SOZ MATE, BUT YOUR LIFE'S SHIT (AND IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU WERE MADE TO REALISE IT)

Shut your mouth and kiss a pigeon.

HI. I'm Randy Turnips and I'm here to help YOU achieve a better life, with my patented Plain Truth™ technique. I'll tell you things you should already know, especially if you're an adult, and in turn you will thank me for ramming simple truths down your throat. Right after you've expressed hatred and/or rage at the idea that you need someone else to tell you them. Don't worry, friend--much like grief, there are many aspects and phases to accepting the truth, and the most immediate and common is the 'This Is Bullshit' phase, or as I like to call it, 'The Unaccepting Schwarzenegger' phase. You're in good company, so calm down.

1. JEALOUSY IS UGLY.
So are certain European women, but that's probably due to inbreeding/radiation. Jealousy is like inbreeding/radiation, as it eats away at all the good things inside your body and replaces them with twisted, mean things until there is nothing good left. Every time a friend or someone you know succeeds, is your typical, immediate response "I'm going to do something amazing too"? Being inspired by a friend is one thing, but if you're more concerned with showing everybody how ace YOU can be, maybe you're a tad self-obsessed. But WHY are you self-obsessed? Because you're jealous. Maybe you routinely fail, not only at all your "amazing" things, but at noticing that you've failed. Don't worry, plenty of people are like this. I was like you, once. Don't be jealous. Prove you can put your money where your mouth is. Oh, what's that? This segues nicely into point 2? My god, you're right!

2. 'ALL MOUTH AND NO TROUSERS' IS NOT A COMPLIMENT
Have you got a bad case of the big ideas? Like to tell everybody of your grand plans and schemes to better yourself/improve your life/do something amazing but never actually do anything? Maybe you have so many big ideas that you count on the next one eclipsing the previous failed one(s). You crafty bastard! Unfortunately, you're only doing yourself a disservice. Jealousy and self-obsession are bad enough, but when you add 'self-delusion' to the mix, then buddy, you're in trouble. Sooner or later, people will get tired of all your talk and start to show only a polite interest in what you're gobbing off about, and then no interest at all. Why should they waste their time and energy humouring someone who wastes theirs? Until you finally follow through on one of your big ideas, you'll forever suffer from IBS of the soul, and that shit's contagious, brah.

3. FORGET THE STATUS QUO AND FOCUS ON YOUR OWN HAPPINESS
Are YOU consumed with the idea that you need to own your own home, have a family, and work in a well-paid job? FUCK THAT! Whenever you feel pressured by society, shout "FUCK THAT!" and forge your own path! Look at me: I'm a famous, inspirational, motivational speaker and I don't have a wife or kids, and live in a box in the woods. But shit son, I'm doing what I want and positively affecting other people's lives! You can't put a price tag on that. Well, you can, but I'm too polite to talk about my earnings and the way they're funnelled through Swiss banks to avoid tax. Have a good think about what makes you happy. Playing the guitar? Doing maths? Digging holes? Are you good at it? Try to make money from it! You might need to supplement your earnings with another job, but what the hell--you'll still be doing what you enjoy! "But Randy, I don't know how to make money from digging holes!" My friend, let me introduce you to a concept I like to call RESEARCH. Use the internet, the library, Citizen's Advice Bureau, your local council...there are LITERALLY a lot of avenues to explore. If, however, you're the sort of lazy arsehole who can't be bothered to make any kind of real effort, then there is no help for you. Have fun living in your mum's basement for the rest of your life.

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RANDY TURNIPS is the award-winning writer of "I Can't Make You Famous But I Can Make You Happy" and "I Can't Make You Happy But I Can Make You Famous". The above article is an excerpt from his latest bestseller "Time To Realise You're An Idiot". He currently lives off the grid in some woods, for reasons that have nothing to do with the FBI.

ARE YOU SAD AND LONELY? IT'S PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU'RE UGLY!

IS THIS YOU? If so, YOU'RE A MESS!

Because it's National Boyfriend Day, I would like to share something with you. Shut up and you might learn something.

