There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
Scattered from the South Coast to the Capital
I sometimes ache a little bit in the heart region when I think of all the pop culture flotsam and jetsam - CDs, DVDs, videos, books books books - that I have spent thousands of pounds collecting, gathering and foraging for in the cities of England and Scotland. And yet, none of it has been united in one single monolithic collection block of pure awesomeness since I was at university many many years ago (okay six). I imagine it would make for the kind of sight that would make me instantly think: "Wow! That was an incredible waste of money. I could have travelled round the world for a year or more. Seen beautiful and awesome things. Experienced the thrill of total travel and made friends that would comprise a global community. Instead, I'm asking myself why I bought four Menswear singles and wondering why I bought so many Varnaline albums. As for the hundreds of videos! Who knew technology and my own desire for far smoother picture quality would screw me like that, and so royally too."
Apart from my new-ish DVD collection, built from scratch since the start of my residential stint in Rainy London Town far away from thieving crims associated with my brother who pillaged my first two bids, my CDs and books have suffered from the diaspora effect, caused by my constant flitting from hither to thither, hastily dumping batches and boxes in places and forgetting I ever did, and working in an office for a few years, a time when owing to sleeping in my living room I felt like I had no possessions at all and was merely glad to get through the working day without catastrophic fatigue and stress hastening a full body collapse. They have been divided and packed away, sifted and separated in a kind of sickeningly trite Sophie's Choice comparison; meticulously built collections broken three or four ways, and becoming so fractured and mislaid that long ago I fell into the meh-laziness trap of buying tracks off iTunes I knew I already owned somewhere in the multi-site CD labyrinth of my own confused making. I promise myself: one day they will be reunited. Every missing part. And it will be a happy day. A joyous day.
Geek Book Treasure Trove
But there is a far more viable related aim: I would really love to have a certain, special subdivision of my book collection together in just one place, piled in vertiginous towers of factage: the thing that be a quizzer's ammunition store. The books that are the power behind my slightly wonky throne. My LA bedroom is currently dotted with reference books, encyclopaedias, quiz books, trivia collections, miscellanies, specialist dictionaries, general histories, travel guides, film review compendiums and many more information-imparting chunks of literature, each of them offering something different and something potentially crucial for competition preparation and my q-writing in the future.
The same goes for my London abode: there is a large plastic box containing about another substantial portion of the collection, bulging to the brim so burstingly that the container has cracked in countless places and will surely disintegrate in one explosive movement thus causing the dozens of books to crash onto my feet and shatter each metatarsal into dozens of pieces if I try to lift the bugger up. And yeah, you will probably say that maybe I should take some books out first. Then I'll say I watched the Michael Douglas/Catherine Zeta-Jones episode of Star Stories again and that I so admire the deeds of "geriatric strongman" Kirk Douglas that I must try and lift really heavy things to emulate him, no matter the potential cost in physical injuries. So there. (If you see a loitering barrel, please let me know ...)
Naturally, other useful books - love that first Observer Sport Monthly Top Tens compilation book and the superlative PoW quiz book - lie willy-nilly in locations secluded and low where they are liable to be whacked out of shape or scarred with paper abrasions by clumsy footwork. I think one of my Best Pub Quiz books is till on the table in the hall. It's a bit toss, so I'm not that boffed.
Fear of Being a Sad Git
Now if only they were all brought together to become one - and excuse me for going off on a bit of a self-indulgent once again on this blog but I genuinely feel a slight tinge of strange sadness at this inconvenient division - in a giant and imposing bookcase looking sorted and organised in impeccable fashion and ready to be perused, then I would feel a kind of bliss-flavoured peace knowing that hopelessly broken quiz book collections can be reconciled if you put your mind to it and believe that incredibly geeky dreams can come true. Serenity would reign, wrapping me in its soft embrace. Just gazing at the mahogany-encased proof of my autism-enhanced ultra-nerd powers in wonderment. Certain visual proof that a type of sad bastard parasite can creep up on you without you realising it, and it did so years ago, and there is nothing you can do about it infecting and mutating your very being to marry it with its nefarious geek DNA. But the SBP got me long ago. It's too late for me. I let it grow inside my body for all these years and now this thing inside me had changed me irrevocably. No, don't look back. Don't let it happen to you. I'm lost. Gone. Still, love my quiz book library though. It's ace! I really must get some NHS specs to fully savour its awesome dimensions. And a nice baggy racing green sweater with a huge pattern of dog on stitched on the front that I can wear to satisfy this sudden urge to do a 48-hour Doctor Who marathon. I never even knew I liked the Doctor before. [alert: stereotype pee-pee take no 1]
And relax...
