Rising Up In Darlington County
May. 19th, 2006 07:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirks"Sex Slave Cult Discovered In Darlington".
Have you noticed how, although movies like that David Bowie/vampire flick tend to focus on the sexual deviations apparently rife in metro New York and other urban hotspots, when it comes down to it, bizarre sex cults, swingers' clubs, voluntary cannibalism (which led to a great headline from my friend "What's Eating The Germans?") and the like, all seem to take place in suburbia or the "normal" provinces?
I had no idea that there were 25,000 Goreans worldwide, people who have constructed a philosophy around the Chronicles of Gor — quite astoundingly bad science fiction written by John Norman which I thought only adolescent males read after they had gone to bed. But the Darlington cult went one better than that. These people were Kaotians, a splinter group from the Goreans.
They had a photograph of the house in which this cult was based in Darlington -- a pebble-dashed terraced house in Darlington which explains why property prices in some parts of the world will never really attain the heights of Manhattan or central London.
You have to wonder how boring the lives of these people must be for them to head off into a land of cults based on novels written solely to pad Mr Norman's burgeoning bank account. Do these people have jobs at the local DSS, or as low-level hospital administrators? Do they, indeed, have jobs at all? Did the guy who put this together just think of it one night after rereading one of the Chronicles for the 25th page-stained time? "I know, I'll turn this into reality!", he thought, in a moment of what must have seemed mind-bending clarity.
Apparently 350 of these people meet in pubs and clubs throughout the north-east over halves of shandy and two-hour pints of bitter. Just goes to show, as they say up north, there's nowt so strange as folk.
Busy this weekend, so updates may be sporadic, if at all.
Have you noticed how, although movies like that David Bowie/vampire flick tend to focus on the sexual deviations apparently rife in metro New York and other urban hotspots, when it comes down to it, bizarre sex cults, swingers' clubs, voluntary cannibalism (which led to a great headline from my friend "What's Eating The Germans?") and the like, all seem to take place in suburbia or the "normal" provinces?
I had no idea that there were 25,000 Goreans worldwide, people who have constructed a philosophy around the Chronicles of Gor — quite astoundingly bad science fiction written by John Norman which I thought only adolescent males read after they had gone to bed. But the Darlington cult went one better than that. These people were Kaotians, a splinter group from the Goreans.
They had a photograph of the house in which this cult was based in Darlington -- a pebble-dashed terraced house in Darlington which explains why property prices in some parts of the world will never really attain the heights of Manhattan or central London.
You have to wonder how boring the lives of these people must be for them to head off into a land of cults based on novels written solely to pad Mr Norman's burgeoning bank account. Do these people have jobs at the local DSS, or as low-level hospital administrators? Do they, indeed, have jobs at all? Did the guy who put this together just think of it one night after rereading one of the Chronicles for the 25th page-stained time? "I know, I'll turn this into reality!", he thought, in a moment of what must have seemed mind-bending clarity.
Apparently 350 of these people meet in pubs and clubs throughout the north-east over halves of shandy and two-hour pints of bitter. Just goes to show, as they say up north, there's nowt so strange as folk.
Busy this weekend, so updates may be sporadic, if at all.
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Re: More Mysteries
Date: 2006-05-19 08:32 am (UTC)There is a very definite Readers Digest effect to these things now. An in-depth discussion of IFRS, GAAP and the rest of the alphabet soup of high-end accountancy is not of much use when you're sorting out the petrol receipts of a violinist in Croydon and so I'm a missed target.
But there is technical stuff at lower levels that Informa just might be able to produce, but it would end up in the recycle bin now because it comes from Informa.
I'd just assume that accountingweb.co.uk do it better and faster.
Re: More Mysteries
Date: 2006-05-19 10:02 am (UTC)Like you say, there's the "throw it away anyway" danger. Alliance & Leicester (and British Gas) now put so much marketing material in with their communications that I am sure there has been some internal dissent, because it's a valid excuse to say that you failed to see an important communication on the grounds that you assumed it was, like nearly everything else that they send, a piece of marketing.
Part of the problem is that, for those in the know, most stuff can be found out for free these days. So we tend to market (successfully) to larger companies where there is less tie-in between spending money and personal wealth. The chief librarian at a major accountancy is not likely to worry about the difference between £900 and £950. His or her major worry will be to make sure that he or she spends the maximum allowed, to ensure that the budget is not cut the following year.
I think that companies like Informa will head down the path of bespoke solutions for major operations, with smaller companies left to fend for themselves on the web. If this means a lot less marketing and less money wasted on junk mail, this will be all to the good.
But what does this have to do with sex slave cults in Darlington?
PJ
Re: More Mysteries
Date: 2006-05-19 05:17 pm (UTC)I was reading the Sun while munching fish and chips in a cafe on Kings Road today and was struck by a side-story concerning a teenage boy who's become involved in this cult. His mother had tried to reason with him and get him back, but somehow this hadn't worked.
It seemed to be a genuine shock to her that he'd rather live in a household where young women did all the work and performed anything he demanded sexually.
Hello!!??
DY