Update!!!

1) Since our Hattist performance at the Book Trust, where we received a standing ovation and groupies a-go-go, there have been plans to build a giant floating fez-ship over Edinburgh, keeping watch over the non-hat-wearing population. The fez-ship will contain lasers to keep the docile consumer masses in their proper headgear before the Sultan of the Hat returns. This ship, Uncle Fezter, or another fez pun, will be powered by HIM.

2) I am addicted to cuddlecore music. I am talking about Cub, Bunnygrunt and The Muffs. These bands write twee pop songs with childish melodies that makes one want to get up and dance and shed ice-blue panties. I have come to realise how much of a slave I am for a cute pop hook and I do not care what the cooler-than-thou crowd says.

3) I am nearing the end of a fifteen-book Gilbert Sorrentino marathon, and I never want to write anything linear ever again. I want to hide in a cave and carve postmodern stories into walls, lapidate passersby, and send abusive smoke signals to the “civilised” world. Gilbert has changed how I think about narrative composition and ice-blue panties.

4) In Chris Bachelder’s U.S.!, a great fuss is made about the excessive usage of exclamation points in the novels of Upton Sinclair. I have decided, to forge a more positive outlook, to end every sentence I write in exclamation points! This technique is a lesser-known Oulipian quirk, and within good reason! Can you imagine reading a whole novel like this! You would be either outraged or amused! I imagine outraged, though!

5) Before I start the second year of my Napier MA, I am undergoing an airborne sex change. I demand that the operation be performed while hurtling through the air at 10,000ft. The complicated procedure will be conducted within a floating gazebo, decorated by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen (remember him?) and my doctors will be former cast members of E.R.

Mauve?

Why do you write? Do you write to make sense of the world? Is that too trite? Do you write because you have a passion for language? Do you think that is good enough? How are you going to write something accessible for the kiddies? Do you write because you have a unique take on things? How unique, exactly? Are you as unique as Lydia Davis? Or Elizabeth Browning? Or are you somewhere in between? Or nowhere in between? Is one person’s uniqueness better than another person’s uniqueness? Was that sentence awkward? Would you like a paragraph break?

Is that better? Are you finding this wearisome? Would you like a break? What if I say no? Is this blog post more or less unique than Elizabeth Browning? Who is Elizabeth Browning? Sonnets From the Portuguese? How do I love thee? Do I love thee? Do I think thee is not as unique as Lydia Davis? Do I love Lydia Davis? Who is Lydia Davis? Is she better than Lydia Millet or Lydia Lunch? Does Lydia Lunch like lunch or prefer dinner? What did I have for lunch? Is that any of your business? What did you have for lunch? Is that any of my business? Paragraph break?

What are you wearing? Is it mauve? What is the point of mauve, anyway? Would you use mauve in a story? Have you ever worn mauve in your life? Why should we bother describing clothes in stories? Does anyone really care what another person is wearing? Oh, you do, do you? Well, how would you like three pages of exacting description about clogs? What’s that? If they were pretty clogs? Are you serious? What’s that? I should be working on my story, not faffing about with the interrogative? Should I? Should I?

Yes?

Apologies

I would like to apologise to the following:

1) Bonnie Raitt, for fourteen years sneering at your accessible Grammy-winning C&W stylings.
1) Jem Finer, for considering your contributions to the Pogues of no consequence.
1) Ian Rankin, for using you as a whipping boy on this blog in past posts, when I should have used Iain Banks.
1) Franz Kafka, for finding your prose tedious to the point of despair, and your despair tedious to the point of prose.
1) Don Delillo, for not reading a single word of your books because I hate your name.
1) To all Jennifers, for using the name Jennifer for every female character I write.
1) Don Delillo again, as the more I think about that name, the more irritated I become.
1) My body, for eating that whole bag of marshmallows.
1) Anyone reading this tripe.
1) The inventors of cheese, for finding your product disgusting and reprehensible.

