John Soanes

... Or Is It Just Another Post Trying To Avoid The Appearance Of What I Believe Is Known As 'Blogfading'? Hmm...

2012-01-29T14:22:00.002Z

Hello.

I know, I know, it's been ages. How have you been? Good, I hope.

Anyway, just dropping by to mention that I do genuinely absolutely positively intend to be blogging a lot more regularly - as ever, I'm brimful of opinions (mainly ill-informed) about various forms of media and news events and whatever else skitters across my eyeline and makes me feel the urge to comment.

If you're dying for some insight into the current contents of my head, I'm fairly active on Twitter here, and of course if you need to contact me directly, my info's in the column to the right.

So: back soon, but in the meantime, I recommend tea.

Oh, It'll Take A Photo To Separate Those Two Drivers

2011-08-01T20:01:00.001+01:00

Two recent films about motor racing, but sharing, it seems, one design:

Oh, That Is Pretty

2011-07-01T01:59:00.002+01:00

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Dunno about you, but I like a good mountain.
And, of course, a correspondingly good sky above it.

In Which I Refer To My Gag, And Those Put In Place By Others (Who Shall Remain Nameless, At Least For Now)

2011-05-18T07:47:00.001+01:00

As the writer of a radio gag about superinjunctions back in 2010, you're probably thinking I've got an opinion on this currently rather hot topic. And you'd be right.

For those of you who are a bit unclear on how they work, a superinjunction is an injunction which stops someone saying something, or even reporting that they've been ordered not to say it. And regardless of what you think about the issues of privacy or press freedom or Judges making law or the Human Rights Act or whatever, lurking behind most of these cases seems to be one common factor: someone did something they'd rather you didn't know about.

Most of the instances which the press have become very excited about have involved men putting their winkle somewhere they shouldn't have, though in the Trafigura case it was more a question of alleged business naughtiness; but it's still a case of people doing stuff which they know would reflect badly on them in PR terms. Whether it's sleeping with someone you're not married to, or paying someone to place items up your bot, these are things which are likely to make people tut and buy papers and think less of you. Which is why people who have a public image to protect, and sufficient money to afford it, seek a superinjunction.

And it's from this that the more tangled debates stem, and I think this pretty simple thing is easily overlooked in the more messy and interesting-seeming debates which are currently taking place - which is a pity, because all of us have to take responsibility for our actions, and if we do something we're not proud of, it's not the place of the law to hide that. If you're in the public eye, the media will be very interested in everything you do - this is not new, we've seen it since the times of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis, and if you have a propensity for behaviour (sexual or otherwise) which might not do your career any good, you probably have a choice to make about which to pursue.

But if you're going to do something which you'd rather people didn't know about, and someone does know about it, using a legal mechanism to try and pretend it never happened strikes me as both disingenuous and a little bit childish; it did happen - and it's interesting how this is rarely at issue in these cases, it's more a question of damage limitation - and if you thought it was a good idea at the time, maybe you should be adult enough to admit it, rather than trying to gag people who know about your indiscretion? It sounds like the worst kind of denial, like the Dead Parrot sketch or something, shutting your ears to the reality of the situation and hoping that the world will reshape itself to match your delusion.

And this bugs me because I like to remember things which often seem to get removed from the history books: like when the Chinese authorities opened fire on hundreds of students in Tianenmen Square, or Cheryl Tweedy (as was) assaulted a woman in a nightclub toilet, or the way the newspapers criticised Diana, Princess of Wales in the months before her death. All these things often seem to be forgotten or overlooked, but they happened, and it feels like 1984-style Doublethink to act as if one thing's the case (it didn't happen) when you know the opposite is true (well, yeah, it did happen).

In psychological terms, holding two opinions that clash that way is seen as a likely cause of 'cognitive dissonance', that awkward feeling we have when two ideas in our head don't quite sit together; most galling when we realise that our opinion on something doesn't actually square with the facts, but, well, doing stuff and knowing at the time it's not so bright, or realising that after the event, is part of being a grown-up and taking responsibility for your actions.

A prospect which some people in the public eye appear to have a bit of trouble accepting, so I can only hope that the adulation and money helps take the edge off. The poor dears.

This Looks Classy

2011-05-17T08:53:00.001+01:00

Writer and all-round decent chap Jason Arnopp done wrote a film called Stormhouse, and here be the trailer:

Looks good 'n' spooksome, yes?

Do tell your friends about it.

In fact, tell your enemies. Especially if they're 'fraidy cats.

Whereof One Does Not Know, One Should Talk Louder, And Perhaps Intersperse It With Swearing Or Colourful Metaphors

2011-05-16T21:23:00.001+01:00

Words people say without knowing their true meaning - an incomplete list:

"Infer"
"Metatarsal"
"Draconian"
"H1N1"
"[Whitehall] Mandarins"
"Machiavellian"
"Svengali"

Your contributions are, of course, welcomed; the Comments section eagerly awaits your input.

Blogging About Blogging Is One Of The Worst Writing Sins There Is...

2011-05-06T23:42:00.000+01:00

... the first is, of course, writing a book where the main character is a writer (extra sin points if they're wrestling with writer's block).

However: I'd be remiss (which is rhyming slang for 'taking the...') to just start posting again without acknowledging that it's been an appalling long time, and to apologies and to thank you for sticking around.

Back here now, and I have things to share; not necessarily insightful or adding to the sum of human knowledge, but perhaps mildly diverting or entertaining. At least I hope so.

Okay, self-referential, and believe it or not sincerely apologetic, bit over - I shall get on with writing some posts.

Persona Launches Tomorrow!

2011-02-11T21:30:00.003Z

I'm very excited to be able to announce that Persona goes live tomorrow.

As you may well remember from my recent posts, Persona is the world's first continuing drama created exclusively for smartphones, giving the viewer a daily 2-3 minute drama series, with new episodes every day of the week.

You can buy the Persona App in the iTunes store (search for 'Persona App Media UK') for £1.19, or you can text PERSONA to 87474, which costs £1.50. A year's worth of episodes for less than a Starbucks coffee.

As I've mentioned before, I'm one of the writers for the first season (starting tomorrow, and running for a month), so if you're interested to see what kind of writing I do when I'm not blogging (and it's part of the reason why my blog entries have been so sporadic recently), I'd really appreciate your support - and of course, I'd be interested to hear what you think of the series (and the work I did on Jane's storyline).

By way of a taster, here's the trailer for Persona, which I hope will intrigue you enough to make you want to see more:

Any questions, please don't hesitate to get in contact (unless you're asking about what happens in the storylines; I'm either sworn to secrecy about the stuff I've been involved in, or appropriately ignorant about the other storylines). Thanks!

Okay Then, Let's Talk About Students And Fees And Taxation

2011-01-21T17:21:00.001Z

There is, as readers in the UK will be aware, currently an enormous amount of debate about the issue of funding of students in University; unfortunately, much of it is reduced to being debate and nothing else, as the coalition government seems intent on putting through legislation to remove funding, and make students have to pay for their courses (despite recent protests on the streets and pledges from members of the coalition, during the election campaign, to oppose such measures), and so it looks horribly like a fait accompli. And I think it is a very bad thing indeed. For reasons I shall explain.

History lesson, in which the edges of things go blurry and wibbly: in the olden days, if you were lucky or smart (or both) enough to get good enough grades to go to college, you could get your fees paid to do so, and also a grant to enable you to buy books and the like (okay, so much of it probably went on beer and chips, but let's not pretend that all money allocated to a specific purpose necessarily goes where it should: if that was the case, UK taxpayers would have been aware of a 'propping up the banks' aspect of their taxation system in the past few years). After a while, this became means-tested, so that if you were academic but from a family of limited income, you'd get a full grant, or if you came from a family of millionaires, you'd get no grant on the basis that your folks could afford to pay for your rent and food and the like. Or, if you were somewhere in the middle, there was a sliding scale, with the grant expected to be made up by parental contribution.

If you're wondering about my personal experience of this - and all too often people seem keen to look at the anecdotal or personal at the expense of the overall picture, so let's get this clear now - I fell somewhere in the middle; I got a partial grant, which my parents were expected to top up, and my fees were paid. This was probably fair, though at the time I railed against the system a bit, as my local council decided, in the first term of my second year, to go on strike, so I didn't get my grant cheque through until two days after term had finished, so I had a very thin term financially (who, you ask? Sheffield City Council, I reply). Anyway, my parents had to make some sacrifices to support me, and I had to use some money I'd inherited from my paternal grandmother too, but that's how it was for me. And, I suspect, for many others. How do I feel about this? I'll get to that in a moment.

Anyway, back onto the history lesson: during the last decade or so, the idea of the state (through tax revenue) paying for young people to go to college has gradually been chipped away at (oddly enough, coinciding with successive governments striving to get increasing numbers of 18-year-olds into higher education; a cynical man would suggest that they were doing so to keep them off the unemployment totals, but that's a discussion for another time). And the current governmental thinking, in line with the fact that the UK economy was as badly hit by the recent economic crisis (read: the markets being shocked at the impact of market forces),is that students should have to pay for the courses themselves. The maximum amount being bandied around is Ł9K per year, for three years, so Ł27K.

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that - no, in fact, let's not: the fact is, it is a complete and utter disgrace that politicians, many of whom reaped the benefit of the old system, should put through legislation to stop current and future generations of young people having the same opportunities and advantages they had. If any of them had any trace of self-awareness, they'd offer to pay back the money they received in fees and grants, adjusted for the RPI and inflation since that time. As it is, they're all right Jack, thanks for the free money, and now it's time to pull the ladder up. Appalling.

One argument which is currently, constantly, and I believe disingenuously, made is that it's unfair for the bulk of the population, many of whom will never earn as much as a graduate will, to be expected to pay for the education of someone else in this way. Which sounds spurious to me - I don't know about you, but paying in a bit to ensure there are a lot of smarter people, be they in factories or hospital wards, sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Insurance, if you will.

But - and this is the key thing referred to in the title of this post, and one which I believe the coalition government is either unaware of (unlikely, I'm not the blinding-insight-merchant I wish to be) or wilfully obscuring (far more likely, as it raises awkward questions about taxation in general as a system) - what actually happens is that graduates pay tax in a variety of forms, which pays for the education system. And the NHS. And the police. And defence. And government. And, in a strange and confusing recursive loop, the system of taxation itself.

You hear a lot of people - especially politicians on the stump - talk about "hard-working families". And that phrase is very probably true, many people with families are run ragged just trying to keep everything going on a day-to-day basis, let alone on a financial and employmental level, but a lurking and rarely-spoken truth is that families are a complete pain in terms of their effect on public services: kids need hospitals to be born in, parents need support in the initial years and vaccinations to be given, and then there are schools to be attended, street lighting to make sure the kids don't get knocked down by cars, books in schools and libraries to teach the little blighters to read, and then when they hit the teen years, they may even need assistance from the emergency services after they've been out binge-drinking... okay, I exaggerate, but not much. Families may indeed be hard-working (I was an often-indolent child, so I suspect the adjective often applies more to the parents than the children, at least since the days of child labour ended), but they don't half create a drain on the public purse.

As someone with no kids, do I feel the same way about paying for these families as I apparently should about funding people to go to college? No, of course I don't, because I'm not a moron. I pay council tax for the lighting of streets I don't walk down, I pay tax which the NHS spends on helping smokers and drinkers and the morbidly obsese and those born with mental and physical difficulties, and no, I don't feel resentment about that in the slightest. Because I'm able to recognise the fact that paying tax into public services is a great big insurance policy - one day, I may have kids who need vaccinations and schools and lollipop ladies, or one day I might fall over in the street and need an ambulance, and the same goes for all of us.

The argument that 'ordinary people' shouldn't play a part in funding other people to go to college strikes me as a totally fallacious one, for three further reasons:

1) There are very few people in the UK who haven't benefitted in some way from a service which has been supplied as a result of taxation. You may have private healthcare and have been educated at a fee-paying school, but I'll wager you've walked on a pavement, travelled on a road, or walked down a street which has been illuminated by street lights. Show me the person who has never benefitted from a publicly-funded service in their life, and I will show you a millionaire recluse, or a liar.

2) If you're going to argue that people shouldn't have to pay tax for causes which they disagree with, you're asking for trouble. Many people disgree with military action in Iraq, and they'll presumably be entitled to reduced taxation as they don't have to pay the money that goes towards the MoD budget. If governments are going to start suggesting that you shouldn't pay tax on things which you don't like or don't personally benefit from (I think that this is generally known as 'hypothecation'), they'll see a lot of people objecting to a lot of things (I'd start with the fact that the 20 or so bars within the Palace of Westminster are subsidised by taxpayers, but - again - that's a topic for another time).

3) Are the government seriously trying to pretend that 'ordinary hardworking families' will see the benefits of this scheme? They'll still have to pay the same amount of tax (because there's no way that the government will say "Well, the money you're paying to fund colleges isn't needed any more, here's Ł[n] back"). You're not going to get a refund cheque, so let's not deceive ourselves that the outcome of the "I don't see why I should have to pay for..." debate will actually mean more money in your pocket.

In summary, I have no problem at all with paying tax on things I don't - or, to be more accurate, don't currently - use, because a lot of public services are there for other people. Which is fine. I don't mind paying to ensure that there are hospitals and schools and police and libraries and public transport and museums and street lights and roads and so on, but what I do mind is when people pretend that there isn't a need to pay out for these things, just because they're not using them.

