my_biggest_problem

It's hard to know exactly what to say, today.

I mean, it's not like I've been on my usual rounds of the county, looking at things through my usual skewed perspective.

I don't know what to say.

But I'm gonna say it anyway.

There is a Recommended Reading List at the end of this piece. Don't worry: no comics. And defintely no Nostra-fucking-dam-the-cunt-us. Crackhead Belgian Bun-lover. Anyway.

MY BIGGEST PROBLEM IS GETTING MY COMICS ON TIME

By Matthew Craig

I've been watching the news a lot more recently. Even before all this madness kicked off. I think I was watching the news for something to be depressed about, to be quite honest. Well, that or something to get me good and angry about.

I think I must do this a lot. Watch television to feel negative, rather than positive. I mean, I watch Ally McBeal because I hate most of the characters with a passion. Although, as that's starting to change, with the unlikely reworking of Portia DeRossi's character Nell as a Bitch With Feelings, After All (TM Aaron Spelling, 1982; after W. Shakespeare, 1362), I might actually stop. I watch Newsnight Review in order to see a lot of, well, dickheads frankly, talking rubbish about things even I know more about than them, while trying to work out just where the BBC went wrong.

And don't ask me why I watch soap operas. It's not for the compelling stories. It might be for the women, I suppose. Some soaps are just blatant adverts for The Beauty of Women (the Channel 5 soap, Family Affairs, has I think seven regular male characters, and about thirteen regular female characters, plus sundry minor cast members, and they are all beautiful. Well, except for the slightly nutty older lady, and even she had a fit daughter). But then, that doesn't explain EastEnders, which hasn't had a female character that I've found attractive since the sapphic duo of Bella and The Other One. Apart from Daniela Denby-Ash, of course. Ahem.

This is the best (only) picture I can find of Pooky Quesnel. This is a shame, as she is very attractive.
(God, I need a life!)

SIDEBAR: SOAP ACTRESSES
If I have a type, then it's somewhere here. Daniela Denby-Ash (L) played a whiny character in the reasonably interesting EastEnders, but was a danm sight better-looking than B'yanka and Juneeen, while Kristy Wright (R) played a nicer character in the truly awful (so bad that ITV dropped it!) Home & Away. I barely notice the plot in Family Affairs, but Pooky Quesnel (C)...well...Pooky Quesnel is Gorgeous.'Nuff Said,

Neither does it explain Home and Away, which usually has a plethora of beautiful actresses, but I find excerable in the extreme. Maybe because H&A is a mis-marketed children's programme (it started off as the story of a foster Mother and her wayward charges), and a bad one at that.

There are exceptions, of course. Star Trek, Babylon 5, Friends and ER. I watch these things because they are fantastic programmes. Despite fitting the stereotype (I'm fat, I live with my parents and I have my own website), I don't really watch a lot of science-fiction. I've only just gotten into Buffy, for example. So to speak. Ahem. But I love Star Trek, with it's familiar characters and expansive universe. I devour the licensed books (and reccomend Peter David's NEW FRONTIER series, to anyone who's even enjoyed one episode of the show) whenever I can buy them.

ER is a great show. I really enjoy some hospital dramas, but I get bored of others. It's not the gore. I think it might be the heightened tension of the emergency room (or Casualty, for fans of the show of the same name). Or maybe it's just that the writers, knowing that the real thing might be too dull for a dramatic concept, have spent more time on the interpersonal stuff than the medicine.

Of course, it goes without saying that the double-X content of some of these shows is sufficiently appealing. But I said it anyway. Damn.

But it's a fair bet that, if I'm watching the news, it's to scare myself stupid, or to work me up into a little frenzy.

Cue Tuesday morning.

I had overslept in part to waste some of the day: the water to the house, and indeed half the town, had been cut off by an incontinent water main. I woke up just in time for the BBC to go over to the newsroom for an urgent bulletin.

Oh, dear, I thought. There goes the Queen Mum. Three days of sombre music topped by an excuciating state funeral.

All of which I would miss, as I would be looking at bras on the internet.

You know that feeling you get, when you say something you really shouldn't have, just to yourself, and no-one's around to hear it, but you feel bad about it anyway. Or worse, when someone hears you, and you really feel bad about it.

That was when the second plane hit.

I'd thought that it had been a sad accident. In the back of the noggin was the thought that it might be terrorists, but I had a clear ten second of "those poor people, seeing that thing coming towards them," when Tower 2 was struck.

I half expected planes to start falling out of the sky every few seconds. I thought that maybe something had gone catastophically wrong with planes in general. Then I dismissed that notion for the one that seems to have been proven right:

Scum.

I had in my mind a number of rather harrowing images. Of people seeing this thing coming towards them, a silver angel of Death. Of people on the planes, screaming for a God or a man or a Superman to save them who wasn't going to get there in time.

The sainted Mother called me to see if I was watching the news. I went downstairs to watch the rest of the story unfold over a late breakfast.

