There's So Much More to Life than ... "Blurk!"...

I HAVE SO MANY ideas, but not the resources to put them into operation. I'm overflowing with inspiration for my fantabulous glossy mag. The one I'm not telling anyone anything about, because it hasn't been done before...

Do you know, I worked out ~ if we got a worldwide circulation of 2.4 million across the three regions of North America, Europe and Asia and charged the same rates per reader per page as Vanity Fair and Vogue, and we achieved an average 100 pages of advertising per issue, we could pull in $500 million a year ~ about £320,624,899.20. How incredible is that~??!?

Have I got my sums wrong? Surely I must have...? I heard US Vanity Fair charges about $212,000 per page for a circulation of just over 1.2 million. And that British Vogue charges just over £20,000 a page for 210,766. These figures sound just too luscious to be true... Are they true..?? Can anybody tell me..? Maybe the costs of running a glossy monthly are sky-high also? Who knows. All I do know is that in the beginning I'm going to have a really hard time getting anything into the magazine. And then with the passing of time and an increase in readership and the achievement of iconic status, I know that people and products will be lining up to get in. And then I'll remember everyone who did me some favours back in the beginning...

Wow: I'm in a better mood today. I can see the light once more. Last week I was drowning in depression. My friend Binky said to me "if you need to talk about it, I'm right here at the other end of the phone" ~ but it wasn't like that. Me talking over my depression, or wondering what "issues" are involved ... is a bit like a person with influenza wanting to "talk over" their sore throat and fever and putting their acheing muscles and nausea down to "issues". The depression is just something that comes and goes irrespective of any issues or non-issues (or magazine issues).

My druggieworker was a bit annoying today saying "we all get down now and then and I never feel perfect" so I countered with the declaration that I do feel perfect sometimes. I don't feel down all the time. I get low moods and they come and go. I do not have any kind of depressive personality. I never told him about the psychic voices accosting me in the night, because that would be "mental health" ~ and methadone clinics seem to know next to nothing on that issue ~ and I'm not up for educating them.

I think I made a good point when I mentioned that most junkies are miserable anyway and he said yes, their lifestyle fuels the misery. And I said that I suspect that although heroin is relatively benign as drugs go ~ yes it is deadly in overdose, and of course it is highly addictive ~ but heroin is not associated with paranoid psychosis the way coke and speed are; it doesn't mess up a person's head the way too many Es or trips might. But I'm certain it does something to a person's psychology that is not good.

All clichés contain ingots of truth: so the "miserable junkie" stereotype doesn't exist for nothing. I'm sure heroin itself assists most ably in making unhappy people more miserable still, and I think part of this is pharmacological and not just the consequences of dependency upon a drug that is expensive and of uneven quality and illicit and soul-destroyingly addictive. I think something else is going on, something nobody can quite put their finger on. And I think it has something to do with what Narcotics Anonymous like to call "spiritual bankruptcy". I believe most who have been there know the place only too well, and even if they were articulate enough to give a description of living in hell day after day for years and decades, they wouldn't want to retread those paths of memory or to relive or re-experience or even think ever again about the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

I know the reason I want to stop this drugtaking is that a life of chemical slavery is mind-cripplingly dull, drab and boring. That my life has fallen into a pit that I not only want to crawl out of ~ I want to move on in every possible way. I was not born to waste away in a junkified morass of squandered potential and life unlived. I want so much more...

Attacked by a Psychic Circular Saw in the Night

I HAD another otherworldly experience in the night. This time a circular saw of syllables came and sliced right through my mind; it was saying "numnumnumnumnummm". You see this is what happens when I stop my medication. I took an entire pill last night. But I'd taken it before the num-nums came on and it didn't stop them. I just wanted to sleep... and I got my wish. I slept twelve hours last night, then managed another four this afternoon. It's so cold there's little point getting out of bed anyhow. And I've been feeling so depressed. Every time my phone rings the nasty noise "goes right through me" and I hide it under the bedclothes. I tried Glossy Magazine Therapy, when you leaf through fashmags like i-D, but with every flick of the page, the glossy paper whispered words to me. It was kind of poetic. Ukh: am I going mental yet again? I thought I was mental last week. Well I did afterwards. Now I just think I'm depressed. Just because i-D magazine is talking to you doesn't make you barmy, surely..? I mean, maybe i-D is just a bit talkative as magazines go..?

I note by scrolling down my blog that I left my body and went spiralling into hyperspace exactly a week before the "Circular Saw of the Num-Nums Episode". So maybe there's something going on here: a weekly celebration of surrealist psychiography perhaps..? I know a doctor would call these "dissociative" or "psychotic" experiences. But to me they are real experiences. They feel more dissociative than psychotic.

I hope Anna's porkshire is OK. There's been NO NEWS of her doggie Elle since the cancer op last week... They say No News Is Good News... but why does this feel SO BAD~~?