Quiddity Theme Tunes

Popular singer Abby National has kindly contributed the following five potential themes for this potentially interesting blog:

1. “Both Quiddities Now”



2. “Life on Quiddity”



3. “Trouble on Quiddity”



4. “Quiddity Matters”



5. “Quiddity in the Wind”

The Curious Business of Torrented e-books

OK: Say you are a reader. Say you actually like to read books and take pleasure in other people’s words and ideas. Say, after so many years reading these books, you decide to give up reading them in print, and switch to online or via kindle. Busy life and all that. No room in the satchel for a lumpy Charles Dickens or slim Aimee Bender. You are a go-getter. You gulp down lattes and say “no rest for the wicked.” Go you.

So: Now that you are reading books in a digital medium, a thought occurs to you: ‘Hey . . . I wonder if I could download these books as a torrent? Well, why not? I mean, all that music I downloaded last year from Rapidshare and other morally dubious file-hosting websites was free. Why not books? I mean, I earn enough money to own a kindle, so why should I have to pay for other things? Why can’t I spend that money on Nigerian whores or cheese?’

Indeed. So there you go, logging onto everything4free.net, downloading every new release reviewed in the Guardian that week. Well done. You have stolen forty novels and have helped publishing in its goal to be replaced by Rupert Murdoch's Asian cable channels. So what now? Where do you possibly begin with this e-sack of illegal loot?

I mean, it takes you about a month to get through one book, doesn’t it, because you are a slow reader, aren’t you, yes, you read slowly because you are too busy exchanging witty summaries of your exciting life to your chic urbanite friends who power-walk and do lunch and other repulsive vacuities of our repugnant capitalist world, yes, and you couldn’t possibly get to that new J.M. Coetzee when you are still reading that Martin Amis from 2008, and you like Martin Amis, but he doesn’t half go on much, but you recognise his name, and you must like him, you must, because his views on warmenlovepolitics chime with your own and he appeals to your bourgeois sensibilities, and you will get to J.M. Coetzee at some point but, ooh, he’s a little offbeat and I’m not sure I’ll like him, so in all actuality I'll probably never get around to reading him, I’ll stick with Martin, yes, because I know him, he is a voice I trust, and at this time in my life I don’t really want to be experimenting with new writers, it’s not like I have the time to read him anyway, no, what with the meal-eating with friends and the work, and the going to see bands and pretending I’m still young and the hilarity I have with my friends, oh my many, my varied and many friends who also read one book per year but make $299K in the city, yes, we can’t possibly read with our schedules, no, we must exercise, watch films, watch reality TV ironically, no, we have no place for books in our lives, no, no, I don’t know why I got the Kindle to begin with.

My question then: HOW DO YOU ILLEGAL DOWNLOADERS EVER GET AROUND TO READING ANY OF YOUR THIEVINGS????

What? What’s that? Oh, you don’t? Of course you don’t, you peasants. So please: Get your dirty thieving e-paws of our beautiful books, you repulsive crooks, and get back behind your desks and listen to your Jamie Cullum. For Cullum is the way for you, and Coetzee is the way for us. Thank you.

Festival Highlights

1. Poetry Unbound

Ten poets undergo horrible experiences onstage – sodomy, stabbings, burnings, skinnings, and so on, then have ten minutes to compose a poem about their experiences. The audience votes the best poem and the winner gets a slot in the Slam Tent at the Ham-on-Rye Festival. Includes David Thirstburn, Alan Keswit, Shona McIlkley.

£19 Adult, £18.99 Student. Seating: 50. Expected: 200.


2. Bob Hacklaff + Jason Justinson

Bob Hacklaff, acid-tongued funnyman from Channel 4’s panel show All Politicians Are C**ts, is back with an outrageous new show: Fuck You, You Fucking Fuckface Motherfucking Fuck. In this rowdy and side-splitting show, Bob sets out to use the word ‘fuck’ five times in every sentence as a sociological analysis of the parameters of contemporary language. The Guardian: “A Rabelaisian romp that sets new boundaries of bad taste, then breaks them.”

