Author: christophernosnibor

Writer, ranter, purveyor of postmodern fiction; 50% of the Clinicality Press editorial team, editor at Aural Aggravation, contributing editor at Paraphilia Magazine, and music reviewer for Whisperin' and Hollerin' and Shout4Music. Sleep is for wimps.

How Not to Party… BT Ad Execs Get Down with the Kids

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I find it difficult to watch television without getting wound up by something, and lately that something has been the BT HomeHub ‘Hallowe’en Party’ advertisement. The students all rock up at some undergrad’s shindig and the party ain’t swinging because they’ve got crap Internet, so the smug fucker (he’s a smug fucker in all of these ads) ends up sort of unwittingly and unwillingly winding up with the party moving to the pad he shares with a bozo and a chick who’s supposed to be smart and attractive because they’ve got the ‘Infinity’ uber-broadband from BT that’s so well-priced even broke students can afford it, and then the place is buzzing because they can get the tunes going…

Students sure know how to party these days thanks to the Internet.

Wait, so the snarky bim who’s supposed to be the ‘DJ’ has turned up at the party without any music? Ok, so she’s spent ‘all week finding the perfect playlists’. What’s she doing, streaming tracks off Spotify (and showing her Facebook ‘friends’ what she’s listening to in real-time while she’s at it)? Never mind compiling her own playlist: she doesn’t even have her set of bangin’ choons and choice cuts on her hard-drive or iPod? She needs the Internet to DJ? Is this really what ‘the kids’ are doing these days?

In my day we turned up with tapes we’d compile (we’re not talking that long ago, either) and cranked it up so loud speakers would blow. But it didn’t matter, and nor did the music really because we’d all be utterly shitfaced before we even arrived.

Or is this advertisement just another example of a completely unlikely scenario cooked up by some bozo ad exec who thinks letting credibility get in the way of a half-baked idea is a waste of time because, hey, no-one will notice?

Pill-Popping and Apoplexy

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Prone as I am to venting my spleen to friends, family and via my blogs, I’m not generally the sort to make formal complaints to companies. Having spent a number of years dealing with customer complaints in a corporate / financial environment, I’m all too aware that complaining is pretty much futile, and moreover, if I’m enraged enough to complain about something, then the response I’m likely to get will only increase that anger tenfold. Yes, despite being a placid individual in person, and not the sort to become embroiled in heated discussion on-line either, I’m an angry fucker. As a rule, however, I focus that anger constructively, into my writing.

Sometimes, though, I get grumpier and angrier than usual, and those times often occur when I’m not feeling well. And, not feeling well last week while under the cosh of a heavy cold, I decided to use my lunch break to pick up a few off-the-shelf pharmaceuticals to alleviate my suffering when purchasing some foodstuffs including a jar of organic strawberry jam, and a couple of beers for the evening (it would have been rude to pass on bottles of Shepherd Neame’s Spitfire and Marston’s Pedigree at £1 a bottle, after all).

Suffering from blocked sinuses, a headache and uncomfortable back, and aware that restrictions exist regarding the sale of paracetamol, I thought better of filling my basket with enough drugs to anaesthetize an elephant and only went for the essentials. Even that proved to be a problem, though, prompting me to fire off a stern email to the supermarket concerned….

In the York Monks Cross store today during my lunch hour I attempted to purchase 1 x 16 Ibuprofen, 1 x 16 Paracetamol and 1 x Max Strength Congestion relief but was told by the cashier, Tina, I could only purchase 2 units and had to nominate one of the products to leave. This is absurd.

I understand the law limits the sale of paracetamol to 32, but I should therefore still be able to purchase 32 Paracetamol and up to 32 Ibuprofen as these are not of the same ‘family’ of drugs.

Even assuming the limit of 32 tablets of ANY painkillers is justifiable, given that the decongestants I wanted to purchase contain neither ibuprofen nor paracatamol, but phenylephrine hydrochloride, this product should not have counted toward the 32 tablet / 2 unit limit. These 3 different products would clearly not constitute an overdose hazard.

The NHS website states: “GSL medicines can be sold by a wide range of shops, such as newsagents, supermarkets and petrol stations. Often, only a small pack size or low strength of the medicine may be sold. For example: the largest pack size of paracetamol that shops can sell is 16 tablets but pharmacies can sell packs of 32 tablets. the highest strength of ibuprofen tablets that shops can sell is 200mg but pharmacies can sell tablets at 400mg strength.”