Perhaps, that self-disparaging yet fantastical tangent riffing on the tragedy of a man who forms an emotional attachment to his quiz books and actually misses them when they're not around, and is overcome with melancholy when he realises they are unable to combine and working together as one like the Dinobots and therefore release their ultimate power, yes, ULTIMATE POWER, is the very reason why they are kept apart in haphazard, dishevelled fashion despite this irritating me to the point of making muffled banshee screams when I can't find the particular book I want (where is my Pears Cyclopedia 2005? Please tell me).
It may be a subconscious impulse; even a safe guard. The fear of the sad bastard taking control allied with good old bad vanity pulls me back from the brink. A mental alarm clock always resounds in my mind causing me to return to what I call "real life". Enough with the books and the related projects and the saying no to social engagements. It is time to go out. Maybe party a little bit. But is that really real life? Or is that just a superlative Joan as Policewoman song I saw her play at Latitude?
"We Have No Future"
Sometimes I have no idea what real life is. If, in the terminal long term, it involves the well trodden path of car-career-marry-house-kids-slowbraindeath-retirement, then could you excuse me if I say I don't quite want to buy into it all. Now I could say that all I want is my independence and freedom, like the Littlest Hobo, singing Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home), and nothing can sway you from your chosen life as a lone wolf. And then, like a bolt from the blue decking you in the face, you meet someone who you begin to think can change your life and all the defiance melts away. Life, as John Lennon said, is what happens to you when you are making plans. The future is unwritten and the fear of this unpredictability and sudden onrush of events and emotions will drive us into all sorts of crazy and lame-assed decisions that for the majority of us will result in the marry-house-kids default setting. And we won't mind a bit, so long as we are happy.
I Begin To Talk About Trainspotters. You Say Eh?
You could say that hobby obsessions are a substitute for real life. Everybody thinks they are and, naturally, if they take over your life you will take up some position on the weirdo scale, which utilises the stench strength of BO is one of the key determinant factors. On the other hand, you can also carry on like it is some secret life which you barely mention in your friends' company, only then they bring it up and you have to admit to yourself that it can be genuinely interesting to civilians and normals, before they start mentioning the TPQ. Ouch ooh. The monetary term "£200,000" has become a jokey-hurtful weapon wielded by mates far too regularly. They know my weak spot. Then, for some inexplicable reason, I think of the trainspotters who roam the northern ends of the platforms at Clapham Junction indulging in possibly the most harmless yet most mercilessly derided pastime in all the pop culture kingdom and think my own abiding obsession at least gets me on to TV, get invited to celebrity quizzes and allows me to represent my country at something that genuinely requires talent and hard work (Yeah! British bulldog spirit! With a small Filipwegian shot added to make a fine patriotic yet multicultural cocktail!). That is part of my own obvious reward. It's quite nice. The CJ trainspotters are more likely to end up on well, take a wild guess, but they may share time with Fiona Bruce. [alert: there I go with the hurtful stereotyping again no.2]
Leave 'Em Alone, You Knobs
Being an allegedly elite quizzer, people seem to genuinely believe you are a genius when you, as I have said time and time again, really have a flypaper mind that can't let thousands, possibly millions of little tidbits of information escape your brain, which are probably too crammed by now with things like the derivations of foreign dogs name to allow truly creative and intelligent thought. Nevertheless, the genius description acts as a surprisingly strong form of immunity against geek accusations. Illusion is all. So keep the enigmatic act. Works well for me. As for those (poor) guys lingering in sometimes disturbingly shifty ways, I imagine the possibly hundreds of rail passengers who pass them and see their unsavoury hairstyles and careless clothing ensembles and start shouting vile piss-take abuse at them or giving them a quick fire round of rude hand gestures. The gricers, however, are only doing something that instils a content feeling in them and maybe even happiness or summat that excites enough of their enthusiasm to keep them coming back again and again for donkey's years. They do it because they enjoy getting their idea of a regular reward and I genuinely feel sympathy for them because those train travellers, who choose to be odious idiots, cannot understand the purpose of a hobby that inspires the fire of curiosity and search for the complete in their hearts and bellies. Something that keeps your enthusiasm alive; surely a thing we all crave.
