Mother Nature, now, she’s the worst terrorist of all, and by that I don’t mean she’s clumsy and inept, or what have you, quite the opposite. I mean she stalks us all, randomly taking billions of us out each year through illness, pestilence and natural disaster. Cheery thought, I know, but there is no escaping the fact that she is a remorseless killer, the perfect killer. A person needs to be on guard when dealing with her.

Chicken Flu is a prime example of her powers. Great I thought, I’m not a chicken. Therefore I should be in the clear, but Mother Nature is not big on semantics. You can try and be pedantic all you want and point out the obvious, but once she has you that’s it, there can be no arguments.

The men in white coats, the boffins, the other week they told she is getting worse, out of control, almost. However, the relationship with Mother Nature during human existence has always been a loving one. We try taming her because we love taking advantage. That is how it is and has always been. Like what’s-his-face, the film fellow with the eyes, Indiana Milliband, that’s him, forever sticking his arm out to retrieve his hat at the last second. Nice legs he has as well. Good solid legs for walking, which is important in his line of work, but forgive me, I digress.

Where were we? Yes. What I’m trying to say is that when it comes to Mother Nature, us humans are just like Indiana Milliband in the Temple of Dim, in that our greedy faces light up at the thought of all the riches and jewels we can scoop up in our hands and have away. I reckon she’s about damn near had enough, don’t you?

“The aim of the festival,” says Holloway, who won the international spoken word phenomenon Literary Death Match in 2010 and whose novel The Company of Fellows was last year voted “best Oxford novel” by the readers of Oxford’s world-famous Blackwell’s bookshop, “is to celebrate a vibrant literary underground that festival goers may not even realise exists. We will be showcasing both amazing, internationally-acclaimed local talent, and forms of literature and performance that never get onto festival programmes. We want people to go away enthused, challenged and inspired by what Oxford has to offer, and we want Oxford to be inspired by the incredible things happening at a time when so many are painting a gloomy picture of the literary world.”

Performers will include stars of the UK’s independent literary scene such as Not the Booker Prize winner Michael Stewart and one of the UK’s most celebrated flash fiction writers, Tania Hershman, and leading members of Oxford’s exciting literary scene such as Davy Mac, award-winning poet and author of The Homeless Oratorio, Lucy Ayrton, one of the current hosts of the leading poetry slam Hammer and Tongue which was born in Oxford over a decade ago, Paul Askew who edits the innovative words & pictures newspaper Ferment, and Anna Hobson, MC of the Oxford International Women’s Festival Poetry Night. There will also be talks and readings from those at the leading edge of the current self- and e-publishing revolution: Philistine Press is an international underground publisher that gives all its work away for free, whilst Authors Electric is a collective of traditionally published writers who have turned to self-publishing their work digitally, represented by Oxford author Dennis Hamley whose children’s and young adult books have been delighting readers for decades.

Full details can be found at http://eightcuts.com

For interviews, articles, and further information, e-mail eightcutsgallery@googlemail.com

Prophets, profits, little miss muffits, eating her birds of prey. When down sat beside her an enormous insider threatening to take her away. She looked in her pocket and pulled out a locket that told her her fortune was to stay. But the insider did spy on her. Said he wanted to hire her. In a way that she thought was too creepy to say.

She pulled at his thumbs. Quoted Newton’s sums, and said his business was nothing but the planning of fools! It ain’t cool.

She told him: “Quit looking uptight. Unless you’re looking for a fight, and remember that everybody else is fighting a hard fight, too!”

Prophets, profits, little miss muffits, the Knowles knows, the bling keeps growing and sorrow is growing, now officially described in positive ways. Misery is unreal, but a medical condition, an untimely premonition of cold, dark lonely days. But the insider is inside her eating her away. Breathe and breathe deeply.

Post your answers below. The first to name all three correctly is the winner.

Film 1

Film 2

Film 3

I have given days of my life to dreaming of receiving that phone call. Why not? It is free and fun. Sometimes it’s not what happens on the pitch, but what happens in your imagination that excites. What if we sign this player? Can we win away this weekend? Will Ray Winstone’s gargantuan-melon-of-a head suddenly appear in front of my mates and I at half time to deliver us the latest live odds?

The crushing realisation that my England dream ended early through injury is tough to take. Never mind the dismal lack of talent that had been holding me back me before, because at least then I had some form of hope.

If don Fabio made the call now and in his way of talking English, which somehow seems worse than when he first came to England, but which is still way better than my Italian, and he was to tell me that Rooney is out and I’m taking his place, I would decline the offer for the good of the team. “Sorry, Mr Capello, but I can no longer do a job for you. Why not instead pick…”

Ah, here we enter a whole different territory. Imagining you are England manager, responsible for choosing players, formations and tactics, is no substitute for imagining you are playing for England. We all do it, though, step into the manager’s shoes, but the England manager trip is not a happy one.

