09.10.2009 - 2:06 p.m.

There was a man on the news last night who is a poet and he was being interviewed as a representative for National Poetry week, he said

"i think words are the most powerful force in the universe"

silly man, everyone (except mad fundies) knows that gravity is the most powerful force in the universe, a couple of sonnets ain't going to stop Andromeda tearing itself to pieces.

honestly some people think the universe revolves around them and their own peculiar pecadillos, but then again if it does revolve around them then they must accept that gravity trumps squiggles on pages

trumps as in 'scores higher' not trumps as in 'passing arse gas', because although a funny thought to see a black hole farting letters onto paper it's... actually, fuck it, it is funny, if you gave a thousand black holes each a typewriter and all eternity to do it, they would eventually fart out the works of shakespeare, true fact, tell your friends.

If a black hole being interviewed for National Singularity week then he/she/it would be correct to say

"i think this galaxy revolves around me"

but black holes are generally smarter than poets.

i'm not biased against poets though, i really like wordsworth and a few contemporary contemporaries, i even crack out my own attempts on occasion with mixed results, for me poets occupy the same strata as llamas and fruit bats, it's nice to know they're about and adding diversity to the overall scheme of things but i couldn't find a use for them if i had one.

A friend of J's tried to educate my literary palate by lending me 2666, got about halfway into the second 'book' of the book before abandoning it, never before have i cared less about a bunch of self absorbed, whiney, knob faced characters going about their boring boring lives. Mr Bolano may be heralded as a dead literary genius winning accolades left right and center but he knows fuck all about writing a book. My earliest memories of being taught about writing at school were to draw the reader in as early as possible, if by the second or third chapter you can't wait to plough through the rest of the book to reach the conclusion then the writer has failed. In the case of 2666 i laboured to work my way through it with thoughts of being rewarded by some profound plot twists and revelations, and was rewarded with nothing, the plot was beige, the characters dull, at the end of the first 'book' i was presented with a second 'book' with mostly the same characters in a different and equally boring setting.

for my money, Iain M Banks jizzes all over Bolano from a great height, but then i love sci fi and always have

i've just now wiki'd 2666 and see that there are no plot twists and the mysterious writer they were searching for turns out to be someone else under an assumed name, bollocks to that. If 2666 is beige (and it is) then in comparison The Alchemist or Excession by Mr Banks are full on 800 mcg acid trips complete with records being played backwards and melting walls, suck it The Zombie Bolano.

i went for an extended tour in dland yesterday just to see what was out there and found 3/4 of all diaries i investigated are locked, I only looked at diary names i thought were interesting but i covered the whole alphabet so my sample is still statistically relevent, i think these people are taking themselves far too seriously, or the crazy stalker issue on the interwebs is far worse than i thought, but i suspect it's the former.