Sarsparilla Vanilla

Sunday, 26 October 2003

Why The Big Read Sucks

Mood:

sharp
Now Playing: Chopin. Yet again. I really should change the CD...

?I hate the opinion of the population. It has been wrong about every single thing that has mattered to me in my life. Their choice in books is bound to be emetic, and so it has proved to be.?
Andrew O'Hagan commented on The Big Read.

Finally finished reading 'The Fourth Hand' today. I used to have to admit that while I loathed books by John Irving, I'd never actually finished one. No longer.

Ignoring the two feet of unread new books at the edge of the sofa, I logged on to amazon to see what the running total of Things They Have Fleeced Me For now stands at.
The personalised frontpage adverts were thus:

Volume 2 of Billy Connolly's biography.
If there's any hesitation at all in lurching for the remote whenever I see this ugly bugger's face leering from a cathode tube, it's to wonder what the hell is funny about the guy.
Over 100 Irresistable French Recipes.
I hate France. (sorry, Toulouse)
I dislike the way grown men aren't ashamed of a hideously predictable Freudian attachment to their horrifically bourgeois mothers. I dislike the utter lack of individualism in French street fashion (jesus, if you wear a colour, you stand out there. I once went to France with hair half shaved and half braided, dyed snowy white. I got free drinks in every bar as long as I put up with thirty minutes of Frenchmen laughing at my gall/gaulle. No wonder I looked grumpy.)
By no means the least is the distaste I hold for their undercooked, oversauced food. The only French food worth stomaching is North African. Irresistable recipes, my arse.
'Monstrous Regiment' by Terry Pratchett.
While I don't loathe Terry Pratchett's books - hey I've read a whole pair of 'em! - I don't actually want to read more. Morevoer, I certainly don't want to be thought of as the sort of person who might read (or --- !horrors! --- role play) Terry Pratchett books. Save them for the day I'm partially paralysed, move to the country, ingest way too many country-boy-drugs and grow a beard like Bill Bailey, thank you.
'Dude, Where's My Country' by Michael Moore.
Amazon, you dim fuckers, I bought 'Stupid White Men' as a Christmas present for somebody else. As did everybody. It's the only reason Michael Moore books ever get onto bestseller lists - people buy his unreadable wanky toss as Crimble gifts for that hard-to-gift cranky leftwing-poseur uncle who won't stop whingeing about the state of the world, insists on a Christmas nutloaf, and actually watches the Channel 4 news to the end. You only need read four pages to realise it's entertainment for the modern, socialist-leaning Victor Meldrew.

Bloody sodding sucky marketing-whore amazon. I hate how it never fails to hide the books I want. I hate that if I need a copy of The Faerie Queene, it offers me the DVD, or the PS2 game.
You go to the search page, and it offers you an oven glove. Every single time I use it, I swear I will never ever ever invoke this pure, crystal amazon-fury by patronising their sucky website again in this reality.

And then .... at the foot of the page, I spy a cut-price edition of 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'. I have four copies already, but -- oooooh, there's just one copy left in stock, and look, you save even more if you buy it with Smollett's 'The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker' .....

Note: all links included in this post are negative, grumpy and sarcastic.

This page graced by sarsparilla at 3:08 PM GMT
Updated: Sunday, 26 October 2003 5:22 PM GMT
Post Comment | View Comments (20) | Permalink | Share This Post

Comments Page

Sunday, 26 October 2003 - 4:32 PM GMT

Name: Looby

If Billy Connolly died tomorrow I would jump for joy. He's so unfunny. He shouts "look at me, I'm a stupid Scots twa-t and expects to make a career out of it. And the worst thing is, he's succeeded.

O'Hagen is more up my street. I've pinched that quote for a future sig file.

Anyway must dash, got to go downstairs and pretend to be a loving father for three hours whilst being pissed as a fart.

«	October 2003					»

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31