Your imagined appointment begins well enough. There is an air of optimism. Not new optimism, because we have been here many times before, but optimism nonetheless.

However, there is also an undercurrent of extreme pressure. I don’t need Ray’s head to appear in my face to tell me the odds are low on there being a high percentage of English football fans willing to donate an organ or two to see England win a World Cup in their lifetime. The desire to lift that trophy, any trophy, is palpable.

This strange, but oh so powerful hunger for national team success wafts in strong and thick, at Wembley it chokes the team.

This huge ugly weight of expectation grows and eventually collides with the fact the England team is agonisingly only above average. Usually this manifests itself in the form of a couple of publicly perceived poor results and performances. England hint at success, rather than convince. They always have. That’s the problem. We’re always capable of beating the rest, but consistently unable to beat the best when it matters. That is our place. This is what you must take on when you begin dreaming of being England manager (take note, Harry).

After the bad results and performances the nightmare properly sets in. Questions are raised. Your every choice as England manager is placed under harsh scrutiny, and you smell of blood. Across the country the baying pack want you gone, and pretty soon a graphic designer working in a tabloid art department will be mocking up you up as radish, or some other root vegetable for its back page.

Not long after this the FA have you out. Great compensation, yes, but your reputation is soiled. Your achievements are not understood or valued by your countrymen, and work, which can lead to redemption of sorts, is only available abroad or in the lower leagues.

That is why I can’t daydream about being England manager. I can’t stand the stress. I am not a masochist. Instead I drift into thinking of a really desperate situation. A butterfly flaps its wings in China and everyone capable of taking my place in the England squad, which would probably be every English person, breaks an ankle as a result (sorry everyone, but this is my fantasy). Injury or not, the team is short and I have no other option but to take my place on the bench amongst the other subs and hope I’m not brought on.

My attitude has always been: “it is not in how hard you fall, but how high you bounce back.”

I am not saying it is easy, but for my own sanity and survival I always cling to the positive, even in the blackest of situations. I simply refuse to let the Bad Times win, because to get through life in the best way possible you have to enjoy it all.

Unable to pinpoint any one single action or thing that I could draw upon as running my life made me think harder and asses in finer details my 25 years on earth, and this drew me to the conclusion that it is actually Life that has ruined my life.

Before my life began I felt no pain and was at perfect peace. Then I was squeezed out kicking and screaming into the world like the last drop of toothpaste, and so began what I now understand to be the Creator’s practical joke.

The doctor doing the delivery took one look at the wretched, writhing thing he was holding and flung me hard against the wall. So ugly a baby was I. The rumour in my family has it that at least one of the medical staff present at my birth vomited.

A few years after this I accidentally killed my first person. Sitting in the booth of a Little Chef opposite my dad, my elder brother Nathan was practising sword swallowing. He was dangling his knife down his throat. He was dead keen on being a sword swallower, and he would take every opportunity to practice. Mum was in the queue looking every bit the stressed mother to two. She was trying to pay the lady at the till and at the same time speaking to me about something I can no longer remember. Carrying a tray of food and facing her I edged backwards into my brother causing his fingers to lose their grip on the knife and for the thing to fall.

I turned to look at what I’d bumped in to. At the same time Nathan blurted out, “My god, I’ve swallowed the knife”.

Looking into his eyes, not believing him and thinking it was a joke, I started laughing. Perhaps it was the feeling of terror felt at what he’d done, I don’t know, but Nathan started laughing also. This laughter caused him massive internal injuries and, despite the best efforts of the medical team at the hospital where he was rushed, he died 6 hours later in surgery.

Two years down the line when I was 11, the same age as Nathan when he died, I started becoming myself again. I started to realise that his was an unfortunate accident, an accumulation of innocent events that resulted in a catastrophe. It happens – a hard lesson for one so young to learn.

My parents had divorced during this time. My mum had blamed herself. In her mind she was responsible, because she distracted me and if she hadn’t done that Nathan would still be here and today we’d be able to see the man Nathan would have become. She also blamed dad for not stopping Nathan.

Dad blamed himself as well. The guilt was too much for him to stand, so he left. When I accidentally killed dad, I did not feel totally sad, because I genuinely think it set him free from his suffering. Each day for him he was tormented by what happened that day in the Little Chef, haunted by what he could or should have done. So when I opened a window at his home that knocked the ladder he was standing on, causing him to fall sideways and then backwards onto and through his neighbour’s greenhouse, where he pretty much died instantly from his injuries, there was a small part of me that was actually glad dad was out of what must have been hell on Earth for him.

My mother, who was now convinced I was jinxed and that she was next, sent me to live with my aunts and uncles. Then one of them or my cousins would die and I’d be moved on. Eventually I was moved into care and this terrible pattern continued.

On account of constantly moving from town to town, the hideous looks gifted me at birth, and the fact I keep inadvertently killing the people close to me (13 by the time of my 18^th birthday and 39 now in total), my life has almost exclusively become a solitary one. The deaths were never my fault, as such, at least not in the eyes of the law anyway, but I can tell by the way people behave near me that they are scared, that they think I’m cursed and don’t want to stick around for longer than is absolutely necessary.

