Questions.


Mariane asks Do you have some recommended reading? Anything you've been into this year?

Good question. I still have a great many books on my list to catch up with (A Scanner Darkly, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, Martian Time Slip,) and I am partway through The War Against Cliche, Greetings In Jesus Name!, The Two Towers, We Need To Talk About Kevin. I also want to re-read an awful lot of my books. I think all truly good books should be read at least twice. I need to get through all the Hunter S Thompson stuff and the Chuck Palahniuk novels again. So new books from this year, no, but I have tasked myself with finally making it all the way through The Lord Of The Rings and I think I might get that done soon.

I would recommend though, my usual Top Ten.

I recently finished The Penguin Of Death, which is the best childrens book ever written.



Danny Black asks Do you tend to play the same certain tunes when you feel depressed?

In a word - yes. As I have expressed elsewhere, certain music fits certain moods. Generally my favourite band is New Order because their music straddles the middle ground between miserable and hopeful, which seems to reflect my overall approach to the world. Music I listen to frequently when depressed :

The Holy Bible - Manic Street Preachers
Zooropa - U2
Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails
Animal Rights - Moby

Hopefully, you may be familair with the content of these records : generally they are sonically aggressive, lyrically nihilistic, or (especially in the case of U2), dislocated and lost at a remove from the society they exist within. Which is how I tend to feel about things when I am depressed - trapped in a world I neither recognise or connect with, and frustrated with feeling lost in a world that is not mine.

"Do not listen to a word I say
Just listen to what I can keep silent
The only way to gain approval
Is by exploiting the very thing that cheapens me

Someone somewhere soon will take care of you
I repent, I'm sorry, everything is falling apart
Houses as ruins and gardens as weeds
Why do anything when you can forget everything

And I stare at the sky
And it leaves me blind
I close my eyes
And this is yesterday."

Any more questions?
- posted by Mark @ 7:48 pm