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DO YOU THINK there is any connexion between Num-Nums and Mu-Mus?
IF SO ~ perhaps Tammy Wynette would have known...?



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Feelin' ukkh

I WENT to bed early last night and woke up far earlier than desired. I must have got about ten hours' sleep but had barely slept at all the night before. So I woke up feeling crap. Then had to go to my friend Binky's, where I didn't really want to be. So I got out of there and went home and to bed, but I could not sleep. So now I'm here and I'm feeling ukkk...

I read a thing about moods and emotions, but I'm still not sure which is entirely which while it's being experienced. It's certainly possible to have an "elevated mood" but negative emotions... strangely the reverse does not tend to be true ~ ever heard of a person with clinical depression yet bright, positive thoughts? Doesn't happen: see how crap life is? Even when you feel good you can feel bad, but when you feel bad you cannot feel good. So all I have to say about that is: ukkkk, ukkk, ukkk...

On a more positive note, I looked up how much my magazine could charge in ad rates. If I got a circulation of 100,000 I think the average would be about £10,000 ($15,983) per page. So if we sold a hundred pages we'd take in a million pounds. Not bad, huh? Now all I have to do is set the thing up and persuade the world's top photographers and writers to contribute. See? Easy peasy!


Illustrated: I wanna publish Madonna's diaries too...

Beady-Eyed, Bushy-Furred Akitas and other Doggies Including Anna Grace's, who is Recovering from a Doggie Breast Cancer Op... Plus My FabMag

ANNA GRACE, my online cyberspouse, has been worrying herself ragged because her tiny pet porkshire terrier, Elle (short for Eleanor Rigby), has been diagnosed with doggie breast cancer and went under the knife at the weekend.

I just left a comment telling Anna the worst thing her doggie will now have to endure will be wandering about Green Bay, Wisconsin for the next week or so dressed as a furry light fitting. Doggies get just as embarrassed as we do when they think they look silly. Our late dog Glodemmer, who looked like a silvery furry seal, once had such bad "diredalls" as we called it (diarrhoea) that she had to have a fur-cut around her backside to get rid of all the "cagal" ~ as it's called in Welsh. (As far as I know there is no English word meaning "dried dung on animals' backs".)  

Poor Elle has had to have the surgery all down her chest ~ with dogs having up to ten teats it all has to go. I told Anna I don't think Eleanor will be in that much pain, especially by now, as the surgical invasion is superficial as operations go. (Less than a centimetre deep ~ surely?) My friend's landlady once had a quadruple heart bypass and that was agony, but only because they'd gone so far in, and to get in had to saw her ribcage open. So every time she breathed post-surgery she was in agony... Eleanor Griggsby's surgery is superficial in comparison and I reckon that by now she'll be fine.

When I went to buy my lemonade from Sainsbury's this morning I saw a cute scruffy terrier with beady chocolate drop eyes tied up by the automatic doors. This doggy's eyes were so beady you couldn't see any whites to them. I so much wanted to kidnap the shaggy swine and take it home. But alas an old lady who looked like her name was Marge appeared with pats and kisses and yummy tripe dinner ~ and that was just for me! When she saw Chocolate Drop's lead in my hand (because that's what I'd renamed him) she started screaming like a wicked witch passing a kidney stone and security chased me right down the high road. No I'm just kidding. I always fantasize about taking the little doggies outside supermarkets for a walkies all the way home. And sometimes the great big ones. One time I came across this giant akita with the bushiest white fur,

but there was no chance of making off with it. The dog was so enormous I'd have had to drag it away. And being an akita, the most faithful of all dog breeds, her eyes were fixated ceaselessly where her very bourgeois owner was gliding up and down the smoked salmon and bagle isles. And I do think she was a "she". That's what I've always wanted. A gigantic female akita with really bushy white fur. Or toitoiseshell brindled fur. Or brown fur. Or grey fur. Or black for that matter. Or any kind of fur, really ~ just as long as it's ultra bushy and she has slanty kindly caring faithful Japanese eyes. My business model in owning an akita was to make sure she did NOT get spayed. And I was going to make sure I got to know the whereabouts and walkies habits of every male akita in the area. So when she did come on heat ~ hey presto! A basketful of snaggling, wailing, baying bushy-furred akita puppies! Which cost anything up to £1000 ($1597.50 each these days (which is why I can't afford one). I have looked in the local animal shelters' sites but they NEVER have akitas. Basically these shelters are running (and barking and baying and whistling and groaning) over with STAFFORDSHIRE BULL TERRIERS and I really don't want one of those. They've always been "a bit common"... and now just about everyone seems to have one. And more to the point they DON'T HAVE BUSHY FUR. I want a doggie with really thick shagpile-style fur. And it must be enormous with Japanese eyes and a tail that piggles up on its back. In other words it must be an Akita!

