Keith Banner: The Smallest People Alive

This is an extraordinary book that finds its truths and lyricism in lives that seem to offer almost nothing. The stories are peopled by the clinically obese, retards, workers in dead-end jobs, the lonely, the handicapped: the smallest people alive. What’s more, they’re wise and self-aware enough to know who they are and how little they’re owed. What saves them is love, or the possibility of it, of crumbs from love’s table. Most of the stories deal with gay men or boys, but that should exclude no one from their power and, often, humour. I was touched and amused, and deeply impressed, by Banner’s capacity to make the world he describes not only real but of value.

You can read a story from the collection here. And don’t miss the links for other stories at the bottom of the page.

Proliferation

A treat I didn’t expect is to be able to use this blog to refer you to other blogs featuring me, in this case the brand-new Picador blog. This is so onanistic I’m almost too ashamed to give you the link.

Almost.

Mnemonics

I’ve noticed that many of my labels (the little words at the bottom of each post – I know you knew, but still…) have only been used once. This seems a very uneconomical practice, so I thought I’d try to boost the numbers of a few by reviving a mnemonics exercise I was taught many years ago. It goes like this. If you want to remember something you should associate it with something else in as kinetic, colourful and, if possible, obscene a way as possible.

Now I’m not going to do this for you. I’m simply going to give you the pairs of words and let you do the associating. Here goes (and I’ll start with an easy one):

Borghezio – buttplug
Larry Craig – body snatchers
bars – pottery
circumcision – Paris Hilton
Ratzinger – very dark cave
fatwa – eucharist
heritage – dementia
Rupert Everett – soap

I’ll be testing you in the weeks to come. Don’t let me down.

Toilet paper poll

I suppose I could plead, as disappointed statisticians so often do, that the sample is too small to be significant (and if you didn’t vote, shame on you!). But that would be lily-livered of me, so I’ll just have to be brave and accept that the results do not entirely bear out my initial hypothesis, developed with Jane and tested at numerous social gatherings, that men fold their paper and women crumple it. Let’s take a closer look at the results.

Men who fold: 12 (48%)
Women who fold: 5 (20%)
Men who crumple: 3 (12%)
Women who crumple: 5 (20%)
None of the above: 0 (0%)

Until the rush of female voters (5) of the last few days, the first datum to be gleaned was either that more men than women visit the site or that men are more prepared than women to vote on such a delicate issue. The final difference, though, is trivially small (60% against 40%), so let’s move on and see how they voted.

Well, an overwhelming majority of men do tend to fold, so no surprise there. It would be fascinating to track down the nationality/age/sexuality/political allegiances of the three male crumplers (you know who you are), but not really necessary. Twelve out of fifteen is conclusive enough for me. Obviously, it would be interesting now to know how many sheets they each fold at any one time, but there are limits to what a poll of this nature can achieve.

The most startling result for me is that women divide right down the middle, with five folders and five crumplers. This goes against all my previously conducted field research, to such an extent that I wonder if the poll has been, in some way, tampered with. In fact, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that my poll, ground-breaking in its small way, has been deliberately skewed. Well, the truth will out. This tiny seed has been sown. Now let it grow.

Well said!

Sometimes you read a response to idiocy that is so complete, so elegant, so conclusive that it makes your heart sing. Well, my heart sang out loud when I came across this comment to a post by a religious nutter from San Diego, who claims that the recent San Francisco fires were divine retribution for same-sex marriage legislation. I won’t tell you his name because he already brags about receiving over six thousand hits a day (although judging from the comments most of them are from people who intensely loathe the man). After all, as Joe.My.God says: “I read him so you don’t have to.”

If you think that the state of the world today has anything to do with some roundabout interpretation of Leviticus – congratulations, you’re right. In fact, if you go to pretty much any epoch in the entire span of human history, even those that predate Christ, I bet you can find SOME evidence that backs up the idea that the End Times are at hand.

If you’d expand your hilariously myopic view of reality, you’d see that, among many other things:

1. Fires are extremely common in Southern California, even ones of this magnitude. I’ll bet all of the past ones coincided with some sort of homosexual legislation, come to think of it. I bet they also coincided with a homosexual being discriminated against or being hurt in a hate crime. Which one is God punishing us for?

2. Homosexuals are everywhere. There is always SOME sort of Gay Agenda being enacted, be it anti-discrimination law or affirmative action, and this happens all across the nation – and indeed, the world. Why God would set San Diego on fire for a few days as a message to anyone regarding homosexuality implies that God is weak or stupid, or self-defeatist, none of which are possible.

