Sunday, August 07, 2011

Ottoman Umpire

I can't quite work out why the European Athletics championships are being held in a small rodent.

***

The house has been like May. Football was back on telly today and come 3pm, the wife had that feeling of deja vu again, watching her beloved Hammers lose, at home, to Cardiff, in the last minute of their first game in the minor leagues. In May, West Ham got relegated poorly and in August things haven't, it seemed, got any happier.

I know a lot of Hammers fans and unlike most Spurs fans, I do not hate them. I think they belong in the Premier League; they are a big club, with huge traditions and even if my wife wasn't a fan, I'd still feel the same way. The positive thing for me is that we won't throw away 4pts to them this season.

***

I'm wondering if Saturday 6th August has some special meaning in the Eastern European calendar? Last night, we had several parties going on, all around us, with trashy disco music, shouty foreigners and far far too many fireworks for a mild August evening. I finally crashed about 2am and it was still going on all around.

I hope they all had really bad hangovers this morning, we're sick a lot and their partners refuse them blow jobs, for months...

***

I don't consider publishing an Amazon Kindle book as being properly published, therefore I don't think the availability of my book about comics is really a published book; but today has been a weird old day.

My Monthly Curse (which I have to admit I'm not remotely happy with the title, never have been) went live in the Kindle Store on Saturday. I managed to upload the right version (I think) and my good, dear friend Will was, I believe, the first person to buy it. Thanks Will! The wife was dreaming of paying the mortgage off, I was hoping that it might bring in £100 (and trust me when I say that was me at my most optimistic).

One El alerted me to its meteoric rise in the category it's listed in; rising up to a high of #13 by the end of Sunday. I charted! Maybe huge rises in minority categories are measured in single digits and it might have been a slow day for everything else, but even though it had dropped to #18 by the time I wrote this, I couldn't help but feel a lot happier than I have for a long time.

***

What do you do for an encore?

The thing is, with the 'publication' of a kind(le) of book, I've shut the door on it. It's finished. I can no longer add forgotten anecdotes and extra information; it isn't fair for those buying it, for starters. Yet, unsurprisingly, there are always things I can remember or stuff I should have said, that aren't in there.

Obviously, I could just put them all down and start a follow up, but that would be a little like Tolkien following the Lord of the Rings with the Penguin Book of Corduroy. Lots has happened in the last few weeks alone and in light of events in Plaistow recently, people left out of the original manuscript, now could almost have starring roles.

I have toyed with the self-indulgent notion of writing the other bit. All the other interesting, funny and stupid things I've done that were happening concurrently with my adventures in comics. However, there are some things I don't want to talk about for obvious reasons. So if I stripped out all the sex and drugs, it would leave little of any consequence...

There's this comic novel I have. It's a novel about a man who is a comics creator. I have lots of notes and 75% of a story, I just don't know if I have it in me to write.

I could do nothing. But that seems like a bit of a cop out.

***

I applied for three jobs in the last week. I received the first failed response today. On a Sunday. Via email. Nice.

***

I'm sure there's more...

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