And, of course, I mind when politicians try to simplify the debate and obfuscate the fact that most people who pay tax (and that includes graduates, past present and future) are, in some way, subsidising people they don't know who are doing things they won't necessarily feel the immediate benefit from.

It's society, or community: a group of people pulling together, or getting in place the means to pull together, to ensure opportunities for as many people as much as possible, due to sacrifice being spread across the group. Pulling together like this in an organised fashion is, I suspect, what separates us from the animals.

And millionaire recluses, I guess.

A Delay, Not A Denial

2010-12-31T18:17:00.002Z

Just to update you on Persona : there's been a slight delay in the app being approved by Apple (this sentence may hold the blog record for the most uses of the letters 'app'), so the revised start date is currently 15 January 2011.

I will, of course, keep you fully informed.

In the meantime, though, more pictures from Persona - some from Jane's story - are available to view here.

This is likely to be the final post of 2010, so have yourself a cracking start to 2011, and may the year bring you everything you could hope for, and a few surprises (pleasant ones, of course).

If you're out tonight, here's hoping your evening doesn't lead to you looking or feeling like Lucy, the Persona character pictured here.

See you in 2011.

Persona Update: Teaser Trailer Now Available Online

2010-12-27T18:48:00.004Z

As I mentioned in this post, I'm one of the writers on the smartphone drama Persona, which is coming in January 2011 - and here's the teaser trailer:

It's the first time I've seen anything I've written being performed, and I can't wait to see Jane's storyline brought to life - I'm super-pleased to see Amanda Sterkenburg in the role, as she has exactly the kind of look I was hoping for in the character.

And is it childish that I'm amused that the Youtube 'freeze screen' shows Jane? Very probably... but it's true.

It's Christmas Weekend, Right? So This Isn't Really Late...

2010-12-26T18:43:00.003Z

A very happy holiday to you, my faithful and shockingly patient readers.

Hope you had a good day yesterday, and that any more time you have off between now and the end of 2010 is positively bottom-kicking.

I raise my steaming mug of tea to you, whoever and wherever you are, and wish you the best.

Pedantry, Like Achievement, Is Often Its Own Reward

2010-12-13T10:32:00.002Z

Spotted in the Reference section of WHSmith.

I think this might be an example of irony, but that's a word which has had its meaning diluted to almost homeopathic levels by that Alanis Morrisette song and other misuses, so I hesitate to call it such.

That said, though...

Not So Much A Forgotten Future, More An Overlooked One, I Like To Think

2010-12-11T09:11:00.002Z

Recently, New Scientist ran a Flash Fiction Writing competition, which invited entrants to speculate about futures which never were, or could have been.

Well, I entered, but as the shortlisted folks have now been contacted and it doesn't appear that I was one of them, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share my entry with you lovely people. Waste not, want not, as they say, and hopefully it'll amuse you...

I Still Dream Of Orgonon

Deciding that Operation Paperclip had been very successful, in the mid-1940s the US government ran another operation collating scientific knowledge, once again targeting foreign nationals resident in the USA.

An admin error put Albert Einstein and Wilhelm Reich in the same group, but the two had met previously, and got on well. They talked about how Reich had fudged his figures last time, and Einstein candidly admitted that he'd pretty much done the same in introducing the cosmological constant, and they laughed, and set to work.

Within a few months, they announced that Reich had been right about Orgone after all, and whilst the UK set up a Health Service, the USA provided tax incentives for the mass manufacture of Orgone Accumulators. By the early 1960s, there was an accumulator in every home, and the average life expectancy had increased by 23 years.

Other countries followed suit; in 1983, the UK used Reich’s cloudbusting technology to improve their weather, and other countries used the same technology to counteract droughts and turn deserts into meadows.

Global population levels, but most notably those in societies with a strong religious influence, stabilised once it became clear that channelling sexual energy served the common good, and in many countries state-funded single-sex boarding schools for teenagers replaced power plants, boosting power reserves and education levels alike.

Einstein and Reich both lived to be centenarians, though tragically neither saw Project Iapyx, and the launch into space in 1999 of the first Orgone-powered spacecraft towards Barnard’s Star.
Iapyx I is expected to report back in 2012.

She Does, You Know. She Does Kick Me.

2010-12-09T01:33:00.001Z

Make my friends rich dept:

My old friend Ian, and his bandmates in Katalina Kicks, have just released a new single called 'Me', and it's available to buy via iTunes, for the very reasonable price of 79p.

Not sure if you want to trust my opinion on it, especially as I tend to write about books and writing as opposed to music? Okay, I understand. Here's the video:

What's that? Oh yes, it does rock. Told you so.

Coming Soon To A Phone Near You...

2010-12-07T18:03:00.001Z

I'm pleased to be able to tell you part of the reason why I've been so absent from blogging recently, and it's legitimate and real and relates to actual writing and everything.

I'm one of the four writers on the daily smartphone drama Persona, which is coming from the lovely folks at App-Media in January 2011. There are three other folks contributing words (Phill, Ronnie, and Adam), and between us we've written the first 'season', which will cover the whole month of January.

It's been genuinely interesting writing my 'slice' of the show (the various strands weave in and out of each other, and new episodes - or, rather Appisodes - will be released on a daily basis. As I understand it, you'll be able to buy the app from the appropriate online place, and then you'll automatically get the new show delivered to you. Sounds a lot like the Cracked Reader for the iPhone which I have, and am very happy with.

As you can see from this set of photos, a rehearsal was held on November 27, though I won't say (or perhaps can't say?) which cast members are involved in the storyline I wrote. But if you want to see the character breakdown, it's here, and those of you who've followed the blog for a while will probably be able to guess which characters are ones I've come up with (clue: look for the usual verbosity)...

Shooting is taking place this week in London, and if you'd like to be an extra, I believe they're still looking for people to do just that. You will, of course, get to feature in a pretty revolutionary bit of drama, but more than that you'll get to meet the nice people involved (I can speak from actual 'IRL' encounters with them, they're lovely), plus you'll receive a credit and get food and travel expenses paid for. If you're available this week in London and interested, the best ways to get in touch with them seem to be either Twitter or Facebook. Tell them I sent you.

Anyway, it's been a genuinely interesting (and hopefully for all involved, productive) time writing the scripts for Season One (or 'January', as it's more commonly known), and I'm looking forward to being involved with Season Two - and, of course, seeing how the cast play the lines I've written. One thing which it's certainly reinforced in my mind is the fact that redrafting is vital for me, and as much as I might like to think it's the case, the first thoughts out of my head onto the page are very rarely the best. Even the brightest jewel, I like to think, needs a bit of polishing to shine (ahem).

I'll tell you more about how to view the show, and where to buy the app, and the like, as soon as I know more. And, of course, if you are an extra, do drop me a line and let me know how it goes, eh?

Canon And Balls

2010-11-25T20:10:00.003Z

A few years ago, when on holiday in Morocco, I had a stomach upset.

Well, no, that's putting it mildly; on my return to Blighty, it was diagnosed as amoebic dysentery and an infection of the intestine, but what's relevant to this tale (which started charmingly, I think you'll agree) is the fact that it utterly scuppered my holiday and made me have to stay in my hotel room much of the time, visiting the bathroom literally dozens of times per day, and being unable to eat for a couple of days. Over the course of the ten days or so it lasted, I lost a stone and a half (but no, I would not recommend it as an approach to weight loss).

After a week or so of this, I'll cheerfully admit that my mental state was pretty strange; I was dehydrated and lacking in intellectual stimulation (you can only stare at the ceiling for so long before it starts getting boring - for me, about three days is my limit), and the vast majority of my interactions with other people (mainly hotel staff) were being conducted in French, leading to a slightly odd state where my mind was simultaneously translating my thoughts even as I was thinking them. In short, I was not a well chap.

They say that if you don't use it, you lose it, so I decided to stop the mental rot, and do a bit of writing. I started well, coming up with a pretty decent 'Elseworlds' Batman story (that is, a story based in a slightly different version of the Batman set-up), but that was about it for writing, until the wooziness and general illness passed again and I decided to make a deal with the universe.

Yes, you read that correctly. Don't ask me to explain it, just chalk it up to me being profoundly unwell.

So, I made a deal with the universe, which went pretty much like this: if the universe let me live, and get well again, I'd finally get round to reading the key books by all the 'big and important' authors. The ones I'd always pretended to have read, but really I was just bluffing based upon having seen them referred to in other places, or having read the back covers or other synopses. Don't look at me like that, you've done the same sort of thing, whether it was about books, films, music, art or whatever. You don't fool me.

Anyway, I compiled a list of authors, and then against each name, put the most important or famous book they'd written (if you've never made such a list, I recommend it as an intellectual exercise - it'll make you realise just how daunting it is trying to read all the books that are supposed to be classic or important or both). And I made a solemn vow that if I got well again, I'd keep up my end of the bargain.

As you can tell by the fact I'm telling this story in the present day, I didn't get better - I died alone and unmourned in a Morocco hotel room, and my body was shoved into the wardrobe of the room, the better to frighten the next inhabitant of the room. Or, rather: I got better, and returned to Blighty, and there, once I was strang enough to leave the house, and the urge to sleep non-stop, along with the infection, fled my body, I set about buying the books on the list. And then, more importantly, reading them.

I'm not going to name the authors or books involved (well, with one or two minor exceptions; see later), but a lot of the authors were male, a lot of them were reviewed as groundbreaking and important, and a lot of their books were either boring or self-indulgent or pointless or all of the above. Several of the books featured self-absorbed male characters (I won't call them protagonists, for reasons Robert McKee acolytes would understand), wandering from one joyless and cold sexual encounter to another, full of loathing for, and a baseless sense of superiority to, the world around them.

It was hard work reading these books, and whilst with some of them I struggled all the way to the end, it was after about ten such tomes that I developed my reading rule, which I live by to this day, and which I think is worth your considering as well, so I'll put it in bold here and now: If I'm not enjoying a book, I will stop reading it after 100 pages, or one-third of the book's overall length, whichever is the shorter. Obviously, we all define 'not enjoying a book' in differing ways, but I think there are common ways in which the lack of enjoyment manifests: not remembering the character's names, not remembering story details, not caring what's happened or what might happen to the characters, staring into space instead of reading, having to read pages over and over again, looking at the page numbers and figuring out how much further you've got to go... that sort of thing.

I know a lot of people feel that once they've started a book, they have to finish it, and some are even thoughtful enough to say that the author probably worked hard on it, so they feel obliged to do do. I don't feel this way - I think there's an implied agreement that the author will try to hold your interest, and if they fail to do that, you can leave - and anyway, there are so many good books in the world that I'll probably never get round to reading that I really can't afford to spend time on ones I consider to be ... let's say 'not good'.

Interestingly, the male authors tended to be the ones who interested me least, and after feeling things were improving a bit with The Bell Jar, I found that next on my list was To Kill A Mockingbird. And what a relief it was to read: likeable characters, a moral centre to it, a mystery element, courtroom drama, issues of race and prejudice, and an ending which came as a bit of a surprise, despite it being referred to early on (if you've read it, you'll know what - or rather who - I'm referring to). A brilliant book. That's how you do it.

For me, working my way through the list of 'great books' was a bit of a chore, and because of that, a revelation. I remember being told at college* that the 'canon' of good books was heavily influenced by F.R.Leavis (who we all know best from his appearance in the Bridget Jones film), and whether or not this is strictly accurate, I certainly learned that it doesn't always do to take other people's words for it about books.

Bearing in mind that I haven't posted in a while, only to return with what appears to be textual diarrhoea (perhaps appropriately, given the opening paragraphs), I'd like to try and find some message or conclusion to all this, maybe even a lesson or two, so here we go - what I learned:

- If you're unsure about your stomach's resilience, don't have salad in Morocco
- Read books because you want to, not because someone else insists you must (unless you're a student)
- Some classic books may be respected because of the step they made at the time, not how they read now
- The library is your friend (as is Project Gutenberg if you're techno-hip and modern), especially for relation to books you may only read once (if that)
- To Kill A Mockingbird is a fine book, and if you haven't read it, I heartily recommend it.

I hope this has been helpful.

*I was, on the other hand, told this by someone who believed that books were the one and only valid art form (forget about painting, photography, film, or music), so I should perhaps have taken the remark with a kilo or two of sodium chloride.

Canon And Balls

2010-11-25T20:10:00.001Z

Big Ups To All My Haters, As I Believe The Song Puts It*

2010-09-28T19:37:00.001+01:00

Well now. It's been a while, hasn't it? If it provides any kind of justification for my absence, I've recently had a job which took me out of London (and away from easy access to a full-size keyboard), but now I'm back.

And what, you may wonder, have I decided is the best way to re-commence regular blogging activities? Why, tis nothing less than the perennial subjects of love and hate... well, kind of.

Love and hate, we're often told, are two sides of the same coin. Or there's a thin line between them. And so on. Basically, we're often fed the idea that the two of them are very close together - it's simple enough to see why, they're both extremes of feeling or opinion, and particularly in the field of emotion, disappointment and annoyance with someone we've formed an attachment for can easily cause us to become equally vehement in our negativity towards them; in films and TV shows, it's often quite common for characters who spend a long time being antagonistic towards each others to end up smooching, though I have to say that (relaxed licensing hours notwithstanding) I haven't seen that happen quite so frequently in real life.

