Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Well, Christmas is over. At least, I think it is. For all intents and purposes. I was quite surprised we still had the tree up when I went downstairs, actually. Today in town the shops still persisted in pumping novelty Christmas songs into our brains so I’m not entirely sure my admittedly rash assumption that the holiday is essentially over has reached everyone. Maybe we need a new name for the bit between Christmas and New Year’s, where people swap unwanted gifts and spend excess money before the sales begin in earnest. I can only think of “Postmas” but that’s not very good.

It was a terrible feeding frenzy today, of consumerism and money spendage. I find such things increasingly distateful, there’s a neocapitalist ideal somewhere I’m struggling to reconcile with such rampant displays of property pursuit but I become more and more disdainful of the whole process of extracting money from an overly stupid public. I’m still relatively certain a free market is a good idea, but I think the problem with the system is actually the people. If we could just bypass them everytihng would go smoothly. I believe Communism and the like have similar problems, actually, this is why I tend to abandon the pursuit of political ideals. No situation is ever ideal.

Anyway, that said, I did manage to further contribute to the world of literature by purchasing myself a copy of “If nobody speaks of remarkable things”, mentioned a few times previously. I’ve been reading Kate Atkinson’s “It’s not the end of the world” which is turning out quite nicely, the first 3 stories are all good but I’m wondering if there isn’t maybe a touch of surreality for the mere sake of it. I’m wondering if continuing to read will reveal a set of common themes but right now I’m left with the impression she attempted to write 3 Sci-Fi novels and got stuck after the opening act. I’m not sure if anyone else sees it like that, though, the problem with people who don’t normally write genre fiction is that when they start doing it everyone goes “wow” and somewhere, Phillip K. Dick rotates slowly in his grave. However, the ideas are good and the writing solid, and I’m glad to have made a change by getting books by new authors, all too often I get caught up in the “tried and tested” pattern whereby I only buy things by people I know and like, or that have been proven good over time, and it’s good to attempt to break that framework for a while. I never got around to reading the older books I brought back home with me, but after I’ve read these two, I’ll head back to more historically prestigious pastures.

After dropping Nikki and Jo back home (for they were in town with me too) I came back, made food, watched some more Futurama - the commentaries are as funny as the episodes - and then X-Men 2. It really is a good film, and I’m relatively upset it’s not going to be until 2006 that the next one comes out. But I’ll live.