Because the 3 products were required for different purposes, it was then necessary for me to extend my lunch break in order to purchase the third product – a box of 16 200mg ibuprofen – elsewhere. Not only was this extremely frustrating and inconvenient, but also wholly unnecessary, and all due to a complete misapplication of the law. I would strongly recommend you ensure all your staff are given clear training on the sale of certain products.

The reply I received a couple of days later proved to be kind of dismissive bollocks I should have expected, penned in a style that veered between the informal and the businesslike, but maintained a suitably patronising tone throughout:

Thanks for your email. I’m sorry you were unable to buy all the over the counter medication you recently wanted to while in our Monks Cross store. I can understand this would have been disappointing as you then had to extend your lunch break to ensure you could purchase all three.

As a reputable retailer, we take our responsibilities very seriously. There is a limit on the number of paracetamol based products our colleagues can sell through the checkouts. There is a limit in place of 32 tablets in total, this can consist of 16 paracetamol and 16 ibuprofen for example.

We train all our colleagues to take this responsible selling approach very seriously. I can appreciate this may have seemed slightly over zealous on this occasion, however my colleague was following their training.

There are pharmacies available in our stores were customers can purchase larger quantities of medications should the need arise. Please don’t ever hesitate to speak with the local pharmacist should you need to.

We’re grateful you’ve taken the time to contact us with this feedback and we look forward to seeing you in store again soon.

Kind regards

So, while acknowledging the limit for paracetamol tablets is 32, it would appear that Sainsbury’s have decided rather than risk breaking the law on medications, to dumb it down to the dumbest point imaginable and then take it a step further by reinterpreting the limit of 32 tablets of paracetamol at a non-pharmacy counter as 32 tablets of anything… unless – as this email could also be taken to mean – they believe ibuprofen is a paracetamol-based product. Which it clearly isn’t.

Assuming it’s simply the case that they’re enforcing a strict limit of 32 tablets of any type at regular checkouts (and while I could have got to the pharmacy counter, it seems needlessly obtuse to make customers queue at two separate counters to purchase items they can, by law, purchase at just the one), then I’ll concede that it wasn’t the cashier being (apparently) ‘overzealous’, but the store itself.

And this really the crux of my issue: the laws concerning the sale of paracetamol products are not being applied with any common sense. Am I to take it from the email that I couldn’t buy, say, ibuprofen for my headache, antihistamine for my hayfever and fibre tabs for my blocked-up bowel in one transaction if the 3 products in combination exceeded 32 tablets despite the fact that none of them contains paracetamol and there are no laws concerning the sale of either?

Anyway, a couple of days later I found myself back in the same store (working in an office on the edge of an out of town shopping park doesn’t give much scope for a diverse range of activities and if I don’t get out of the office I’m likely to crack up). I had no pharmaceuticals in my basket this time, but was once again short on time and short on patience.

There’s a reason I dislike supermarkets – and shops in general, and most public places for that matter, and that’s because Sartre was right: hell is other people. I was reminded of this as I waited for what felt like an eternity to buy my booze and bananas and cheese, thanks to the two overweight, mutton-dressed as lamb middle-aged hags in front of me who were too busy gassing and cackling to pack their shopping into bags as it came through the checkout. Although they were together, they were shopping separately, and the one who had been served was busy clucking and tearing open a bag of mints she’d bought. Offering one to her lard-arsed mate, she proclaimed enthusiastically, “Ooh, they’re really minty!”. Of course they are : they’re fucking mints.

On the final item being rung through, the minty binty dropped her card and flapped a coupon around before realising her shop was 23p short of qualifying for the extra Nectar points offered on the coupon, prompting a call of “Sweets! Do you have any sweets on the end? No, wait, I need new potatoes!” and proceeded to wobble off to pick up some spuds to take her shop over £50 so she’d get her 200 extra Nectar points. The cashier then failed to scan said spuds, and the drippy tart bunged them in her bag. On realising the error, the cashier asked for the potatoes back. “Oooh, you’d better scan ‘em, I don’t want to be settin’ off the beepers!” the chubby dumbass clucked – as if they put alarm tags on £1 bags of fucking new potatoes!

As I seethed in silence, I had ample time to read and reread a new notice which had been tacked beside the checkout regarding the sale of 12 certificate games and films, notifying customers that. to purchase these products, they’ll need to provide proof of age. Acceptable forms of ID are a current passport or driving licence. Ok. But if the age limit is 12, then a 13-year old could legally purchase said items… but what 13 year old carries their passport or has a driving licence?