If we're going to be honest about it - and I think we ought to, as life is often more complicated than simplistic presentations of emotional duality in programmes such as the Jeremy Kyle Show would have us pretend - there's actually a long distance to travel between love and hate, if we're using the words in their strictest sense. I love reading, and it would take quite a lot of negative reading experiences (that is to say, bad books or whatever) before that affection for the activity turned into hate. I'm sure you can think of things which you enjoy immensely - would it really take the equivalent of a coinflip, or a hop over some imaginary line, to make you hate them with equal intensity? I doubt it.

In reality, the line between love and hate, when viewed in three dimensions, manifests as a vast plane, with slight disaffection and indifference and irritation with at various stages between the two extremes. And if love and hate are sides of a coin, we should be honest enough to admit that it's actually more of a cylinder than a coin, with enough stages and distance from one side to the other as to make the particle acceleration corridors at CERN look like a cupboard for the electricity meter.

I increasingly feel that there's a problem with people presenting arguments or opinions in a way that suggests you either love something or you hate it; you're either a fan or a hater. And whilst we've often seen this used to simplify political debates - in 2002, a popular simplification was to suggest that any doubts about military action in Iraq equated with approval for the regime of Saddam Hussein - it also seems to be used increasingly in relation to more everyday issues.

Let's take an issue which, in and of itself, doesn't really matter, but which is often portrayed as some kind of ideological battle; the question of whether Apple products are better than PCs. To read a lot of review columns, or to hear people talk, you'd think that one was vastly superior to the other, and that using the opposition's products is the action of a seriously ill-informed person, whose brand allegiance (in whichever direction) is akin to that of a brainwashed dupe. The reality, of course, is a lot more nuanced - let's be honest, both have their merits (Apple's stuff is visually appealing, reportedly more stable [the iPhone 4 signal problems and iOS's tendency to eat battery life could be argued to have undermined this in recent times, though], and generally held to be technically superior; PCs are cheaper, and used in more workplaces and so more familiar) and their flaws. But the problem is, nowadays, you'd think that people either have an Apple or Microsoft logo tattooed on their heart, and this means that the discussions tend to be polarised - and this simplification means that facts get overlooked - such as the fact that Microsoft helped Apple financially in the 1990s by giving them $150m to bundle Internet Explorer with new Macs as the default browser; so, that big hatred and fighting between them you read about in the press? Probably more like business rivalry, but of course that's not so interesting, and it's more fun to portray their customers as engaged in some teeth-baring hatred.

The major problem I have with this situation is the way it reduces everything to a non-discussion, and removes any possibility of people conceding that their so-called opponent has a point (watch the way politicians will invariably try to ignore facts or events in debates, even if empirically and provably true, which don't make their argument look entirely true, as opposed to the best-guess opinion it really is). It means you can't point at flaws in anything without being labelled a 'hater' or 'anti', even if you're only trying to say that something has weaknesses in certain areas (cases in point: Lady Gaga is really not as stunningly original as many people insist, and Steig Larsson writes a lot of exposition).

As I've mentioned with tiresome regularity on the blog, my favourite TV programme of all time is Twin Peaks (it is my equivalent of Mark Kermode's love for The Exorcist), but I'll cheerfully admit that it's got flaws (the second season loses its way, certain storylines are just risible, and it's painfully clear at certain points that they're just making it up as they go along). As long as the catalogue of weaknesses in something doesn't overwhelm the things we like in it, then there doesn't seem to be any problem in liking it, but there's equally no problem in admitting it's not perfect - very few things are unimprovable (despite what the most vocal supporters might say).

Am I asking too much? Is it really now the case that you're either a rabid fan of something or a hater? I'd like to think not, and I'd also like to think that it'd be possible to see discussion of topics (and by 'see' I mean 'encounter', though if televised debates - on whatever topic - would like to actually show people admitting the strengths in their opponents' arguments and the weaknesses in their own, I'd welcome that) which actually reflect that there are many waystations between the positions of support or loathing for something, whether it be a political stance or a work of art or a brand of cola or whatever. Much of the time, opinions on things fall into the median, grey band of 'meh', and it feels to me that pretending that you have to pick a position at one end of the spectrum and fight it doggedly with closed ears and mind is oversimplifying, and doesn't actually enable a proper discussion to take place.

Although - ahem - I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that I'm not so convinced of this that I don't welcome discussion of it. That would be hypocrisy, and of course the Post Comment button exists for your input (and not just about Apple, Gaga or Larsson, ideally)...

*That would be the number "They Know", by Shawty Lo Featuring Ludacris, I believe. Not really a fan, but it seemed appropriate to refer to it, by way of illustrating that merit may lurk where we don't expect it.

I Am Not Dead

2010-08-29T19:56:00.004+01:00

... and nor is this blog, I assure you.

So, apologies to regular readers for the hiatus in updates - consider this, if you will, my summer holiday - and there will be a return to regular blogging soon.

After all, if I didn't post my idiotic and fleeting notions here, they'd just be lost to time and memory, and that simply would not do.

Thanks to those of you who've been so sweet as to send me a message asking if I'm okay - I assure you I most definitely am - it's just proving difficult to find time to blog in recent weeks. But that may change soon, and who knows what nonsensical thought-posting, its hour come round at last, slouches out of bedlam to be typed?

It's Like Ted Striker In Airplane! All Over Again

2010-07-15T20:30:00.002+01:00

The instructions from a box of Optrex, but I can't help thinking it looks more like a deliberately mischievous series of diagrams telling a new drinker what to do with vodka shots...

You've Probably Seen This Already, But If Not... Well, That's What I'm Here For.

2010-07-10T12:38:00.002+01:00

Pretty much note-perfect, I'd say.

Yes, I Know: The Only Frequent Thing About This Blog Is This Kind Of Posting

2010-07-01T21:42:00.003+01:00

A Buffy image, from the best part of a decade ago, and the cover of a vampire book which I saw on the shelves just today.

Hmm.

Should Really Get Someone Else To Help Lace Up, Like That Bit In Titanic

2010-06-29T19:30:00.005+01:00

The book was released a month or two ago, and the film's just come out.

So, if you're a fan of fiction involving people wearing tightly-fastened masks, it's a good time for you.

And you might want to chat to a medical professional about that. There's a lot of interesting other stuff out there.

I Have No Mic, And I Must Speak

2010-06-24T12:37:00.004+01:00

Back in the 1980s, my family went to stay with some relatives for New Year's Eve. I don't remember much of the festivities itself, but one thing I do remember - for reasons that will become clear - is that nearby, about five minutes walk away in fact, was a comic shop.

Now, I'd been reading comics for a while, but my 'local' shop in Sheffield wasn't very local at all - it was a couple of bus rides away, and of course that kind of travel ate into the potential spending money (this was after Sheffield's insanely cheap bus fares had been abolished - boo! A flat fare of 2p was a fab thing to a cash-starved kid), so I tended to walk there with my friend Simon. Which took about an hour there and an hour back, so you can see why a shorter walk was so appealing.

This comic shop - I don't think it's there any more - had a pretty decent selection of recent comics, and also, as was often the case back then, also sold a lot of paperbacks (mainly SF, fantasy and horror), which you could then sell back to them for half the price in credit. So, being a bookish child and having a bit of Christmas money, I bought myself a book and a comic: All The Sounds Of Fear by Harlan Ellison, and the Warrior Summer Special (both pictured). Small pressies to myself, as it were.

I think I can, without fear of exaggeration, state that it was the greatest couple of pounds I ever spent, and that the combined effect of the two did strange things to my brain for which I will always be grateful.

The Warrior comic featured some stories by Alan Moore, whose work I was already starting to look out for (from the cover-date of that comic, I guess I was something like 12, and was just learning that certain names recurred on the credits of things I liked), and other writers as well, all of which made it a pretty heady brew, and then when I started to read the Ellison, my noggin was permanently bent out of shape.

If you've never read anything by Harlan Ellison... well, obviously, I think you should, but there's a fair chance you don't recognise the name, especially in the UK; this is pretty odd really, given that he is one of the most-recognised writers ever, but he tends to fly under the radar for a lot of people. Still, have you seen that original Star Trek episode with Joan Collins in? He wrote the screenplay for that? Seen The Terminator? Yeah, he provided (ahem) 'inspiration' for that. What about Babylon 5? He consulted on that, and the new version of The Twilight Zone and heaps of other stuff - and that's just his filmed work, his short stories are allegedly among the most reprinted in the English Language. So yes, I think you should read his stuff - it often has futurist backdrops, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's science fiction. Cos it isn't.

Anyway, I read the collection of stories in All The Sounds Of Fear, and whatever else that new year brought, it certainly opened with me having a new and strange outlook on just what the written word, when combined with imagination, could do. It's probably very much one of the reasons that I started writing - not because I sought to emulate his work, or anything so straightforward, but rather because it suggested there was a place in the world for writing down the more spiky and awkward of ideas, if you could do it. And that's why I cite him as my favourite writer, when asked - it sounds wilfully obscure to most people, but I like to think it's actually the truth.

Jump forward many years (past 1986, incidentally, when The Singing Detective made me realise just how unlimited the medium of TV could be), to last Friday night, on London's Southbank; it was raining, and England were playing a World Cup match, and that's why there was a limited turnout at the screening of Dreams With Sharp Teeth, a film about Harlan Ellison.

There were probably about 30 of us, plus screenwriter and friend of Harlan Ellison James Moran and the film's director, Erik Nelson, but the limited numbers weren't any kind of damper on the event - the film was funny and smart and showed HE in what looks like a fairly balanced light. Yes, there were scenes where he was a bit short-tempered, but there were others where he spoke about writing and literature with a passion, and when he read sections from his stories the talent was painfully evident. So yes, it was a good film.

Afterwards, Messrs Moran and Nelson asked the audience to come nearer the front, as they were going to do a link-up to LA, where they'd ask Harlan some questions. I moved down as requested, and indeed got a front-row seat, which I was pretty pleased about. They linked up okay, and asked him a few questions, and then they asked if anyone in the audience had any questions. There was a pause, and then I realised that my hand was up, and they were nodding towards me.

I'll freely admit I was quite nervous about asking my question, not because I was speaking in front of a small crowd (as anyone who knows me will be aware, I'm a hopeless attention-seeker), but rather because this was probably likely to be my only actual interaction with Harlan Ellison, whose work I've enjoyed for over a quarter of a century. If there's anyone whose work you admire, imagine how you'd feel in a similar situation. Yep, there you go, now you get it.

Anyway, with both the film and my own personal 'history with HE' (recounted above at length - and you probably just thought it was the usual self-indulgent rambling, but hopefully now it reveals itself as the vital backstory it was intended to be) in mind, I asked my question, which came out in a slightly gabbled and nervous way, and sounded something like this:

"We see you in the film speaking to college students, and a couple of people in the film say that your work should be taught in schools - what, do you think, would be the ideal age for people to first read your work? When would you most want to get hold of their fragile minds? Teenagers? Ten? Eight? One?"

As those of you who can read will probably note, this is actually a series of questions, mainly because I was gabbling to fill the gap caused by the satellite delay, and I didn't actually have a microphone, so it was a bit uncertain to me whether Harlan could actually hear any of what I was saying. But he'd heard some of it, it seems, because he asked "Was that a question, or a diatribe?"

Erik then summarised the question, and Harlan answered it, giving a solid and considered answer - but then again, I probably would say that, as he seemed to suggest that the age of 14 or so was about right, thus making me ahead of my time as a child - and I was suitably pleased, on a number of levels.

And as the second - and only other - question was about the long-delayed third volume of Dangerous Visions, which is decades past its due date, and HE tends to get a bit fed up with being asked about (and showed as much on this occasion), I think that I probably did all right, all things considered.

Apologies for length here, but I was really rather chuffed about it, and wanted to record the event in what, I guess, is probably the closest thing I have to a diary. Given that I've met Alan Moore a couple of times, and that Dennis Potter has been dead for a number of years, I guess I've completed my interaction with the people whose work remoulded my thinking in the 1980s, which feels oddly satisfying.

One final point: if you want to see a terrific example of HE's writing, read the short story I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, from which the title of this post derives. The title's remarkable enough, but the story itself... well, to say "it lingers in the mind" is several kinds of understatement.

Future And Past: The Name May Be Its Future Chart Position (1), And The Form In Which It Would Have Been Sold Until A Few Years Ago (45)... Perhaps.

2010-06-11T11:09:00.005+01:00

Longtime blog readers with appallingly long memories will recall that a friend of mine Ian is a singer by trade, and lookylook, his band's video is available to view online (ignore the fact that the frozen image below appears to show him doing an impression of the Joker, he's actually a very presentable chap):

That's rather good, innit? The single's out on 5 July, and will be available from iTunes and other places like that. If you like it, please buy it. And even if you don't like it, please buy it just to please me, for my wrath is great and far-reaching and painful for those who displease me.

As the aforementioned longterm readers will also be well aware of.

And That Explains Why Lol Creme (Of Godley and Creme) Never Signs His Text Messages

2010-06-02T15:37:00.004+01:00

So, as Mrs S and I returned to the car after a bit of shopping the other day, a chap came up to me in the car park.

