Well, first I was going to use this week’s editorial for an update on my blister — scarily, I got more response from last time’s ramblings, than just about any other item! Then, I was going to apologise to the Japanese emperor for the behaviour of a tiny group of bitter and twisted ex-servicemen unable to let go of the past — it’s not often I agree with Tony Blair (in fact, this is probably a first), but here, he’s right. Their incessant bleating for cash is like a vagrant demanding spare change, and demands for precisely the “right” wording in the apology does neither them nor Britain any credit. It’s pathetic. But, hey, that should be patently obvious to anyone without a Burma-sized chip on their shoulder, so let’s turn our attention to an even bigger example of idiocy.

I like hate mail, providing it’s thoughtful, intelligent, or even coherent. I’ve printed an example of the other sort here before, but at least the writer on that occasion came from South America, so can perhaps be forgiven a little unfamiliarity with the native language. Mr Wayne Fabra, on the other hand, comes from America — perhaps we can instead blame too many generations of inbreeding for the following, which is presented exactly as it was received here, poor spelling, flawed grammar and ‘original’ punctuation intact:

who the fuck is this guy anyway bad mouthing evilspeak and texas chainsaw. you realize that your brain has no conception of what true horror is i guess you like scream and godzilla better its assholes like you who keep the real scary shit off the silver screen.the actors in texas chainsaw went through more hell making that film as realisitic as they could totally involved in their characters.there was so much authenticity in that film especially the acting.how dare you bad mouth such a master peice.you  rag it at first in your pathetic review then you praise it critics have to be hypocritical to be someone i guess dont review horror at all if you bad mouth it.thousands of true horror fanatics laugh at your uninformed ability to degrade everything in your path fuck you you weak geek sucking faggot die in the name of satan

Oooh, I am SO scared. I am tempted to treat this piece of excrement with the appropriate contempt — as well as his mail. But, hey, I’m feeling in a generous mood today, so I’m merely going to point out the flaws in his ill-written and badly thought out comments.

“Don’t review horror at all if you bad mouth it”

I can imagine him sitting there, some spotty-faced teenage oik in his bedroom, with his Ozzy Ozbourne records and black candles. To someone like that, I suppose that ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, or even [giggle] ‘Evilspeak’ might seem like the greatest thing since he discovered how to masturbate. But this doesn’t mean everyone else has to share his views. the POINT of reviewing things is that you say what you think of them. Not even an idiot would claim that all horror films were great – as is proven by the fact that Wayne didn’t like ‘Scream’ – and so, I call ’em how I see ’em. And ‘Evilspeak’ is a turgid pile of stinking garbage, with few redeeming features. I ain’t going to call it a horror classic!

“The actors in Texas Chainsaw went through more hell making that film as realistic as they could.” [I’ll be kind, Wayne, and tidy up your spelling and stuff…]

No, they didn’t. They were making a cheapjack horror movie, that’s why the conditions were hell, it wasn’t some kind of artistic statement. If they were all so talented, why have they none of them done anything of merit since? It would probably be closer to the truth so say that Tobe Hooper couldn’t direct a stream of piss, and I speak as someone who loves ‘LifeForce’ dearly.

“Thousands of true horror fanatics laugh at your uninformed ability to degrade everything in your path.”

Yes: FANATICS. Look up the word in your dictionary, and you’ll probably find something like “unthinking devotees”, and I couldn’t give a single toss what people like that think. I don’t write for people like you, Wayne, I prefer those who have at least the minimal intelligence necessary to deal with criticism.

“Fuck you, you weak geek sucking faggot. Die in the name of satan”.

Hmmm…I don’t think the Lord of the Flies is going to be impressed by putting his name in lower-case. But let’s just see how tough you are: abuse@webtv.net informed. That should be about your level. Have a nice life.

Wayne Fabra may be contacted – at least until his mummy takes his Net access away – at antichristreign@webtv.net.

Currently, I feel like a character in a David Cronenberg movie, watching his body mutate around him. The reason for this is the blister, roughly the size of an egg, on the inside of my left wrist, due to a close encounter with some superheated lasagne last night. I’d just completed a hard evening’s work on the next issue, and stopped for dinner — a nice tray of the aforementioned foodstuff, which had been cooking in the oven, at 200 degrees centigrade for the past 45 minutes.

I opened the oven and took out the lasagne, which was bubbling away in a ferocious manner. I distinctly remember thinking “My, that looks HOT”, as I added the essential parmesan cheese, and took it upstairs for consumption in a more relaxed setting. Unfortunately, half-way up the stairs, I clipped a step and stumbled. I recovered with the agility of a lasagne-carrying orang-utang, but a wave of sauce sloshed over the top of the bowl and coated my left hand. In the next two-tenths of a second, four thoughts crossed my mind:

1. My, it *IS* quite warm, isn’t it.
2. FUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. Put the plate down, Jim.
4. Water. I want water. LOTS of water.