A lot of people just tell me to chill out and let it all go, but I can’t. It’s years of people doing precisely that which have brought us to this ridiculous situation. The trouble is, I don’t know what’s worse: retailers, local governments, etc., and the countless others who consider themselves to have a ‘social responsibility’ taking it upon themselves to dictate what we can buy, do, say, etc., etc., by effectively rewriting the law under the guise of ‘responsibility’ and ‘protection’, or a population stupid enough to believe potatoes might be security tagged and actually need those decisions making for them…

 

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Stock photo of sheep in a supermarket, happy to provide ID in order to purchase a bar of soap (limited to 1 per customer in case someone eats it).

Reviewed: Baron’s Court, All Change by Terry Taylor (New London Editions, 2012)

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As Stewart Home emphasises in his introduction, Baron’s Court, All Change is something of a lost cut classic. Precisely how it came to disappear from the face of the planet for some forty-odd years is rather difficult to explain, but disappear it did. After its initial publication in 1961 and republication four years later, this first-hand account of the hippest cats on the drug-fuelled London Jazz scene at its most swinging, which drew a readership at the time and has obvious and broad appeal since as a historical work, fell not only out of print but out of memory.

Taylor’s first-person narrative has a conversational quality to it, and while he’s not big on detailed description, with some of the writing appearing rather hurried and a shade rough in the editing, these are actually endearing qualities and he draws vivid, earthy pen-sketches of 1950s suburban life in just a few simple lines.

His teenage frustration with suburban tedium and conformity still resonates now, and while some of the writing has a hurried, pulpy quality and many of the characters are little more than sketched pen-portraits, Taylor’s narrator is multi-faceted and displays a surprising degree of emotional depth. This is one of the book’s real strength, as the narrator portrays life as an insider but also an outsider in different social circles, and reveals the dichotomy between family ties and friendship in what could reasonably be called a ‘coming of age’ tale with a real warmth.

Some of the lingo is as priceless as it is necessarily dated, and so many of the cats are digging the scene, wigged by all the charge they’re smoking and the swinging tunes that if it had been written thirty years later it would seem parodic. But at the same time, the overall narrative style is remarkably contemporary and is striking in just how fresh it seems, and Taylor’s turn of phrase is credible and naturalistic in a colloquial way (for example, after an argument with his mother, the narrator immediately feels guilty, and writes ‘I felt like a right cunt’).

The insight Baron’s Court gives into the drug culture of the period is also illuminating, and while most of the characters are strictly hash smokers (the book could almost as readily have been called Baron’s Court, All Charge), LSD does receive a mention (the first in a work of literature) and heroin also features prominently.

‘Junkies fascinated me from the start and I found out all I could about them… His thing isn’t a kick, it’s a way of life,’ recounts the narrator around halfway through, at the same time echoing Burroughs’ line ‘Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.’ I can’t help but wonder how much information would have been available about junkies at the time, and would contend it’s not unreasonable to assume that Taylor had read Burroughs’ debut novel Junkie, published in 1953 in the US with a first UK edition, published by Digit Books of London in 1957. The text may not have been widely known, but hipsters have, as Baron’s Court reminds us, always been two steps ahead of the trend.

At a couple of hundred pages in length, Baron’s Court is a quick and straightforward read, and without doubt this is one of its great achievements. Whereas so many other books on drugs and drug culture are dry and unappetising and judgemental or otherwise agenda-driven, Taylor’s novel is vibrant, lively and above all entertaining.

 

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If you’re not online you don’t exist: Christopher Nosnibor ceases to be… thanks to Microsoft

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Five years is a long time in the ephemeral zone that is the virtual world. Although I’ve been an Internet user since around 1997, it took me a while to make the transition from consumer to creator of content, but I’ve maintained a fairly strong on-line presence since 2007 – and it’s no coincidence that my first book, the short story collection Bad Houses was published that year.

The received wisdom is that if you want to succeed, you need to be on-line, and if you don’t have a website then you pretty much don’t exist. After all, without a website, how will anyone find you? It’s a fair enough question, and because my output is wildly disparate and flung to the infinite corners of the virtual world, it made particular sense for me to have my own domain as a means of providing a hub that linked to all of my various appearances in small press magazines and so on.

Not being much my way of an expert when it comes to the practical aspects of building a website, I went with Miscrosoft Office Live, which provided useful templates, customised domain names and email, was piss-easy to use and, best of all, it was cheap. In short, it suited my needs and my abilities.