"I'd like to congratulate you on your parking."
"Sorry?"
"You scratched my car," he said, and gestured to a car which, I then realised, had been parked next to ours, but which was now slightly further away.
"Well, I'm sorry if I did, but I didn-"
"Just be more careful in future, all right?" he said, and then went away pretty quickly (leaving me to wonder if he was telling the entire truth about the alleged damage).

As Mrs Wife pointed out, it hardly seemed worth sticking around to make the point, and I also had doubts about the claim of damage (it had been close, yes, but when I'd got out of the car, my door had only touched that rubber strip thing which most modern cars have along their sides - for just that reason). But it also made me think about something which is relevant to writing, and certainly to life in general: the need to express yourself clearly.

I'd been thrown off by his opening gambit because it just hadn't made any sense to me, coming as it did from a rather obtuse angle and then suddenly switching to the main point. I mean, I know full well that a great way to throw an argument a bit off track is to shift from discussing the opinions at the heart of it to the method of discussion ("look, you don't have to shout, all right?" etc), but if you're trying to make a point to someone in the first place I think it's probably key to express that pretty clearly.

I think we've probably all had experience of disagreements which begin with you being wrong-footed by a bewildering opening - something like "I think you've got something to tell me, don't you?" - which kind of leaves you feeling a few minutes behind as you try to catch up and figure out what you're supposed to be discussing, or what you've allegedly done; I guess that's partly due to the fact that the person initiating the (ahem) discussion has had more time to mull it over in their mind and try to figure out the sharpest and snarkiest angle of attack - which lets you know that they're not happy, though not necessarily what they're not happy about. Which probably isn't the ideal way to communicate.

In a similar fashion, I often find myself slightly bewildered by slang and text-speak and the like, which is obviously a sign that I'm an old fart, but I think that sometimes it almost seems like the point of the slang is less about getting your point over, and more to be seen to be using zOMG, LOL, dat, 2day, and the like. In this situation, I guess the medium, or at least the method of communication, becomes the message.

You see slang and invented languages used a fair amount of fiction, too; A Clockwork Orange is a pretty good example, though if memory serves that gradually adds more and more of the invented lingo until you suddenly realise, towards the end of the book, that most of it is in Nadsat. Quite a lot of books written in not-quite English (or at least, not quite English as we know it today) are off-putting to the reader, and are often reviewed with comments to the effect that 'persevering pays off', though I think there may be an argument to be made that in the opening stages of a book, care should be taken not to alienate the reader; it's a case of setting out your stall or being on your best behaviour in the early stages of a relationship, to my mind, though of course you don't want to make your beginning so smooth and easy that it misleads about what's to follow (whilst I haven't read beyond the first Harry Potter book, I gather that the series gets darker as time goes on, and deals with far less innocent stuff), or so cautiously tailored to avoid alienating anyone that it ends up appealing to no-one.

I guess the point of all this rumination is that there's some truth to the idea (which I'm not claiming to have originated) that the quality of your communication is the degree to which it's understood; if you want to be understood clearly, so that you can proceed (with your story or argument or whatever), I guess the key thing is to rein in any tendency to elaborate or approach from a clever angle, and just to get to the heart of the matter as directly as possible.

I'm reminded of Samuel Johnson's advice about writing, which I think applies: "Read over your compositions and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."

...Which also goes to explain why so many of my blog posts are published as written. Hmm.

Abnormal Service Will Be Resumed Soon

2010-05-28T14:27:00.003+01:00

Apologies for the lack of updates in the last few days, I'm hurrying to get an entry together for this - why not have a go yourself, if you're not already doing so?

Anyway, back soon - in the meantime, nano-blogging takes place on my Twitter account, if you're that keen on seeing what's inside my head at random stages during the day.

Okay, You Two, Level With Me - Are You A Couple, Or Not? Yes Or No? What Is Your Situation, Eh?

2010-05-22T23:10:00.001+01:00

Tch, I should have known better than to try to get a straight answer out of a book-TV pairing.

Wow, Have You See Who's In This Film?

2010-05-21T11:12:00.005+01:00

I can't wait for this film to come out!

I love the work of Bruce Tracy and Willis Morgan!

Am I Telling You About A Writing Opportunity, Or Just Finding A Way To Justify Using This Picture, Which I Find Aesthetically Pleasing?

2010-05-19T12:41:00.005+01:00

The answer is, of course, both.

Anyway, instead of biting your nails with anticipation for the shortlist for the Alibi Crime Writing Competition (you did enter, right?), why not put your fingers to more productive (or, at least, creative) use by entering the Perfectly Formed Short Story Competition, being run by Waterstones, Pan Macmillan and the Arvon Foundation.

Stories can be in any genre as long as they're under 2000 words, though (the opposite to the BBC writing Academy) if you've had fiction professionally published you're not allowed to enter.

The prizes seem pretty good - the winning story'll be published in a forthcoming issue of Books Quarterly, Waterstones's promotional magazine, and you get to go to a lunch with some folks from Pan Macmillan and on a week-long Arvon course (all about writing and the like), as well as winning some Pan Macmillan books. There are a couple of runner-up prizes too.

So, worth a go - nice short wordcount, and with online entry, you don't even have to buy a stamp.

Full details at the link above, or, if you can't be bothered to sweep your mouse up the page a bit, then here it is again, lazybones: tch, you appal me.

EDITED TO ADD: Oops, forgot to say, the closing date is 1 July. I appal me.

I Used To Work With Someone Whose Parents Wouldn't Let Her Watch Magpie When She Was Young On The Grounds That It Was 'Common'...

2010-05-14T12:11:00.002+01:00

... but looking at this LP from one of the presenters, I think that they were probably just trying to shield her from the wanton perversion simmering below the surface of a seemingly innocent children's TV programme.

Shocking, it is. I'd write to my MP if I was confident he could read.

Hands away from the swimsuit area please, Mr Robertson.

Got A Book About How To Break Away From The 9-5? Need To Design A Cover For It?

2010-05-11T12:13:00.001+01:00

Stick some text at the top, a silhouette of someone reclining in a palm-tree supported hammock (make sure they have one leg crooked), and you're done.

Take the rest of the day off. Again.

Got A Film With The Word 'Boy' In The Title? Need To Do Some Marketing For It?

2010-05-10T11:06:00.002+01:00

Blue background, title in big yellow letters, and your lead character front and centre.

Job done, take the rest of the day off.

A Historic Occasion, Indeed

2010-05-07T16:31:00.004+01:00

That's right, yesterday was the first UK General Election since I started this blog.

Anyway, despite the fact it's still all rather up in the air, thought I'd share a few stray thoughts about it, in no particular order:

Nick Griffin of the BNP didn't win the seat he stood for, despite vigorous campaigning over the last year or so, including appearing on BBC's Question Time. In fact, the BNP share of the vote was down from the last election, which leads me to conclude that the BNP might have been better off campaigning less, as it seems the more people see them, the less support they have. Certainly suggests that they shouldn't be censored or banned in case it leads to a huge increase in their support.

During the campaign, a lot of play was made both in the press and online about David Cameron's background, calling him a toff etc. There's certainly a point lurking under the personal attacks - that he may not be able to relate to other sections of society, etc - but I'd imagine it would be unacceptable to suggest a candidate from, say, a very poor background would be unsuitable for office? Inverted snobbery is, let's not forget, still a form of snobbery.

It almost feels a bit like 1992, when the polls were fairly far off the mark; in the same way that 1992 voters seemed to say they were going to vote Labour and then get into the polling booth and vote Conservative, a lot of voters said they were going to vote Lib Dem and then didn't do it when that X needed to be made.

Increased coverage of the actual mechanics of the UK voting system, which I think is an interesting angle: questions about voting reform and the flaws of the current or proposed other systems, and even, on the day, concerns about voters being unjustly turned away from their polling stations. Good to see the system not just being accepted 'because it's there'.

Distinct lack of canvassing in my constituency, really - leaflets from Labour and the Lib Dems, nothing from any of the independents, and not a single ring on the doorbell to ask about our voting intentions. It's probably my cynicism about these things, but I like to feel wooed a bit, made to feel special.

Thought the BBC coverage was pretty good, and the ITV stuff I saw seemed very hesitant and uncertain (with a lot fewer people; seemed the BBC had thrown all its recognisable news staff at the evening). I was fading at around 1am, I don't know how Paxman and Dimbleby managed it. Does the BBC News department endorse polyphasic sleep or something?

Finally, and let's put any kind of partisanship to one side and face it: none of the parties should try to claim this election shows a ringing endorsement of them or their policies, or any kind of mandate. Thankfully, none of them have done so.

Anyway, we do live in interesting times...

I Am Now Max Clifford

2010-05-04T16:06:00.006+01:00

One of the problems facing writers is their anonymity; the old joke in Hollywood used to be that an airhead actress was so keen to further her career that she slept with the screenwriter.

And in a way, it remains that way to this day; for every Jo Rowling or Stephen King that you might recognise, there are a hundred writers who you wouldn't recognise if you tripped over them in the street (where, I guess, they'd be lying due to the writerly tendency to seek solace in the bottle, but that's a subject for another time).

And of course there are the Salingers of this world who actively avoid publicity and camera lenses - fine for writers, but not the sort of thing you can really do if you want to be an actor or member of a band (The Residents and The Art Of Noise have dedicated, but let's face it limited, fanbases).

It's an inevitable consequence of being the one who puts the words into the heads or mouths of other people, of course, but in an increasingly personality-driven age, where celebrity (of no matter how nanoscopic a level) is the great leg-up to success, what can a writer do to increase their chances? What, what, what?

I'm glad you asked that question. I've been thinking about this a lot, and in fact I spent the whole of last night looking through my collection of Grazia and love it magazines, and I think I've figured out two of the best ways to get famous quick. They seem to work across a whole bunch of forms of entertainment, so I don't see any good reason why they shouldn't help writers (then again, I am an idiot).

Anyway.

1) Have a tragic story to tell

Maybe it's schadenfreude, or maybe it's schwarzwalder kirschtorte, but people love to hear tales of terrible tragedy. If your parents kept you in a sack in a box in the cellar even though they lived in a bungalow, then you shouldn't shy away from writing or talking about it.

In all honesty, even if you didn't have a tough childhood, you shouldn't be afraid to make it up like James Frey did. Once you've sold millions of books, you might have to apologise, but by then you've banked the money, and apologising on the Oprah show is all the more bearable when you can go home to your gold-plated mansion in the Caribbean.

Be careful not to go too far, though; whilst we all know that the audience for tragic memoirs is always keen to hear more tales of childhood neglect and abuse, know the limits: claiming to have beaten to death by a cruel step-parent might make your offering of a manuscript hard to swallow, as might getting too far into the world of make-believe; only the most gullible of publishers would stick 'Non-Fiction' on the back of the cover of your memoir of how you suffered in Narnia under the Snow Queen, or how your home in Helm's Deep was affected by a nearby battle.

2) Claim there was chemistry between you

This is an old showbiz trick, often used in films - if the film isn't getting very good reviews, a few well-placed leaks about some on-set shenanigans between the leads can help increase press coverage. Obviously, this is rather dependent on the film - Two Weeks [sic] Notice and, more recently, The Bounty Hunter saved a lot of money they'd have had to spend on marketing by pretending the leads had "more than just on-screen chemistry, know what I mean, nudge nudge", but it's less believable when stated of the cast of Monsters Inc, and so blindingly obvious as to not even be worthy of claiming about the cast of Suburban Shagfest 3 - Spank You Very Much.

However, to do this you'll need to have someone to claim to have chemistry with. This is fine if you're married co-writers like Nicci French, very wrong if you write with a family member like PJ Tracy, but as most writers work alone, to avoid accusations of being in love with yourself (an allegation often levelled at more solipsistic writers, who tend to be at the literary end of the scale, or bloggers), it's best to find someone else in the process to pretend to have been having an affair with.

For many writers, this will have to be an agent or editor, though this of course means you have to have been accepted (and not in that way) by them prior to this stage; it's not likely to help your submission very much if the query letter has a PS saying "if you take me on I will do things which are illegal in several EU countries" unless you're very confident both of your manuscript and of your own attractiveness, regardless of whoever opens the submission. And you'd probably need to send a picture to prove your point. A nice one, tastefully lit. With the top button undone, just to make sure. Yeah, you look good like that. Oh yeah baby, you know what I like. Uh-huh.

Um, seem to have strayed from the point a bit there, but if you're going to go down the chemistry route (either real or faked), it's probably best if you, or the person you're working with, is a known quantity to the world at large. In most writing instances, that's not likely, and even if it is the case, it may not work - Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller, but if she saw it as a way to get a foot in the door of writing plays, it doesn't seem to have worked.

Anyway, those are my two theories, and if you give either of them a go, do let me know how you get on. You might think I've made a mistake by telling you how to do it, but I've already started to use these approaches as a leg-up into being published, and am hanging round literary agents' offices with my shirt unbuttoned down to the waist. And if that doesn't work, I plan to write a misery memoir about my traumatic years spent trying to make it as a writer.

All the bases covered there, I like to think.

Up Above The Streets And Houses

2010-05-02T14:24:00.007+01:00

Despite the usual Bank Holiday weather, this morning Mrs Wife and I went for a brief helicopter flight along the Thames. Here, by way of proof, are pictures from mere hours ago...