There then followed a near-teleport back to the kitchen, to slam my hand under the tap. Which is where I stood for the rest of the evening. But too late, since the damage had already been done. For not only was the sauce at, or very close to, 200 degrees C, it also had the curious STICKY consistency. You spill hot water on yourself, just flick your hand and it will fly off. Not so cheese sauce: we are dealing with the culinary equivalent of napalm. It remains firmly attached, chewing its way through the flesh until you hose it off — along with your skin.

The only question was whether this was going to be one of those red skin and a bit painful for a while burns, or if we were talking the full-blown reaction. It took about an hour of throbbing pain for the question to be answered; we were heading deep into Blister County, stopping en route at Painsville. Now, there’s something life-affirming about pain: it’s nature’s way of telling you to STOP DOING THAT AT ONCE! In our modern, molly-coddled society, actual physical pain is not something we have to encounter very often, and when you do, there are remedies. At least, there are, if it’s not 9:30 pm at night, and the medicine box contains an opened packet of lint and some expired ear drops.

The night that followed was best described as somewhat restless. Fortunately, the injury was on a spot that it proved difficult to put any pressure on, thereby preventing the nightmare of rolling over onto the blister, splitting it open like a ripe tomato, spilling…well, we’ll take THAT imagery as read, shall we? But I woke up this morning. with a dull throb in my left hand, and a more than usually distinct sense of “don’t want to go to work”. I phoned in sick instead, and have spent much of the rest of the day coating the hand in soothing lotions, and trying to work out if the swelling had stopped expanding (“The Blister That Ate Tulse Hill”).

I *think* it has, so now all I have to do is wait for the damn thing to go down again. As someone to whom scab-picking is a source of infinite pleasure, I’ve been very good and not attempted any deflationary surgery of my own [visions of punctured beachballs from ‘Dark Star’ come to mind]. But when it DOES go, it ain’t gonna be pleasant; I can see myself carting round the sterile swabs for the next few days, just in case a tidal wave of …uh, okay, I think that imagery goes on hold too.

Time for dinner. Pork pie and salad, methinks, or at least anything that doesn’t involve ovens. Though the way I’m going, I’ll probably drop the pork pie on my foot and fracture a toe. LONG live the new flesh…

It’s hot. Too hot. That’s only been one week of ‘summer’ temperatures, and already, things like slush and frost have taken on a nostalgia value right up there with Frank Sinatra. Coming, as I do, from the far North of Scotland, I think that my hatred of the sun is possibly genetic in some way. Though, to be strictly accurate, it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. I’m pretty sure it was warmer last weekend in Hamburg (don’t worry, full report will follow later, when the photos return — I’m damned if I’m going to get less than two weeks’ worth of editorials out of that trip!), but it was a dry heat, and so was not too unbearable. London, however, seems to specialise in the sort of heat where you can feel the moisture condensing on the insides of your lungs.

Of course, other factors did come into account. The fact that we were never more than fifty yards from a pub probably helped, as did wandering round in the lightest T-shirt I could find, as opposed to the nightmare which is a suit in a London summer. This is especially true when you have to get on a crowded train, with people for whom the concept of personal hygiene is apparently a bit tricky. But at least that does go above ground, rather than descending into the bowels of the Earth for a brief glimpse of what life after death will be like, if you’re not good.

This, so far, is but a mere precursor — after all, it’s only mid-May, and things will get a LOT worse before they get better, I can confidently state. Still to come, we have those hot summer nights, where you lie there on the bed, with the blankets thrown off, and the windows wide open, praying alternately for unconsciousness and a breath of air, but being disappointed on both counts. These are the sort of days where the slightest movement leaves you sweating like a bad dose of flu, ruling out any activity more energetic than getting another cold drink. [I would just like to record that during the creation of the above paragraph, I disposed of a pint of lemon Tango, and a chocolate and cream trifle. It’s 23:30, and it is still FAR TOO WARM]

Part of the problem is that air-conditioning is still often viewed as an optional extra, because it’s something that will only be of use for two or three months in the summer. If you go somewhere like, oh, Arizona, then you’ll find that everywhere has it as a matter of course. Instead, about the best option here is to chuck all the food out of the fridge, clamber in yourself and pull the door shut. Though I imagine the imbecilic chief executive who abolished our dress-down days at work, is no doubt comfortable in his carefully climate-controlled office, rather than having to endure a mutual agreement between thirty co-workers with differing metabolisms — the end result being a sort of tepid compromise which pleases no-one.

But no matter how bitterly we complain, it ain’t gonna make any difference. The weather will probably keep getting hotter — blame El Nino, or global warming, the Earth falling into the Sun, or the Sun falling into the Earth, or whatever. And so, when a pretty girl, in summer-inspired minimal clothing, walks past lasciviously sucking on an ice-lolly, it is a fact of life that I just can’t help drooling — but it’s a sad reflection on what this weather does, that I’m probably thinking about the lolly…

Amazing scientific find! Neanderthal man located!

Scientists today announced the discovery of the so-called “missing link”, a primitive form of human closely resembling a giant ape, showing a very limited level of intelligence. The creature was found working as a bouncer in the Sussex pub near Leicester Square.