And, by arrangement with Clinicality Press, I was able to set up a store through which to flog my work in print. In addition to the main titles, I put out a handful of limited-run pamphlets (many of which I have to admit are still sitting in a box in my office. Ah well. Serves me right for being so prolific and antagonistic toward all literary and publishing conventions).

However, while the website has its definite uses, I’m a strong believer that ubiquity is the key to global domination. As such, my quest has driven me to myriad social networking outlets and to try other means of getting my name – if not my face – known. My blogs and articles posted elsewhere have always received more hits than my website, which I would say validates my approach. What’s more pretty much all of my book sales are made through Clinicality or Amazon, and since most of my titles were published in Kindle, Kindle sales have accounted for around 95% of my sales. I’m cool with that, but it does mean that the website is simply one aspect of my broader on-line presence, and is by no means something that’s making me rich by its existence.

So when Microsoft announced they were discontinuing Office Live and ‘upgrading’ it to Office Live 365 I was less than enthused, not least of all because the ‘migration’ of existing websites entailed the users rebuilding them, from scratch. Custom domains – or ‘vanity domains’ as they began calling them – needed the owner to switch all of the registry information themselves, and reconfigure any ‘vanity’ email addresses (the term hardly makes it sound appealing, but then it’s still more appealing than having your name or business’ name with a Microsoft suffix by way of a domain name).

Still, for continuity’s sake, I ‘migrated’ christophernosnibor.co.uk to the new platform, taking advantage of the three month free trial on offer, and using the opportunity to redesign the site a little. I soon discovered that Windows Live 365 was nowhere near as user-friendly as its predecessor, and lacked some of the essential functionality. Particularly frustrating was the fact there were no reports, meaning it was no longer possible to determine the number of hits or the search terms used to bring traffic to the site. Then of course there was the pricing.

Whereas Office Live had been around a tenner a year, the new supposedly improved but actually inferior service costs that a month – with an additional charge of three quid per email address.

The plan had been to find a suitable alternative during the three month trial and shift everything over before the time was up, but in the event, being a writer – and a writer who also happens to have a full-time job and a life as well – it didn’t happen. So, in concentrating my efforts on producing content, which is ultimately what I’m about, and what the website’s purpose is to promote, I find myself with six days of my free trial left. The simplest thing to do would be to pay up and forget about it. It’s hardly a king’s ransom, after all. Besides, chuntering about the price won’t achieve anything. But because the revenue it generates is nowhere near the cost of the hosting, it makes no sense to cough up for the sake of maintaining the presence, especially when it costs more for less (which seems to be the way everything’s going these days, and that’s capitalism for ya, but that’s a whole other blog).

At some point, I shall convert the blog, hosted by WordPress, to christophernosnibor.com and redesign it so it not only has the content that was on the website, but so that it looks like a website. When that will be, I wouldn’t like to say. So from now on, if you’re loving my work, there’ll be more of the same (only different) here.

 

Microsoft

Microsoft Office 365: a load of crap and more than ten times the price of Office Live

Whipped into Shape: Getting Fit For Christmas with Jesus Christ

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With the Summer and the London 2012 Olympics over with, and the ‘back to school’ promotions finished now that school, college and university students are all back, many are beginning to turn their attention to Christmas. M&S already have seasonal red and white carrier bags in circulation, Sainsbury’s has got its ‘seasonal’ aisle packed with confectionary and snacks (which will be rather close to their best before date by Boxing Day) and the Slug and Lettuce pubs have got their Christmas trees up in the entrance. Yes, it’s the second week in October.

Around Christmas and immediately after, there’s invariably a big push to promote fitness DVDs to cash in on the fatties desperate to squeeze themselves into that not-so-little black dress at the office Christmas party, and the lards who decide they need to do something about the three stone they gained gorging themselves on mince pies, buffets and endless turkey roasts over the festive season, not to mention the copious quantities of calorific celebratory booze.

High-energy aerobic exercise isn’t for everyone, and not everyone wants to see some celebrity bimbo prancing around while telling them to ‘work it’. For these reasons, amongst others, gentle low-impact exercise like yoga and pilates is often a popular alternative to boxercise, dance workouts and zumba.

