Stuff I can't be arsed to blog about

Stuff I can't be arsed to blog about include:

• Angelina and Brad naming their kid Shiloh Nouvel or "New Messiah". I mean, for fuck's sake...
• Possible job opportunity at Council heading my way. Would mean more dosh than I have ever had the power to earn although the job itself is of no particular interest to me.
• My new haircut. Actually, there's nothing to say about that other than "I got a haircut". Had quite a bit of hair, now have less.
• Ken Loach winning the Palm D'Or at Cannes. Might have more to say once I have actually seen his winning film The Wind That Shakes The Barley. I'll let you know if it is "anti-British" and "pro-IRA" as the likes of The Daily Mail and The Sun newspapers claim. Personally, I admire Loach's films a great deal so good on him.
• The absolute pit of despair and misery into which I sank over the weekend. Be very, very thankful I didn't blog about that.

Please do try to contain your disappointment that I can't be arsed to write at length about any of the above subjects with my usual wit and intelligence. Go pick something from the Blogroll in the sidebar - you'll find much more entertaining stuff to read than this pitiful dreck.

Eurovision Song Contest 2006

A theatrical heavy-metal band called Lordi who perform under monstrous latex masks and outfits have won the Eurovision Song Contest. I haven't watched Eurovision for years since it usually promotes the most saccharine, vapid kind of pop-cheese that I have always despised.

So, upon hearing that a rauccous bunch of guitar-wielding Finns dressed up like monsters from a Clive Barker movie came along and crushed the opposition, I wish I had watched it this year.

As the lead singer commented, "We are a rock band and we just won Eurovision - that's weird."

It's good to know that inversions of reality such as this can actually happen outside a Flann O'Brien novel.

Just to clarify...

... so there is no confusion on the matter, I don't give a fuck about the new series of Big Brother nor do I care one jot about the Football World Cup. This does mean that I will watch hardly any television over the coming months except for Doctor Who - assuming that the football doesn't fuck too much with its scheduling on Saturday evening (seriously, if there are significant disruptions to the only TV show I go out of my way to watch as a result of the football then people will have to die).

This won't make that much difference to my viewing habits as I hardly watch television anyway. But it's the principle of the thing, you understand.

Also, I probably won't be able to go into any public house as there will no doubt be hoards of grunting drunken neanderthals gathered around big-screen televisions watching a game at all times, cheering, jeering, leering, thumping their chests etc.

Of course, by renouncing any interest in Big Brother and the Football World Cup, I effectively render myself a traitor to my contemporaries, my country and my gender. It is this willful rejection of the culture of the masses that means that I will forever be alone.

Buy this book or the puppy gets it #3

Jim Younger's first novel, High John The Conqueror, is released tomorrow. But what's it about? Here is the synopsis what I nicked from the publisher:

In Jim Younger's brilliantly original first novel, he takes us to London, but not quite the one we know. The King of England has converted to Roman Catholicism, along with his sons, and has abdicated in favour of his brother, now known as Andy One. Sickened by years of corrupt and incompetent presidents, the United States has petitioned Andy One to resume sovereignty over America. In England, the government of Christian Coalition Socialists has been ousted in a coup d'etat. The survivors have gone underground, led by High John the Conqueror, chief of the Flagellants, a squad of paramilitary sadomasochists. To escape arrest and execution, High John (real name Organ McWhinny) fakes his own death and disappears, so successfully that his son Lingus, a boy in his mid teens, believes him to be dead. Motherless and fatherless, Lingus takes to the streets...Resolute and cheerful in adversity, Lingus tells his story with huge comic gusto. We watch him stagger to manhood, encumbered by a carnival crew of grotesques amid the epochal political and religious upheavals of his time. "High John the Conqueror" is a dark comedy, written at the Devil's dictation.

If that doesn't sound like an absolute hoot then I don't know what does. I was fortunate to meet Jim last month at the Macmillan New Writing event at Goldsboro Books and I can tell you that he is most entertaining company and a very nice man.

So, order High John The Conqueror today otherwise I'll send the boys round to forcibly relieve you of your elbows.

Helix v2.0

Started revising my NaNoWriMo novel today. It's been sitting on the virtual shelf for six months so I can now view it with fresh, objective eyes. And - bugger me - the first five pages suck the big one. The prose style doesn't settle or flow comfortably until several thousand words in. And as for the supporting female cast... Oh dear. I am going to have to completely overhaul them to make them resemble real people.

Not some much a revision as a total rewrite. I'm going to pay a great deal more attention to the language sentence by sentence than I did with the first draft - a luxury I didn't have at the time. Page one now features ruminations on fruit smoothies and fear of arse-rape with a carving knife.

I foresee a long haul ahead of me.

That book list meme thingie addendum

The Sleep Evangelist wishes to be tagged on that book list meme thingie so, um, consider yourself tagged, Miss Sleepy.

Questions of the day

Two questions posed by Carol Novack further down on that book list meme entry:

1. What the fuck is a "meme"?
2. Why am I reading Annie Proulx's The Shipping News?

To answer the first question: The word "meme" was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976): "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation." In other words, memes are tunes, stories, ideas or cultural trends that propagate themselves by leaping from brain to brain in the same way genes propagate themselves by leaping from body to body

The definition of "meme" seems to be quite malleable, though. In the "blogosphere" (I'm sorry but I find that such a silly term) it is used to refer to a question or statement posed on a blog that other bloggers then respond to on their blogs, thus the question or statement and subsequent responses propagate themselves all over the interweb.

To answer the second question of why I am reading The Shipping News: I realised a while back that my bookshelf is lacking in tomes written by women. I have made a conscious decision not to read books by women or that I don't like books written by women but rather the books I have always been drawn to have generally been written by men - the only exceptions being Angela Carter and Muriel Spark (and, even then, I've only read one book apiece by those writers).

I made haste to my local bookstore determined to redress the balance. I ended up buying A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley and The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. Both had good reputations. Smiley's book was solidly written and intelligent but it didn't astonish me in any way. Proulx has a more adventurous prose style and is compelling enough but, again, I doubt it will linger in my mind long after I finish it the way my favourite novels do.

So, come on, which wildly inventive and possibly mad female authors should I seek out? Apart from Carter and Spark I have also dipped into Jeanette Winterson and Beryl Bainbridge. Who else?