James’ Poor Brain

A couple of nights ago I had a dream where someone (I forget who it was) had basically got their torso chopped into quarters and were now held together by piercings. Like golden surgical staples. Crazy stuff.

This made me think about piercings, which is something I don’t normally do, for whatever reason. Probably because they’re a bit, well, pointless.

I don’t get it. I don’t hate it like I do smoking or Richard Dawkins, but I don’t see how having a metal bolt through your nipple is attractive. Earrings and stuff are fine, and can look very nice.  Holes all over your body are not.

To be fair, the people who do this to themselves are obviously a bit slow, or they’d realise that whilst having rings going all the way up your sides might look cool to them now, in five years or so it’s likely they’ll have a lot of trouble doing things such as going swimming or getting laid (unless their spouse is an unemployed biker). They don’t realise people grow out of these things, and their fancy ‘corset’ thing will eventually become money down the drain. Enjoy your disfiguring hardware, you tard.

Apparently, piercings are cool because its a symbol of rebellion against the dull-clothed majority. Yeah, really original, you and the other several thousand people with a nose ring. Why not do something no-one else has, like a brain piercing? Although that might make you a bit dead. Oh well. 

I had this idea whilst I was bored at my boring job. Ever been browsing over a website/forum of something you’re into (Band, book series, TV show etc.) when you sudeenly stumble upon a section entitled “Creativity” or something to that effect? If you have, it almost definately contained the scourge of the written word - Fan Fiction.

I found quite a lot from some links off Uncyclopedia (it still makes me laugh). Theres a reason the original writers of any given show/book didn’t include a certain storyline/scenario/romantic relationship - its because it would have made it shit. So what the writers of this stuff (supposedly “fans”) are doing is butchering their favourite established universe with their own writings. Can’t be much of a fan then, really. REAL writers write what makes a good story - fan fiction writers write what they and only they want to hear.

But wait, there’s more! Rather than leaving the writing to those who are paid to do it, largely because they have actual skill, ANYONE can write fan fiction, regardless of their obvious lack of writing talent. They don’t even make up thier own characters, locations, themes…they just take it all from the original writer and copy and paste into their own scribblings. But of course, if they were good enough to make up their own characters, they’d probably write more than two pages per installment.

Which they don’t.

But these shortcomings seem insignificant when compared with my main gripe - SLASH.

I hate slash. Making a character (or, most of the time, characters) suddenly turn gay/lesbian/pansexual isn’t a genius stroke of creative license - its stupid. Characters are of a certain sexuality because it relates to their personality (IN FICTION ONLY - LEAVE ALL POORLY-THOUGHT-OUT “HOMOPHOBE!!” COMMENTS AT THE DOOR, FOOLS). Don’t deny it, when have you last seen a hard-as-nails army commander batting for both sides? But its not as bad as when characters are PROVEN to be straight (I’m going to use, umm, let me see…Harry Potter? Yeah, he’ll do as an example) and yet overzealous fans continue to place them in embarrasingly homoerotic scene. Why, thats a great idea! Combine inexplicable changes to a character with the hardest fiction genre to get right - erotic fiction!

Harry touched Draco’s skin as he felt his wand harden… 

I can’t go on, it’s so hilariously stupid. Who reads this stuff? Paedophiles? No-one likes paedophiles, why write fiction for them?

In the 3 years or so I’ve had proper access to the internet, I’ve found one good piece of fan fiction, entitled ‘18th Century Muse’, and was basically about three chaps with the same names as the members of Muse in 18th century Britain. Very Casanova, but I stopped bothering to read after the site it was hosted on changed, so it can’t have been that good. But I didn’t immediately dismiss it for the following reasons:

- It DIDN’T just copy existing characters. As well as two prominent, entirely fictional female leads, Matt, Chris and Dom all had unique personalities and backgrounds (they weren’t even in a band together).

- The DID have a unique storyline and setting, ie. Muse didn’t just go on holiday and start humping each other.

- It DID have a decent length. Most fan fiction I’ve inflicted on myself lasted seldom over a page. This one was at least 30 pages long when I stopped reading it, andthe end was hardly in sight.

Conclusion - if you want to write fiction, take an English class. Do a Creative Writing course or something. Then maybe you can learn to make up your own material, rather than stealing stuff from established writers and throwing in the word “ample” every now and then.

How bloody awesome does Transformers (the film, in case you’re thick) look? And I don’t even own the toys.

Have you seen the frikkin trailers?! Things blow up! Cars turn into robots and start firing missiles at each other! A bus gets chopped in half! Holy shit! How a film that has fight scenes and car chases going on at the same time, as part of a single scene can fail to be awesome I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure - this makes the toys, cartoons, anime and videogames look like little pussy things that come free with Frosties.