Yet anyone who aggressively and wholeheartedly pursues any sport or pastime, take chess, bog-snorkelling, football, air guitar, squash, magazine competition winning, juggling, Sudoku, or even freakin' QUIZ, and willingly immerses him or herself in it will understand how their finding something you love doing and doing it on a regular basis can make life seem that much more sweeter and enjoyable. And, of course, communities of like-minded individuals will, in most cases, welcome with open arms anyone who shares their enthusiasm for their chosen pastime. Through such doors new circles of friends away. Social contact with other members of the human race certainly constitutes one essential facet of real life.
Spotting the choo-choos makes the gricers happy, or at least let out an imperceptible grunt of satisfaction. Setting and competing in quizzes makes me happy (well, 95 per cent of the time), which is why I do them and I wouldn't have started doing them if I hadn't found how easy it came to me and how good I plainly was; displaying immediate precociousness always helping someone when taking up any pastime. It eases you in and erases many immediate fears, especially if it is a competitive situation. Confidence follows and grows, though I learned over the years that I was then sadly deluded about my trivia powers, but the delusion kept me going through those sixth form and first couple of uni years. Then I was in the safety zone by age 19. Who cares about the fully rounded real life when you are doing something you think you could never tire of, make friends with countless other trivia fiends and maybe grab a little glory and get on TV at least 20 times? It's not exactly real life as normals would see it, but sometimes it's a far more interesting and exciting life replete with many a surprise and opportunity to mingle with minor celebrities. Quizzes never fail to amuse me, and neither does the realisation of my increasingly belligerent competitive edge. Thankfully, it only truly rises and blooms like a atomic bomb mushroom cloud inside me on championship/GP days. So please take this into account if you think I'm being a tad stand-offish on one such Saturday. Go blame Jesse if he's around.
Acceptance of a Bad Habit
Oh, the books! My preciousessss. (Reminds me: still got to read Trainspotting in its my Manhattan book skyline) It would be years before all of that quiz literature could be used properly, carefully swept minefield-style etc because for a start I know have too many already and, for seconds, you are still compelled to buy new books, better books, even more comprehensive books. It is one compulsion I never mind giving into. New general knowledge questions are forged in the world of current affairs every day. It never stops. Though, I sometimes think, you can never have too many quiz books - GK is so random that every one you buy will have something different or something you have never thought of or seen before. By expanding your collection, you are in fact giving yourself more options, spreading your bets (never rely on just one or two of the classic fact compendiums like the Pears Quiz Companion because they are so well known and repeatedly used that serious question setters will look elsewhere to find source material he is assured much of his chosen audience will not own and have spent at least three or four years thumbing through) and giving yourself the chance to cope with any scenario. Except histories of and guides to the British canal system. And books of 20th century British military aircraft photographs. There is some shite I will not bite.
Anyway, I realise I moved enough books into the KX when I started living there almost two years gone to prevent my mother from being able to use her rear view mirror on the car ride up. I estimate that 75 per cent of my stuff was composed of literary material ready to be piled around my room as if they were medium height garden walls or leftfield literary barricades. Since then I have doubled the tally - the piles have swayed and collapsed several times - and they are mostly real novels, written by people who have nothing to do with the trivia life, I'm sure the likes of Jonathan Lethem is far too slaked with Yankee Doodle cool to grasp the significance of the quiz as a British cultural phenomenon and VS Naipaul, well, he would probably set fire to any quiz answer sheet proferred to him, fling it to the ground with a swift wrist flick and then piss on the ashes with contemptuous, truly intellectually-driven vigour. But then, I'm only speculating here.
Hippocampus Overload
It is hoped that proper novels will exercise my brain and stretch my imagination and fine-tune my ability to string a decent, flowing sentence or - and this is ambitious - even a paragraph together, rather than turning reading into some sort of mechanical stuffing process as I do with trivia books; my mental routines having been trained mighty hard over the last decade to pipe the good, quizzy stuff straight into my now engorged hippocampus without my consciously forcing myself to remember because my brain instantly knows it is the stuff needed for future GPs and championships, for future glory days and for invoking knuckle-gnashing when near misses couldn't quite make it out of my long term memory in time, and identifies the ingested info as high priority material, while things like acquaintances' names and birthday party dates are dumped in the mental trash bin as they will NEVER EVER come up in a quiz will they?