The Excel Centre in East London. I think you can see the queues for the next series of The X-Factor at the right of the building (seriously - they're holding auditions there this weekend).

The Tower of London, with Tower Bridge in the bottom right corner (with the skid of the helicopter)

The mother of Parliaments was the turn-around point for our trip, so it necessitated the mother of all steep turns. No, it wasn't just me being all artsy with the framing of the shot, this is how it was.

And heading back out towards East London, and Soanes Towers, we see the Dome and Canary Wharf. Not everyone's cup of tea architecturally, either of them, I know, but to me being this close to them says one thing: I'm almost home.

On which note, I shall get back to enjoying the Bank Holiday Sunshine, which is currently dripping down the windows. Hope you're enjoying this Now With 50% Free weekend.

I'm Still Alive!

2010-04-27T11:14:00.001+01:00

(Which, coincidentally, were the words I texted to friends and family late on Saturday afternoon.)

By way of proving that the claim to be a 'mountain-climber' in my profile on the right of this page is true, and also explaining the lack of posting here on't blog in the last few days, I respectfully offer the following:

That, m'loves, is me at the summit of Ben Nevis on Saturday. So that's the highest mountain in the UK ticked off my 'to do' list.

Not sure what chunk of earth will be next, but the freshness of the air and the scenery has reminded me just how much I enjoy the mountains, so there will be another. Oh yes.

Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society Use Unwitting Kidnap Victim In Their Advertising?

2010-04-19T15:52:00.001+01:00

Unless the design of her car is staggeringly modern, I have to respond :"No, sorry, you really aren't..."

Learn From My (Almost) Mistakes

2010-04-15T11:17:00.004+01:00

So, on Tuesday night, the external hard-drive thingy attached to my computer died. It's a cute little thing, about the size of a passport and about 300Gb, and thus the ideal place for me to store all my music and video files and the like (not to mention my writing).

But the computer suddenly stopped acknowledging the drive even existed, and so iTunes and other programmes were looking for information that wasn't there. Yeek.

The fortunate timing for me was that this drive-death had happened within hours of me backing everything up onto another, bigger drive, so after buying another portable drive I was able to get things pretty much back to where they'd been. Okay, time and a bit of money wasted, but a small price to pay in comparison with losing all my tunes and videos. As the Young Ones put it, "Phew! That was close!"

Anyway, I'm telling you this not just because I treat this blog like some kind of online confessional/notebook, but also because the moral of my tale is one which has been said many times before, by better folks than I, time and time again: back up your stuff.

They often say you never know when a drive's going to die, but the chances are that it'll be when it's least convenient for you (not in my case, but I've always been a freak), so save your stories, assignments or whatnot in a good location, and then save them again somewhere else.

If you've got a Mac, there's the Time Machine software; if you're signed up to Windows Live, you can use their 'Skydrive' facility to stash stuff online, or there are other services such as Dropbox which offer free online storage and access (and if you use that link, we both get an extra 250Mb free space), or you could just use plug-in external HDs or memory sticks or whatever you prefer.

But I strongly urge you to back stuff up, and get a routine going to do so, so that you can avoid the possibility that, as mine did the other night, your stomach suddenly goes cold as you realise that you may have lost all your funky music and draft writing...

BBC Writers Academy - 2010 Applications Invited

2010-04-12T16:49:00.004+01:00

If you're interested in writing for TV, chances are you've already heard about this, but if not...

The BBC Writers Academy application process for this year opens today, and if you get one of the (up to) eight places, you'll get a pretty cracking grounding in writing for TV, particularly Continuing Drama (which covers programmes such as EastEnders, Holby City and Casualty).

You need to have a drama credit - and that means a paid commission for stage, screen or radio - and to submit a sample script as well as the application form etc, by 5 May 2010. There are, as I say, only a handful of places, but it's a terrific opportunity to learn about writing in a professional environment, and that certainly can't hurt.

Full details are available here, and there's a transcipt of the recent BBC Continuing Drama Q&A session here - wherein I spot that an online drama credit, as long as you've been paid by someone else for it, also makes you eligible to apply. Groovy.

Anyway, as I'm not yet in possession of a drama credit, I can't apply, but if you are and you do, please let me know how you get on, eh ?

What A Difference A Hyphen Makes

2010-04-08T12:29:00.002+01:00

For some years since the character came into the public domain, the world of literature has seen a number of books featuring Dracula, such as this one from 1997:

As you may have read, last year the Stoker estate authorised a sequel, co-written by Abraham's great grand nephew Dacre.

Strange, then, the choice of title for it...

Ah well.

You Know, Aside From In Comedies Or Repeats, I Don't Think I've Seen Flashbacks Signified By That Wibbly-Wobbly Screen Effect In Quite Some Time

2010-04-07T15:53:00.003+01:00

Crikey, a few days between posts there. Anyway, hope you had a good Easter Break.

So, I've been thinking about flashbacks; mainly because the novel I'm currently writing - at a glacial pace - features two 'strands' of narrative, one of which is a flashback for the main story, providing background detail for it.

I was watching the TV series Jekyll the other day, and - as is often the case with his work - the writer Steven Moffat does some interesting things with the structure, flashing back to scenes (either familiar or unseen) to provide information about the current story. In one of the episodes, a tough-looking military chap is introduced, and then we have several minutes of montage-style flashbacks showing him being tough in various situations before he engages with the main character. It works pretty well, but in the hands of a lesser writer (like me), it could just be a way to introduce a character or plot element and retro-fit them into the story to plug a gap; the good guy's cornered by a horde of hooligans, but then we see a flashback of him picking up a taser as he leaves home, and so he deus ex machina-s his way out of the predicament.

There's a problem for me with the film Kill Bill Part 2 as a result of this (and after this parenthesis, there be spoilers); in the second film we see a sequence where The Bride is being trained in certain techniques, and then we see her using them a little later in the film; all fairly normal, but of course this is the second of two films, and if Tarantino wanted us to 'almost forget' that she'd learned the wood-breaking technique or whatever and then go 'ah, right, of course' when she uses it, I'd imagine he would have buried (pun intended for those of you who know what I'm on about) that sequence in the first film so you would have nearly forgotten it. I'd imagine that if the film had been released in one chunk then that sequence would have been earlier in the running order, though that's just my guess.

On the other hand, if you release a film and there's a period of time before the completion of the story, it means keen fans may see it more than once and spot scenes which are possibly setting up pay-offs in later instalments (cf the hoverboard in the Back To The Future films), but you don't necessarily want the audience to spot that something is clearly setting up a later event. It's a fine thing to balance - some stories can be sufficiently involving that you forget the key plot element (I'd nominate the boiler plot point in The Shining), or there can be so much going on - such as many possible suspects in a murder mystery - that you're not sure which clues are relevant or not. On the other hand, flashbacks can suddenly appear and inform the current situation with such plodding obviousness as to remove the suspense or mystery from the story.

I remember a chap I worked with who said he didn't like the flashbacks which started to appear in the second series of The West Wing, because he felt that it showed they'd run out of story, and were resorting to making up stuff that had happened before the show started; I didn't think that was the case, but I know what he means - it's a fairly frequent occurrence in film sequels or long-running TV series for one of the main characters to suddenly encounter an ex-wife or mentor or adversary, and depending on how it's handled it can add a bit of depth to the characters, or just look like they're bolting something on to the existing setup in the hope it works.

As is so often the case when I'm talking about the specifics of writing, I don't have any kind of definitive conclusion on this, but it's certainly something I'm mindful of at the moment, when writing and or reading and when watching TV or films alike; flashbacks, at best, should contribute something to the characterisation or plot, but at the same time they're best when they don't scream 'look at me, I'm important!'. Better, I think, that the flashes should are discreet; my aim in my novel is for them to intertwine with the 'present day' events like a background harmony (appropriately enough, the example which comes to my mind is the 'Frere Jacques' bit in The Beatles' Paperback Writer), but as with most things I'm involved in the creation of, I'll probably be the least qualified to judge whether I've been successful or not.

Still, one of the benefits of writing a self-contained story is that I can go back and insert things to make it look as if I knew what I was doing all along, and not just making it up as I went along; that's what all the drafts after the first draft are for, really.

Or, if I can't be bothered to do that, I'll point to this blog post and say see, I did think about the flashbacks, even if I didn't really make them work.

Les Poissons D'Avril

2010-04-01T14:09:00.005+01:00

Given the date, I can't really post anything you'll believe, can I ?

That being the case, here's a picture of a (not unconnected) fish.

Basically, I'm Saying "Don't Worry, Daddy Still Loves You Just As Much"

2010-03-30T13:53:00.002+01:00

In an example of my usual skill at being ahead of the curve, I've just started to tinker on Twitter (as promised last year, I gave it some time, to see if it was just a pash in the flan) - you can see me here.

Not entirely sure if it'll prove to be a lasting thing, though I'm finding it quite diverting so far.

Anyway, I'll still be blogging - and don't worry, there are actual content-rich posts in the pipeline, not just 'ooh, doesn't that look a bit like that?' ones - so this is not any kind of farewell. You don't get rid of me that easily.

That said, I still think I'd have to sustain some kind of head injury before I'd consider signing up to Facebook.

I Think I'll Get Some Pick N Mix Too

2010-03-28T11:42:00.002+01:00

Obviously, it's subliminal advertising - you know they make more money from selling snacks than from sales of cinema tickets?

Two Comic Covers From 1984

2010-03-24T13:35:00.002Z

Normally, I'd suggest plagiarism, but these were both drawn by the same chap (Brian Bolland), so I'll just chalk it up to a similar approach taken to both the pieces of work.

No criticism here at all, by the way; Bolland's an absolute master of comic art: if you want clean lines, he's yer artist. And I particularly like the way that the design plays on the left-to-right approach to reading, drawing the eye across the image to make you wonder just who or what is firing at the characters.

Anyway, this slight coincidence freaked out my 13-year-old self, so I thought I'd share it.

As The Saviour Of Humanity In The Matrix Put It: "Whoa!"

2010-03-22T14:23:00.004Z

I've linked before to the ever-amusing Photoshop Disasters blog, wherein they point out under-'shopped bits of advertising and promotional material.

But like any tool, Photoshop itself isn't a bad thing, it's a question of how it's used, and here's something created by Eric Johansson, a craftsman who need not blame his tools:

Clever, innit? You can see more of his work here - prepare to have your ever-lovin' brain bent out of shape (or, at least, for your eyeballs to be tickled).

Enjoy.

I'm Using The Internet As A Message Pad, Yes. What Of It?

2010-03-20T08:36:00.002Z

Just a quick message to wish my brother a very happy birthday - he's a jolly good egg, and has been a longtime reader of the blog, and is always one of the first to comment when posts become fewer and further between.

So, have a good day Bro - and if you're reading this on your phone in the usual way, I guess you'll be needing this in a minute or so:

To the rest of my readers, I can only apologise. And I do.

I Am, Quite Literally, A Dancin Fool

2010-03-18T18:30:00.000Z

... oh, hang on, I can't find a film called Cardboard Box.

Ah well. Better kick off my dancin shoes.

As you were, everyone.

The Perils Of Associative Thought Patterns, I Guess

2010-03-15T15:52:00.000Z

This image is (as you can probably guess) from Apple's webpage about their iBooks store.

You probably can't make it out on the picture, but one of the lines reads:

"...the bookshelf flips around like a secret passageway to reveal the iBookstore..."

Anyone else inclined to think of Anne Frank when they read that?

What with their logo allegedly being a reference to Alan Turing, whatever you may think of their products, it could be argued that Apple have a sense of history.

The Very Definition Of An 'Art Installation'

2010-03-11T20:17:00.003Z

Apologies if you've seen this before, but if not, ladies and gennelman, I give you The Kansas City Library.

A terrific bit of architecture, I'd say - and I'm rather taken by the eclectic choice of books as well.

Bravo, Kansas!

Entering Decade Four

2010-03-10T23:37:00.002Z

Today was my birthday, and for the first time in my working life, I didn't take the day off.

How was it, you ask? Well, the title of this book by the late David Foster Wallace sums it up best:

I shouldn't really complain: I've long thought that there wouldn't be any harm in everyone having their birthday as a day off school, college, work or whatever. It's just the one day, and since everyone has only one every year (except the Queen and people who were born on February 29), it'd apply pretty much equally.

Now I think about it, this is probably one of the few beliefs I have which hasn't changed over time. A solid and definite policy decision, maybe I should (crap pun approaching) form a political group and stand on this policy and this policy alone, under the name The Birthday Party?

Oh hang on, looks like Nick Cave and friends have beaten me to it. Ah well, probably for the best.

Do forgive my nonsense, it's late and I'm increasingly old. Though I guess that applies to all of us.

There Goes The Sun, Diddle-Da-Dah...

2010-03-09T14:46:00.002Z

Last summer, I wrote about watching the solar eclipse in India, and mentioned that there'd been thousands of other people observing the event.

However, what I didn't know at the time was that a camera crew was there making a BBC science-based programme, and you won't be surprised to hear that their film of the eclipse is much more professional.

The footage forms part (some might even argue the centrepiece) of the first episode of the BBC2 series Wonders of the Solar System, presented by physicist Brian Cox, who's both smiley and enthusiastic about his subject matter, and it's generally a very interesting programme.