People often ask me "Hey Dave, how does someone as mildly astounding as you manage to remain successfully single?"
"Firstly, that's not my name," I say, "and secondly, by choice. Otherwise I'd be overrun."
"I thought as much," people reply. "But what about if you do turn 'it' off and make yourself unavoidable? How can *I* get a boyfriend?"
"It's very easy," I say. "Simply follow my advice and you'll have a boyfriend in no time!"
"No time isn't a quantifiable amount," people reply.
"Shut up and listen," I say. I then tell them the following FACTS:

Message a boy every day. At least once, but lots more if you get the chance. This shows you're keen. Social media is great because it allows you to send elaborate and painfully desperate messages for free, rather than waste your free text allowance on sending truncated missives like 'Ur fit lol', thereby allowing you to send a potentially infinite amount. You may have heard the adage 'treat them mean, keep them keen'. That's rubbish. Treat a boy mean and they'll think you're just being rude. He will then seek solace with someone who isn't rude. To be clear: someone who isn't you.

Show you're dead keen on equal rights, like all women, by not allowing the boy to pay for anything if you go out. And/or always get him the first round. Also, open doors for him. He'll see this role reversal as a ballsy move on your part to establish yourself as the dominant one in the relationship, and we all know that every boy on the planet has mother issues.

Comment on his fashion sense at every available opportunity, and convince him to wear skinny jeans, preferably red or green, so he looks like a Christmas elf squeezed into twin denim icing tubes. This will accentuate his legs and groin, because it will be impossible not to notice these things. Again, it's tantamount to marking your territory, but in a painfully obvious way. Which leads onto the next piece of advice...

Be obvious. All the time. Boys don't like flirting or suggestion. They want to be told "This is how it is." No, it doesn't kill any sense of romance or mystery! It has exactly the opposite effect, and makes a boy wonder what the hell happened to you in the past that made you so domineering. And boys find domineering women sexy, even if they claim otherwise. They love being told what to do.

This advice is literally the tip of the iceberg. If you want your relationship to be the Titanic, sign up for my FREE newsletter ('How To Get Sex For Cheap') or send £39.99 to the usual address for a copy of my instructional VHS tape ('Don't Take No For An Answer'). Follow my lead and you, too, will soon have your very own boyfriend! Guaranteed!*



*not guaranteed.

SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Keep it down, will you? Some of us are trying to write. nb. This post contains lyrical waxing and personal statements, which some viewers may find offensively boring.*

First things first, for those out of the loop: A Glitch in the Continuum and Attack of the Fifty Foot Book are no more. Basically, a mixture of cold feet between the publisher and some authors have caused these anthologies to breathe their last. It's no one's fault, really. Just one of those things. And in working on 'this side of the fence' I've come to understand just how mercurial the small press can be. I'd like to be able to resurrect these anthos in the future (because I think they both had really cool concepts, if I do say so myself) but we'll have to wait and see. In any case, I hope to be able to edit/compile other anthologies, for whichever publisher, but this is something I'm going to concentrate on after I'm all sorted.

"Sorted"? Yes, I'm moving house! What?

Living the highly profitable* lifestyle of a published writer allows me to make my abode in such a place as a damp-riddled maisonette. Every morning, I get a breath of bracing cold air thanks to the highly effective* double-glazing, and feel the invigoration of the same cold temperature once I leave my bed thanks to the equally effective insulation. Sets me up for the day ahead!

But, I can't live in this sort of luxury forever, and so I'm moving, somewhere really downmarket. A semi-detached house, with central heating. How the mighty have fallen! Please, don't cry for my awful circumstances. I get to share them with my platonic wife. She likes to remind me that I need to finish washing her pots. It's a fun thing we do. She also likes to tell me how to pack boxes, because moving house repeatedly over the last few years has not given me this rare and useful life skill. None of these things in any way wind me up and kill any writing buzz I might have had.*

But seriously. I've been struggling to write lately, for these reasons, and because I hate the idea of starting a new story when I have a shitload of unfinished ones stuck on a broken USB stick. I have duplicates of some of these stories, but they're 'unedited' and I can't face re-doing all the changes because I intend to get the USB stick (hopefully) fixed. In the meantime, I'm trying to work on a few stories, including a pulp/horror/superhero piece that is currently stuck somewhere in the Fifties, but I might move to modern times, and a prequel story to yet another story that hasn't been published.