The Church of England today announced it would be releasing its own Christian exercise DVD. Entitled Pontius Pilates, it will feature gentle stretching and breathing exercises that date back to the time of Christ. The workout instructions were found in an ancient scroll containing a version of one of the scriptures that was recently discovered in the same collection that contained the so-called ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’. Positions featured on the DVD include well-known ones that are still popular today, such as The Lotus, The Cat and The Crab, as well as some which have been lost for centuries, like The Nail and The Crucifix.

The RRP for Pontius Pilates will be £12.99 – but rather than paying full price, why not wait a bit? The chances are they’ll be flogging it off cheap around Easter.

 

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Pontius Pilate prepares for take-off

 

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk

Kate Middleton’s Breasts

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In the wake of the Olympics and the Paralympics, it was inevitable the news agencies would be looking for items to easily fill the gaping chasm in their columns and programming. It would have been all too easy to have returned to the previous staple of war, global economic meltdown and devious political manoeuvring exposed, but to have pursued that direction would have called a rapid halt to the jubilant mood that still hangs in the air as Olympic fervour dissipates.

Boom! Kate Middleton – or Catherine Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge as she’s formally known – with her jugs out! Of course, no British publication would run the pap snaps, and in many ways, that only added to the essential cocktail of ingredients that rendered this the perfect story for the time. The British public love a good scandal and an excuse to puff up with righteous indignation (as evidenced by the Daily Mail reading masses) and have a thing about topless birds, especially celebrities (as the Sun ‘reading’ masses prove) and as the popularity of publications like Heat etc., show, celebrity gossip is what everyone who doesn’t want to deal with the horrors of everyday existence wants.

As this non-story and the frothing furore and debate surrounding it unfolds, I’m reminded – as I often am, in truth – of J G Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition. In particular, the geometry of the media landscape Ballard portrays so vividly, marked out by enormous blow-ups of disembodied parts of celebrities’ anatomies. I’m also reminded of the titles in the appendix sections, ‘Mae West’s Reduction Mammoplasty’ and ‘Princess Margaret’s Face Lift.’ The vapid culture built around a prurient obsession with celebrity Ballard depicted may have been the emerging landscape of the time it was written, but it’s unquestionably more relevant now, in an era when fervent adulation of Pippa Middleton’s posterior has filtered through into even the broadsheet press. And so it comes as no surprise that there’s a veritable media spasm over Kate Middleton’s breasts.

Because I’ve already written extensively on media overload on countless occasions already, and no doubt will again in the future, there seems little point in doing so again here. Similarly, the ethical questions concerning privacy and the press that are proving to be the central focus of this so-called ‘scandal’ have received so much attention, there’s absolutely no point in rehashing it, and even if I felt able to bring something new to the table, it would be lost in the endless currents of hot air already circulating. If I’m going to expend energy pissing in the wind, it’s going to be on a subject I at least feel truly passionate about.

The real question, as I see it, isn’t about whether or not a royal should be able to sunbathe topless without being snapped, but what’s the fuss about? Just as the nation went nuts when Prince William began courting ‘Kate’, as much because she was a ‘commoner’ as anything, so it seems that the idea of ‘young people’ in the monarchy seems to have changed the tide of opinion and enabled the monarchy to shed its stuffy imperialist image, and the only real explanation for this is because people are stupid and gullible – and of course, celebrity fixated.

But celebrity is always about mystique, and all the more so when the celebrity in question is largely inaccessible. The intrigue of what’s under her (high street fashion / designer) clothes therefore becomes heightened proportionally against the likelihood of ever finding out.

In Kate, they were always looking for a new Diana, and in this episode, they’ve got it, and a whole lot more. Woman of the people, hounded by the press… check. But in Kate we have a rather different scenario based on paradox: Kate Middleton is a celebrity, and one who is less accessible than most because she’s royalty. At the same time, because Kate’s a ‘commoner’, she’s more accessible, which gives people a (false) sense of hope. If she gets ousted by her future monarch husband after siring the next generation, then perhaps someone of her own class might be in with a shout… of course it’s all an illusion, the ‘commoner’ image simply a tag that’s been fostered to broaden her appeal. Anyone who thinks they’re going to stumble into Kate Middleton (even if she does eventually find herself out of monarchical favour and free to date dynastic billionaire film producers) in their local Asda is clearly deluded.

