After a quick browse through the selections last time you may recall I found the London Shyness meetup group, a group which surely is an oxymoron or at least someone with a lot of spots. I figured that if such a group could form in London then there must be some provision for a guy into some not-so-unfeasible things like myself.
Putting aside the obvious really weird shit that I'm into like sniffing people, gnome spanking, and wearing womens clothing, which I decided it best not to look up, I decided to look up my more mainstream pursuits. I set the search criteria to look for meetups in London and then proceeded to type in my main areas of interest.
In goes the search for Notting Hill Carnival, one of Europe's biggest street parties with nearly a million visitors a year.
...and back comes a list of meetups for clowns, the nearest one being in Hong Kong. hmmmm not really much use for meeting and discussing the finer points of costume design methinks. Sod that, let's try something else.
So I decided to search for my favourite writer, Alan Moore, the writer of the groundbreaking Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Swamp Thing, the comic that introduced John Constantine and redrew the boundaries of horror comics while establishing the Vertigo imprint on DC. Alan Moore, who I saw do a talk at the Institute of Education to nearly 1500 people a few weeks back is a national institution for us comics geeks, an English writer who still lives in a terraced house in Northampton while writing the comics that inspire comics writers and fans all over the world.
So in goes Alan Moore. And out comes a list of meetups for Mandy Moore. I think she's a pop singer with big tits.
Final throw of the dice. H.P. Lovecraft was a turn of the century horror author, who transformed the landscape of horror writing by applying a materialist philosophy to his writings. Instead of writing about the supernatural as such and thus making events in his books seem as though they rely on a distant force out of our ken, Lovecraft's approach was to create scenarios which were eerily possible and his horror was much more immediate and tangible as a result. Instead of the witches and demons of old e.g. Dracula, Lovecraft was more influenced by Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelley and would write with a basis in science instead of the occult. Some reviewers of his work say that his skill lay in formulating his plots such that rather than Humanity living in a perfectly ordered universe where chaotic things sometimes occured, he instead places humanity as the last bastion of sanity in a completely chaotic universe in which anything could conceivably happen. Lovecraft's work inspired all the contemporary horror writers including Stephen King who refers to him as "the horror genre's baroque prince" and Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Only last week Lovecraft was the chosen specialist subject for a contestant on mastermind and I recently read a graphic novel called "Necronauts" (brilliant by the way - read it) in which Lovecraft plays a central role. With his worldwide fame and influence you'd pretty much count on some bastard out there starting a meetup group. I mean for fucks sakes there exists a group exclusively for SHY PEOPLE!!!
So in goes Lovecraft. And out comes ONE SINGLE PERSON. ONE. SINGLE. PERSON.
I've now decided to give up trying to meet people who are interested in the sorts of things I'm interested in and have decided that my rather niche interests (I mean REALLY are they niche? I'm not so weird am I?) are unlikely to ever be shared by anyone.
But more than that I am rather sad that the creative talent of Alan Moore is deemed far less important to people to discuss and meet up over than Mandy Moore, who I presume is a talentless bimbo with big breasts. The fact that there are 5 times more people in London who are willing to meet up and discuss the Backstreet Boys than there are to talk about HP Lovecraft is a sad reflection of the sort of people that society is today breeding.
As for the carnival search, I already have my carnival group but it's a shame that carnival isn't something that people discuss all year round. My ideal world has carnival on every day. Still, I guess I can always get the carnival face paint and oversize shoes out and go join the clown meetup group for the rest of the year...