Support from Jason Justinson, the most recent twentysomething cheeky Irishman who does jokes about relationships and the fact that there are actually differences between the sexes.

£7 Adult, £7 Student. Seating: 4. Expected: 900.


3. Brecht vs. Beckett

In a first for Edinburgh, The University of Chester’s drama graduates present Theatre of the Absurdly Tuneful. Beckett’s Waiting For Godot and Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera meet for the first time to form Waiting For Opera: an existential musical interposing the plot and characters from both plays to devastatingly original effect. The Herald: “Like being in the head of a schizophrenic Nazi janitor.” Original score by Katy Perry.

£40 Adult, £60 Student. Seating: 500. Expected: 3.


4. Madagascan Toe Orchestra

For the first time in Edinburgh, come and see the marvellous quintet from Antananarivo! This outstanding group perform tribal music on entirely on their toes, using their toenails as the driving instrument, with the rubbing sounds providing a support, or rhythm section. This is a one-off opportunity to see this incredible group – tickets are selling fast! They are performing hourly at the Hooterfooter Tent for the duration of the festival.

50p Adult, 35p Student. Seating: 30. Expected: 0.


5. The Critic Strikes Back

Five critics who have spent the duration of the festival in a loft in Morningside are invited to review, onstage, the shows they haven’t seen. Watch them as they reach for pithy quotes that kill dreams stone dead, insult performers they’ve never heard of, and undermine every idea by comparing it to something that has gone before. This is a must-see show, though the critics maintain it will be disappointing and not as good as Live Jenga.

10p Adult, 1p Student. Seating: 0. Expected: -5.


6. Live Jenga

For years, performers, actors and directors have wondered: could you make Jenga into an event? Usually, the answer is no, but Bob Holm isn’t so sure. Using dramatic lighting techniques, tense music and two moody competitors, Bob sets out to prove Jenga can be as entertaining as Shakespearean tragedy, and a lot less wordy. No coughing or heckling permitted.

£400 adult, £399.85 student. Seating: 10,000. Expected: 50,000.

Flush Fiction

Why are there never any reading materials in public toilets?

Say I go into the stall in a restaurant bathroom for a number two. I don’t want to walk past men at the urinals carrying a book, because this is odd behaviour, and I want to keep odd behaviour to a minimum in public life, so I have to go in there with nothing. If I have partaken in a hearty meal, I will be in there for 5-10 minutes, which seems the perfect length to read a short piece.

So here’s what I propose: Flush Fiction. Each public toilet should have a writer-in-residence. Their task is to compose short stories on one or two sheets of toilet paper. The stories don’t have to be brilliant: basic Man A does Thing B and ends in Happiness C stuff. The point is, the stories will keep the user occupied during their time on the toilet, and they can use the story afterwards to wipe themselves.

The prospect of having someone wipe their bum with an original work of yours might seem ghastly, but think of the practise. You will write so many little vignettes that a genius idea is bound to spark. You will soon be on the bestseller list, courtesy of those hours of forced writing. You can do this work from home: sheets of loo roll can be shipped to the writer, who writes their work along a roll, respools it, then sends it to the establishment.

The classier the location, the different the stories. Swanky eateries require Victorian yarns or comedies-of-manners, whereas your fast food joints will make do any potboiler or bonkbuster. There is no telling what people will like, of course, so be as eclectic as you can. Stalls could even be divided into various genres, meaning women will get a more diverse reading experience, which is fine, as women read more than men on average.

Write to your local restaurant. Say you demand Flush Fiction in their stalls at once. Say you refuse to sit there staring at graffiti which, although mini-narratives in their own right, lack a proper story arc. Give public toilets the stories they deserve.