"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilisation, which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain the and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilised world."

Taken from 'The Torture Garden' by Octave Mirbeau

Having researched what people put on their web pages, I have found that a large number include a 'Personal' page, about them and their families, pets and even their hopes and desires.

Although that often makes for a good laugh, you can also clearly see why such people are ridiculed; anything you publish on the web makes a comment about you and your personality... (Oh crap).

(Several of my friends read my pages so I guess I'm going to know pretty soon whether or not they agree with some of my opinions)

Anyway the main purpose of this section is just a slightly different way of looking at things that are wrong with the world (phew, I've got this far and not mentioned the Jerry Springer show once!) It is also a type of critic's page, not because I'm particularly knowledgeable about anything, but maybe because I enjoy criticising people who are more intelligent than myself.

Absurd Diaries

Recently I subscribed to an e-mail discussion list on the band 'Manic Street Preachers' out of curiosity, some of the people who posted messages and opinions were rather ordinary, but there were also some really strange ones regarding sexual fantasies and the lives of the people on the list. One of the emails I received was entitled 'Diary part Four' and was from a regular voice on the message group. Despite having been subscribed to the list for several weeks I had not come across parts one to three of the diary and no more have been received since. At first reading I assumed that the mail was an attempt at humor and was made up, but, as I continued to read I was no longer certain. Is it possible it is genuine and was maybe sent by mistake? Or have I found someone with an even weirder sense of humor than myself? Either way, it is certainly worth reading so here it is.

(Warning, if this turns out to be from a person you know, you didn't find it here)

(NB there are many references to the Manics, but knowledge of the band is not necessary to understand how truly disturbed the author is)

"It is, of course, profoundly ridiculous that one wank from a prostitute can cause so much indignation in a country where seven million people devour page three over breakfast"

James Dean Bradfield

If the British people had wanted to be part of mainland Europe we wouldn?t have spent the last 500 years fighting them in various ways. We can't even hold the f*cking UK together without a bunch of sausage sucking sauer-crouts sticking their noses in. The basic message is just leave it be, we're too immature to be part of something bigger when the poor hard done by Welsh & Scots can't go a week without wanting to be cut off from England so they can float away into the sunset. Island mentality my arse.

The more I go out, the more I socialise, the more I realise I've got to accommodate the beliefs of others to a scary degree... the problem is, I just hardly agree with anybody else, or their beliefs"

James Dean Bradfield

"It comes from the idea that the first thing a baby does is shriek at the horror of it all. And as, when you get to adolescence, the rewards of being older don't really give you any satisfaction whether it's getting a new car or a fuck or a CD player. It's also about the fact that, if you go into newsagents & see pornography on the top shelf at an early age, it becomes very difficult to reconcile that with the idea of 'love' that you're presented with later. I think we're romantic people in some ways, but when it comes to relationships it's not a question of 'Can you trust another human being?' so much as a question of trusting yourself. The animalistic nature of man seems to mean that you're bound to find other people physically attractive. And there's something dishonest about shutting those feelings off - it seems puritanical to deny yourself that. The idea of sin is still so widely pervading."

"Life Becoming a landslide - Gold against the soul - notes" Richey James Edwards

The modern fox thrives in urban areas (due to lower instance of twats on horseback & packs of insensible dogs), but he does not, as they say, come quietly. Due to protracted nature of the copulation process and vixen's technique of 'locking' vagina onto penis, Reynard's bloodcurdling nocturnal screams can be heard all night during rumpo season. Enough to wake the suburban dead.

Corner shops used to go 'ting-a-ling' when you entered, a jolly signal to Mr. Arkwright that Mrs. Caldwell had come in for her farmhouse loaf & tin of brasso. Now they go 'DEE DOOT!' (Meaning-shoplifter! Alert!). During busy periods-i.e.. Last orders for lottery tickets on Saturday - it's like being inside a fax machine.

Yum-te-tum-te-tum-te-um? Quick! Re-tune to Melody FM, Heart 106, even bastard Radio1, anything but Eddie Grundy going on about calving for 15 minutes.

Despite major advances in technology it is clearly beyond the over funded capability of scientists to invent a washing machine that doesn't threaten to bring the house down during the death throes of it's spin cycle. Even Metallica & the Venga Boys stick their fingers in their ears when the Zanussi hits tumble dry.

Eeee! Eeeee! Eeee! Eeeeeeee!

Is there a more acute crystalisation of twentieth century angst than shaking a CD box & hearing the telltale tinkle of plastic that tells you the little pegs have snapped off the nub which holds the disk in place?

Dentist's. Pneumatic. Black & Decker. That big f**ker Peter Cushing and Doug McClure used to get to the earth's core. Anything those whirs & makes holes, make them all go away.

It's stressful enough going to the hair dresser's - putting you're head in the hands of a man who is unnaturally interested in where you went on holiday, smells of soap, listens to independent local radio & stock exotic hair oils not manufactured since 1945 - without the buttock clenching sni-I-ip of scissors which sound as if he's been using them to trim bacon rind & leaving them in the washing up bowl overnight. And so close to your ear, too.

Not that it's cruel to keep dogs as pets, unnaturally deprive them of their pack mentality, feed them left over trifle as a treat, put Christmas party hats on them for funny photos & then leave them locked out of the house all day with a bowl of water & a squeaky toy in the shape of a rolled-up newspaper?but it doesn't take a trained psychologist to ascertain from their constant melancholic howling that they are very, very unhappy indeed. Although not as unhappy as the people who live next door.

Did Mr. Dolby die so that we could enhance a film's soundtrack by unwrapping opal fruits, rummaging through pop-corn, slurping diet coke, answering mobile phones, noisily getting off with the person next to you and asking each other if that's the blonde women who got shot at the beginning without her wig & how come she's not dead?

The modern railway journey is a collection of annoying noises: mobile phones with novelty ringing tones, bored children, PA feedback. But for sheer sphincter fingering unease, there's little to beat the industrial squeal of metal on metal to have you leaving the train with a spring in your step.

Babies are all adorable & in every way essential to the continuation of the human race, but when they cry like broken air-raid sirens - which is often- on plains, on trains, in buses, in cars, in waiting rooms, in hospitals, in the street, at bus stops, on Telly, in the next room, upstairs & downstairs. King Herod doesn't seem so unreasonable after all does he?

Ding-ding! Can you start drinking up now please? Ding-ding-ding! Haven't you got homes to go to? What's the matter-does the sound of the 11 o'clock bell actually trigger an impulse dark and remote within your soul that signals a deep existential panic about the godlessness of the universe? See you tomorrow.

"It was Christianity which first painted the devil on the world's wall: It was Christianity which first brought sin into the world. Belief in the cure which it offered has now been shaken to its deepest roots; but belief in the sickness which it taught & propagated continues to exist."

Nietzche