandably thrilled.
Scene 2. In the House of Dread, Great Literature is being pored over for linguistic errors. The Great Fangirl Who Must be Obeyed is reading DANNY Volume 2 on behalf of The Others. This is partly economy and partly The Porn Contingency Plan (no point in everybody reading it if the porn's no good) and wholly spite. Do not give Financial Aid to that which you wish to kill. She is not happy – NOT HAPPY, even.
The comma thing has been changed – there goes three-quarters of the Bad Grammar Attack Plan in one swoop. Shit. Sorry, darn it. What's worse is she is involved despite herself. She doesn't want to be, but the fucking thing is just so… well… involving. She is pissed off that nothing new is coming to her. She must find something original and specious to say – darn it again.
And then she comes to The Monstrous Horror. She can't believe it. Her growing spleen is halted in its tracks. She has gone from Blackly Consumed With Thwarted Envy to Ecstatic With Euphoria. She too runs to the phone. She cannot believe her luck. She can't get the words out, she's even more inarticulate than she was when she found a fellow-fangirl had not only been professionally published but had appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. She is so excited by the Scathe & Snipe Potential of The Monstrous Horror that she chokes on a chenille Goth cookie from that Lord of the Rings deli in Tribeca. She dies. (But did you notice how I got food in there too? I think I need my supper)
Sadly The Others never find out about The Monstrous Horror and they write about the book from The Great Fangirl's copious notes (44 pages) without mentioning it, thus inadvertently revealing that they've never actually read the book. I, regrettably, because I am trying to reform, cannot resist taking the piss and they are forced to retire in ignoble defeat, finally exposed as sad little girls who didn't get enough Barbie time, but too much TV.
Okay, that last bit just sounded like a badly overwritten revenge fantasy, but mark my words, the division will look exactly like this. Yep, when the Big Shiny Present hits the fan you will see the shit and fur truly flying.
Of course...... I could be making all this up to cover up the fact that Volume 2 is so fucking depressing I'm afraid you won't buy it without the incentive of a Big Shiny Present or a Lovecraftian Horror.
I'm not above it, you know………
To subscribe to this blog without divulging your email address click on the Newsgator button on the left-hand sidebar or simply post the following text into your RSS browser: http://www.poisonpixie.com/chanceryblogfeed.xml
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts. Don't say we don't spoil you.
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their heart's content. 
23:50 Posted in Blog , Books , Shopping | Permalink | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Tuesday, 17 April 2007
FAG-GLASSES - MEN, SEE THRU (boys') WALLS!!!
Just watched The History Boys. Ah, the rose-tinted power of fag-glasses. Wish I could get me a pair.
Fag-glasses are indeed wondrous. The extent of their powers is truly awesome. This is what fag-glasses can do for you:-
Negate all women. Yep, they can make them simply disappear, entirely. With fag-glasses you can write an alternate universe where there literally are no women. Wondrous.
If, however, you are aiming for at least a smidgen of reality then there's the PC version (that's correct, not computer) wherein THE WOMAN gets to be a cipher of universal everywoman. Good God, gay writers use female stereotypes – who'd ever have thought it?
Fag-glasses also make paedophilia okay. It's amusing, it's RITES of PASSAGE. No, it's not. It's gay porn thinly disguised as autobiographical reminiscence and I seem to be the only person on the planet that notices it as such.
Hello!!!!!? Anybody there!!!!!? (Echoes to infinity.)
Fag-glasses allow gay fiction to morph the universe so that you get staggering incidences of homosexuality much higher than any national average, cluster-fucks of queers coming at you from all angles (now there's an image). Two gay teachers, a gay pupil and one ambivalent in a group of nine, say. Ten per cent? Only on Planet Rose-tinted Gay.
Fag-glasses take us back in time, where the world is set in any period of porn nostalgia that does it for you, where every boy is beautiful, where they have paper girlfriends who, strangely, are sexually absent as well as physically absent.
Fag-glasses make 'flirting' (aka sexual harassment) with anything straight and delicious not only non-threatening (they're all ambivalent, don't you know) but delightfully tender, sweet and humorous. Oh, you saucy old queer, you.
Fag-glasses turn dirty old men into love interest.
Fag-glasses take us back to more innocent times – aka when the author was permanently hard.
Fag-glasses make Britain great again, when women were either wrinkled, old and bitter or thin, insubstantial and dumb. Think of it as Ealing in the age of AIDS.
