[montsnmags]

G'day et al (Go on, correct my usage. You know I love it when you talk teacher to me). Welcome to my Sunday Dreaming. Come one, come all. Don't be shy. We're all friends here, and hardly ever bite (and if we do, we nibble). No application is necessary. No post-count is judged. No admission fees are charged. No cliques are entertained.

Welcome and welcome again.

Nice to see you, Steve. I'd feared that your posting predominance at Mobileread indicated a personality dedicated to seriousness and intelligent discourse - it's good to know we can entrap you in sticky silliness (silly stickiness?) as well (Welcome. "You can check out any time you like but you just can't ever leave").

So, the dark, later half of Sunday comes around, and I am forced once again to contemplate the aching chaos of error, ego and bland insanity that has lead me to this point (and worry about the homework that I don't have to hand in tomorrow, not having been to school for 20 years). 'Tis the temporary apocalypse of my mind, Sunday night, and so it is necessary that I distract myself from the drowned woods by beginning the provocation of Unutterable Silliness (tm) once again.

So, to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's The Wall (sorry, Zelda - I'd like to serendip the light fantastic with the Rocky Horror Picture Show tomorrow if you'd like), let us play before bedtime. Let the dogs out, come alive, and take off all your clothes, before our guardians shout for us to turn off the lights, turn down the music, and we have to Itty Bitty beneath the bedsheets. There are some matters to attend to.

Firstly, to my dearest soul-eater, Cthulhu, who I note has just preempted me at the pool-bar...

As Microsoft once said in an effort to create it's own grammatical meme independent to that of verbing nouns, "Welcome to the social" (the social what? Please let it be "intercourse" so I can snigger like Benny Hill). Let me show you to your reserved throne (no, it's only white porcelain because of its resistance to stain, honest), and pour you a long, dark glass of extra-dimensional ennui (I've put a little, blue umbrella on top, so that people know that under that skirt of tentacles, you're all man, baby, or so the many soulless ladies tell me). This is not so much "social networking" as "drinks after midday". Pull up your pew and settle in - the Lounge bar is open, and it's Unhappy Hour!

Secondly, a grateful nod to my good friend (by which I mean "someone who replied to me on the internet"), TadW, who wishes me "sweet dreams" despite all evidence of a contrary likelihood. He's nice - he's like the lovely man who brings you your final meal before execution.

Finally (by which I mean not finally at all - the evening is still young), I would like to thank the following people from elsewhere:

- those who conflate their own subjective preferences into an ethos that must be defended at all costs should someone dare desire something otherwise;

- those who respond to any differing opinion with voluminous (both textually and emotionally) outrage and ad hominem pejoratives of ridicule and pointless facetiousness while simultaneously creating large, empty spaces within their vitriole where actual content (or at least some semblance of thought) should reside, but doesn't.

- those who must enter any conversation to bemoan, in an obnoxious and self-righteous tone, the presence of their particular bugbear lest some poor newbie become confused by the bugbear's flagrant misdirection and heinousness into taking a course of action that brings into jeopardy the future of the human race (the Calling of Cthulhu excepted, of course)

- those dribbling, feeble-minded, arrogant arses that do any of the above in response to a newbie's innocent and nervous introduction of "Hi, I'm new and looking forward to speaking to you all about [insert incorrect/disliked terminology/idea/spelling]" (unless, of course, said newbie has partaken of the above themselves, in which case, I will myself drag them down into my own private Hell, hooked-through with rusty talons on the end of chains of razorwire. Let's call all it "Extreme Body Piercing")

It is those above of my fellow travellers, the practitioners of pedantic and empty polypillory, that I credit with bringing me, manic-and-morbid to this prettly Lounge.

After I have spent several hours composing posts intended to rip-and-chew the flesh from their incoherent ideas and ground the bones of their non-arguments into an odoriferous mush, before then deleting my own posts...unsent, self-determined as time-wastage in a spasm of pessimistic frustration and existentialist isolationism,...

...after those pointless pre-retractions, I come here, to the Lounge, my Boulevard of Broken Screams,

with Friends who pat me on the back and wish my dreams sweeter;

with friends who berate me my foolishness as not being foolish enough;

with Great Old Ones who aren't afraid to knock back a double-ennui-on-ice amongst us bloodbags;

with friends who bring me gifts of seal pelt and let me pinch their non-sacrificed virgin buttocks;

with friends who know and bring scarified innocents (always good for a round of "Let's abuse their illusions");

with friends who like pie and don't share but then do;

with friends who like a little jump to the left and then a step to the ri.i.iiii.ight;

with friends who call themselves "yvanleterrible" (what's not to like?);

with friends who seem to have a distinctly unexpected, succinct and delightful sense of humour at very rare times (I'm looking at you, Jon);

with friends who aren't too proud to talk about Paris Hilton;

and finally, of course, with friends like nekokami, who always brings a frisson of "dead sexy" to the party (which is odd, since my predilections don't extend along that particular branch).

Welcome, folks. It's SHOWTIME!


"So ya...thought ya...might like to...go to the show...
To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow

Well I've got some bad news for you, sunshine..."


Cheers,
Marc ("skating on the thin ice of modern life")