No More Mr Nice Guy

Reader, I have of late (wherefore I know not) lost my nice guy image. Well, I say of late - it has been a gradual process throughout my twenties.

I used to be considered a fairly nice chap, but in reality I was just misunderstood. There's always been a rage against everything bubbling away under the surface, but when I was younger, I cared enough to hide it. Now I'm not arsed.

But who is the truly nice guy? Is it the pusillanimous milquetoast who hasn't the nerve to hold an opinion? Or is it he who cares enough be angry about the wrong in the world? (Thrill at that two-fisted rhetoric!)

Of course, the answer is the latter. If I'm angry at the way Waterstones massage the intellectual egos of their customers by encouraging them to think that reading a book makes them a cut above the proles, it's because I care about literature. If I'm furious about bland TV, it's because I care passionately about the medium. If I'm blacking out with rage at the pretentiousness of bottom-feeding indie bands, it's becuase I give a shit about music. I care enough to be furious.

On the other hand, it may well just be that I'm bitter. It could be said that life has, in customer service speak, failed to manage my expectations. What exactly do I expect from people? Many people are happy to let their intellectual needs be catered for by the Richard & Judy Book Club - who am I to criticise or deride?

It's a fair point. I wouldn't blast these people to their face. I haven't the right nor the temerity. However, you're in my gaff now. My blog, my rules. Herein you get to peer into the raging storm behind my eyes. The rules of polite social conduct don't apply.

Or maybe I'm just being sarcastic. Maybe I'm being ironic. Who can tell? What do YOU think? Comment below.

The Aesthetics of Loserdom

Reader, something terrible has happened to you. You've just given your life savings to a passing tarmac-ing gang who promptly disappeared. You've signed up for a timeshare in Belarus for six squidillion pounds a year. The local hospital has accidentally removed your arsehole and won't be able to put it right for seven years. You've been swindled by a ten year old scratter pretending to be the gas man. You live in East Hull.

Whatever it is, the local TV news crew is on its way round. They've spotted a perfect method to rile up their viewers and you're going to be the star. Only thing is, when they get there, you'll most likely be over the worst part of your upset. After all, it was almost two months ago, and they took six weeks to reply to your letter. They need to show that you're still in pain every waking minute of the day, still left slack-jawed and dumbfounded by your inexhaustible misfortune. They need to make you look tragic. How can they make you look like a victim for the camera?

Well, in the TV news and current affairs style book, there's one easy way: They're going to have you make a cup of tea. As a concerned reporter tells your pathetic tale of woe, we're going to watch footage of you filling the kettle from the tap. As he explains your decent and trusting nature, you're going to shuffle back to the worktop with kettle and put it on. As he goes over your war service and/or voluntary work, we'll cut to the kettle coming to the boil and turning itself off. As he takes us through the jarring tragedy of whatever befell you, you'll fill your lonely mug. As he tells us about your sleepless nights and panic attacks, you'll slowly and methodically stir your tea. Then you'll shuffle off to your lonely armchair, and set down your tea, and maybe look over a photo of yourself before you were such a fucking loser.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but that's what you'll be if a director ever asks to film you making tea. When you were threatening your wrongdoer that you'd get the press involved, what you didn't realise that it would cost you your self-respect. For in the imagination-free world of TV news, there's no easier way to codify a loser than to show them making tea. If your spouse is making the tea with you, then you'll look like the most pathetic specimens on telly that week. In TV land, you'll have been forgotten in about the same amount of time it takes for the kettle to boil. But your neighbours will have much longer memories...

Don't worry though - it could be worse. If a director ever asks to film you feeding ducks, then you may as well be dead.

Why Read?

* Please note from the get-go that this posting is likely to contain intellectual snobbery and sexism of a grade that may well make you vomit up all your clockwork. Readers of a sensitive disposition would do better to fuck off now. *

Last week, I went for an interview at Borders Books. Yeah, that's right - the bookshop. (As you'll note from the footnote at the end of the last post, I got sacked a couple of weeks ago, but I'll explore that particular piece of outrage-fodder when I'm feeling more sweary.) During the interview, the fella asked me various questions (as interviewers are often wont), but in amongst the usual bullshit about teamwork and time management, he asked a question that unleashed - to our mutual surprise - a moiling pot of rage that caused me to have to change my sitting position excitedly to contain it. He asked me what I thought of Waterstones.

