"The worst cause I have ever seen in my entire life. You are not going to get a single penny of my money. You blockhead. Get away from me right now." - Man in bakery, Woking, Surrey.
"It is not at all dignified to talk about money in public. Particularly in this fashion. You're not the Messiah. You're a very naughty boy. You're the black sheep of the family." - member of Matthew Devereux's family
gambler.novella@gmail.comHello. My name is Matthew Devereux. I have written "The Gambler: A Shakespearean-Dostoevskyian Take on the 2010 South Africa World Cup", amongst other works. It is a complete sell-out and has been written with all emphasis on commerce and none on artistic or aesthetic value and even has a ludicrous proposal for a film and computer game tie-in. The opening chapters are online for free. I love the funding model pioneered by Radiohead when they released "In Rainbows", though, and am looking to apply a similar principle to write from a fan's-eye perspective in South Africa for the World Cup tournament.
The image above is a picture of the Money Chess Set.
I realise there are squillions and quadrillions of good causes in the world but instead of giving money to them, why not give me donations to go and lie in a hammock in South Africa drinking copious amounts of cof
fee and whisky and eating lots of bananas and smoking too many cigars and very very very very occasionally penning short, poorly drafted and basically fictive accounts of the World Cup from a fan's eye perspective?The way this works is as follows:
1. When you donate money to me, please also tell me which genuinely good cause you would favour that it goes to in the event that it does not go to the genuinely bad cause of me flying to South Africa and lying in a hammock drinking more coffee than an eighteenth century, newspaper-founding Londoner and quaffing more whisky than nineteenth century British chess grandmaster J.H.Blackburne for the duration of the tournament. By genuinely good cause I mean one that furthers collective human welfare rather than just my own personal human welfare which is of no consequence in the grand scheme of things.
2. If you donate money to me but I am unable to stump up the requisite amount to fly to South Africa and lie in a hammock for the duration of the tournament, your money will be refunded to you in full if you wish. Alternatively it will be donated to the genuinely good cause that is the most popular out of the recommendations made along with donations in number 1.
Image on left: international banknotage
Image on right: banana hammock
3. If you donate money to me but I am given a proper deal by a publisher, newspaper, magazine, TV programme, radio programme or similar, which allows me to fly to South Africa and write/present/produce genuine journalism on the tournament from a fan's-eye perspective, then I will match a donation to a genuinely good cause recommended in number 1 of the amount of money that I am provided in my deal(s) out of the total amount that I have already received in donations up to the point when I am finally provided with a deal or deals for my scribblings.
The three points above might sound simple but obviously they will require organisation to achieve.
I haven't set up a PayPal account or anything like that yet but hope to in due course, although that does sound terrifyingly organisational.
So in the meantime please contact me at gambler.sponsorships@gmail.com and cross my palm with gold, silver, bronze, lead and pewter or, alternatively, one of the more abstract forms of legal tender.
I am open to all manner of different forms of the money supply. M0, M1, M2 - makes no odds to me.
Check out Carl Wilkinson's 2007 "The Observer Book of Money" for all the different ways in which you can help me promulgate my prose.
A donation of 1 pence or equivalent is fine and dandy.
The portals to my literary vestibule are also, of course, open to Lady Godivas, ponies, monkeys, grands, or anonymous donations in the order of the quadrillions.
Gold bars are also more than welcome. As are Mars bars.
A donation of 1 pence or equivalent is fine and dandy.
The portals to my literary vestibule are also, of course, open to Lady Godivas, ponies, monkeys, grands, or anonymous donations in the order of the quadrillions.
Gold bars are also more than welcome. As are Mars bars.
Image on right: a rather goldie looking chain
"Despite the fact that it purports to be by Martin Amis, this quotation is not by Martin Amis at all. Despite the fact that Martin Amis has not declared that this quotation needs to be removed immediately or else he will sue Matthew Devereux, Martin Amis has declared that this quotation needs to be removed immediately or else he will sue Matthew Devereux. There is, of course, no need for any legal action, which could potentially sap both sides of the equation, because in reality all this faked quotation does is give a 'de facto' free advert to Martin Amis by product-placing his oeuvre, and also makes Martin Amis's oeuvre look like that of a Hyperion to the 'oeuvre' of the hyperlinking satyr that is Matthew Devereux. The only possible advantages to Martin Amis bringing legal action against Matthew Devereux on the basis of this quotation is that it might bring extra publicity to both Martin Amis and Matthew De
vereux and could provide a lively day in court rather than the usual mopping up of small-scale reheprensibilities that clog up the legal system and lead to an awful lot of High Court judges having an exceptionally hard time batting off the desire to have a cheeky forty winks."
- Martin Amis (in reality Not-Martin-Amis), author of "Money" (1984), amongst many other works.
"Millions of people are starving. Stop leaving messages on my answer machine demanding money. And no, I don't think an anthem for the England football team is a good idea." - entirely fabricated quotation never once uttered by Sir Bob Geldof.
"Stand and deliver" - Adam and the Ants
"Money money money" - ABBA
Image above from MotivatedPhotos.com.
