Something's a little bit wrong.

I’ve just come in from picking up a birthday card for one of my friends in WH Smith where I stumbled across the weirdest magazine. There is a magazine called ‘Murder Most Foul’ and it’s full of real life murder stories. Its kind of like all the nastiest stories you would find in Take a Break or Chat, you know things like, ‘My husband cut off my legs and I watched him feed them to the dog’ or ‘I killed my neighbour…on her new carpet.’ Things like that. Anyway, I was flicking through this magazine with a look of what some may perceive as gormless but I think of as being utter disdain (mouth open and nose slightly wrinkled) reading story titles such as ‘Jane comes face to face with her axe attacker after 30 years.’ I then saw the most inappropriate and disturbing headline of ‘Daddys got a Christmas surprise for you!’ I stood and scanned through the story getting the general gist that it was about a man in some state in America who murdered his four children on Christmas Eve. Now, I’m known to have a somewhat dark interest but this was too much even for me. For one thing, the headline actually turned my stomach because it was just sensationalising the most heinous of crimes. The inclusion of an exclamation mark was the part that really bothered me. Secondly, this magazine was filled page to page with murder stories, which makes me wonder who on earth reads it? I flicked through the pages to see what the advertisements were for to see if I could suss out the demographic of such a publication but there weren’t any. It was issue 62 as well so it’s obviously been going for quite some time. I think it would be almost more acceptable if it focused on the psyche of murderers and any correlation in killings but instead it just glorifies the crime, turning them into almost fictional works. I suppose that the magazine has to seek the approval of families and friends of victims before the stories are published. But the person who the story is focused around, the victim themselves obviously can’t give their consent. And I’m sure that most would not want their demise to become a two-page feature in a magazine called ‘Murder Most Foul.’ I don’t know, maybe since I sometimes watch films in which there is intense violence (American History X and Hostel spring to mind) I can’t really pass judgement on this. But I just felt very concerned about the very existence of this kind of publication. And it was one of three in the same series. Part of me wanted to buy it to show people but the other part of me didn’t want to invest money in such a cash in on crime.

Anyway, aside from that, today is the start of a new week and I’m pretty excited about it. I had a really good weekend, which has set me in good steed. I went to see The Little Shop of Horrors on Friday night performed by a local amateur dramatics group. It was excellent. I had seen it before and it’s quite a daunting piece to put on effectively, particularly because of the inclusion of a talking Venus fly trap. But the group was fantastic. The sets looked great with posters for films of the 50’s in which the action is set, and were manoeuvred so that the audience could see both the inside and outside of the shop and the entire performance was flawless. However, one of the best moments was during the interval when I went to get a drink. The woman in front of me turned behind her with a look of panic and called to someone, ‘Oh Joe, is you mum in tomorrow? I really need to see her about that cellophane.’ I can’t get across the urgency with which this was said but it was all quite bizarre. I don’t think cellophane should ever be a word spoken with any urgency at all. But maybe that’s just me.

So that was Friday evening. I then spent Saturday researching an article for Social Anxiety Disorder, which was quite successful and I enjoyed doing. Then I headed home, had my dinner and went into town to meet some friends for drinks. We ended up going back to a friend’s house and playing this Playstation game – SingStar. It’s kind of like karaoke where you have to sing along and then it rates your singing at the end. It’s a great way to spend a night. I then passed out and woke up on a settee in the foetal position. Always a good way to see in a Sunday.
So then Sunday morning was, naturally, a time to play Poker. This was probably quite a painful experience for everyone else involved since I had never played before so the game was punctuated with, ‘Oh, no Liam you can’t do that.’ I got the hang of it after a while and I’m glad I’ve been introduced to the addiction of such a game.

Then I slumped home and did some work before going out to fireworks in the evening. The fireworks were in the most ideal situation on the beach and we sat on benches outside a bar/café with drinks watching them with my friend’s eight year old son. I think having a child around at times like that is fantastic because it adds an element of excitement to the whole thing. He was really enjoying them and it made me think about how such simple things mean so much to you when you’re young and even now, as adults, we get the same sense of enjoyment from the same things. It was lovely. Anyway, then we headed back to Frea’s and I nearly got my car hit by missing the turning for her house. We stayed for a while and played more poker. I can see this being a downward spiral to gambling for me. So, that’s the lot for now.

xx