Fag-glasses make schoolboys smart, witty and entertaining – even in Yorkshire. And that isn't easy.
Fag-glasses make Sheffield a hotbed of tortured romance. And that's even harder.
Fag-glasses make everything and anything politically correct, from sexism and misogyny to child molestation, because - bless 'em - it's a fag that's wearing 'dem fag-glasses and we all know that as a repressed minority they can do no wrong.
Fag-glasses are the Positive Racism of sex.
We want more fag-glasses! We all want a pair! We want them now!
The History Boys is Alan Bennett's prose poem to lusting after teenage boys and he has covered all the bases.
All authors put themselves in their work, but Alan has taken this to the nth, managing to star himself in The History Boys in no fewer than three of the major roles and in a few of the subservient ones too.
Alan is young Posner lusting after Dakin from not very afar. Alan is the revered, hip, erudite Mr Irwin to whom Dakin loses what slim grasp on heterosexuality he has because he is just so damned attractive. Alan is the fat, old Hector for whom the straight, Northern - ha-ha - 1980's boys all perform camp film scenes, musical numbers and sub-rosa male bonding poetry. And, as if that wasn't jammy enough, they also permit - laughingly of course (oh, the dear, harmless old thing) - to cop a feel of their dicks, on a daily basis, in a Tom of Finland, sexy motorcycle-fantasy-with-fat kind of way.
Alan has written a curiously dated wankfest of every sexual fantasy he's ever had since 1954 with some funny dialogue and a lot of literary references and we, the discriminating voting public, have given it a 6.8 rating on IMDB, while the true arbiters of taste have seen fit to nominate it seven times for various film awards.
Now here's a thought. A daring and controversial one, but a thought nevertheless. Let's practice some of our own reverse sexism.
We are going to rewrite The History Boys using Positive Sexism.
The Geography Girls.
Our author is Alana Bennett. She is a fat, middle-aged, sagging dyke from Lancashire. She writes herself into the story as a geeky little girl lusting after Delilah, the bad girl. She is also Miss Quim, the sexy, hip young dyke teacher that Delilah decides to give up men for, itching to get into her thong because she craves her attention and approval. And giving a teacher a blow job will do that for you. We have a lot of scenes where Delilah gets close and flirts and seduces. Temperatures rise.
Lastly we have porpoise-sized Hermione. Whale-sized Hermione. Hermione has a belly that looks like two watermelons with a crease up the front. Her front bottom is indeed a front bottom in that it looks like an Exorcist-style happening has afflicted her and stuck her arse where her belly should be. Hermione looks like she's a feeder's prime project.
Hermione has chin hairs that Alan Rickman would be proud of. Hermione has specs indenting her puff-ball face like chicken wire on cheese. Hermione sweats and wheezes. Hermione lusts after her pupils. Hermione bullies them, in the most genial way, of course, into riding pillion on her bike. Every day one of them must come. Literally.
Hermione gets hot and sweaty reaching back at the traffic lights and inserting a pudgy finger into those juicy little leg-spread pudenda.
Hermione is a wheeze – bless her.
Right, now tell me something. Are we watching some kind of weird bastard cross between a seventies exploitation movie and a grotesque horror movie here, or what?
Old fat bird who likes fingering her cute girl pupils. I can see the nominations rolling in now. Lovely school girls lining up to seduce tasty young lesbian teacher. Yeah, alright as far as any of the boys reading this right now go, but up for an award?
I don't think so.
The History Boys can win awards from here to Blackpool and back. It can have a rating of 9.9 on IMDB – a rating I've never even come near seeing – that's all fine by me. Who cares? It's a well-written, funny movie with good dialogue but it's about as comfortable as watching Brady & Hindley selecting pretty girls from the Marshall Ward catalogue.
All the time I'm thinking, This is supposed to be okay? Earth to Planet Bennett – not okay. No how.
And here's another thing you can tell me. I've read far too many gay books. I've seen way too many gay films. I've experienced way too much gay culture. Know it all, seen it all. No-one can claim I 'don't know no better'. So why, why why is paedophilia such a common theme in gay 'art'?
How often have you heard gay men bleating "Homosexuals are not paedophiles."?
Why then is it impossible to escape it in everything they think, write, film, photograph or do? Maybe someone should stop yelling it at the heterosexuals who misjudge them and tell it to Alan Bennett and the trillion and one other gays who seem to be completely unable to get past their fourteenth year.