3. Regarding the Coincidence post: Yes. Yes, it can be mere coincidence. That is exactly what it is. If you looked for the entire body of current events, you would see a whole hell of a lot that these fires coincided with beyond one or two points of political correctness. By whatever logic you arrived at your answers with, I could as easily blame these fires on the Red Sox winning the World Series. (God is omniscient, he can start the fires ahead of time to coincide with their coming back from a deficit against the Indians.)

Get over yourself. God isn’t punishing anyone for anything, because he doesn’t exist, and even if he did he wouldn’t bother killing and evicting innocent people – in his own house no less! – with a poorly-aimed fire because somebody, somewhere, is marrying men to each other. Your beliefs are utterly senseless, and you’re insane. Good day.

Percect, isn’t it? Thank you, Anonymous.

The Cusp of Something

“Jai Clare’s stories are filled with the disaffected, those who kick against their everyday lives, who crave the mystic when seeking their spirituality, and who are desperate to be alone as much as they are desperate to be with someone. Whether in North Africa, Greece, or Britain her characters’ concerns remain the same. To find meaning in the universal and the personal, through transient sex or emotional depth. All told with a fluid intensity of prose that cuts to the heart of them, lays them bare to misfortune and fortune, and stands them waiting on the brink of discovery.”

Want to know more? Click here.

Nirvana: Smells like Teen Spirit

I love this song and I love this version of it. So there. Maybe it’s the cheerleaders.

Haikus

If you’d like to have a T-shirt with this written on it – and who wouldn’t? – click here. Another classic from Threadless T-Shirts.

Knock, knock, who’s there?

Never heard of Sylvia Browne? I hadn’t either before I read this article by Jon Ronson in today’s Guardian Unlimited. Apparently, she’s the most famous psychic in the United States. If you’d like to ask her a question about, say, your missing cat or why your boyfriend killed himself you can pay $750 and wait four years for a 30-minute telephone consultation. Alternatively, pay €4000 and go on a cruise, where she might just pull your name out of a hat during one of her lectures. This is the kind of in-depth information you’re likely to get:

“Am I ever going to have a better relationship with my father?” another woman asks.

“No,” Sylvia replies. “He’s narcissistic. He has sociopathic tendencies. Forget it. There’s a darkness there.”

“Thank you, Sylvia,” she says.

Sylvia seems to be psychically diagnosing a lot of people with narcissistic personality disorder today.

“Will you tell me exactly the time and place my father died?” the next woman asks.

“Ten years ago in Iowa,” Sylvia says.

“Iowa?” says the woman, surprised.

“I’m the psychic,” Sylvia snaps. “I’m telling you. Iowa.”

“Thank you, Sylvia,” the woman says, cowed.

The next woman asks, “What happened to my dog? Is she still alive?”

“No, honey,” Sylvia says.

The woman bursts into tears.

Read the whole thing. It’s worth it. And if you’d like to buy one of the old fraud’s inspirational books (titles include: Christmas in Heaven, Animals on the Other Side and, for only $14.95, God, Creation and Tools for Life), just click here.

Back to red (sorry, Amy)

Julian Schnabel was interviewed last night on Italian TV. The programme’s called Invasioni Barbariche, so it may have been a policy decision to appear so distracted – in the ironic 1960s rock-star sense of really being, like, somewhere else, man – and to wear pyjamas in such a coolly barbaric fashion. Irritatingly, he kept breaking into pidgin Italian, which confused the interpreter, the interviewer – the charming and resourceful Daria Bignardi – and, of course, the audience. He didn’t have much to say for himself in either language, apart from complaining briefly that he was forbidden by contract from drinking whisky on the show, although this may have been a joke. When Bignardi asked him why he was wearing pyjamas, he said that he needed the extra space for his balls. This may also have been a joke. It was his birthday, so all is forgiven.

He rose to the bait, though, when she mentioned recent criticism of his rock-star lifestyle, and came out with the old chestnut about how it wouldn’t make any difference if he distributed his fabulous wealth among the deserving poor, it would just be a drop in the ocean, and why didn’t his critics fuck off and do something useful with their lives. Obviously this morally complex issue has been discussed in depth with friends like Bono, Johnny Depp, er, David Bowie…

She also asked him what he thought about the recent Trevi fountain incident. He said the red was a beautiful red and wanted to know the name of the artist. When Bignardi explained that the dyer’s hand, in this case, belonged to a right-wing activist with a criminal record for political violence, he said – wait for it – art is art, whatever. Oh God, he must have read my blog!