Me want see now. Who’s up for it? 

Feedback was mostly amused, although there was the odd “OMG your myspace has been hacked!!”.

If anyone I was directing the shots at read it, they either a) didn’t get the joke or b) they were offended but couldn’t think of anything to say because they know I’m so damn right. 

Well, kind of.

As a little experiment, I’ve effectively “pimped” my personal Myspace page to lampoon everything I don’t like about myspace and a good fair few of its users. Its all there - pouting, sparkly banners, bad poetry - if its on my page, I think it sucks.

The real point of this is timing how long it takes for someone to actually notice and say “but James, I thought you hated Pete Wentz? (It is also a testament to my determination that I have even posted declarations of bisexual love for the fish-faced “bassist”.)

The worst that could happen? I receive friend requests from seemingly like-minded emo kids.

Tell me how much I suck at www.myspace.com/jamesarcheronline

NOBODY CARES. 

Fact: The only people who can make politics interesting are Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. Everyone else will just talk about some little insignificant occurance and then either a) tell people its the best thing to happen in politics ever or b)Rip it to metaphorical shreds and accuse the people who came up with it of some kind of improbable smear campaign against them. Neither of these will make me care about the fact that taxes were lowered by 4p.

Holy shit! FOUR WHOLE PENCE!? Pah. Even if I paid taxes on my shitty paying job, you know how long I’d have to work to make 4P? Little over six seconds. But at least I could spend my 4p on something else, say, four of those little banana sweets from Pick and Mix.

I’d rather talk to my Nan about sex than have a political debate. Unless the person you’re talking to agrees with everything you say, there’s a 99.99998% chance they’ll take personal offence and end up not talking to you for the rest of the week, just because you said something like “I don’t agree with abortion”. What you thought was a casual throwaway comment ends up alienting you from your over-enthusiastic friends. Am I a bad person for having opposing opinions to you? No, so CALM THE FUCK DOWN, ITS NOT A BIG DEAL. Especially when you’re sixteen and you can’t even vote. Arguments cause dislike, intolerance and divorce. Why would people seek them out?

I hate being drawn into political “debates” I don’t care about. I hate people who make out the media to be evil and are “covering up” things that either didn’t happen or did but is not a big deal to 95% of the population. I hate the right wing people who say stupid things like “computer games cause MURDER!!1!SINEOVERTAN!! I hate the left wing people who convinently ignore a certain Mr. Mao when raving about how great they are and talk shit about “revoloutions” that will never/don’t need to happen, or would chicken out if they did. I hate politics.

Monarch owes me a tenner.

I bet him £10 Herminone won’t die. And she doesn’t. So I WIN.

PS. The previous text contains spoilers. It is now safe to hit your computer with a baseball bat.

I really can’t be arsed to read Harry Potter. Look how long it is! My phone book is thinner than that. Even Abbi would look tall if she stood on it.

Here’s the thing: it would porbably take me, quite a fast reader, several hours to finish - I went on Wikipedia earlier and found out the entire plot in a few minutes. Hey, I just saved £18.99 or whatever it s they’re holding little kids to ransom for it.

However, in the interests of a fair argument, I’m offering some ways to make it a little more digestible should it ever be re-printed:

- Get rid of any romantic subplots. This has the added benefit of not fuelling the bad fan fiction.

- Don’t acknowledge lame characters that have appeared in less than three books. Umbridge? Why is she in it? No-one likes her anyway.

- Delete the epilogue. IT. SUCKS.

- Change the cover art. Yes, I’m aware that this is irrelevant to the length of the book and that there is an “adult” cover available, but we should just have that one. Look at the regular cover. Look at Harry’s buck teeth and tell me you wouldn’t be ashamed to get that book out in public.

- Include the following phrases:

                           - “Lady you crazy!”

                           - “I’ve HAD IT with these muthafucking Snapes in this muthafucking castle”

                           - “What are you, emo? Emo boy. Go cut yourself”

                              “Yeah, well, you’re ginger. Ginger Nut!”

                               “Gasp!”

                            - “POW, BIATCH!!” (preferably said after someone kills someone else)

Man, I should write a book. I’d buy it.

1. Become even more awesome at bass

2. Learn Keyboard (inc. crazy synth stuff like Kaoss pads)

3. Learn Guitar

4. Learn drums

5. Learn trumpet

6. Learn bagpipes

7. Learn Indian Nose-flute

8. Learn singing

Continue in this fashion until I become Swindon’s equivalent of Dave Grohl, then…

9. Have surgery to gain an extra 50 limbs

10. Play all aforementioned instruments at once with extra hands

11. Make a one-man band and write songs

12. Play Wembley with Muse as supports.

I win.