Social Networking Site Philosophising
The thing is now many of us have mobile phones, e-mail accounts and Facebook profiles to remember all those details, or at least check up on them or message our mates to remind us or get the info we want. Our social memory is becoming externalised in the form of FB photo albums of last night's trip to the club or the weekend's festival and swapping of wall postings and such and such, and, though it is sad in a way, it does make everything much easier. The computer becomes a vital device for facilitating this thing we call friendship because maybe it is easier to do everything while ensconced in our bedrooms, relaxing and not speaking, just tapping away after coming home from a tiring day at work. Talk is overrated. My phone manner sucks, tripping and mumbling, leaving seconds of icy silence, then talking too fast. We can type so much faster these days and yet also take our time when we want to and polish our increasingly witty written styles. Well, at least everyone is getting better at whacking out words in a coherent manner. You know, I'm not even sure I'm joking or not when I make such a wild statement and I think of many random forums I have chanced upon lately and realise that, nope, it's just my mates and acquaintances who can converse along the internet highways and byways in a reasonably amusing and sometimes high-larious manner manner. The vast majority of people who hang around on messageboards and forums many, many hours every day are in fact borderline illiterate morons who really need to sort out some of their anger management issues, but not until after they have been taught to read and write, properly this time.
Facebook Killed The Bibliophile In Me
One thing I do hate about the social networking tsunami is that it has vaporised my yen for reading novels whilst tucked up in bed. The profile patrols take a long time, which is why I have banned myself from going on the evil FB more than three times a day and then for only ten minutes each from now on (um, I say that, and yes, I may well adhere to these conditions). And all while the fiction-loving side of my brain that yearns for stories other people have made up, inspiration, larger than life characters, amazing wordplay, outsider insight, emotional warfare and tenderness, the vague promise of a decent plot (I'm never so bothered with that element) is left to whimper, lonely and unfed like a ragged Dickensian gutter-boy the colour of porridge left out in the sun for a week, begging me to fill it with that Thomas McGuane novel I've been trying to start since July last bloody year for a start, having been left to survive on the unsatisfying stops and starts of dozens of books that get left stacked up in depressing little piles of inadequacy everywhere. I must get back into the habit. Must find the time (I know I have oodles of time ... maybe, it has something to do with setting the mood).
Astonishing News Flash
Because books are great. That was it! There is no better form of immersive entertainment. Nothing can match the alternately heartwarming and exhilirating feeling of finding an author who dazzles you by performing tricks with words and uncoiling erudition that you leave you gasping with admiration and jealousy, but more importantly speaks to you in an utterly convincing voice that sinks its hooks into you and drives you helter-skelter to the end: writers like Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Chabon and Tobias Wolff who make you completely forget the existence of an outside world from page one of their books (well, more often than not). Call my book habits aspirational too. Reading the very best as I see the mid-late 20th century American masters, the centuries old classics and the culty ones, as are my preferred areas of the literature world, can only instil ambition in the wannabe writer by delineating the true possibilities of literature and remind you of the countless fascinating stories that remain untold and are just waiting for you to try your hand at tackling. You may let such ambition be polluted by a touch of self-delusion, but if you do not try, you will never know. Failure is better than nothing since it will teach you so many more lessons. Especially sharp lessons about the people management skills of leading literary agents (grrrr... I'll show him ... what did the 16th century clergyman George Herbert say? "Living well is the best revenge." Ah. Not "Killing a man's testicles back into his own body is the best revenge" then. Well, they both have their merits)
Antisocial Book Habits
And nothing feels better than getting into a reading habit that gains momentum as your addiction to the printed word becomes near-uncontrollable, causing you to aim for one novel a day at its zenith of consumption, read novels while walking down London streets and into lamp posts (only a minor bloody bump on my forehead ... nobody saw it, I hope) and, impatient with the lack of optical-cerebral activity whipping a book out while there is a lull in conversation in the pub and instantly becoming a pariah simply because you cannot help yourself from sneaking a page or two whilst the attention of the table is firmly directed away from you.
One real life bad habit flashback:: Sticking on my MP3 player (RIP) and diving back into Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man on our train journey back home after seeing the White Stripes suck big balls at the Ally Pally, I was asked by Morgan: "What's the matter with you? Er, don't you like us anymore?" No, no, no, I protested, and waited a beat or two to resume the seclusion. While Chris was malfunctioning on account of a massive sweating bout and was therefore unable to pass comment, I heard Jamie sneer a jokey "Twat!" before I slipped my headphones back in. But this book was too much to resist. It was James Joyce! Being comprehensible and being brilliant. How could I resist? So on I read, as everyone else stared out into the blinking lights and soft orange glow of south London the packed urban tableau slowly disintegrating before finally disappearing and yielding to a cloak of Stygian darkness enclosing green Sussex pasture after pasture. I didn't utter another word until we disembarked at Worthing. The novel had simply struck me dumb. It was that good. Never mind my frightful, shut-up shop rudeness.
So: books. They are awesome. Word.