But here’s the clincher paradox: Kate Middleton may be the ‘princess of the people’ and more accessible than any of her predecessors, while also being royalty and a celebrity on an almost untouchable level, but the bottom line is that she’s really pretty average. By which I mean that if she wasn’t royalty and a celebrity on an almost untouchable level, she might still be a rich girl, but no-one would pay her any attention whatsoever. What is there that truly distinguishes her from the crowd? She doesn’t even appear to be ageing especially well, with her features often appearing drawn and haggard beyond her 30 years in photographs on-line and in the press. The cult of Kate is purely a reaction to her social status and celebrity. Consequently the intrigue of what’s under her (high street fashion / designer) clothes becomes heightened proportionally against the likelihood of ever finding out. But, against the odds, we now know. The pictures are blurry, the quality disappointing, and the same is true of Kate’s boobs, which are average and unremarkable in every way.

And there you have it. You’ve seen the goods, they’re not much to write home about, and besides, you haven’t got a hope. Now please, move on, get a life and find something / someone else to wank over.

 

 

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Kate Middleton: Ordinary?

 

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk

Concern Grows as Christopher Nosnibor’s Blog Falls Quiet

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While the world was in a frenzy over the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic games last night, and many breathed a sigh of relief over the postponement of global wars and financial crises, as well as a temporary suspension of all criminal activity, in particular rape, murder, child molestation and car crime, a small number of observers began to grow agitated by the lack of spouting on Christopher Nosnibor’s blog.

Nosnibor, a music reviewer, novelist and self-appointed commentator with a tendency to fire salvoes of bile into the blogosphere in response to events and phenomena linked to popular culture, has been suspiciously quiet in recent weeks, and following a succession of posts promoting his latest ‘novel’, the mass-market friendly This Book is Fucking Stupid, and a series of outbursts over E. L. James’ bonkbusting mummy porn 50 Shades trilogy and the Olympic torch relay, his blog, hosted by WordPress has lain dormant.

Speculation began to build concerning Nosnibor’s activity before one fellow blogger decided to email him to get the lowdown.

‘Fuck off,’ was the terse reply. ‘I’m working’.

Nosnibor did, however, follow this up with a statement confirming that he was suspending blogging activity for the duration of the Olympics, on the premise that his lack of comment was comment in itself.

‘It’s my equivalent of a boycott’, he explained. ‘Plus, I need to crack on with some reviews and a piece of fiction I’m currently working on. Going to ground while everyone else is immersed in the games seems like a a sound strategy to me.’

Although some observers suggested that this was in itself a form of negative self-promotion and typical of Nosnibor’s recent antics connected with This Book is Fucking Stupid, most simply ignored the whole non-event in much the same way as usual.

Foos for Thought: Groomed Bears and Porny Mummies… 50 Shades of Shit Lit Served Up on a Silvery Grey Platter with a Side-Order of Spam, Slaughtered Missing Girl and Spunk Salad.

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While working on and developing This Book is Fucking Stupid, I became increasingly fascinated by the world of one-star book reviews and terrible book synopses. A number of things very soon became apparent. First, I discovered that good books – by which I mean both books of quality and books which have been lauded as books of quality by more respectable literary critics and publications – are as likely, if not more so, to receive negative reviews from readers than mediocre books beloved of mainstream audiences with less literary tastes. All of the authors I admire – from Burroughs, Ballard and Bukowski, via Stewart Home, Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller to Chuck Palahniuk and Alain Robbe-Grillet, are in receipt of an almost equal number of one and five-star reviews.

Second, and equally depressingly, many of the worst, most poorly written book synopses, outlining the most absurd and implausible plots, didn’t belong to self-published pot-boilers, but to books riding high in the bestsellers lists. Of course, many self-published e-books proved to be supported by shamefully amateurish blurbs, but then any author who publishes a piece that’s under 6,000 words in length and calls it a novel clearly hasn’t a clue and we can expect little else.

Third, I began to appreciate just how vast the domains of erotica and fantasy writing really are, as well as how people really are suckers for series at the moment.

It was while searching the bestseller lists for abysmal blurbs for my occasional ‘bad blurb of the day’ series – and I have to say I was spoiled for choice, if not completely overwhelmed by the volume of contenders – that I stumbled upon the 50 Shades trilogy. The blurbs were terrible, but what intrigued me more was the polarised reader reviews. And there were many. This wasn’t a case of a few people with very different opinions posting their reading experiences, but a full-blown raging controversy that runs into postings into the thousands. What was curious was the fact that, whereas more often than not you’ll find those who abhor a book do so for precisely the reason those who adore it do so, with 50 Shades it was different. Those who loved it loved the plot, the characters… and those who hated it hated everything, but in particular the prose.