The eclipse stuff is around the halfway point, but I'd heartily recommend watching the whole show (not least because, if it's phenomena in the sky you like, there's a great sequence about the Northern Lights towards the end of the programme).

One of the things Cox does well, I feel (in addition to explaining issues clearly) is to convey a genuine sense of wonder and amazement about things; so often people will tell you that something is important or startling, but Cox is good at telling you why he thinks this is the case. I understand they're doing a trimmed-down version of the show for children, which sounds like a terrific idea.

What's that you say? Where do you find the programme? Why, m'love, tis right here. Enjoy.

Strangely Attractive, I Think You'll Agree

2010-03-08T11:14:00.001Z

Do you agree?

Yes, I know, this sort of link-passing is what Twitter is for, but I don't have a Twitter account, so here it be.

Previous Price: 75p. New Price: 0p.

2010-03-05T11:14:00.004Z

Back in May 2009 I gave a resounding thumbs-up to the first issue of the comic The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross.

This week, it's been made available online for free in PDF format, so you can have a look at it and see if I was way off the mark or not.

In the months since its release, another ten or so issues have been published, and I feel they've fleshed out the underlying 'mythology' rather well, including a number of historic figures such as Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling and even Joseph Goebells.

It's currently one of the comics I look forward to most each month, so I'd urge you to have a look at the freebie first issue and see if it's your kind of thing.

"Lee-ah" like Leela or "Lei-a" Like Layer? We Were Never Sure At School

2010-03-04T10:28:00.003Z

For me and many other males of a certain age and inclination, the reaction to Princess Leia in the Star Wars films was one which changed as the years went on and morefilms came out.

When the first film came out, and I was 7 or so, she was just, well, there, being captured and rescued and arguing with the male characters and then dishing out medals at the end. I think I may have had the Leia action figure which came out, but it wasn't my favourite or anything.

Then The Empire Strikes Back came out, and I seem to remember Leia having more to do - she was in charge on the ice planet, and more like one of the troops. Still, as a boy of about ten, I saw that she was a girl, and of course that meant she probably smelled like flowers and liked ponies or something. I don't know, all right? I was young and foolish then (as opposed to older and ... well, yes).

But a few years later, in Return Of The Jedi there was a frankly gratuitous scene with Leia in a metal bikini (much referred to amongst boys of a certain age, and the focus of an episode of Friends), which coincided with certain age-wrought changes in me to the extent that... well, yes, I found the scene oddly compelling. That's how shallow and facile I was then (and probably am now, some might say).

As I say, the scene with Leia in a metal bikini in the 1983 film was pretty unnecessary really, and I don't think it would be stretching it to say it was sexist. Fortunately, in 1995 a remodelled version of the Princess Leia action figure was released, and I think it's fair to say that it went some way to addressing the unnecessary sexualisation of the character:

... well, maybe you find that alluring. It doesn't do it for me, and I'm not alone in that, as apparently collectors call this the 'Monkey Face Leia' figure. I can see why, though it looks both simian and constipated.

Still, Carrie Fisher has demonstrated a sharp sense of humour about all this, I feel - in 2008 she said "Among George's many possessions, he owns my likeness, so that every time I look in the mirror I have to send him a couple of bucks. That's partly why he's so rich."

Variant Covers

2010-03-03T11:12:00.003Z

I derive a strange delight from seeing international editions of magazines on the shelves of newsagents (often the larger branches).

I'm intrigued to see the differences between the covers of the US and UK versions of, say, Esquire or GQ; whilst this may have its roots in my childhood discovery of imported american comics alongside copies of Whizzer and Chips and Krazy comic (and wonderment at the fact that the US comics were, despite being smaller, in full colo[u]r), it's also quite interesting to pre-spot cover features on films or bands which may well make their way across the Atlantic in a month or so's time. This used to be very apparent with the film magazine Premiere, where last month's cover-feature in the US often seemed to be this month's in the UK edition, though I'm not sure if that mag still exists in either form.

Anyway, as ever, a thousand words or so when the pictures say it all: the UK and US editions of the current edition of Wired, and I'm amused by the different approach to the same cover-featured article: the US version looks like something from a Haynes manual, and the UK edition looks more like a poster from the era of Communism or the like.

I have no real point to make here, in all honesty; I'm just sharing something which amuses me a bit.

Self-indulgent? Very probably, but I suspect I've posted worse.

Proving That, Even In The Far-Flung Future, Intelligence Will Not Equate With Social Skills...

2010-03-02T14:59:00.001Z

... in the 25th Century, Brainiac 5 demonstrates his contempt for those members of the Legion Of Super-Heroes too stupid to figure out how to make their own flight-rings.

Go on, Brainy! Flick them the rods!

The Ghost Of My Holiday Romance Toyboy Husband Shot My Conjoined Twin Baby As She Lay Dying Of Leukaemia... But I Still Love Him!

2010-03-01T11:54:00.004Z

For some years now, the shelves of newsagents have been awash with... well, I don't know what you'd call them, really; tragic confession magazines? I'm sure you know the sort of thing - like the one pictured here, they're jam-packed with true tales of tragedy and woe, and yet often topped with a no-context-at-all picture of a smiling woman. Given the coverlines swirling around her, I always wonder: just what is she smiling at?

Anyway, there are a lot of these magazines, and a lot of the tales seem to focus around death or children or the deaths or illnesses of children, but there seems to be very little coverage of them; I can't help but wonder if, like their equivalent in book publishing, they're a bit of a 'dirty secret' - very lucrative, but not necessarily something that the folks involved want to admit to being involved in or talk about too much. Like being a pimp or drug dealer, or the composer of The Ketchup Song.

But, in a strange case of synchronicity, these magazines are the focus of not one, but two programmes on TV this week - one on Tuesday and another - on a different channel - on Thursday.

Hang on a mo, though... is it synchronicity... or a clever marketing ploy?

Hmm. If the latter, then my simple-minded ways have been exploited by a cruel media machine. I feel so dirty and used, like my very soul's been violated.

Perhaps I should sell my story.

Not So Much A Blog, More A Way Of Scoring Points

2010-02-26T09:25:00.002Z

None of my schoolfriends believed me when I maintained that there was something... unexpected on Penelope Pitstop's car dashboard.

But this screengrab vindicates me. Oh yes.

And now, with this decade-spanning disagreement finally resolved in my favour, I can move on with my life.

NB: There is a possibility the above is slightly exaggerated to justify showing an innuendal image. Do not panic. All is well. Please do not adjust your 'nets.

"Seeing Is Believing"...

2010-02-25T10:23:00.000Z

...has not been true since Winsor McCay and Gertie The Dinosaur, but it's startling to see just how much greenscreening there is in use, especially in TV shows where you might not expect it.

I mean: Ugly Betty? Seriously, I'd never have expected that.

Free Politics-Related eBook

2010-02-24T11:49:00.002Z

Not everyone's bag, granted, but you might be interested in the free copy of Daniel Blyth's X Marks The Spot which you can get from the Waterstones website.

I haven't read it yet meself, but as it comes up as being both 'humour' and 'politics' on my eReader gadget, I think it'll probably be interesting. Seems to be available both in ePUB and PDF forms, which is a nice touch. Mind you, you have to sign up for e-mail updates from the publishers, so you may feel the game isn't worth the candle, as it were.

Anyway, have a look, see if it's your thing or not. And don't say I never give you anything.

Or, at least, that I never point you towards an opportunity to get something for nothing from someone else. Hmm, that doesn't sound quite so good, does it?

No, Of Course I Haven't Seen It. I Like To Comment From A Position Of Ignorance.

2010-02-23T15:39:00.002Z

You've probably seen the adverts for the film Valentine's Day. Two thoughts:

1. Can we agree that this looks rather like Love Actually, with a shift of location and time of year?

2. Given that the film was released on Friday 12 February in the UK, I hope the studio behind the film aren't going to be shocked if last weekend's box office doesn't equal that of the opening weekend...

And yes, the posters for it do resemble those of He's Just Not That Into You, but you'd spotted that already, right?

I Probably Shouldn't Look Gift Advice In The Mouth, But Still...

2010-02-22T13:53:00.000Z

Over on the Guardian website, they've recently published a two-part article called 'Ten rules for writing fiction', which makes for pretty interesting reading. Part one is here, and part two is here, though reading them in order is probably best.

As I say, I think there's a lot of useful advice in there, though some of it doesn't apply to all genres or whatever (I don't suffer from adverb-phobia, for example), though it's not without flaws; unfortunately one author seems to have rather forgotten the brief and veered towards details of how he writes, whilst another rather impractically suggests "When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books" - fine advice in itself, but I'd guess most Guardian readers are likely to feel it's too late to do that if they didn't at the time.

And for the few children who read the newspaper, it's preaching to the converted.

Childish and envious snarking aside, it's nonetheless worth a look, as one of the recurrent messages is the always unwelcome but equally true reminder that you actually have to get on with the writing part, until the story's finished.

Yes, yes, I know: I was hoping there'd be a magic short-cut revealed as well.

10 Things I've Learned From Watching Come Dine With Me A Smidgen Too Often

2010-02-19T15:10:00.003Z

1. Anyone described as being a 'self-confessed foodie' is usually a bit of a pain

2. When shopping in your local deli/butcher/fishmonger, be sure to mention that you're holding a dinner party, and address the person behind the counter by their first name more often than is normal in conversation

3. Not supplying drink for your guests, even if it's for religious or medical reasons, usually leads to them getting a right arse on

4. Musical entertainment, whether provided by you or hired professionals, is not a good idea if you want to win

5. Any female contestant not in some kind of relationship will be labelled a 'singleton' in the commentary

6. Depending on how the group is constituted in terms of gender, a butler (with or without a shirt) may be popular

7. Don't try out something new on the night of your big event (actually, re haircuts and outfits and the like, this rule applies to much of life)

8. Rare is the person who can lift the silver salver without making the money move in some way. Less rare is being able to see the cameraman reflected in the surface of the salver

9. It's impossible to stand in the kitchen and talk to the camera about the meal you're preparing without acting like you're either Nigella L or Hugh F-W

10. Dave Lamb's voiceovers for Come Dine With Me are like the commentary for Masterchef, but with an awareness that - ultimately - we are only talking about cooking here.

...Which is probably why I watch the show a bit too much, as the above rather shows.

BBC Writing For Continuing Drama Q&A

2010-02-18T16:20:00.002Z

So, the good folks at BBC Writersroom are holding another one of their Q&A sessions, this time about Continuing Drama, and they'll also be talking about the BBC Writers Academy. Attending will be John Yorke, whose name you might recognise from the end of the credits for a lot of TV shows.

It's at the Drill Hall in London (kind of equidistant between Warren Street and Tottenham Court Road tubes), on Thursday 4 March from 6:00pm. It's free to get in, but you need to send an e-mail asking if they can add you to the guest list, otherwise one of their scary bouncers will throw you out.

I've made a vague plan to focus this year on non-visual media (by which idiotic turn of phrase I mean the novel and writing for radio), but this sounds like a good chance to grab an insight into an area which I'd certainly be interested to write for (I'm not ruling TV or films out forever, I just want to prevent myself being the jack-of-all-manuscripts and finisher of none), so I think I might give it a go.

Full details can be founded right here

And in case you think that the accompanying picture is inappropriate, I'd politely disagree; it refers to events in the Queen Vic on most evenings.

I Love The Caption At 0:54

2010-02-12T08:55:00.000Z

Insidious Worm Makes Unauthorized Purchases When Computer User Is Drunk

Once again, The Onion nails it.

"In my experience, those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it."

2010-02-10T16:28:00.001Z

No, I haven't gone all hard-boiled; those are the works which you have to use as a first line if you decide to enter Alibi's search for a new crime writer competition.

The first line is supplied by Stuart MacBride, and then it's up to you to complete the story (between 2000 and 5000 words in all) and get it to them by noon on Saturday 16 May.

The prizes are pretty decent, I feel - they'll pay for you to go to the Crime Writing Festival, and you get 100 crime books (though as one of the other prizes is an e-reader, these might be eBooks, I suppose), and they make your story into a downloadable e-edition. I've certainly seen worse prizes, and entry is free.

Full details are available here. I'm planning to give it a go, let me know if you decide to.

Actually, thinking about it, I might go for something a bit hard-boiled, or noirish, might be interesting to try writing in a very different voice from the usual...

This Offer Only Good Until Midnight (I Think)

2010-02-07T17:32:00.006Z

Available for the first time on DVD since it was first shown on BBC TV in 2006, Stephen Fry's two-part documentary series The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive is released tomorrow...

... but if you click here and buy it today, you can get it for 45% off the release price of £15.99.

If you haven't seen it - and statistically, I'd imagine that's fairly likely - it's a very solid documentary, with Fry and people such as Robbie Williams, Tony Slattery, Carrie Fisher and Richard Dreyfus talking about how their life's been affected by bipolar disoder.

Very much recommended, and a portion of the profits go to a mental health charity, so I politely suggest you click the above link. Trust me, it's worth every penny.

Now You Can See (Well, Hear) What I've Been Up To While I Haven't Been Posting This Week

2010-02-05T11:45:00.004Z

I'm pleased to be able to point you towards the latest episode of the BBC7 comedy show Newsjack, which features a joke by little ol' me.

