Saturday, November 25, 2006

It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you


Weather

The weather this week: cramped, dismal and Russian. It serves to remind one of why the English are quite so wretched.


Boring man

Last week I met a very boring man. I was trapped in his company for about an hour, perhaps longer. It was enough time for me to appreciate a distinction between the boring and the merely dull. Dull people are without merit. They lack qualities. Boring people are different; they actively engage you in conversation, and suck you into their tedious world of anecdotes and solipsistic pomposity. They are wasting your time. They are standing too fucking close. If you insult them they don't notice, which is enraging. You want to kill them but they will not die. They simply will not die. My friend was mugged and the boring man immediately told her in great detail of the time one of his friends was mugged, as though as it were a competition. Boring people are intensely competitive. Likewise, intensely competitive people are boring. Sometimes the world is simple, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Eva Green
I had Bond Girl Eva Green tipped for stardom after five minutes of dirty old Bertolluci's bi-curious arthouse skinflick The Dreamers.

Cigarettes
There are two types of cigarette and they are both Class A Cigarettes. The first is your standard filter-tipped wincer at around £5.50 a pack. Camel, Marlboro and Lucky Strike are favoured by the young and trendy, who think that Rothmans are a bit working-class. The second type is smoked by older people who are in the know. This cigarette is longer, cheaper, comes in packs of 25 and has an aristocratic name, such as Mayfair and Regal. Those attracted to an elitist, clubroom, invitation-only aesthetic may enjoy the smooth taste of John Player Special. The packaging is often exquisitely gaudy, with gold trim and bevelled edges. Some of these brands are menthol flavoured. All these cigarettes taste and smell disgusting and no-one would smoke them if they weren't highly addictive. They are sprayed with chemicals so that each cigarette burns itself out, ensuring you light another if you forget to smoke continuously. Remember, they are both Class A cigarettes made from a careful blend of only the very finest Virginian and Domestic tobbacos. I have a Craven 'A' tin from the 1920's. On the inside lid reads the legend 'These cigarettes are specially formulated to prevent sore throats'. The fact that companies are no longer allowed to lie to us so brazenly means people think that they might now be telling the truth. Let them lie to us again; let them weave colourful webs of ludicrous deceit; then it will be obvious that they aren't to be trusted.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

one of the worst aspcects of boring people is their ability to turn non boring people into boring people merely by proximity, sucking them into their stupid anecdote competitions ("fight not with monsters..." etc.). A dead giveaway is when someone starts a sentence with something along the lines of 'yeah, no but the best was this time when...' at this point you have ot run.

Nick Talbot said...

Yup, you just have to run away. There's nothing else you can do. These people are completely oblivious to the effect they are having. Other people are just microphones for them to talk into. Sometimes they just talk over the top of you. I one met a guy who would start talking again at exactly the moment you struggled into a response to their last pointless anecdote. These people will survive a nuclear winter.

Anonymous said...

Eva Green has deliciously evocative eye-flames in the Dreamers. She is very beautiful with just the right amount of the Devil in her smile.

That film has Michael Pitt from Last Days in it. I thought that film was actually quite an incisive meditation on loneliness, humanism and the collapse of genuine communication. Which kind of links back to people who can only emit sound waves and not process those returned to them. I remember reading most people thought Last Days was just a guy mumbling in an old house for 2 hours. Which I concede is a valid opinion.

Ive never smoked im too scared.

I really don't like the Joanna Newsom album. Does anyone else? Its a bit twee and all over the shop. It reminds me of Astral Weeks but I never liked that either. I might trade it in at HMV for the Final Destination boxset.

Anonymous said...

Think I was a bit harsh on Joanna, case of the 1st listen panic. Ys without doubt treads the thinnest of tightropes between tweeness and outright dementia. But after about 4 listens it starts to unravel affectingly naked emotions beneath the monkey and meteorite references. Think this one needs time.