I mean it's very nice for me because it backs up my theory that they are a) all stuck in their childhoods (fits their obsession with dressing up as cowboys and their infantile delight with pissing and shitting) and b) have way too many undeclared victims of child abuse on the team to be any way coincidental.
Any homosexuals reading this? Okay, hands up - truthfully now - were you molested as a child?
Thought so.
Fortunately not all molested children grow up to molest but it certainly leaves a lot of the male ones with a life lived through fag-glasses.
I don't find that strange (actually, maybe I do) but I do wonder quite why they are in such denial about it and when, exactly, it became politically correct to condone paedophilia because a respectable gay man was indulging in it.
If a straight male director had made the same film about school girls he'd be immediately classed, along with Larry Clark, Tinto Brass and Bertolucci, as one of The Dirty Old Men School of Directors. And get nominated for awards?
Ah well, that one would be open to debate. Wouldn't be the first time a dirty old man won an award. But a dirty old fat dyke? Can't see it myself.
So my final thoughts on The History Boys? Well, here's a few.
Putting a handful of badges on one boy's lapel does not make a movie part of the 1980's. The History Boys comes straight from the nineteen fifties – bad boy's Teddy Boy hairstyle and all.
Bad Boys should be bad, not camp cuties who look like they escaped out of Brighton Rock and are a stone's throw from talking in Received English.
Giving your 'lead' (oh ha-ha) female character quasi-feminist speeches and making her 'understanding' is just Nanny in the Dorm a new way. You may be fooling everyone else but you ain't fooling me, motherfucker.
Straight boys who only pursue girls for casual sex but do not involve them in any part of their lives or devote any time, effort or thought to them while pursuing their far more interesting male teachers are not straight. They're straight boys written by old queers who are indulging in something known as Wishful Thinking.
Knowing lots of poetry and having a good imagination is not sufficiently endearing or charming to let you feel children's genitals.
Boys get molested too. They occasionally find this distressing - not funny, educational or a Rite of Passage.
Keeping your accent and setting stories in the North of England will not necessarily cover up middle-class attitudes and intellectual snobbery.
Lastly, I will never, ever be a gay fangirl.
That is all.
To subscribe to this blog without divulging your email address click on the Newsgator button on the left-hand sidebar or simply post the following text into your RSS browser: http://www.poisonpixie.com/chanceryblogfeed.xml
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts. Don't say we don't spoil you.
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their heart's content.
23:25 Posted in Blog , Books , Film , Leisure | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Friday, 06 April 2007
I'm Just an Unattractive, Unassuming, Fat Individual
Envy.
Let's talk about that dirty, sneaky, creepy insidious little emotion. Let's talk about what it is that makes us all tick, because make no mistake, today, you and I, as at this moment, are ticking away with the time-bomb of envy.
Gloria Estefan was right: the Envy is gonna get you.
Envy. How the world runs on it. Which makes my experience of today all the stranger.
Buying books on Amazon. Every once in a while I get the urge, stronger than any urge for chocolate. Got to buy books. It's a looking urge. A needing urge. Yes, I know you all worship me as the demigod of sortedness and self-sufficiency (and you are right, my friend), but even I occasionally look outside myself for answers.
Sometimes I need other people's input to bring what I am feeling or thinking into focus. It's like my brain becomes overloaded with ideas and I need someone to make me stand still and really see them.
Problem with it, of course, is that the very nature of my disorder is one of restlessness. Seeking is directionless, vague, unsettled. I'm like a fractious child needing to pee. "I wanna PEEEEE… I wan' it now." And, of course, there's no toilet available.
Actually I think I just had a moment of satori there, but we will press on with envy. Sorry, Envy. We're giving this word full dignity and weight today. It needs and deserves it.
Envy drives me. Not the performing of it - if that's the word - but dealing with the knock-on effects of it.
You see I am the world's foremost, leading expert on Envy. And, for a change, I'm not just saying that to be provocative. Sadly, it's actually true. Sadly, because I would give anything, anything for it not to be so.
I would love to be completely innocent of Envy. In fact I'd love to be cursed with it myself. I imagine those of you who are more self-aware and honest are saying right now, "Yeah, like fuck. You only think that. It's a monster."
And you're right. Envy is the monster that eats itself and still hungers for more. But I am also being truthful when I say I'd like to feel it instead of being the target of it.
