The creator of TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and one of my comic books gods. For those of you who read regularly [are there such people out there, wandering the land with laptops in hand and a glazed, dead look in their eyes?], I wrote him a rather crazed fan-letter on this blog a few months back. I was going to link to it, but I decided you guys need to WORK for that honor. Also, not as funny as I previously imagined it.
"Okay, okay. I lie to you constantly. But still."
"I figure that the more of you there are around me, the more chance there is of the inevitable hail of bullets hitting you instead of me."
"I have decided that I'm going to drink myself into a coma tonight. Join me?"
"When they're not around, I put the TV on. Purely out of curiosity, you understand. Up here, we can snatch some forty thousand channels out of the air. Most of them, of course, are still showing CSI and LAW AND ORDER. There are twelve different channels showing LAW AND ORDER 24 hours a day. In some countries, Jerry Orbach has become a cargo-cult figure. They don't understand the language or much of the situations. They comprehend only that Jerry Orbach is immortal. They watch and divine from the show that he outlives the young gods who are selected to be his assistants. Criminals fall. DAs change. Assistants fade away. Jerry Orbach is forever. Jerry Orbach is, in fact, some kind of avenging God-King who will hunt and incarcerate Scum until the end of time."
"Fuck everybody. I won."
"I really need about six more hours in every day. Ten past two in the afternoon and I can barely keep my eyes open already. I miss dexies, I really do."
"I am, in fact, Internet Jesus. Hurrah."
"During this week, I've been leaving the house only once a day, to clear my lungs before returning to my death bed. So I've been getting a single snapshot of the weather each day. And it's no wonder I'm fucking dying. Yesterday, blazing heat, not a cloud in the sky, people moving in slow motion under the oppressive radiation. Today? Black skies, pissing down with rain, gales turning people's umbrellas inside out. It'll be snow tomorrow. Or hot hail."
"I will accept death as an alternative to the pain of being awake, at this point."
"Seriously. UFO organisations have been contracting of late, because no-one's seeing flying saucers any more. They turn up at weird cultural stress points, like an approaching millennium (which the X-Files lucked into, rather than caused). Almost, it seems, when the culture is worried about something amorphous rather than concrete (like terrorism). The 90s UFO "glut" coincided with the threat of nuclear war fading, relative political stability in the US and UK, and yet the feeling that the turn of the century Meant Something that we couldn't put into words. I almost miss flying saucers: because they might mean that we don't have anything serious to worry about."
"The sky's gone the colour of death. Big storm coming. I'm going to be trapped in the pub. Very bad."
"In cultural news from here in the old country, Pete Doherty is apparently still a "genius," which presumably means we have a hidden race of intellectuals who express their sheer brilliance by rubbing crack rocks into their eyes, stealing all their mates' stuff and failing to get it up for their girlfriends. Oh, and Kate Bush is making a comeback, which I would imagine means that Tori Amos will have to go into some kind of witness protection scheme."
"I grew up in the 80s in England: we'd wake up each morning and look out the window to see if the government had finally put Daleks on the streets."
"The book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore's best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It's hard to describe just how much better the book is. It's like, 'If the movie was an episode of 'Battlestar Galactica' with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is 'Citizen Kane' with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end.' That's how much better it is."
"When you're putting together any kind of really stupid loud explody movie, I feel you need a Posh English Girl With Guns. Also, a Robot, a Man With One Name Who Hits People, The Blonde and the Magic Negro."
"I actually thought about attending San Diego a couple of years ago, and talked to a publisher about it. I told them I'd need a business-class flight (better air filters -- otherwise I spend a day on an inhaler) and a decent-sized hotel room. They said: 'But if we give you that, what will Neil Gaiman ask for?'"
"Always remember: Valentine's Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens. I love you all."
"It is so fucking cold. Outside, the sky's cut in half. There's this huge black cloudbank covering half the sky, just radiating cold and rain and doom, waiting for me to step outside. And it's not moving. It's waiting. The other half? Blue sky. Every erg of heat in England just flying up through it into space. There's some Russian bastard on the ISS right now looking down and saying, see, my country is saved, the Russian winter is moving east to FREEZE WARREN'S NUTS OFF."
"Oh, this is brilliant. The Wales team are being sponsored by a brewery with a slightly unusual name. On their red shirts, the name is emblazoned on the front in big white letters: BRAINS. We are WALES, and we are here for BRAAAAIIIIINNNNS."
"But if you're one of those real frightening anal sticklers for Marvel continuity? And you get genuinely angry about people playing fast and loose with Marvel comics canon? Please don't pick it up. You'll have a heart attack, and I don't need that on my conscience, despite the wonders it'd do for my reputation."
"You'd be surprised how many people approach me thinking I'm going to try and cut off their thumbs or hit them with a chairleg or something."
"My back is killing me. I can feel things moving around in it. It is a singularly unpleasant sensation. Almost as bad as watching Xmas television. Caught part of a documentary on the recording of 'Fairytale Of New York' last night. What the fuck happened to Shane McGowan's head? It's shrunk."
"If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain — do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?"
"So fuck 2005 right in the eyesocket. Horrible year. Will 2006 be any better? I'll settle for not having to bury any more of my friends for a year. Hoping to travel more. Also, forming a religion of some kind would be good. Embracing my destiny as Internet Jesus. (Or, at the very least, Wise Man Of The Internet Forest, who appears half-clothed at the treeline every day to make Proclamations And Propheses. You all want to fuck me now, eh?)"
"I have decided that I shall be referred to only as Love Swami for the rest of the week, and shall delete any email not headed with the term."
"Writing comics? Still the best job in the world. I sit around all day making shit up and see it illustrated, in 99% of cases, exactly as I imagined it, if not better. I've been doing this a long time now, and I'm going to do it until I die. Which probably won't be long, given the constant insane deadline pressure. But fuck it. Anything worth doing takes work. Some people do question if it's worth it, given that the industry makes no friends and takes no prisoners and is not kind to people without the chops or the commitment or a thick skin. You know what? I've got forty books out there that some people wear on their fucking skin, and I didn't manage that by arsing around on the internet all day. That's right. I managed it AS WELL AS arsing around on the internet all day. I have powers."
"Apparently it is Wrong, when finding carol singers at your door, to yell 'Hail Satan! See you in Disneyland!' and slam it on them. But I don't want to be Right."
"Stress has finally caught up with me. I know this because I have spent the last ten minutes considering whether or not the theme music to HAWAII 5-0 is in fact the greatest TV theme music ever. Or whether it is in fact the theme to VAN DER VALK... And have downloaded both of them off the internet. In the name of God. Someone help me think about sex or death or something. Thank you."
"Shots of whisky between finishing a magnum of champagne? Don't do that again. I think I've woken up with motor neurone disease."
"I want fucking points for upgrading Wordpress myself when I still can't program the fucking video recorder properly. Points, and, I dunno, dancing girls and streams of whiskey and cigarettes that won't give me cancer. See to it."
"On Live Journal, my friend Donna came up with the joke tag 'Warren Ellis' Holy Slut Army.' She even made t-shirts. You know how scary it is to walk into a hotel and see a girl wearing one of those?"
"In other news, I'm up way too fucking early again. Oh, and Southend Pier caught fire (again) last night. Wasn't me."
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