Here be the link to the show's page, which also includes the iPlayer link and a credits list (rather charmingly alphabetised by forename). My gag is the one about SuperInjunctions in the Corrections segment about two minutes from the end.

There'll probably be a link for the podcast in the next couple of days, and my rampant egocentricity means I'm very likely to post that too. (EDIT: Crikey, looks like it's already available here. That was quick.)

Anyway, as you can probably gather, I'm more than a little bit pleased about this (which is why my usual English reserve has been overwhelmed with the desire to self-promote so shamelessly); my first paid work for the BBC, and not, I hope, the last.

Though, as ever, that's rather up (or indeed down) to me, innit? Back to the writing...

No, No, There Were Supposed To Be Plans For A Batman Musical...

2010-02-04T13:16:00.001Z

I don't want to pre-judge, but is it just me, or is this the most insane idea for a musical ever?

For every Sweeney Todd, there is, after all, at least one Capeman.

I Am Become Ouroboros, Devourer Of Tails

2010-01-29T11:21:00.004Z

To the left, my only joke about the iPad's name; the toilet-related ones strike me as a bit weak, really.

Anyway, what of the new Apple device ? I don't know, I haven't seen one or tried one or whatever, and anyway we all know that later models will be faster and cheaper and do extra things and so on.

What I do think is interesting, though, is much of the media coverage of the product's launch; after a fair amount of speculation about its possible existence (and of possible capacities), there's a lot of coverage of the iPad's launch, both in traditional media and online (such as in posts like this one).

And I think the reason why the media coverage has probably been disproportionate to the genuine level of interest (aside from the usual thing about filling airtime or column inches or what have you) is less because of what it does, but because of what it could potentially do in the future; because if the capabilities of it were developed to their full extent, this sort of device could have a serious impact on a lot of jobs relating to the media. Because it could, at the far extremes of possibility, replace books and magazines and newspapers in the same way that, for many people, the iPod and iTunes have replaced CDs and music shops.

Print media have been struggling in recent times with falling sales and/or ad revenues, and one of the main expenses for print media is, well, you've got to print the thing; if, on the other hand, you can just edit your copy of The Daily Blah and send it wirelessly or what have you to your subscribers, that saves you a sizey chunk of dosh on printing and distribution costs. And of course you could correct or update stuff as the day goes on, add in video stuff, make your ads link directly to the advertiser's sites, and so on. All of which will involve very different 'skill sets' (as the cool kids in HR say nowadays) for people working in print media.

So, for that reason, I rather suspect the press coverage (whether it's manifesting as Apple Acolyte behaviour or sneery dismissal, or something in between) is, in a large part, born of an awareness that this device, and others with similar capabilities, could have a serious effect on the press, who may need - as the music industry has done - to find themselves a new (or parallel) business model pretty sharpish.

Whilst the unveiling of the iPad is, for the vast majority of people, an item of only marginal concern as they may not be inclined (financially or in terms of interest) to buy one, for anyone working in the print media, it could have a serious effect on their livelihood in their not-necessarily-distant-future.

It's probably not the greatest innovation since the invention of movable type; but the high-profile launch of a device which enables words which have been typed to be moved through the air and presented in a form akin to print media has to send waves of concern through the fourth estate.

And that, I would suggest, is motivating a lot of the coverage. And in covering the coverage, I am drawn to quote Robert Oppenheimer (allegedly) quoting the Bhagavad Gita. But that's the kind of pretentious idiot I am.

Or, perhaps, I am become.

Slightly Further To Yesterday's Post, But Not Entirely

2010-01-28T08:34:00.001Z

A new word for your dictionary...

Jedward [Jed'wood]

1. portmanteau n. Contestants John and Edward in ITV talent contest The X-Factor in 2009. Their elimination sparked a very short-lived campaign of complaints.

2. n. Slang term for any item which excites a great deal of interest for a brief spell and is then forgotten as though it had never existed. Often applied to workplace tasks whose lasting impact is inversely proportionate to the importance placed upon their timely creation at short notice, as in:

"Dave, I need a full report on the last six years' sales figures for the MD, by tomorrow morning."
"If I bust my guts to deliver it on time, will he actually read it, or is this another bloody Jedward?"

The Never-Ending Story

2010-01-27T13:51:00.004Z

Unlike many, many people, I haven't yet watched the Doctor Who episodes The End Of Time, though I've got them through iPlayer, and they're sitting on my computer awaiting my eyeballs.

In a similar fashion, I haven't read the final volume in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, though I really like the books, and the finale is on my 'to read' bookshelf.

I don't watch Heroes any more, though I cheerfully followed the first series all the way until the penultimate episode, and only missed the finale because I mis-set the recorder; granted, most people I know are suggesting that I didn't miss much (either in that finale or what has followed), but I was oddly content with leaving it where it was.

I've written before about how mysteries and questions can be as satisfying as resolutions and answers, and it's certainly a feeling that seems to be increasing in my thinking; which is odd, given that one thing that I find deeply satisfying if it's present (and frankly irritating if it's not) is a story in which it's clear that the creator knows where they're going and what they're doing.

And yet, like a reunion of a much-missed band or sequel to a much-loved tale, the anticipation can overwhelm the reality, and your excited imaginings can far outstrip what's actually delivered.

In part, this is an inevitable result of items being exaggerated in their importance; there's a story which I love (especially if it's true) that when a group of journalists were attending the official release of the 'reunited Beatles' song Free As A Bird, they were asked to turn away as the boxes of the single were carried onstage. One of them, apparently (and rightly) said 'oh, for god's sake, it's only a record!', and refused to turn away, at which point all the others did the same. Don't get me wrong, I think the Beatles are far and away the most important band ... well, probably ever, but a new song from them is, when all's said and done, a song, and it's unlikely that its four minutes or so of music and lyrics is going to actually, literally, knock the world off its axis or otherwise change absolutely everything forever and ever and ever.

I think there's a similar hyperbole applied to many things, be they books or films or albums or comics or whatever, much of which seems to be intended to get people all giddy and excited and convinced that this thing really, really matters just long enough that they slap down money for it, and after that, well, so long and thanks for all the dosh. In a way, it's pretty much evident from, say, the promotion for films - there are trailers and posters and interviews on chat shows and press releases dressed up as news reports (I'm looking at you, free newspapers), but within a day or two of the film's opening, it's almost as if the massed media has forgotten about what it was so recently talking about, and is trying to pretend its fleeting obsession never happened.

Seemingly the most obvious version of this, though it doesn't quite follow the theory, is the way that winners of The X-Factor tend to vanish without trace for the best part of a year until they bob back up to the surface of public consciousness in late autumn, to ride the wave of pubic interest generated by the new series of the show. There's a very real danger in this instance that the public - who are, after all, encouraged to pretend that this really matters as the series goes on, and to forget about people whose standing in the show they were terrifically excited about the previous week - will forget all about these newly-born 'stars' in the intervening months, though I guess it takes a few months of being strapped into Simon Cowell's Strip-Away-Any-Vestige-Of-Personality-And-Ensure-We-Can-Flog-Them-To-The-US-O-Tron before they can be presented safely to the public. But I digress.

I guess one has to be realistic about the level of expectation involved - and when I say 'one', I mean you. And me. The final Harry Potter book or a newly-discovered full version of The Magnificent Ambersons or [insert your Holy Grail here] may be a terrifically exciting prospect, but as so many people felt about the Star Wars prequels or Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, the finished article may not live up to your expectations (which may themselves have been stoked by blanket coverage and exaggeration of the item's properties and importance). Don't get me wrong, I still retain a frankly child-like ability to get excitable about things which - in the long run, and often in other people's estimation - aren't really that important, but I'm trying to keep a sense of perspective, and realise that a comic which finally and definitively settles the fanboy question of whether Captain America could beat Batman in a fight* is, five years down the line, less likely to be quite so important to me, and may well in fact be a bit of a disappointment.

And of course, holding off on the climax has its own rewards (oh, stop that, you filth; you know what I mean): as far as I'm concerned, the story's still taking place - David Tennant is still The Doctor (though I'm optimistic about the Moffat/Smith era), and Roland Deschain is still en route to the Tower, and neither story's end has come as a disappointment.

Unlike - very probably for many of you - this lengthy and rambling post, whose end probably comes as a blessed relief.

*Of course he couldn't - Batman would win hands-down.

By Way Of Antidote To My Usual Mockery And Pedantry...

2010-01-24T16:56:00.004Z

... have a look at this; the song's pedestrian at best, but I genuinely love the way the woman signing it in the lower right corner gets into it (you may want to skip to a minute or so in):

I suspect she's just paid to sign the words, but she goes well beyond the call of duty, and, frankly, gets on down. And it looks like she's rather enjoying her job.

Good for her, I say.

Pedantry Aside, I Really Like The Cover

2010-01-22T14:31:00.003Z

I genuinely like the design of this cover, but on the basis that covers of books tend to feature the main character (and I applaud the way the artwork doesn't show the man full face, meaning that you won't have your mental image of the character barged aside), I guess that this cover shows Reilly's recurring character Jack West Jr.

But, um, doesn't he have a bionic arm made of titanium steel? It doesn't look that way from the cover picture.

Unless, of course, he got his arm back in the previous book, but I haven't read that one yet.

A Second Edition (Should That Be 'Opinion'?)

2010-01-20T14:29:00.002Z

Many moons ago, I referred - albeit fleetingly - to the book The Writer's Tale by Russell T Davies.

As you might imagine from the title, it's an account of his experiences working on Doctor Who, incorporating scripts as well as featuring nicely candid e-mails between RTD and the journalist Benjamin Cook. It came out in a nice hardback form in 2008, and as you can see from the picture to the left, the paperback has come out - with, cripes, a big chunk of new material, covering the episodes which were broadcast in 2009. In the absence of a 'supplement' being issued for hardback-owners, I think that 300 pages of new material is a pretty good lure to buy it again, really.

Anyway, I wanted to draw your attention to the updated Writer's Tale website, which now features downloadable PDFs of the scripts for the 2009 Specials, including The End Of Time. And, unlike the book I sound suspiciously like I'm hawking above, the scripts can be had for the always-nice sum of nought pence.

I always think it's interesting to have a look at how these things are done (even if the depth of my insight is limited to thoughts like "Hmm, these episodes are numbered as an extension of the previous series"). A peek behind the curtain, as it were.

Juvenilia (Or: Er, Dracula Is Public Domain, Right? Please Don't Sue My Child Self)

2010-01-18T16:42:00.002Z

As if deliberately plumbing the depths of self-indulgence, and seeking to alienate you good people, I thought I'd share the following early example of my writing, which I found yesterday when clearing out some boxes of stuff.

The dates on the back suggest it's from when I was five or six years old, so please excuse the mangled conjugation of the verb 'to eat':

I think we can all see what young me was aiming at with that picture, but I think I owe an apology to the estates of both Bram Stoker and Bob Kane.

And, very probably, Freddie Mercury.

Channel Surfing

2010-01-16T14:08:00.003Z

My current reading material is the second volume of Michael Palin's Diaries, a very thoughtful Christmas pressie from Mrs S. It covers the 1980s, when Mr P was featuring in an impressive array of films (Time Bandits, The Meaning Of Life, and Brazil, for example).

However, for sheer unexpectedness, one of my favourite onscreen Palin moments is the following from 2006:

All things considered, I think he underplays it rather nicely; good to see an extra not trying to scene-steal in any way whatsoever. Ahem.

As I Say, Trying To Make The Posts More Interesting, Even If There Are Fewer Of Them...

2010-01-12T15:58:00.002Z

... which is why I had to share this.

Thanks to m'chum Dan.

Perhaps I Should Just Re-jig This Blog To Make It About Pointing Out Similarities And Be Done With It

2010-01-07T15:51:00.006Z

On the left, an image from a current Marvel comic, relating to their latest cross-over story, Siege.

On the right, the cover for a DVD of a performance of The Wall which took place in Berlin, with a logo dating back to when the concert took place in 1990.

Hmm.

I rather hope it's a pre-established icon or image which is being re-used here, so do let me know if you know better.

First 'Book Twins' Of 2010...

2010-01-05T13:50:00.003Z

... though I doubt they'll be the last.

For the record, I have no objection to Brad Meltzer's work - I really enjoyed The Tenth Justice - it's the derivative book design I have a beef with. Though judging from his comics work, Brad and I clearly differ in our fondness for Red Tornado. Ah well, tis but a small matter.

Silliness, Like Diarrhoea, Runs In The Genes

2010-01-04T20:11:00.005Z

Almost a guest post, this one; my father's been interested in astronomy for most of his life, even building a Dobsonian telescope from scratch (well, he had the mirror blank, he didn't glue together millions of individual glass particles, but you know what I mean).

And so it was with genuine amusement in his voice that he suggested that I have a look at this site about some photos allegedly taken by the Hubble Telescope.

Despite what Mr Dawkins says, it's the foolish gene which is dominant in the Soanes family.

By The Time I Hit 'Publish', This Could Prove To Be Invalid

2010-01-03T13:44:00.004Z

But nonetheless, it's worth a try.

A short film written and directed by Neil Gaiman, and starring Bill Nighy, which was shown on Sky TV a night or two ago, and which has somehow made its way online:

Is the item above not working? I can only assume the link's invalid because Sky have issued a cease-and-desist-and-go-to-your-room order. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

Brake Time

2010-01-02T19:10:00.004Z

Gah, this is going to be horribly self-referential and indulgent, but then again that's not really anything new to the blog, so...