Let me share a little quote with you.
"As unbelievable as it may seem, envy can even be experienced by a parent toward a child."
You are shocked right now, aren't you? Some of you are even saying 'Don't be stupid, why would parents envy their child?'
AHAAAAAAAAAAAAA…HAAAAAA….HAAAAAAA! (Apologies to net geeks the world over for that plagiarised laughter.)
I'm jerking your string. Yeah, you're too bright, ain't ya? You know parents are jealous of their kids. Hey, parents hate and kill their kids. Maybe somebody needs to tell Michelle Joy Levine that though. She is the author of said quote. She is also the author of the title of this blog which I stole from her book I Wish I Were Thin, I Wish I Were Fat and which I feel should be on T-shirts. I'm considering producing them myself.
Think of the potential. If you are a fat frump you can wear it and people will leave you alone. If you are a demigod of beauty and self-confidence like myself you can wear it with an insouciant nod to irony that both makes a feminist statement plus (more usefully, in my eyes) tells people to stay well the fuck away from you.
That is my definition of Cool.
But Envy. As we can see Michelle finds it hard to believe that parents might envy their child. No doubt others (some of you) share her belief, while the rest of us hardened bitches know better.
Envy is the last taboo. Not being a faggot or sleeping with your dog or even being a dick-sucking mother of a sexy six year old boy whose every flavour you know. (Did that last image make you uncomfortable? Ooh… now there's the second-last taboo.)
Envy is the thing we don't talk about. Envy gets us all defensive. Envy is the bogey-man. Think I'm overstating it?
Okay, smart-arse, how about this for size?
Most multi-million dollar industries are built on Envy, some of them (cosmetics, top-range cars and the diet industry, to name but three) couldn't exist at all without it. Nothing. Nada. No money. No jobs. No industry.
It is absolutely essential, particularly in countries like the United States, which has a morbid fear of The Death of Capitalism, that you feel Envy. Not just one envy but many envies. You must envy everything, from the food in your neighbour's mouth to the sex positions you fear he's tried and you haven't.
Without Envy there is no celebrity culture. Without Envy there is no fashion. Without Envy there is no racism, sexism, genocide or war.
I'm wondering how many of the other seven deadly sins could claim that.
Given that underlying culture of Envy is it any wonder that parents "may" envy their child?
How many things have you envied to day?
So you see my problem. I am already quite a square peg in a world of round holes, so for me to be 'missing' Envy is quite unbearable. (And yet I manage – ah, my Zen mastery.)
I've told you before, I only envy skinny people and I only truly envy them for the clothes. I don't give a fuck about the status part, or the one-upmanship part. In fact, quite the opposite. I fear it. Positively. That's why a gem-encrusted T-shirt bearing the title of this blog is my perfect God-given garment of choice. It does everything I want in one piece of clothing.
It's sexy, well-designed, sparkly, comfy, 'dark' and ironic, feminist and, most important of all, puts out a clear and unmistakable message that I AM NO THREAT.
Why would I care?
Let's read the second part of Michelle's quote – see what Envy gets us.
"Experiencing envy from a parent evokes very confusing and frightening feelings for a child. Since we need our parents in order to feel secure and loved, their hostility is truly threatening."
Forgive me, but I simply must do this again. AHAAAAAAAAAAAAA…HAAAAAA….HAAAAAAA!
"To feel secure and loved"? Dear God, this is the failing (many times over) of Michelle's imminently irritating and, at times, quite barking book. What fucking planet is she on? If only it was to feel loved. How about to be sure you're not murdered in your bed, abandoned, dumped, tortured, beaten, raped, humiliated? Repeatedly.
Loved. That's so sweet. Secure. Ah, the pathos.
People kill from Envy. Envy is a murderous rage that gallops through souls, eating them up unchecked. Envy, my friend, is the most dangerous emotion since…
Nothing.
Envy is the most dangerous emotion.
Let me share another delicious little quote with you. This one has been one of my personal favourites of the past year because it has the whole hungry ethos of Envy tied up in one neat little package. I'd love to credit the writer with skill, perspicacity and originality on this one but unfortunately this was not the point they were trying to make. Rather like the Hitler Youth, their propaganda makes a more convincing argument for the opposite team.