I sometimes ache a little bit in the heart region when I think of all the pop culture flotsam and jetsam - CDs, DVDs, videos, books books books - that I have spent thousands of pounds collecting, gathering and foraging for in the cities of England and Scotland. And yet, none of it has been united in one single monolithic collection block of pure awesomeness since I was at university many many years ago (okay six). I imagine it would make for the kind of sight that would make me instantly think: "Wow! That was an incredible waste of money. I could have travelled round the world for a year or more. Seen beautiful and awesome things. Experienced the thrill of total travel and made friends that would comprise a global community. Instead, I'm asking myself why I bought four Menswear singles and wondering why I bought so many Varnaline albums. As for the hundreds of videos! Who knew technology and my own desire for far smoother picture quality would screw me like that, and so royally too."
Apart from my new-ish DVD collection, built from scratch since the start of my residential stint in Rainy London Town far away from thieving crims associated with my brother who pillaged my first two bids, my CDs and books have suffered from the diaspora effect, caused by my constant flitting from hither to thither, hastily dumping batches and boxes in places and forgetting I ever did, and working in an office for a few years, a time when owing to sleeping in my living room I felt like I had no possessions at all and was merely glad to get through the working day without catastrophic fatigue and stress hastening a full body collapse. They have been divided and packed away, sifted and separated in a kind of sickeningly trite Sophie's Choice comparison; meticulously built collections broken three or four ways, and becoming so fractured and mislaid that long ago I fell into the meh-laziness trap of buying tracks off iTunes I knew I already owned somewhere in the multi-site CD labyrinth of my own confused making. I promise myself: one day they will be reunited. Every missing part. And it will be a happy day. A joyous day.
Geek Book Treasure Trove
But there is a far more viable related aim: I would really love to have a certain, special subdivision of my book collection together in just one place, piled in vertiginous towers of factage: the thing that be a quizzer's ammunition store. The books that are the power behind my slightly wonky throne. My LA bedroom is currently dotted with reference books, encyclopaedias, quiz books, trivia collections, miscellanies, specialist dictionaries, general histories, travel guides, film review compendiums and many more information-imparting chunks of literature, each of them offering something different and something potentially crucial for competition preparation and my q-writing in the future.
The same goes for my London abode: there is a large plastic box containing about another substantial portion of the collection, bulging to the brim so burstingly that the container has cracked in countless places and will surely disintegrate in one explosive movement thus causing the dozens of books to crash onto my feet and shatter each metatarsal into dozens of pieces if I try to lift the bugger up. And yeah, you will probably say that maybe I should take some books out first. Then I'll say I watched the Michael Douglas/Catherine Zeta-Jones episode of Star Stories again and that I so admire the deeds of "geriatric strongman" Kirk Douglas that I must try and lift really heavy things to emulate him, no matter the potential cost in physical injuries. So there. (If you see a loitering barrel, please let me know ...)
Naturally, other useful books - love that first Observer Sport Monthly Top Tens compilation book and the superlative PoW quiz book - lie willy-nilly in locations secluded and low where they are liable to be whacked out of shape or scarred with paper abrasions by clumsy footwork. I think one of my Best Pub Quiz books is till on the table in the hall. It's a bit toss, so I'm not that boffed.
Fear of Being a Sad Git
Now if only they were all brought together to become one - and excuse me for going off on a bit of a self-indulgent once again on this blog but I genuinely feel a slight tinge of strange sadness at this inconvenient division - in a giant and imposing bookcase looking sorted and organised in impeccable fashion and ready to be perused, then I would feel a kind of bliss-flavoured peace knowing that hopelessly broken quiz book collections can be reconciled if you put your mind to it and believe that incredibly geeky dreams can come true. Serenity would reign, wrapping me in its soft embrace. Just gazing at the mahogany-encased proof of my autism-enhanced ultra-nerd powers in wonderment. Certain visual proof that a type of sad bastard parasite can creep up on you without you realising it, and it did so years ago, and there is nothing you can do about it infecting and mutating your very being to marry it with its nefarious geek DNA. But the SBP got me long ago. It's too late for me. I let it grow inside my body for all these years and now this thing inside me had changed me irrevocably. No, don't look back. Don't let it happen to you. I'm lost. Gone. Still, love my quiz book library though. It's ace! I really must get some NHS specs to fully savour its awesome dimensions. And a nice baggy racing green sweater with a huge pattern of dog on stitched on the front that I can wear to satisfy this sudden urge to do a 48-hour Doctor Who marathon. I never even knew I liked the Doctor before. [alert: stereotype pee-pee take no 1]
And relax...