By the time I had gotten downstairs, the Pentagon was on fire. Shit hitting the fan at gathering speed.

I remembered my friend Crossy's brother, Andrew. A year older than us, Andy works just off Wall Street. Sufficiently far from Ground Zero to be safe, but close enough for me to hope that he had chosen to not take the day off to go sightseeing.

Another though occurred to me: that the Spider-Man movie trailer and posters featured the WTC quite prominently. The picture on my computer desktop was of Spider-Man peeking out from the side of a building, the WTC reflected in his eye piece. The picture that adorned the front of this site (and the links page) had a similar image. I remembered a Spider-Man adventure that featured the hero rescuing his wife from the top of Tower 1, while his clone, the Scarlet Spider (long story), resuced some other people from Tower 2. At least one of these concurrent adventures featured terrorists. I wondered how this might afect the movie.

A few minutes later, I got my answer.

In hindsight, I should have expected it. The planes had been moving noticably slowly when they hit, and had not gone all the way through. The Daddy had said something about millions of tons of water in the sprinkler system.

Right then, I should have known. Right bloody then.

The second before the first tower fell, I noticed that the cameraman on screen was filming the WTC from the same angle used at one point in the Spider-Man trailer.

By this point, most of the waking world was watching these pictures on telly. The rest have caught up by now. So I won't go on.

How do I feel? Dumb question. Glad I asked.

I'm scared. Scared that America is a bit too keen to go to war. Scared that no one will learn anything from this tragedy. Mre scared that they will, and it'll be the wrong lessons. Scared that things'll get worse.

There were fathers in America ready to drive their sons across the Canadian border, rather than have them drafted.

I'll go on record now: I will not fight. I will not kill. I do not believe in nationalities or countries or religions or race. All I believe in is you. And me. And possibly aliens.

The hatred has already begun to spread. A man in America blamed the attacks on an America softened by abortions and gayness. And not religious fundamentaslism probably a bit closer to his point of view on those subjects than the "liberal" (a hate word itself in certain circles, inexplicably) society, for example. A man in the Shropshire Star, a paper that has done the impossible, by making me more angry than the Daily Mail, claimed that this was "the true face of Islam."

His name, by the way, is David Blunt. The Big, Fat Cunt.

Just say that to yourself, for me. David Blunt, the Big, Fat Cunt.

I was moved to write to the Shropshire Star in response to this letter. I wanted to set him straight, as a former Irish-Catholic (and someone who has lost a family member to terrorism), on the concept of the few not representing the whole. I wanted to question the paper's editorial policy in publishing hate-filled shite.

But I got too scared to send the letter.

Fans of Pastor Niemoller's famous quote will appreciate the way I feel right now. Japanese-Americans have probably seen all this before.

I've rewritten this bit of the piece four times now. I have a big scratchpad of things I'm too scared to say.

Maybe I'll find my backbone before it's too late.

Here's a picture of a woman licking a giant ice cream.

Taking their inspiration from the phallic Flake commercials of the 1970's, Wall's Mighty Jon Dong Ice Cream was a huge success in Dorset.

The attack has affected everthing that I do (which isn't much). The comics weren't delayed this week, although I had travelled to Birmingham to find this, and had to ring my shop in Wolverhampton (from a number I got in a magazine in the Birmingham shop, hee hee), to check my standing order was okay. But they'll be late for the next few weeks.

Marvel Comics and DC were too far from the attack to be in any danger, but y'know, Manhattan is a small island. Everyone knew someone who knew somone, if you know what I mean. Everyone was touched. My regular websites were updated with news of tributes and tragedy, rather than comics news. Some of the more unfortunately-timed comics, including an issue of Superman featuring the rebuilding efforts in Metropolis after it's near-desrtuction. A shot of a twin-towered skyscraper complex, damaged in an eerily prescient way, combined with Superman's adoption of a new symbol, mourning the dead in Metropolis and his home state of Kansas, has led to some angry customers this week. The Spider-Man movie has been affected, as has the latest Spider-Man game, which was due to come out this weekend, but now pushed back (the end of the game features a fight at the top of a twin-towered skyscraper). Which is a pisser.

The black background in Superman's shield comemmorates the people who died in a story running in his more recent comics. Oddly (and sadly) prophetic...

I'm so glad that this is my only problem.

I just hope it doesn't get worse.

This was supposed to be a funny essay.

Sorry.

Here's Mr. T.

I pity the fool who drilled through my arm last night while I was asleep!

And why am I in Surrey when I last remember being in L.A?

Hannibal, you better not have drugged me and put me on no plane!

An' why am I wearing this ballet skirt?

Matthew Craig, coward, September 17th 2001.

RECOMMENDED READING LIST:

Star Trek: New Frontier by Peter David.
Book 1 is �2.99. You don't to have ever seen an episode of Trek to enjoy this series of books. Funny, sad frequently at the same time, the books are written by a master storyteller.

That's it. More tomorrow.

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