beatingadeadflower

okay, something needs to be said and i guess there is no better place than my page.

this is in regards to something that happened on my best friend chrissy's page. you can go back and see what happened but the reason i am writing this is to have my say in this whole thing. someone wrote things in chrissy's guestbook that i think were the embodiment of bad taste.

let me preface this by explaining a little bit. the friend who "supposedly" cuts themself is me. i know this is a really shitty thing to write on a page and unlike other manics "fans" i do not feel this is something i want to talk about in a forum like a homepage. (note to all manics fans on the internet who choose to write about this in their journals, while these journals are for your thoughts, when you write things like that, they sound either like a big cop off aping of some rock star you never knew whose name i do not need to mention or some attempt at attention and "pity me" via modem. i can say this because i know.) i don't feel like i need to talk about my self mutilation any more because that is SO not what this entry is about.

chrissy was speaking her honest feelings towards the whole "cult of richey" phenonmenom and the image the manics have portrayed over the years. everyone has some feeling towards it and she has every right to express hers. as for her not knowing that there were words to theme from mash prior to the manics rerecording it, c'mon i know you diehard manics fans out there. you each try to compete with each other about knowing every miniscule fact about them and get pissy when someone who is not a "diehard" tries to learn everything. but then when someone who never professes to be a diehard fan doesn't know the minutea of manicdom, you jump down their throats. it is certainly not a crime and probably a healthier way of life not knowing every tiny fact about the manics.

but here is where i get midevil on the asses of these people. you NEVER knew richey. to take a quote from simon price's book, everything (and if you don't trust what he has to say, then you don't know what you are talking about), james has said, "quite a lot of people think we are completely disrespectful to the memory of their "best friend" but, at the end of the day, he was MY best friend, not theirs." or how about nicky? "this song is for our Richey. I repeat, OUR Richey!" no one can speak for him, saying that he was this or he thought this. sure, i miss his greatly and think he was a very intelligent and funny (yes, i said funny) person. but reserve the pious, he is so close to me thing for nicky, sean and james. don't take everything anyone says about richey as a personal thing. you didn't know him and you don't need to stand up for him.

it just gets to me that my best friend spoke her mind about something that was very upsetting to her. i respect her immensely for caring enough to look into the topic of self mutilation for the help of people close to her who fall victim to it. she wasn't trying to write another manifesto (of which there were enough written by the manics themselves, making the cookie-cutter, nutter written ones tedious and silly). i think she probably understands the manics better than any of the fans out there who like to talk about how they down a bottle of vodka and mutilate themselves while reading sartre and listening to joy division do. please, i emplore of you rabid manics fans out there, read a book on them. instead of feeding your self-fueled propaganda machines, you might pick up the humor (gallows or not) the manics actually have.

i agree that the band are probably very proud (as any band would be), of the fact that they have had such a profound influence on the lives of their listeners. and i don't think all manics fans are bad. when i say that term here, i am talking about the apples that sour the bunch and i think you know who you are. nicky writes to fanzines asking fans to send him, "cat masks, tiaras, glitter and make up." that is where he gets most of his onstage garb and i think that is truly cool of him. besides, when you are glued to sky tv golf coverage, who has time to go to miss selfridges? so i think the manics themselves appreciate their fans who, instead of aiming hate at all people who dare speak the name of richard james edwards without first carving his likeness into their forehead, send them make up and glitter and bags for nicky's dysons.

to wrap my feelings about the manics into one paragraph, they were four boys in podunk wales trying to get out and make a mark while they did it (ie not being the alarm). they stole things from their heroes and made them their own. but they also evolved and dealt with loss. so is there really a need to go around spewing venom at innocent people just so you can be like nicky wire was in 91? he's grown up, why haven't you? he has no regrets because he was in something called show buisness. unless you are saying all this for some big nme feature, shut the fuck up. it's not nearly as becoming. don't become an embrace fan (like nicky) but stop thinking carving suicide baby into your forearm makes you the manics PR mouthpiece.

to inject a little humor into all this, i again without permission, take something from the simon price book. when asking if to one-up himself, richey would have to carve something into his skin on CNN, sean peeked from behind his Sega game and responded, "we're gonna cut his head off!"

and with that my little suicide twins and little baby nothings of the world, i bid you adieu.

freed from our memory, escape from our history. everything must go.