"Someday, you're going to meet someone. They're going to be charming, kind, amiable. And they're going to be persecuted. Some group of people are going to be after them, and you're going to have no idea why. Who could dislike such a friendly, open person? When you ask your new friend why, they'll say that they don't understand it either, really. The other people are jealous of their talent. Or they can't stand real intellectual debate. Or they're just mean, nasty people who need to put someone else down so they can feel better about themselves. Nod. Console them like a good friend. Then go find out what the real reason is. Because here's the thing: These vague reasons are wrong. Real people don't whip up baying mobs because they can't stand a real debate. Real people might be jealous of someone's talent, but they don't escalate to the sort of trouble your friend is experiencing unless they have something meatier to go on."
I have been meaning to write about this gem of human self-deception and sheer stupidity since I first read it. Never quite got round to it. But today, searching for Envy on Amazon made me remember it. And how beautifully, zenfully (is that a word? should be) it fits.
I remember when I first read it laughing my head off for an inordinate length of time. It was indecent how much pleasure I got out of it. I kept reading bits of it out loud and slapping the table with hilarity. For the first week after it was linked to my blog I kept going back to it, positively willing someone to develop the argument further so that I could watch Middle England (although the author was American) on the move.
It's the defintive curtain twitcher of Envy.
I'm guessing right now some of you are saying, "Well, I don't see quite what exactly…"
Course you don't. You're not supposed to. Envy never shows its true colours. Envy is permanently hidden behind the mantle of respectabilty, reasonableness. Envy is the friend who smiles while she sticks the dagger in your back.
The key sentence smothered under all those reasonable mouthings is this, "Real people don't whip up baying mobs…. [they] might be jealous of someone's talent, but they don't escalate to the sort of trouble your friend is experiencing unless they have something meatier to go on."
Third time lucky, eh? Yeah, we might as well. AHAAAAAAAAAAAAA…HAAAAAA….HAAAAAAA!
Real people sent millions of people to the gas chambers because they were envious of the imagined wealth of the Jews. Real people hung black men from trees because of imagined sexual threat from those good ole' big buck niggers (again). Real people keep women encased in head to toe black drapes because they fear other men may envy them. Real people dig out women's clitorises in unsanitised (and nicely sanitised) locations because they are envious of the perceived insatiability of women's sexual appetites. Real people crucified Jesus because they were envious of the influence his sermons were having.
I don't know about you, but I would categorise lynch mobs, the Nazis and Jesus's nailing party as "real people" doing their damndest to "whip up baying mobs" and with precious little in the way of provocation other than Envy.
What a wonderfully middle-class and self-serving notion that "real people" are never driven by mindless envy.
Indeed, given her argument, we are left with no alternative but to suppose Jesus deserved it; those rich Jews were really to blame for not only their own deaths but also the deaths of those poor Jews (and the communists, gypsies and homosexuals) who were dragged along with them, and that if those damn niggers would just stop hounding our white women with their big cocks those "baying mobs" would lose their Envy overnight. That would be the "something meatier" she's talking about.
Maybe we're being unkind. Maybe, like the Nationalist Party, she just worded it wrong. Maybe she meant "reasonable people" and not real people. Perhaps she meant her.
Or maybe she's part of a "baying mob" herself but is too ashamed to admit to the demon Envy in any of her impulses, her being "real people" and all.
We'll never know. And, because she's commoner than the air we breathe we really don't care. We fell over four of her today; at work, in the supermarket, in that bitchy newspaper column, on IMDB. She's the everyday, reasonable face of Envy. And we know her.
So…. the strange thing that happened today when I went to Amazon looking for books on Envy?
This.
There aren't any.
Oh, there's plenty on how to stop yourself feeling Envy. Although not nearly as many as I would have expected, given the all-consuming passion for it that underlies our culture. But as to what to do when you are at the centre of Envy, what to do if you are a well-hung nigger, a rich Jew, a Christian with too many disciples or, worst of all, a small child on the receiving end of that 'rare' thing, terrifying parental Envy – you're on your own, mate.
Like I say. Envy. It's the final taboo.
Hey… and I just broke it.
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Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts. Don't say we don't spoil you.
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their heart's content.
23:00 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Sunday, 01 April 2007
Wesley Snipes IS Dracula's Bitch!!!
I just watched Blade: Trinity and I want to know only one thing.
Whatever happened to Dracula's balls?