I do like to link a lot of my stories together - and was only really able to do this once I stopped writing things where everybody dies hahaha I'd like to think that, after I've been going for a few more years and picked up more of a readership, constant readers will start to notice references to other stories, or events, or maybe even the inclusion of previously-used characters. I know it's a little obvious to cite Stephen King as an influence, but when I was a teen I read his stuff religiously, a bit like how I am nowadays with Bentley Little. I thought his Dark Tower saga was so good I didn't want to finish reading it. So I stopped halfway through the last book. The way he weaves a multitude of his stories into that world is brilliant, and though I wouldn't want to do something on a similar scale, I do like the idea of there being this 'place' that incorporates elements/characters/what-have-you from existing realities/stories.

And on that non-ending, let's call it a night. Some of us have boxes to badly pack and other people's pots to wash.*

*not really

IT'S QUIET AROUND HERE...PERHAPS EVEN A LITTLE *TOO* QUIET! OR MAYBE NOT QUIET ENOUGH. I DON'T KNOW WHATEVER PISS OFF.

Pretty much all that stuff mentioned down there is still happening, or almost sorted. I'll reveal the cover to AOT5FB soon. I basically aced a teaching lesson I had to do recently (I talked about story elements and genre tropes) and have been busy rocking like a motherlover with my motherloving rock band HANDSOME BASTARDS. I think that's IT!

ABOUT AS FILLING AS A BOTTLE OF POP

I prefer Burger King to McDonalds, but I don't think I could subsist on nothing but BK. I do, however, think I could live on nothing but Pizza Hut. SORORITY ROW is Pizza Hut.

Unfortunately, it soon turns out that this is a Pizza Hut that only sells Margherita pizzas, which are nice for a change and when you don't want anything too fancy, but soon gets boring.

The starter menu isn't too fussy, presenting as it does an extended set-up to events: a group of sorority sisters play an exceptionally mean-spirited prank on their friend's cheating boyfriend, which ends up inadvertently costing the girl her life. After A LOT of standing around and arguing, they dump the body down a mineshaft and try to get on with their lives.

It takes far too long for the main course to arrive: it's almost 40 minutes from the start of the film before the killer actually appears and starts whittling down the cast. Is it worth the wait? Yes and no. The kills range from the boring (being stabbed) to the unpleasant (a girl gets a bottle rammed down her throat) with none of the playfulness of earlier slasher films such as Friday The 13th's sleeping bag kills or the tension of Michael Myers' relentless stalking. This killer wears a black cloak and gown (obvious/not scary) and kills using a modified tire iron (as this was used to kill the girl at the start). They also have unerring aim when throwing something that evidently carries a bit of weight. Perhaps there's a Slasher Olympics? That might be worth making into a film.

And then it's onto the dessert. I felt like I'd ordered a chocolate fudge cake and got one of those steam-in-the-microwave chocolate puddings instead. There are the usual array of red herring suspects (the dead girl's boyfriend? her sister? one of the main girls?) but it turns out to be someone utterly ridiculous, and feels like a "Haha! You didn't see that one coming!" No we didn't, because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Sure, the killer explains their "motive" (and I use that term vveerryyy loosely) but it's balls, frankly. I haven't felt so disappointed in a killer's reveal since I endured Valentine.

Sorority Row has very little wit, features largely unlikeable and contradictory characters (whose personalities turn on a dime if the plot requires it) and far too much standing/sitting around arguing about things and being bitchy to each other. I suppose in that respect the filmmakers have perfectly captured the spirit of a girls' sorority, but when it pads out the runtime of a horror film, it's not much fun. Yes, there're tits on display, but it feels like a necessary evil, rather than the joyful boobnanza of 1980's horror films (where they tend to pop out at any given time). And Carrie Fisher gets in effect an extended cameo, for no real reason other than to be a bit of a 'badass' housemother with a shotgun.

So if this is Pizza Hut with incompetent staff and a bare bones menu, I think I'd rather live off the cinematic equivalent of Pizza Express, where a sorority plays an integral part but there's also genuine charm and imagination on display. Yes, I'm talking about my favourite film ever, Night of the Creeps. I'd never get sick of eating at THAT restaurant!