Now let me interject at this point that I used to have a friend that worked at Waterstones a few years ago, and from time to time I'd go and meet her in the pub with her workmates. My rage against Waterstones isn't in any way related to the fact that they were the most pretentious and affected shop assistants in the country, nor was it related to the fact that I had to sit through hours and hours of them trying to remain civil with each other whilst arguing desperately about which of them was cleverest (when we all knew it was me, as I was the only one earning more than minimum wage). No, the pot of rage whose lid the interviewer had so carelessly kicked off was a relatively fresh one.

So what was my problem then? Well, I told him there was something about Waterstones that rubbed me up the wrong way. Only as I elaborated did I begin to realise what it was. I suggested that I found the atmosphere in Waterstones one of Sunday-Telegraph stuffiness, what with the thick red carpet and piped classical music. But this on its own wouldn't bother me especially. I went further. I explained that such an atmosphere seemed to be created to support the notion that reading a book made you part of some sort of elite. I suggested that Waterstones liked to make their customers feel elevated above the plebs just because they were buying a fucking book (which isn't exactly an uncommon marketing strategy), and I found the whole pretence unnecessarily jarring and exclusivist. I felt the need then to finish by opining that Borders, of course, was much more relaxed and inclusive.

A collective sigh of relief went up when I concluded and my face uncontorted. The interviewer and his note-taker may or may not have been aware of the abyss of anger they'd just skirted, but luckily they were spared having me pull them down into it. If I hadn't been so collected, I would have taken them down into the chasm into which we are now about to nosedive.

So what's my problem with people patting themselves on the back for reading? Surely the more people read, the better? Well, you'd think. On the surface this is true. However, scrape away the platitudes and truisms and you'll realise that this is wrong. Dead wrong. Because these days, most books are just ringtones with pages.

Example - the ingredients for a Richard & Judy Bookclub book of the month are as follows: Take a mundane object or profession, add it to an exotic place name, give the author a foreign-sounding name = 1 million plus sales. The following may or may not be genuine books - see if you can tell:

The Bellows-Mender of Tehran by Thebill Isgriti
A Box-Kite Above Belgrade by Lika Pudenda
The Trinidadian Cinema Projectionist's Assistant by Aureola da Silva
The Dog-Botherer of Tibilisi by Tenanz Supa
The Librarian of Pretoria by Castle Greyskull

Did you spot the genuine one? (Answers next time.) And who's reading these criminal wastes of ink? I'll tell you who: women. The pointless flow of words and punctuation amounts to a few hours of nothing but pink noise; a three-hundred-odd page journey into perfume-scented, faux-mystic soap opera. If there's any male other than Richard Madeley that reads this shit, then I shall cut my cock off in disgust.

Men, incidentally, are catered for with 'humour' titles. You know the sort of thing: Doing Some Painfully-Contrived Task Whilst Being Significantly Less Funny Than Cancer by Tony 'Bastard' Hawks, or Is It Just Me Or Is This Book Not Funny In Any Way?, etc., etc.. These are generally books that are funny in the same sort of way that radio comedy is funny (i.e. not at all), but are just as smug and self-satisfied.

But Waterstones like to make their customers think that by buying these disservices to trees, they are undertaking some huge intellectual journey that will enrich their soul and deepen their hearts. Yeah, right. And I just downloaded the Crazy Frog reading TS Eliot. Waterstones can kiss my arse. They can take their classical music and their nose-in-the-air demeanour and their stupid posh customers and their wanky magazine and their staff reviews and their recommendations of the week and fuck right off. Do yourself a favour - next time you buy a book, get it from Amazon. At least the person who fetches it from the giant, dark warehouse is going to have his feet firmly on the ground.

* I think this might be my most offensive posting to date. What do you think? Perhaps you think I haven't gone far enough. Post your comments below.