I went and bought some glossy magazines for inspiration. I have always wanted to own and edit a magazine since my teens. Yesterday I got Vanity Fair. Today I got GQ and i-D (which used to be a lifestyle magazine, but has transmogrified into a fash mag. But it's cutting-edge fashion. Not the kind of dull fashion-victim crap British Vogue seem to specialize in).
I also got a title called Hero which seems to be men's fashion. But this is ultra-cutting-edge, with arty paper and ideosyncratic text layout. Whoever is head of ad sales for that title should get shot between the eyes with their head on a plate for apart from the back cover, there was not a single ad to be seen throughout the entire publication. For my magazine I want cutting edge photography, artwork and overall layout. It needs to have a real "picture book" style to it, so you can just flick through and be transported into a different world. But then you flick back and the text is in-depth and full of the intriguing details we all wanna hear. I will specialize in really really long features about fascinating things and people. I can't be more specific than this as I don't want Condé Nast nicking my ideas! Some of my concepts are fabulous. Eg I thought of doing a society magazine for the rougher elements of the lower classes. I was going to call it Second Class Socialite. And I'll cover the social scene in places such Essex, Coventry and Manchester's Moss Side ~ don't you think that would be a massive seller?! We'd be over-run by ads for Ratners Jewellers, herpes creams, pound shops etc. Our restaurant reviews would focus on KFC, McDonalds, Burger King and the like ... hey what am I saying ~ KFC's far too "posh n pricey" for my readers! And we could do "Crack House Couture" "The World of Council Flat Interiors" and fashion spreads of stuff stolen from the charity bins. O, I can really see this taking off...

Now I MUST GO I never slept last night and my mind is bleary. Any submissions ~ text or artwork for Second Class Socialite are gratefully accepted. You can save money on wages by just taking on loads of interns, all desperate to work in "the media" who'll slog their guts out for free! Each month we'll put all contributors' names in a bucket and the winner will get a £5 ($7.99) Argos voucher! How does that sound...?

Talking of fashmags here's Linda Evangelista ~ the most Superbly Superlative of all Supermodels in her time...

  Illustrated: Anna's Porkshire Pooch ~ the original Eleanor Rigby; beautiful white akita pup; Hero magazine...

♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧

Back Home at Last!

YESTERDAY evening I had the bizarre feeling that I was "normal" again. My head was full of rational thoughts and I looked back to my ridiculousness of the past week or so and thought "I'm glad to be myself again". I felt like when you come back from holiday and your house is cold and stale (and in my case, foetid) but hey, it's home! So I'm back at last. [From alleged "hypomania".]

Binky lent me the film A Beautiful Mind starring Russel Crowe as the schizophrenic Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash. O boy was he crazy! His entire life seemed to be a fable and then when the doctors come to arrest him I actually thought they were the KGB! Just like the director probably intended. I've never gone mad like that ~ that's paranoid schizophrenia, where a person has an entire delusional structure they live by. My worst madness was far more Confusional than Delusional.

At one a.m. I finally went to bed. And slept. And slept. And woke up at nine feeling "ukh why so early". Except that 1-9 made a perfect eight hours' sleep... But then I drank my methadone and went into the kitchen and spotted something that looked like a Rice Krispie on the microwave but ~ wahey! ~ it was a lump of "B". So I banged that up in my leg and promptly fell asleep. And slept, and slept. And slept and slept and slept. And slept some more. Finally getting up after four. And no, I wasn't gauwching, It was true sleep. A Rice Krispie sized bit of 'eroin would never get me that high. Actually, that stuff doesn't even make me sleep any more. Nowadays if it makes me "high" it's a hyper high, like heroin isn't "supposed" to be. But I've got to the stage now where my mind is so fried I never know what to expect of anything.

Excessive sleep is a warning sign of depression. How can I be depressed when my mind is still full of such marvellous ideas ~ all thought up last week. And apart from some of the names for my clubnight they are marvellous. I mean, I haven't even told you about my fabulous magazine yet. Condé Nast will piss their pants when they see it. The key to success in magazine publishing is obviously ad revenues. I think that's where Andy Warhol went wrong: he never seemed to have a top flight ads team for Interview magazine ~ and I bet he was too stingy to pay them a cut of revenue. Well my mag will be nothing like Interview. Imagine the fabulousness of Vogue but without the boring clothes and you've got it. [You really think I'm going to give out my concept on my blog?] Bulgari, Van Cleef & Arples, Cartier, Tiffany all the big names will be queueing to get in ... It will be for everyone male or female, young or old who is Fresh, Fabulous, Funky and Friendly... the Big Wow of tomorrow...

Anyway... It's late; I've got to go. It's getting dark around 4:30 now the clocks have gone back. But hey, my golden fleece still gleams wondrously in the night...