Perhaps, that self-disparaging yet fantastical tangent riffing on the tragedy of a man who forms an emotional attachment to his quiz books and actually misses them when they're not around, and is overcome with melancholy when he realises they are unable to combine and working together as one like the Dinobots and therefore release their ultimate power, yes, ULTIMATE POWER, is the very reason why they are kept apart in haphazard, dishevelled fashion despite this irritating me to the point of making muffled banshee screams when I can't find the particular book I want (where is my Pears Cyclopedia 2005? Please tell me).
It may be a subconscious impulse; even a safe guard. The fear of the sad bastard taking control allied with good old bad vanity pulls me back from the brink. A mental alarm clock always resounds in my mind causing me to return to what I call "real life". Enough with the books and the related projects and the saying no to social engagements. It is time to go out. Maybe party a little bit. But is that really real life? Or is that just a superlative Joan as Policewoman song I saw her play at Latitude?
"We Have No Future"
Sometimes I have no idea what real life is. If, in the terminal long term, it involves the well trodden path of car-career-marry-house-kids-slowbraindeath-retirement, then could you excuse me if I say I don't quite want to buy into it all. Now I could say that all I want is my independence and freedom, like the Littlest Hobo, singing Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home), and nothing can sway you from your chosen life as a lone wolf. And then, like a bolt from the blue decking you in the face, you meet someone who you begin to think can change your life and all the defiance melts away. Life, as John Lennon said, is what happens to you when you are making plans. The future is unwritten and the fear of this unpredictability and sudden onrush of events and emotions will drive us into all sorts of crazy and lame-assed decisions that for the majority of us will result in the marry-house-kids default setting. And we won't mind a bit, so long as we are happy.
I Begin To Talk About Trainspotters. You Say Eh?
You could say that hobby obsessions are a substitute for real life. Everybody thinks they are and, naturally, if they take over your life you will take up some position on the weirdo scale, which utilises the stench strength of BO is one of the key determinant factors. On the other hand, you can also carry on like it is some secret life which you barely mention in your friends' company, only then they bring it up and you have to admit to yourself that it can be genuinely interesting to civilians and normals, before they start mentioning the TPQ. Ouch ooh. The monetary term "£200,000" has become a jokey-hurtful weapon wielded by mates far too regularly. They know my weak spot. Then, for some inexplicable reason, I think of the trainspotters who roam the northern ends of the platforms at Clapham Junction indulging in possibly the most harmless yet most mercilessly derided pastime in all the pop culture kingdom and think my own abiding obsession at least gets me on to TV, get invited to celebrity quizzes and allows me to represent my country at something that genuinely requires talent and hard work (Yeah! British bulldog spirit! With a small Filipwegian shot added to make a fine patriotic yet multicultural cocktail!). That is part of my own obvious reward. It's quite nice. The CJ trainspotters are more likely to end up on well, take a wild guess, but they may share time with Fiona Bruce. [alert: there I go with the hurtful stereotyping again no.2]
Leave 'Em Alone, You Knobs
Being an allegedly elite quizzer, people seem to genuinely believe you are a genius when you, as I have said time and time again, really have a flypaper mind that can't let thousands, possibly millions of little tidbits of information escape your brain, which are probably too crammed by now with things like the derivations of foreign dogs name to allow truly creative and intelligent thought. Nevertheless, the genius description acts as a surprisingly strong form of immunity against geek accusations. Illusion is all. So keep the enigmatic act. Works well for me. As for those (poor) guys lingering in sometimes disturbingly shifty ways, I imagine the possibly hundreds of rail passengers who pass them and see their unsavoury hairstyles and careless clothing ensembles and start shouting vile piss-take abuse at them or giving them a quick fire round of rude hand gestures. The gricers, however, are only doing something that instils a content feeling in them and maybe even happiness or summat that excites enough of their enthusiasm to keep them coming back again and again for donkey's years. They do it because they enjoy getting their idea of a regular reward and I genuinely feel sympathy for them because those train travellers, who choose to be odious idiots, cannot understand the purpose of a hobby that inspires the fire of curiosity and search for the complete in their hearts and bellies. Something that keeps your enthusiasm alive; surely a thing we all crave.
Yet anyone who aggressively and wholeheartedly pursues any sport or pastime, take chess, bog-snorkelling, football, air guitar, squash, magazine competition winning, juggling, Sudoku, or even freakin' QUIZ, and willingly immerses him or herself in it will understand how their finding something you love doing and doing it on a regular basis can make life seem that much more sweeter and enjoyable. And, of course, communities of like-minded individuals will, in most cases, welcome with open arms anyone who shares their enthusiasm for their chosen pastime. Through such doors new circles of friends away. Social contact with other members of the human race certainly constitutes one essential facet of real life.
