I woke up this morning and my friend had sent me this message in the middle of the night: “Bush has been assassinated. Turn on the news.” So run down to the tv in my underwear, switch on the news, and…nothing. Nothing about a dead president. So I try to ring my friend and he ain’t answering. I am confused. Either my friend was drunk or high when he sent the message, or Bush really is dead and it’s been hushed up or something. Not as far fetched as it seems. Remember on Sep. 11th when we were told that the US military had shot down the fourth hijacked plane? We didn’t hear much more about that, now did we?

Frankly I don’t really care if Bush is dead or alive. I do think he’s a poisonous little shit, but I don’t think that his death would really change anything. It would be like shooting the dummy that called you names instead of the ventriloquist.

Great. Blogger isn’t working. I know it’s free but that won’t stop me bitching about it.

Warren Ellis speaking:

When you talk about movies, there's always that which bookstores live by; the book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore's best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It's hard to describe just how much better the book is. It's like, "If the movie was an episode of 'Battlestar Galactica' with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is Citizen Kane' with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end." That's how much better it is.

He uses words the same way that the US uses bombs.

Reading Gillen’s blog,he said something that seems to apply to me:

I write about Stafford so much because it defines what drives me on completely. It's an average town, with literally nothing to do and nowhere to do it. There were no decent record shops. There was no decent clubs, at least any I'd like to go. There wasn't anywhere to buy books of an oblique nature. Christ - you couldn't even be geeky properly, since there was nowhere you could buy any funny-shaped dice or little lead men. I wasn't even aware of the concept of a Comic Shop until Dave Hyland dragged me into Nostalgia and Comics in Brum on a rare shopping trip.
So I stayed immersed in mainstream pop-culture far longer than anyone with my temperament would be in any sane town. To choose one example, it lead me to loving Pop music in a more genuine way than anyone can really grasp, because if you're forced to go to a shitty club because there's nothing else to do, you learn to differentiate between the various strata of Pop and learn what there is to treasure in things most people sneer about.

I always felt like an outsider as a kid. I live in a place so remote and rural we don’t have a bus service. The only place within cycling distance is a village with a church, shop and school. Pop? 500. Maybe. Until I was 18 (ie 2 years ago) our tv picked up 6 channels. Think about that. I only started watching The Simpsons a coupla years ago. The only radio stations we got were pop friendly clones. (seriously we have two competing stations called 98fm and fm104 that I swear come from the same transmitter). The only music in my house until I was 13 was my parents’ old vinyl collection and the record player was broken. I didn’t even live near any kids my age. If I wanted to go hang out at someone’s house it took about 3 days notice. I had to look inwards to entertain myself. I read every book in the house. I watched every tv show that was on. Every film that my parents didn’t know I was watching. (I’ll never forget the time Mum caught me trying to tape ‘Aliens’ when I was like 12). I didn’t know there was such a thing as alternative media until I was about 15. We bought a pc when I was 13. We got the internet when I was 17. I didn’t get my first real job until I was 18. My childhood was closeted. Comfortable, but restricted. I’m not saying that my parents were stifling me, but what can you do when you live in the middle of nowhere? Even now that I'm in college I still live at home. So when the evening starts and people are heading out to do stuff I'm braving the rush hour traffic and heading home. Anyway the point is that I never really feel like I fit in with people. My development was focused on being comfortable with myself rather than with other people. I feel like I am coming at the world from a different angle. Things that other people take for granted I’m only just finding out that they exist. Like going out to clubs. It’s an alien idea to me. One that I will probably never get used to. Or drinking beer. I don’t get it. The point of this mini-biography is this; I feel like a hermit who has been trapped in a cave for 20 years and has just come out to discover that there is more to the world than the ancient collection of encyclopaedias that he’s had for company. If that makes any sense.

Back to you, Gillen:

knowing I started later than everyone else makes me very aware it's always catch up time. I'm going to die soon and I really can't pretend otherwise. Then again, if I *was* exposed earlier, maybe the lack of drive wouldn't bother me since I would feel I had nothing to prove?
If I'd haven the net earlier, I'd probably be a happier, more well-adjusted and generally rounded human being.
And what sort of fuck would want that?

Excellent