It’s obvious now, looking back, that my life has indeed ruined my life. It’s ruined quite a few other lives too! None of it deliberate, mind. I just happen to be incredibly unlucky and a nightmare to be around. Not to worry. The show must go on, as they say, which is why if you provide the best comment below you can win a trip yachting round the Solent with me. Surely I can’t keep accidentally killing people, right?

Post your answers below. The first to name all three correctly is the winner. We shall gives hugs and kisses to the winner and the person who gives us the funniest alternative film title or comment. We’ll post the winners up on Twitter and Facebook page. Good luck.

Film 1

Film 2

Film 3

A few correct entries this time, but again Jim Condon calexico65 was first to get it right. He really is the movie quiz King. The films are 1) Two Lane Blacktop 2) The Wedding Crashers 3) Escape to Victory. Funniest comment goes to Loo Roll Lou for this piece of enlightenment: ‘I love arse paper. Imagine life without it – only true friends would shake hands.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJ0z_93wVE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcBgeyo5bIo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73PnAymHAHk

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Some films to whet your Terry Southern appetite.

Hopefully these films will inspire you to explore Mr Southern’s work and motivate you to be a better writer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJ0z_93wVE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcBgeyo5bIo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73PnAymHAHk

]]> http://popcultmag.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/some-film-clips-to-whet-your-terry-southern-appetite/feed/ 0 popcultmag1 http://popcultmag.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/legendary-us-writer-to-feature-in-new-pop-cult/ http://popcultmag.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/legendary-us-writer-to-feature-in-new-pop-cult/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:28:00 +0000 popcultmag1 http://popcultmag.wordpress.com/?p=608 ]]> September’s issue of Pop Cult, Essential Reading Material for the Bathroom is going to feature four pieces by legendary practitioner in the Quality Lit game Terry Southern. Three of which have not been published before in the UK. To celebrate the work of the man who wrote the classic novels Candy, Magic Christian and Blue Movie, and landmark films Dr Strangelove Barbarella and Easy Rider, we’re doing a Blue issue, and thanks to Souvenir Press there will be the chance to win copies of Southern’s novels.

Tom Wolfe credits Southern for creating the New Journalism genre, a form made popular by maverick journalists such as Hunter Thompson, and Norman Mailer described Southern as writing ‘a mean, coolly deliberate and murderous prose.’

As well as Southern, the issue also features the blue efforts of Pop Cult’s fine team of short story writers and illustrators. What was once considered Blue and unacceptable is now accepted and mainstream. We live with hearty liberal attitudes and Terry Southern with his intelligence and humour help breakdown those barriers. We’re aware of this irony. What we’re trying to do with the Blue issue is very much tongue in arse cheek.”

Reserve your copy here: popcultmag@gmail.com

Can’t wait for the new issue? Try one of our back issues on for size.

“The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies.”

Hitler said that. I think he was implying that most people in any given country are a good, trusting, gullible sort that have missed out on evolution, which somehow makes them stupid and ripe for power crazed maniacs like himself to takeover and exploit, but that was a long time ago and times have moved on.

Hitler, who had evolved so much that he only needed one testicle, also said:

“In relation to the political decontamination of our public life, the government will embark upon a systematic campaign to restore the nation’s moral and material health. The whole educational system, theatre, film, literature, the press and broadcasting – all these will be used as a means to this end.”

I have heard similar recently. Well, not exactly like that, but there have been promises. One was to make the nation happy, to make things orderly and proper, and a review of how education and the arts and media is run. Well, fuck that. I was doing fine till you started making me question whether I was actually happy or not. I’m not sure your kind of spiritual, uptight karmic help is needed, at least not today.

Mastering the art of decontaminating your public life has proved tricky of late. There are many contaminated elements from the fallout of this deplorable episode that makes a mockery of British democracy. Those who have not already made for the exits are desperately hoping they will not be shoved forward and have to don the lead gloves to clean the mess up. Or maybe they won’t need shoving?

Maybe they will have the metaphorical balls to step up and be a hero for democracy and integrity, but they’ll need to remember to put the gloves on first, as this mess will do worse than stain. Avoid getting any traces of it on your person. You won’t notice at first, but soon, maybe in days, or months, your hair will fall out, your gums will turn purple and your teeth will drop from your mouth in groups, and you will spew up acidic vomit that will eventually rot your throat and the lower half of your face away.

What we face now in the UK is a question of integrity and credibility. Sure, this kind of subterfuge has always been going on in political life, only these guys have been caught in the open with their pants down. I once worked in a chicken factory and one of the employees was found by his colleagues fucking a dead chicken, the prepared kind you buy in shops. He couldn’t deny it, and it may even have been his first attempt at such a practice, but from then on he was always referred to as the chicken fucker.