Spotting the choo-choos makes the gricers happy, or at least let out an imperceptible grunt of satisfaction. Setting and competing in quizzes makes me happy (well, 95 per cent of the time), which is why I do them and I wouldn't have started doing them if I hadn't found how easy it came to me and how good I plainly was; displaying immediate precociousness always helping someone when taking up any pastime. It eases you in and erases many immediate fears, especially if it is a competitive situation. Confidence follows and grows, though I learned over the years that I was then sadly deluded about my trivia powers, but the delusion kept me going through those sixth form and first couple of uni years. Then I was in the safety zone by age 19. Who cares about the fully rounded real life when you are doing something you think you could never tire of, make friends with countless other trivia fiends and maybe grab a little glory and get on TV at least 20 times? It's not exactly real life as normals would see it, but sometimes it's a far more interesting and exciting life replete with many a surprise and opportunity to mingle with minor celebrities. Quizzes never fail to amuse me, and neither does the realisation of my increasingly belligerent competitive edge. Thankfully, it only truly rises and blooms like a atomic bomb mushroom cloud inside me on championship/GP days. So please take this into account if you think I'm being a tad stand-offish on one such Saturday. Go blame Jesse if he's around.
Acceptance of a Bad Habit
Oh, the books! My preciousessss. (Reminds me: still got to read Trainspotting in its my Manhattan book skyline) It would be years before all of that quiz literature could be used properly, carefully swept minefield-style etc because for a start I know have too many already and, for seconds, you are still compelled to buy new books, better books, even more comprehensive books. It is one compulsion I never mind giving into. New general knowledge questions are forged in the world of current affairs every day. It never stops. Though, I sometimes think, you can never have too many quiz books - GK is so random that every one you buy will have something different or something you have never thought of or seen before. By expanding your collection, you are in fact giving yourself more options, spreading your bets (never rely on just one or two of the classic fact compendiums like the Pears Quiz Companion because they are so well known and repeatedly used that serious question setters will look elsewhere to find source material he is assured much of his chosen audience will not own and have spent at least three or four years thumbing through) and giving yourself the chance to cope with any scenario. Except histories of and guides to the British canal system. And books of 20th century British military aircraft photographs. There is some shite I will not bite.
Anyway, I realise I moved enough books into the KX when I started living there almost two years gone to prevent my mother from being able to use her rear view mirror on the car ride up. I estimate that 75 per cent of my stuff was composed of literary material ready to be piled around my room as if they were medium height garden walls or leftfield literary barricades. Since then I have doubled the tally - the piles have swayed and collapsed several times - and they are mostly real novels, written by people who have nothing to do with the trivia life, I'm sure the likes of Jonathan Lethem is far too slaked with Yankee Doodle cool to grasp the significance of the quiz as a British cultural phenomenon and VS Naipaul, well, he would probably set fire to any quiz answer sheet proferred to him, fling it to the ground with a swift wrist flick and then piss on the ashes with contemptuous, truly intellectually-driven vigour. But then, I'm only speculating here.
Hippocampus Overload
It is hoped that proper novels will exercise my brain and stretch my imagination and fine-tune my ability to string a decent, flowing sentence or - and this is ambitious - even a paragraph together, rather than turning reading into some sort of mechanical stuffing process as I do with trivia books; my mental routines having been trained mighty hard over the last decade to pipe the good, quizzy stuff straight into my now engorged hippocampus without my consciously forcing myself to remember because my brain instantly knows it is the stuff needed for future GPs and championships, for future glory days and for invoking knuckle-gnashing when near misses couldn't quite make it out of my long term memory in time, and identifies the ingested info as high priority material, while things like acquaintances' names and birthday party dates are dumped in the mental trash bin as they will NEVER EVER come up in a quiz will they?