There are times when it seems to me that the sole purpose of bouncers is to give something to do, to jumped-up shits with an overblown sense of their own importance. I have *never* been grateful for their presence – not once – but their idiotic lack of common sense has caused aggravation on more than one occasion.

One evening, a dozen or so of us were out on a stag night, and were refused entrance because one (1) of the party was wearing training shoes. Luckily, he’d come up from Bristol for the event and had a change in his bag; he switched them over, and the same bouncer who’d blocked his way in a totally unremitting way, now welcomed him like a long-lost friend. Now, some of the blame for such idiotic rules has to lie with the owners — you are either a fit person to enter their establishment, or you’re not, what freakin’ difference does your choice of FOOTWEAR make? But, I guess, it’s necessary to keep the rules as simple as possible, because anything which requires intelligence beyond the level of pond-scum, will be too complex for your average bouncer to handle.

Witness last Monday [scarcely a peak night]. Myself and Simon Moore, keeper of the enormous and recommended Emmanuelle Beart site, visited the Cinema Store for a browse, and opted to go on for a pint or five afterwards, in the nearby Sussex pub. Several beers later, we were approached by a sloping-foreheaded goon, the archetypal bouncer, wearing a long coat despite the mild weather — presumably underneath it was a bone with which to brain members of other tribes. He asked me to put my jacket on.

“Excuse me?” was my first, fairly obvious, reaction. “No colours” was the grunted reply. I looked down at my shirt. New York Mets. I looked up at the gorilla to see if he was joking. He wasn’t, but then, I should have known that — both bouncers and Customs officers seem to require a sense of humour bypass as a condition of employment. I looked around for hordes of rampaging Yankees fans, and was disappointed. I enquired politely if he was aware that the Mets were a baseball team and that the “no colours” rule was clearly there to stop football fans. I mentioned the two hours we’d been there already, without the SLIGHTEST HINT of trouble.

However, needless to say, the thug in front of me would brook no argument, and I put the jacket on, simply because I couldn’t be bothered to argue with someone whose sole line of reasoning was physical intimidation. Even though anyone could still see very clearly that I was wearing a Mets shirt under the jacket, this mollified Mr. I.Q.Lukewarm and he shuffled off, presumably to bother another peacefully drinking customer.

The only bright spot, which might stop me from crossing the place off the list of viable drinking establishments, was that the staff’s opinion of their “security” was just as low. Though since the bouncers have apparently thrown people out for no other reason than being male [I’m not making this up, it came directly from a barman], I think I’ll find somewhere else to drink. It’s not as if there are any shortage of places in the West End!

I could get used to this. Between Easter, May Day, and Whitsun bank holidays, and a couple of actual days of holiday, I am currently in the middle of a seven-week spell when six of the seven weeks are only four days long. If I spread my holiday very thinly, I could get through most of the year like this, though it would mean that I wouldn’t get anything more than a long weekend. But it might be worth the price, simply to avoid the sheer hell which is Monday mornings.

This is especially true when you’re on the early shift. For reasons too historical to go in to, someone at work decided it would be a good idea if there was someone in the office to deal with queries from 7 a.m. — even if I’d have said that anyone dumb enough to be in work at that hour deserved whatever problems they might get. For a long time, I managed to avoid this particular honour, but just after Christmas, due to a (somewhat unsurprising) “staff shortage”, I was dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the rota.

I am not a morning person. In fact, I amn’t really an afternoon person either, and only really start to perk up at, oh, whatever time I get to go home. But it’s true to say that 7 a.m. is, as far as I’m concerned, an infernal hour at which everyone should still be curled up in bed having pleasant dreams about…well, never you mind, but you get the drift. The problem is that as the week goes on, and you get further and further behind in sleep terms (for really, who wants to go to bed at 9:30 pm?), you start to resemble an extra from ‘Carnival of Souls’. You finally reach Friday, and your mind can think of nothing more exciting than moist towelettes.

There are, admittedly, a couple of plusses. 95% of the time, nothing goes wrong, and you are left to your own devices — let’s just say that one week in four sees significantly more progress on the next issue of TC. It is probably also a good job that things are so quiet, since while my body may be in the office, my brain at that time of day is still curled up in bed having the aforementioned pleasant dreams. On a good day, I don’t actually hit consciousness till lunchtime — by which point, it’s almost time to go home, since the nominal hours are 7 a.m till 3 p.m.

Except, of course, the standard pattern is to skip lunch and piss off home at 2 o’clock. Ah, sorry, we’re not allowed to do that. What we are allowed to do, however, is to take our lunch at 2 — and no-one seems to mind whether you come back or not. It’s a small, bureaucratic device that fools no-one at all, but if it oils the wheels of life a little bit, hey, who cares.

Despite this, being on earlies sucks, and is a major reason why, when I was offered the chance to move to another area of the department — one that works far more civilised hours, my response time could be measured using the lifespan of some of the shorter-lived subatomic particles. I thus have only one more week of crawling from bed while larks are still snoozing, before I can (hopefully) leave it all behind me for ever. Let’s just hope that’s enough time to get the rest of TC sorted out…