I love vampires, have done for a very long time. My sixth year school dissertation was on the evolution of the horror story and spent a lot of loving detail on Bram Stoker (and Edgar Allan Poe). Got piss-poor marks for it, mind you. So bad in fact it dropped my grade to a B or a C (can't remember which), a hitherto unknown occurrence in my entire – shining - career in English.
This was due to the fact that at that time neither Poe nor Stoker – and certainly not Pan horror stories – were considered literature or, indeed, even 'proper writing'. It was the opinion of my teacher at that time (who suggested I appeal the decision) that the examiner had not read any of the authors I discussed, never mind the lesser known ones - and had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
I no longer have a copy of it but I remember it was a bloody good dissertation, mostly because I had, pretty much without doubt, done more reading and research for it than any other fucker sitting Sixth Year Studies.
In fact, I had been so thorough that I even read books that were no longer in print. I tried to find the original Victorian gothics, completely without success. My school library had never heard of them and East Kilbride libraries didn't even keep Bram Stoker.
I finally got a copy of The Castle of Otranto through the library inter-loan service which turned out to be a Victorian original that had last been taken out in 1956, or some such date. They had actually dug it out of storage for me.
I even read biographies of 'real' vampires – Vlad the Impaler, Countess Elisabeth Bathory and Gilles de Rais. All far more interesting, I have to admit, than their fictional counterparts.
You would be forgiven for thinking I had lived through the last of Victoria's reign, but this was in the late seventies, only thirty years ago. Not so very long for Bram Stoker and Poe to have gone from being marginalised and discounted to achieving a mantle of respectability and becoming 'Real Writers'. Let's just hope they were suitably grateful to the fans who 'made' them, eh?
However, they seem to have paid an indecently high price for said transition into respectability and mainstream acceptance.
Neutering.
I repeat, what has happened to Dracula's balls?
We all know horror has been kidified as a medium, but the Blade movies are 18's and this in spite of the fact there's no sex in them (not that I can remember).
Assumably it's for the bad language. There's always a few motherfuckers to be had in Blade. Wesley can't do cool without sunglasses or motherfuckers. But I seriously doubt if it's the blood. Have you ever known them censor a film (particularly a fantasy film) for the violence?
But that's not the point. The point is this. If you have an 18 certificate and know you are going to have an 18 certificate, why the hell does Dracula have no balls?
The Wampyr belongs to a very specific legend. He is a very old legend and he is a legend of Sexual Threat.
I shall repeat that. Dracula, who is a wampyr, is a creature of Sexual Threat.
Bram Stoker's Dracula is very much a creature of Sexual Threat.
For those of you not familiar with the original book, Coppola's Dracula is the closest to it in style and mood (I'm only talking well-known Draculas here). If you cast your mind back to the three brides of Dracula that hold Jonathan Harker prisoner you have something of the atmosphere of the original plus an idea of what a vampire should represent as a threat.
What a vampire is going to do to you is suck you dry. And yes, that's as dirty as it sounds. It's meant to be.
Vampires and succubus and incubus (not even going to start on the plurals of those) are very closely linked in myth and fable. They all sneak into rooms at night, when you are sleeping, and either suck your blood and/or other more erogenous fluids from your body. They were thought to induce wet dreams (which were sometimes interpreted as attacks by these creatures) and erotic nightmares. They were also thought to infect the blood and cause nymphomania and satyriasis, or any other diseases of the blood where tiredness, anaemia or sexual disorders were symptoms.
In short they were about sex. Sex, sex, SEX
Now, however, they are about martial arts, ripping off heads, silver-bullet-induced explosions and AIDS. (Yet, strangely, not sexually transmitted AIDS.)
They've become viruses and plagues and infections and some kind of weird cross between parasites and werewolves.
All this is fine and dandy. No reason why they shouldn't update, change, metamorphose. But why, oh why, do they now pose all the threat of a football hooligan? Why are they now completely neutered, ball-less and charmless? When did they become so fucking boring?
Kids. That's when. It's always kids. Kids and comics. Kids and skateboarding. Kids and mini-Goths pretending they're all Blade in long black leather coats and T-shirts saying People = Shit.
Kids, kids, kids. It's Dracula processed through a comic where the fourteen year-olds don't want to see 'kissing' - i.e. Dracula wielding his hypnotic weapon over large breasted ladies. They want to see him biting off the heads of schoolteachers and sports jocks and every other character lifted directly out their banal lives.