Social Networking Site Philosophising
The thing is now many of us have mobile phones, e-mail accounts and Facebook profiles to remember all those details, or at least check up on them or message our mates to remind us or get the info we want. Our social memory is becoming externalised in the form of FB photo albums of last night's trip to the club or the weekend's festival and swapping of wall postings and such and such, and, though it is sad in a way, it does make everything much easier. The computer becomes a vital device for facilitating this thing we call friendship because maybe it is easier to do everything while ensconced in our bedrooms, relaxing and not speaking, just tapping away after coming home from a tiring day at work. Talk is overrated. My phone manner sucks, tripping and mumbling, leaving seconds of icy silence, then talking too fast. We can type so much faster these days and yet also take our time when we want to and polish our increasingly witty written styles. Well, at least everyone is getting better at whacking out words in a coherent manner. You know, I'm not even sure I'm joking or not when I make such a wild statement and I think of many random forums I have chanced upon lately and realise that, nope, it's just my mates and acquaintances who can converse along the internet highways and byways in a reasonably amusing and sometimes high-larious manner manner. The vast majority of people who hang around on messageboards and forums many, many hours every day are in fact borderline illiterate morons who really need to sort out some of their anger management issues, but not until after they have been taught to read and write, properly this time.
Facebook Killed The Bibliophile In Me
One thing I do hate about the social networking tsunami is that it has vaporised my yen for reading novels whilst tucked up in bed. The profile patrols take a long time, which is why I have banned myself from going on the evil FB more than three times a day and then for only ten minutes each from now on (um, I say that, and yes, I may well adhere to these conditions). And all while the fiction-loving side of my brain that yearns for stories other people have made up, inspiration, larger than life characters, amazing wordplay, outsider insight, emotional warfare and tenderness, the vague promise of a decent plot (I'm never so bothered with that element) is left to whimper, lonely and unfed like a ragged Dickensian gutter-boy the colour of porridge left out in the sun for a week, begging me to fill it with that Thomas McGuane novel I've been trying to start since July last bloody year for a start, having been left to survive on the unsatisfying stops and starts of dozens of books that get left stacked up in depressing little piles of inadequacy everywhere. I must get back into the habit. Must find the time (I know I have oodles of time ... maybe, it has something to do with setting the mood).
Astonishing News Flash
Because books are great. That was it! There is no better form of immersive entertainment. Nothing can match the alternately heartwarming and exhilirating feeling of finding an author who dazzles you by performing tricks with words and uncoiling erudition that you leave you gasping with admiration and jealousy, but more importantly speaks to you in an utterly convincing voice that sinks its hooks into you and drives you helter-skelter to the end: writers like Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Chabon and Tobias Wolff who make you completely forget the existence of an outside world from page one of their books (well, more often than not). Call my book habits aspirational too. Reading the very best as I see the mid-late 20th century American masters, the centuries old classics and the culty ones, as are my preferred areas of the literature world, can only instil ambition in the wannabe writer by delineating the true possibilities of literature and remind you of the countless fascinating stories that remain untold and are just waiting for you to try your hand at tackling. You may let such ambition be polluted by a touch of self-delusion, but if you do not try, you will never know. Failure is better than nothing since it will teach you so many more lessons. Especially sharp lessons about the people management skills of leading literary agents (grrrr... I'll show him ... what did the 16th century clergyman George Herbert say? "Living well is the best revenge." Ah. Not "Killing a man's testicles back into his own body is the best revenge" then. Well, they both have their merits)
Antisocial Book Habits
And nothing feels better than getting into a reading habit that gains momentum as your addiction to the printed word becomes near-uncontrollable, causing you to aim for one novel a day at its zenith of consumption, read novels while walking down London streets and into lamp posts (only a minor bloody bump on my forehead ... nobody saw it, I hope) and, impatient with the lack of optical-cerebral activity whipping a book out while there is a lull in conversation in the pub and instantly becoming a pariah simply because you cannot help yourself from sneaking a page or two whilst the attention of the table is firmly directed away from you.
One real life bad habit flashback:: Sticking on my MP3 player (RIP) and diving back into Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man on our train journey back home after seeing the White Stripes suck big balls at the Ally Pally, I was asked by Morgan: "What's the matter with you? Er, don't you like us anymore?" No, no, no, I protested, and waited a beat or two to resume the seclusion. While Chris was malfunctioning on account of a massive sweating bout and was therefore unable to pass comment, I heard Jamie sneer a jokey "Twat!" before I slipped my headphones back in. But this book was too much to resist. It was James Joyce! Being comprehensible and being brilliant. How could I resist? So on I read, as everyone else stared out into the blinking lights and soft orange glow of south London the packed urban tableau slowly disintegrating before finally disappearing and yielding to a cloak of Stygian darkness enclosing green Sussex pasture after pasture. I didn't utter another word until we disembarked at Worthing. The novel had simply struck me dumb. It was that good. Never mind my frightful, shut-up shop rudeness.
So: books. They are awesome. Word.
posted by That Quiz Guy at 4:02 AM
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