A quick glance at the column on the right shows that in 2009 I posted at least once a day here on't blog, and though I don't think I said as much at the time, this was a challenge (albeit a fairly pathetic one) I set myself back at the start of the year.

I think that it went pretty well overall - there were probably a few too many posts wherein I pointed out some minor point of similarity between two items, or picked on some frankly pedantic point and scratched away at it in an attempt to mine some amusement, but on the other hand I was pretty chuffed to have said something to you, my faithful and frankly pert audience, every day. Whether or not you felt the same way is an entirely different matter, but heck, that's what the Comment function's for, right?

Anyway, all of the rambling nonsense above is by way of alerting you to the fact that the blog may see something of a decrease in frequency of posting - or, at least, a decrease in comparison with the past year; that's not to say I won't still be making facile remarks on a regular basis, but it may be more like a working week's worth of comments as opposed to a daily thing. Still, we'll see - and hopefully you'll feel that the shift in frequency is matched by an upswing in quality of content, as I find myself feeling less that I have to post something, and more that I have something to post (an important distinction, I think you'll agree).

But don't fret (or, depending on how you feel about my still being here, do fret), there'll still be the same stupid mix of personal opinions on matters I know next to nothing about, links to items of possible interest, and - oh yes - more pictures of books and films with similar covers or posters; I appreciate knowing you good folks are out there as I post all my nonsense, and I hope you'll stick around for more.

Because there is more. Oh yes.

Welcome To The Future

2010-01-01T00:01:00.003Z

According to the tagline for the frankly underrated film 2010, it's "the year we make contact".

That would, of course, be terrific, but in the absence of Dave Bowman returning, I just hope that, for all of you who are kind enough to read this blog, it's the year we make progress, howsoever you choose to define it.

It may be that you want things to feel they're moving forward on a personal, professional, creative, mental, physical or even spiritual level, and so I hope that, when we reach the end of 2010, you can look back at the year and - whether it's because of things you've done or events conspiring in your favour (or, perhaps best of all, both of those) - that you can look back and think yep, that was a very good year.

But enough of my hoping, a new year (and a new decade? Or is that mathematically inaccurate?) awaits! Let's get using the time productively, eh ?

So, let's take a moment to gather ourselves, and ... onwards!

Good-Bye To All That

2009-12-31T11:24:00.006Z

As a year comes to a close, it's traditional to look back on the its various events and achievements.

Being a non-traditional sort, though, I'd just like to take a moment to talk about something which I hope we'll see the end of when midnight chimes. I don't want to sound overly negative, but it'd be nice to see this one thing go when the year ends. And that thing is...

People taking offence on behalf of other people.

Actually, I should probably qualify that slightly - it's more a case of people continuing to take offence (or claiming to, but I'll get to that in a minute) on behalf of other people, when those others have either said they're not bothered or they've accepted an apology.

The obvious example would be the Daily Mail-led campaign to continue to be shocked and horrified about the prank phone calls to Andrew Sachs, but this year we've also seen a fuss about Ben Elton making jokes about the Royal Family; there are probably other examples, but the key thing about all of these events to my mind is the fact that the person who was directly affected by the remarks accepted an apology from the so-called offender (or, in the case of the Elton 'fuss', saw the joke, it seems. So it is a bit odd that people who are not directly involved should continue to stoke the fires of outrage, when the one whose feelings could be legitimately stung is moving on and getting over with it.

I suggested above that the people who get all offended about such matters aren't truly offended, and whilst I don't feel that's the case about all such instances, I think a lot of the time the vicarious offendees are taking a slightly odd delight in feeling affronted. I'd been struggling to verbalise why people might want to do this - beyond the fact that, unfortunately, some people seem to take delight in being angry more often than not - but fortunately, a line on an episode of The West Wing I was watching summed it up for me:

DONNA: ...they're shocked and appalled and disappointed but really, they're none of those things, they just wish they were. So, never miss an opportunity to feel morally superior.

And I think that's at the heart of it - a lot of the time, these 'campaigns' seem to be organised not with the intention of ensuring respect for the monarchy, or ... er, that people don't ring grandfathers and talk about their granddaughters' sexual activity (not actually one of the biggest blights on society today, I suspect), but more of allowing the person being shocked and horrified to feel that they're morally superior to the miscreant whose actions they're so very appalled by.

To use a phrase I've written before, I question their sincerity. Yes, many of the jokes that people claim to be so appalled by may not be incisive or sharp, and may well be ill-judged, but they rarely seem to merit the big hoo-hah that follows; a lot of the time, the involvement of newspapers (especially in cases where the BBC can be given a kicking) makes me wonder how much of it is a crusade for social justice, and how much of it is a decision to try to have their paper spearhead a campaign against [whatever] by way of making newsprint seem important and current and relevant in the face of stiff competition from 24-hour news channels and new media.

On a meta- level, you might well ask why I'm so bothered by this when most of the attacks have been on comedians and writers and the like; surely, one might think, it's paradoxical at best and hypocritical at worst for me to be offended on behalf of these other people. And I might agree, but for the fact that I, and everyone else who spends time watching TV or film or listening to the radio or reading, suffers if we live in an environment in which producers or publishers are constantly examining works in case they offend, they might offend, or someone might take offence at the very possibility that they might offend someone else. Whilst many people are aware of the protests at the time of the release of Monty Python's Life Of Brian (pictured), it's all too easy to forget that now, just under thirty years later, it's seen not only as one of the funniest films ever made, but one of the most insightful about the nature of religion and belief. At the time, it was deeply offensive and shocking and blasphemous, but now it's held up as being a classic of intelligent humour, and without its creators being able to risk offence those insights (and jokes) would never have been made.

I wouldn't want to pretend that Frankie Boyle's joke about the Queen's ladyparts is likely to be as respected as "You've got to think for yourself! You're all individuals!" in years to come, but an intellectual climate in which material which might possibly offend any portion of the audience has to be excised is a perfect breeding ground for intellectual stagnation, and - ironically - TV schedules full of material which, by its sheer blandness, I find deeply offensive (for example, the currently-on programmes All Star Family Fortunes and All Star Mr And Mrs, whose titles and content differ so wildly I'm surprised Trading Standards haven't intervened).

In 1990, Salman Rushdie wrote the Hubert Reid Memorial lecture, entitled "Is Nothing Sacred?"; due to his life being threatened for some words he had written on religious matters, Rushdie was in hiding, and so the lecture was delivered by Harold Pinter. In the lecture, Rushdie argues the case for literature being allowed to say things and propose ideas that people might not like, and compares literature to a small room in a large house, in which anything might be said:

"The room is empty, but there are voices in it, voices that seem to be whispering just to you. You recognize some of the voices, others are completely unknown to you. The voices are talking about the house, about everyone in it, about everything that is happening and has happened and should happen. Some of them speak exclusively in obscenities. Some are bitchy. Some are loving. Some are funny. Some are sad. The most interesting voices are all these things at once."

A similar analogy might be struck for almost any form of media or other means of communication, and whilst I'd strongly urge you to read the entire lecture, if you apply Rushdie's 'room model' to a medium you care about - whether it be film or TV or radio - then the final line of the lecture, even if slightly edited, cannot fail to give pause for thought:

"Wherever in the world the little room [...] has been closed, sooner or later the walls have come tumbling down."

And on that relentlessly cheerful note, this blog bids farewell to 2009 - and, hopefully, to the idea of taking offence, or pretending to take offence, at jokes or comments or ideas, specifically those which relate to another who is notably less concerned by them. I question the sincerity of those who do so on a regular basis, and so perhaps we can close the door (with a hearty slam) on this practice as we leave this year - indeed, this decade.

Dropping One, As It Were

2009-12-30T17:50:00.008Z

As the year draws to a close, I think that I can presume upon your discretion, and make something of a confession.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, the BBC1 station ident looked like this:

The thing was this; I didn't really know what the picture was meant to depict, and so I mistook the negative space to the right of Africa, thinking it was meant to be the depiction of something. And as a child of the 1970s, I thought it was meant to be this:

Seriously, it's true.

...and if the intent behind this post pans out, you might never look at the globe in the same way again. And it works for the Peters version of the world as well.

If you think this post is asinine, you should be glad I didn't post about how I thought pansies the flowers and chimpanzees the primates were the same thing, which made me scared to get too close to flower beds. Mum, Dad, if you're reading this, it's true; at that tender age I was not aware of the concept of a homophone. Oh, the shame of it.

Does This Put Anyone Else In Mind Of Monty Python's Galaxy Song?

2009-12-29T08:39:00.001Z

"Makes you feel sort of insignificant, doesn't it?"

Anyway, nicely done stuff, I feel.

Writing For Film - A Good Practice Guide

2009-12-28T13:22:00.004Z

It came out a couple of months ago, but embarrassingly, I only thought to mention it when it arrived through my letterbox the other day...

The Writers' Guild of Great Britain has produced a good practice guide to writing film. It's aimed both at screenwriters and people who work with them, and contains information on practical stuff like contracts, all in one place. And whilst I'll openly admit I'm not currently in a position where anyone's asking me to sign contracts for my writing, I like to think it can't hurt to be informed on this sort of thing.

The guide was posted out to Guild members with the latest quarterly magazine, but it's free of charge as a PDF, which you can download here, whether or not you're a member.

Though I'd have to say that it's not as expensive as you might think to join the Writers' Guild (just over £8 per month for Candidate Members, which covers folks like me), so it's worth thinking about, wouldn't you say?

You Call It Light Content, I Call It Art... With Facile Captions (Day 2 of 2)

2009-12-27T12:25:00.000Z

Voice over loudhailer:
"I repeat, advanced swimmers only beyond the gorse bush, please. Advanced only."

Apologies to John Everett Millais. And, by association, to Bill Shaky.

You Call It Light Content, I Call It Art... With Facile Captions (Day 1 of 2)

2009-12-26T18:15:00.001Z

"Be honest, now. Does this hat make my bum look big?"

Apologies to Sally Dali. And Arabella Weir.

Topical And Obscure At The Same Time

2009-12-25T15:00:00.001Z

As I've mentioned a tiresome number of times, I'm a fan of TV show Twin Peaks.

And, what with it being Christmas Day and all, it seems the perfect chance to link to this...

The Twelve Days Of Christmas, as performed by the cast of Twin Peaks.

As HM Betty might say, a very Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.

Happy Holidays To You!

2009-12-25T11:55:00.001Z

From Mr Hankey, and everyone here at Soanes Towers, a very merry Yule / Christmas / Kwanzaa / Hannukah /Other Festival*.

Today, I hope you're with people you like, and who like you too.

*Please delete as applicable.

I Really Ought To Learn Not To Leave My Christmas Shopping Until The Last Minute

2009-12-24T18:31:00.002Z

It's not really my fault it happened; I needed to get someone a pressie by the time the shops closed, time and money alike were running out, and then I saw something which looks to be a combination of a respected name and zero expenditure.

There was only one left on the shelf in the department store, so I grabbed it.

For such a small woman, the undercover store detective was surprisingly fast and strong, I have to say. But I was coming quietly, there was no need for that second kick to the ...er, swimsuit area.

Deck The Halls, By All Means, But Let's Not Get Too Carried Away, Eh?

2009-12-23T17:55:00.008Z

I've written before about my fondness for Moleskine notebooks, and I still use them as my scribble-place of choice.

And I can understand why, as an item of good design and quality, they inspire a certain following and indeed adoration (after all, the list of sites in the right-hand column of this blog includes Moleskinerie).

But this is just going too far.

I mean, really.

Return Of The 'Jack

2009-12-22T13:49:00.002Z

A second series of BBC7 topical radio comedy Newsjack has been commissioned, and like the first series, they're looking for material from new writers - or old or increasingly-old writers; anyone, really. Which has to be a good thing.

Full details of the show and how you can go about sending them material are located here, and it's got to be worth a go, right?

I mean, you don't even have to pay for a stamp (if you're reading this, I'm going to assume you have internet access). Which is handy, as - let's face it - very few of us feel actively wealthy as January hoves into view.

And No, I Don't Think It's The Result Of A Marty McFly-Style Casting Change After They's Started The FX Work. I'm Just Being Stupid, As Usual.

2009-12-21T18:25:00.000Z

As you probably know, in the film Avatar, technology allows humans to put their consciousness into artificially-grown bodies (hence the title).

The idea is that the avatars look a bit like the human in question, but all through the film (yes, I've seen it: capsule review - very good, but too long), I kept thinking that the avatar of the character played by Sam Worthington, who looks thus:

... looked a lot more like Brendan Fraser.

Is there a medical term for the tendency to 'pattern recognise' and seek similarities where there may be none? If so, I have it. Or, at least, an analysis of my posts and thought patterns alike seems to suggest just such a pattern of behaviour.

(Sung) It's Cutting It A Bit Fine For Christmas...

2009-12-20T11:27:00.000Z

... but nonetheless, if you want to learn some crafty ways to save money on stuff from Amazon, why not have a look here?

The trick about creating your own links to find bargains strikes me as probably the craftiest bit - and it seems to be perfectly legal to do so, in case you're worried about such things.

Though looking at the site-trackback data for visitors to this site, I don't think that'd generally be much of a concern, you bunch of reprobates.