They want revenge fantasies, and the fact that the guy's a blood-sucker just gives them more reason to beat him mercilessly and feel vicariously good about themselves.
Dracula has been hijacked so that the annoying little shit and his eight friends throwing chips and packets of Ketchup at the table across from you in Burger King can feel better about being skinny as a whippet, dumber than every girl in his class and possessed of no balls at all.
The sad fact of the matter is the original Dracula is a very real threat to his new audiences.
Dracula is educated, anciently-wise and sinisterly charming. Truly dangerously charming. Dracula can not only seduce any woman he has a mind to, he can enslave her too.
Vampires were considered to have poisoned breath or mesmeric eyes. One look, one sniff of that sweetened cocaine breath and you were gagging for it. Vampires owned you. Women went to them willingly, knowing that the orgasmic frenzy of being sucked by that voracious, all-consuming lust would be way better than anything any mere mortal male could offer you.
Dracula transported you alright. What's more he gave you laissez-faire to be craven and wanton, to join him in any lust you could name. And he never called you a slut. What's more he bestowed the same powers he had on his brides, his chosen ones.
Suddenly women became powerful sexual predators who could pick off men at will, feed off them and dump them. Any disrespect and the victim was, quite literally, a piece of meat. What's more not only was Dracula not mad at you for doing it, he positively condoned it.
Dracula and his lifestyle offered the ultimate in sexual freedom, for both sexes.
Now he never targets women at all. Now he just wants to Bruce Lee every motherfucker he meets. Now he wears armour and boots with spikes in the toes and wants to take over the planet so he can…..
Well, actually we don't know quite why he wants to take over the planet. We never get that far in the story. We just want to see him kill maybe fifty, sixty people and planet-taker-overs justify that, okay? It's an American thing. Leave us alone.
But even this original sexual promiscuity and potency of his is still not the real reason why he has been emasculated as he's moved into popular culture. No, it's something even more fundamental, something so sadly predictable it's depressing.
Yep, Dracula is now a dickless B-movie thug that your little sister could beat because Wesley Snipes isn't going to be kissed by no motherfucker.
Fuck, no.
Yep, that's Dracula's big boogey man. It always has been. He will eat out anyone.
Dracula is Danny – an equal opportunities employer. He's the original bisexual. In fact, possibly the prototype bisexual.
Hammer maybe liked him draped over bosomy wenches, but even they stayed truer to the original and had him eat boys too.
Picture it – Wesley has been stripped of his manly shirt so that we can appreciate just how many hours he spends in the gym. That deliciously sculptural physique of his is glistening the way only big black buck niggers can do. We've been oiling those Mandingos up since we first realised just what a sexual threat they were too, and Blade's no exception.
There he is, stripped and ripped, and over sidles Dracula - or Drake as we are now calling him (what a leap, and so modern). Drake looks like an Eastern European gangsta-pimp, complete with half a pound of silverware round his neck. He looks like a wrestler who's gone into movies, but what the hell. All villains are Eastern European nowadays and it helps that Dracula actually was.
Sidle, sidle, sidle… like Gollum. He's up against Wesley's body, getting greasy with the baby oil. He licks his lips, bends to his neck, almost like he's going to…. kiss him. Oh no. Wesley gets one whiff of that sweetened poisonous breath, looks into his big brown pimp's eyes… and he's a goner.
He goes limp, starts to crave it. He pulls an 'I'm itching to come, bite me, you motherfucker' face. Drake slowly sinks his big, hard teeth right into him – penetration, yet – and Wesley sighs and moans like he's never had it so good.
Yep, that's going to be the best Blade yet. I can see the tag line now. "Wesley Snipes is Dracula's Bitch!!!"
And that is why Dracula lost his balls.
Because all those fourteen year-old losers throwing sweets and texting in the front rows might get an embarrassing stiffy at seeing two men kiss. Worse, they might get to like it. You know how much meat those big buck niggers pack.
Dracula has been neutered so that small, white, pizza-faced boys don't get sexually confused.
And if that isn't tragic I don't know what the fuck is.
To subscribe to this blog without divulging your email address click on the Newsgator button on the left-hand sidebar or simply post the following text into your RSS browser: http://www.poisonpixie.com/chanceryblogfeed.xml
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts. Don't say we don't spoil you.
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their heart's content.
23:50 Posted in Blog , Books , Film , Leisure , Web | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this