Blog Git

From the diligent Circletide who writes These Four Walls and Pop Pourri I have been sent a blog stick. It's the blogging equivalent of one of those annoying forwarded emails people send you where they ask you everything from your favourite nail varnish remover to the ten people you wish you could bone before they get too old to fantasize about.

So, here goes. Rangy Manatee feeling a little out of his literary depth and having clearly spent too long doing this.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Something I haven’t read and probably feel too overwhelmed to read but probably will eventually get round to reading, like Proust. This rather disappointing answer means I can be mysterious and unknown. Even to myself.

Besides, isn’t this a rather odd question? I can get my head round the question of which character from a novel I’d like to be, but which book? Umm, ‘The History of World War II’ by Lt. Colonel E. Bauer because it’s big, imposing, gold and unreadable, and I’m none of those things.

Plus, I haven’t read Fahrenheit 451. Is this a literary joke I don’t get? Literary jokes are famed for being hilarious after all.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Tess Durbeyfield, bless her. Though I think from watching Polanski’s film effort, I have a real life crush on Natasha Kinski.

The last book you bought is:

A school-style notebook with a handmade cover from Bookville in Newcastle at the reasonable price of one pound. However, when you consider that these notebooks are practically free, or at least quite pinchable from an impressionable schoolchild, it starts to seem expensive.

To make up for this I’ve scribbled and dribbled in it a bit.

By the way, note to staff of Bookville, considering that you have (what you must surely consider to be) the perfect job (sitting in an inspiring and fully-funded room, making little books which people will read) – you need to cheer the fuck up. And get some manners young man.

The last book you read:

‘It’s Not a Runner Bean’ by Mark Steel on a long bus journey from London. Not a revelation but I had bizarre feeling of coincidence as I read the author’s short tale of achieving ‘some success’ as a comedian based around London, especially as I had just been to London to see my brother achieve ‘some success’ as a comedian based around London.

That and a generally very funny collection of essays, sketches and letters by the comedian Rich Hall called ‘Things Snowball’.

What are you currently reading?

The internet. All the time. Pitchforkmedia, blogs, reviews. Too many reviews. Why do I bother? The more reviews you read of one specific cultural item, the more you realise the whole process is utterly self-defeating and pointless (see MetaCritic). It’s usually at this point that I try to write my own.

I’m still catching up with Christmas/birthday reading. My friends know I’m interested in comedy so I’m trawling my way through the occasionally insightful but generally infuriating ‘Sunshine on Putty’ by Ben Thompson. Stylistically, it is a shambles. One minute it discusses in a very po-faced, academic manner (complete with endless irritating footnotes) how fantastic Vic Reeves was and how he influenced everyone from your postman to the ‘surreal’ way your Dad might say the word ‘arse’ – it goes from this to a crudely-posited ‘comic’ attack on David Baddiel because he had a crack at writing a novel. Basically, he talks seriously about funny things and talks ‘amusingly’ about people who are trying to be serious (like David Baddiel). Ben Thompson, you’re not funny and you makes me want to rant.

About to start ‘Cloud Atlas’ by David Mitchell, though I’m quite aware that it’s a ‘popular’ novel so I’m understandably concerned. Again, a birthday present – from my bro.

Little pieces of scribbled-on paper stapled together by the hardworking and miserable people at Bookville. I’d like to think if I’d had an idea that brilliant and had the time and effort to realise my dream, well, I’d like to think I’d be happy about the whole thing. Maybe I wouldn’t be hunched over a chair with my arm around my work (a collage of dancing monkeys with a speech-bubble above one, reading “Hi, I’m Alan”), desperately waiting for the public to leave.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Well, I’m assuming the Bible and Shakespeare are par for the course (and let’s be honest, they’d be your last selection)

Actually, do you know what, I’d bring four fat volumes that I hadn’t read (like some classics that I’ve totally ignored: ok, Proust, Dickens etc) and an I-Book full of really hardcore porn. I somehow don’t think I-Books count as books, but I checked with an independent adjudicator and he said weren’t bothered.

Biographies would probably be quite annoying as they would remind me of all the interesting things people were able to do with their lives. And I’m stuck foraging pathetically for wild boar and non-deadly berries whilst masturbating intermittently.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Matt Green
Shenanigans at the Gates of Dawn
Phil McLean

Because in the first two cases, their blogs are a little on the bare side of things. And in the last case, because I’d be interested alright? Sorry, I’m becoming weary.

So there you go. Bit of a struggle wasn't it?