I wondered fleetingly how the 50 Shades phenomenon had bypassed me, and if I was really falling out of touch with the mainstream I so love to keep abreast of if only to dismantle and berate, before promptly forgetting about the whole deal and refocusing on something more important, like whether or not I needed to recharge my mobile phone.

A couple of days later, lo and behold a gaggle of women were discussing the book within earshot. Despite their varying demographics, they were all in one mind and totally aflutter over this exciting, steamy novel they’d been recommended. Stepping away from this predictable plot development, I was reminded of two important lessons I’d seemingly forgotten: 1) word of mouth is still the most effective promotional method going. 2) people are idiots who’ll subscribe to any crap, and herd mentality reigns.

The repetition of phrases was a recurrent theme in the postings of the book’s detractors. Now, I have no issue with repetition myself, and having absorbed a substantial amount of pulp fiction, as well as Stewart Home’s complete literary output and most of Robbe-Grillet’s major texts, I’ve come to appreciate the fun that can be had with recurring phrases. I’ve been known to apply a spot of cut-and-paste myself in the creation of various texts, with specific effects in mind. In fact, in writing This Book is Fucking Stupid, I took the practice a step further, in that the core narrative provided the basis of two novellas and a trio of short stories (although not all have been published at this moment in time). So, repetition’s fine by me, but there’s a world of difference between repetition for effect – orientation, disorientation, parody, pastiche, pulpiness or to create a strange sense of déjà vu, for instance – and limited vocabulary or a lack of lexical imagination. Judging by the comments regarding the standard of prose in 50 Shades, there seemed little doubt that it was very much a case of the latter, and that this was the most amateurishly-written dross to have ever been sent to press by a major publisher.

Perversely, my curiosity was aroused. I found myself wondering just how bad it really was, so took myself to WHS on my lunch break the next day, and having flicked through the NME, gravitated toward the paperback section.

On finding other customers browsing the bestselling fiction – a predictable array of all of the Game of Thrones titles (and having read an except of one of those over the shoulder of a fat guy with BO on the bus recently I really can’t comprehend their popularity either), plus Stieg Larsson’s imaginatively-titled Girl With…. doorstops and half-arsed horror and cack crime fiction by the likes of Karin Slaughter – there was simply no way in the world I was going to be seen, even by total strangers, with my nose in a print wedge of mummy porn. So I turned to face the shelf directly behind me, which I discovered housed the paperback non-fiction bestsellers, which include biographies and autobiographies.

Amidst the predictable pap I found the laughable This is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl (he’s not fucking dead yet, his life and times are now and they’re ongoing), and, worse still, a 500-page autobiography by Bear Bullshitter Grylls. Entitled Mud, Sweat and Tears (the man’s such a hero: having broken his spine in 36 places and being told by doctors he’d never walk again at the age of 21, by virtue of his sheer determination he defied all the odds to become the youngest person to climb Everest just 18 weeks after his accident. Or something). I was also interested and elated to see that in between her tireless questing to find her missing daughter and clearing her own name, Kate McCann’s managed to pen a 500-page memoir about her tireless quest to find her missing daughter, and of course, all of the royalties will be used to fund doubling the number of investigators for Interpol, because Madeline, the first young girl ever to disappear, must be found and she is most definitely alive because they’ve produced CGI images of how she looks now.

 

bear

Bear Grylls: that’s not mud he’s covered in.

It’s not that I want to belittle the achievements of others, but I can’t help but question their motives, and the motive of the publishers, too. The rack of ‘real-life trauma’ tomes only highlights how fucked up the whole deal is. With titles like Groomed (subtitle: ‘An Uncle Who Went Too Far. A Mother Who Didn’t Care. A Little Girl Who Waited for Justice.’ and Little Prisoners: A tragic story of siblings trapped in a world of abuse and suffering, there are many questions to be asked, and not just who buys these books, and what do they get out of it?

Of course, these are radically different strains of shit lit from 50 Shades. Or are they? These titles all engender vicarious living, and lead readers into territories they wouldn’t otherwise dare – or want – to enter for themselves. If Bridget Jones represented the everywoman, then the facile Twilight transplant characters who populate the 50 Shades trilogy represent the everywoman’s kinky fantasies, a peek through the keyhole into a netherworld that’s less seedy than swinging because, well, it’s always more exciting and fun when there’s a rich powerful man involved. The real-life tales of atrocities perpetrated on children are just another aspect of Eastenders syndrome: it’s as depressing as fuck and the regular viewers watch it because the daily trials, tribulations and agonising ordeals of the characters make them feel better about their own pathetic shitty lives. Perhaps it is sick, perhaps the society’s sick, but it’s alright if it makes you feel better.

