Smothered References

I've been repeatedly contemplating and then discarding the notion of taking this web-log into depths thus far unplumbed, into a confessional zone that would cause a Baptist to grind his teeth down to white ash. But it doesn't really suit my style. So I think I'll just act bored instead, and go and shed some blood. Or I could follow the lead of certain others, and make a few veiled references.

I need three catalysts. The first is a pure agent, that facilitates everything whilst creating nothing. The second is a caltrop best eaten with honey, that sticking in the craw spurs one to fiery bliss. The third is in everything but is legendarily hard to extract. Sufficient of these three substances can motivate the solutions of my own riddles.

Those are more like suffocated-under-a-pillow references, which in failing to provocatively emphasise the lines of a shadowy profile, do not render the mundane beautiful. They are too opaque, and their lunatic albedo signals, in its few darker territories, the crippling extent of my inhibitions. But such is the nature of my project.

All men have secrets and here is mine, so let it be known,
We've been through hell and high tide I think I can rely on you,
And yet you start to recoil, heavy words are so lightly thrown,
But still I'd leap in front of a flying bullet for you.
The Smiths, 'What Difference Does It Make'

I've been listening to The Smiths quite a bit more lately, which could be the source of many of my problems. Enjoyed the scene in The Doom Generation where the goofy little guy who I wanted to kill throughout (and who did, eventually, get brutally killed by Nazi rapists - hmm) described the demise of a friend who listened to The Smiths too much. Can't say I really enjoyed the film much. When I wasn't yawning, I was either revulsed (by anticlimax rather than by horror) or indeed, at the end, genuinely shocked. A waste of time.

I think I'm regressing. I spent most of yesterday cooped up in my room, alternately playing guitar and reading the manga Hunter X Hunter. Burnt more holes in my fingertips by the end of the day. Enjoyed the manga far too much, given its facile, wish-fulfilment-oriented plotline, substance consisting largely of violent fantasies, and uninspired artwork. Started to think that adult manga fans should admit it's just a way of enjoying children's literature in a semi-respectable cultish manner. Realised that most of said fans probably read Eddings or Jordan with pleasure, and consequently can ex-pect no re-spect from the wider community anyway.

Which brings me to my next topic. Eddings. His entire oeuvre is utter rubbish (and in fact, I had to take legal advice before using the word oeuvre in relation to such a pile of ordure). That's all that needs to be said, really. That some find his works easy to read damns these readers without redeeming the words tainting each banal page. I base this opinion on a one-week consumption of everything he'd written up to 1992, in 1992. I don't think I've read anything by the man since, but his absence has only made my heart grow colder. The fact that he now credits his wife with the co-authorship of his novels goes some way to explain the fact that they're about as interesting as committee meeting minutes. They were written by committee all a-bloody-long (an example, in that last word, of tmesis. I encourage my readers to learn about tmesis, a very Australian practice with a very exotic name). Those people currently reading his work, and praising it with faint condemnation in conversation and writing, should not imagine doing so doesn't reduce them in my estimation.

I wonder if I'd leap in front of a flying bullet to save myself?