Critics and ‘quality’ writers can and will endlessly berate such titles and despair at their immense popularity, and the fact 50 Shades is the biggest ‘literary’ phenomenon since Dan Brown exploded with the formulaic potboiler The Da Vinci Code and its immediate successor, which was in turn the biggest ‘literary’ phenomenon since J K Rowling’s ever-lengthier succession of Harry Potter titles speaks volumes. But as I commented in a previous piece, Readers rarely seem to agree with critics, yet purchase books on the strength of the reviews its received – and then complain, feeling that they’ve been in some way misled by the critics’ positive assessment of any given text.

I read a few excerpts of the 50 Shades books on line, using the Amazon ‘look inside’ function, which it has to be said is no substitute for browsing in a bookshop but can save some embarrassment. Of course , the one who should be embarrassed is Erika Leonard, better known as E. L. James – embarrassed by her shamefully poor, GCSE-standard prose and the fact that she’s coining it off the back of such low-grade fiction. It’s the literary equivalent of KFC.

Just as fast food and the so-called obesity epidemic threaten to drown the populace in tsunami of fat, so shit lit is just one more example of the zombifying brainrot media that’s endemic. It’s perhaps fair to say that, finally, the novel truly is dead. I now consider it my duty to bury it.

 

And if you’re loving my work, the ‘Fifty Shades of Shit’ special edition of This Book is Fucking Stupid is out now on Amazon Kindle.

The Worker pt 7: Sunday Bloody Sunday.

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Sunday morning. Hangover. Took him a moment to realise where he was. Home. His own bed. A good sign. Fully dressed. He glanced around, the movement of his eyeballs in their sockets making him wince in pain. The pungent aroma of the previous night’s smoke which clung to his clothes, mingled with the sickly-sweet tartness of stale sweat made his stomach lurch, but he observed with relieve that his bed was free of puke and he’d not pissed or shat himself either. Ok, so it was rare for either of those things to happen, but they weren’t unheard of. How had he got home? And when? Where had he been, even? After arriving at the club, already hammered, some time after ten or thereabouts, everything was a blank. He felt like shit, felt like he was gonna die.

He moaned and gingerly winched himself out of bed. Went to the bathroom, pissed like a horse for a good couple of minutes. Bliss! Chugged half a pint of full-fat milk straight from the carton, threw down some painkillers and tossed some bread in the toaster. Checked the clock. Ok, so it wasn’t Sunday morning any more, it was closer to 1pm. A seriously heavy night. He buttered the hot toast on ejection from the machine and took a couple of bites before a wave of nausea broke from the pit of his stomach. He made haste back to the bathroom and spewed it all back up. mouth, nose, some serious velocity. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and crawled back to bed.

The next time he woke it was just after 3pm. He still felt rough, but nothing like the way he had felt before. What a waste of a day. Still in the clothes from the night before, he went back to the kitchen and prepared a mammoth fried breakfast and sat in front of the television while he troughed down the greasy collation. There was a match on. He didn’t really give a shit about Liverpool or Chelsea, being a Man U supporter but football’s football.

CouchPotato

A generic image of a bloke slobbing out on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon

 

Afternoon rolled into evening as he sat, vegetating, on the sofa. Fuck it, he couldn’t be arsed to wash up or so any washing, not today. It would keep. Around 8, he decided to take a shower, after which, still wrapped in his towel, he fired up the PC and checked his emails. Nothing much doing. He logged into his Facebook account. A few tagged pics from last night were up already, and a number of people had left him comments, too. But as far as he could ascertain, he’d only danced like a twat and tried cracking onto a couple of birds, both absolute munters, by all accounts. But he’d not screwed either of them – because they’d turned him down flat – and he’d not flashed his cock or arse, so on balance, no cause for concern. He idly flipped up some porn pages. Before long, his horn was throbbing as hard as his head had been earlier in the day, and he knocked out a mix over a couple of chicks lezzing it up. Job done, he wiped himself down, put the telly on and watched some second-rate eighties action movie till just gone midnight. Waste of a day, alright, but it sure as hell beat having to go to work.

 

 

The Kindle – and paperback – edition of Postmodern Fragments is available via Amazon in the UK …and in the US.

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk