aymczard

Distractions

2006-10-26T13:16:19Z

Well, I should be practicing guitar as I only have a few hours before Tez and James come over and lesson is tomorrow, but in my infinite capacity to generate ceaseless amounts of bullshit, I'm posting here instead. Afterwards, I may cut my nails . . . you know how it goes.

Anyway, it's the 26th October today. NaNo starts a week yesterday. I now have an issue plan, detailing what's going to happen in each issue and what's going on each splash page. It generated a new character, Mr. St.Stephens. He needs a little work, I think. He's my side-line antagonist for Issue #4. I mean, he's a one-shot bad-guy that's more of a plot device than a person, and there's no shame in that. He's the one that introduces the whole idea of angels and higher things going on, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. But, all the same, I don't want him to be a cardboard cut out. I mean, for the people who don't read comics and can't get into that whole thing, I don't want to leave them feeling cheated. I mean, this is a book, and not a comic, after all. It needs to read like a novel and not a comic. I'm sure I can do it, just with the way I've set up issues and everything, I have to be careful. It's something I need to keep an eye on. I want this to be serious, you know, intellectual stuff. Not some sort of cheap fan boy thing. Anyone can do that. I'm not a huge comics person, after all. I just like that theatricality you get in Batman.

Anyway, I shall think some more on Mr. St.Stephens. Get an angle on him.

Planning out the issues has helped, I think. It's not so much detail that I'm just hoping from point to point when writing, but it's enough so that I know where I'm going, where I have to get to at any given time. With a bit of luck, it'll both keep me writing and keep me in check. About 18,000 words an issue gives me about 162,000 words at the end of the novel. Gives me some wiggle room in the dub and a finite target to get to. It also means that, to fit the 135,000 I have in mind for the final piece, I only have to lose around 3,000 from each issue - get them down to 15,000 a piece. As each one has it's own self-contained storyline, that shouldn't be too hard.

Mind you, it's easy for me to say all this now, of course . . .

Also, more good news: I've found Pandora. I wanted a play list that was in the same vein as Workingman's Blues and Nattie Moore from Modern Times, and found my own supplies of music sadly lacking. Pandora is an on-line radio station, and you type in the names of a few songs you like, and it goes through it's databanks and finds songs with similar characteristics. Could I wish for anything else? So, anyway, I'm listening to that and building up my station for November. It's good stuff, so far. The only problem I've found so far is that it randomly stops playing every so often, but if you skip to the next track, it plays again. I've only tried it once, but it worked that one time. The interface is smooth and easy to use, which is the nicest thing I can say about anything, really. It's easy and it works. What more can you want?

I think that's pretty much everything. Damnation. What's the next step on the Snowflake?
"Step 5) Take a day or two and write up a one-page description of each major character and a half-page description of the other important characters. These 'character synopses' should tell the story from the point of view of each character."
Have I done that already? Is that what my Step 2 was? What's Step 6?
"Now take a week and expand the one-page plot synopsis of the story to a four-page synopsis."
Well, my issue plan is four and a half pages. I guess that's the same thing. Isn't it . . . ?
Step 7?
"Take another week and expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as birth date, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character change by the end of the story?"
That could be important. Stuff on Jene's and Andrea's history, and physical appearances for everyone would probably help. Ages, too. I could slip that into my profiles for Step 2. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just do physical descriptions. I know the salient points of people's histories, and I can warp the rest around the story. Maybe I'll do that. But I think physical descriptions would be helpful. That shouldn't take long. An hour? Tops? Probably.
Do I need to do anything after that?
"Step 8) You may or may not take a hiatus here, waiting for the book to sell." ???
Aware though I am of the realities of selling novels, something inside me rebels at the thought of selling a novel before it's written. If you have enough to sell it, where's the fun in writing it? Where's the spontaneity and energy you can only get from fighting with yourself and caffeine? Maybe I do still have some artist principles left. That's a bit of a surprise. There's still a tiny slither of the 16 year-old purest left. Wow. Who'd have thought it? Good thing or bad thing? I guess we'll see. Anyways, step 8 . . . "Make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes that emerge from your four-page plot outline. Make just one line for each scene. In one column, list the POV character. In another (wide) column, tell what happens. If you want to get fancy, add more columns that tell you how many pages you expect to write for the scene. A spreadsheet is ideal, because you can see the whole storyline at a glance, and it's easy to move scenes around to reorder things. "
Maybe I'll do that. I don't know. This guy's written many a book, so I should listen to him. But then, as artists, we're going to go our separate ways at some point. I was quite happy with my issue plan until I read about this. Truth be told . . . It's Thursday today. Parents are arriving tomorrow, and staying the weekend . . . can I do this over the Monday and Tuesday? Chances are against it. It's a big project. Detailing each scene . . . ? Food for thought . . .
Anything else I should be thinking about?
"Step 9) (Optional. I don't do this step anymore.) Switch back to your word processor and begin writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a multi-paragraph description of the scene."
Leaves me with a 50 page synopsis. No chance. Not in a few days.
"Step 10) At this point, just sit down and start pounding out the real first draft of the story."
That sounds an important step. I'll make sure to do that one :)
"You might think that all the creativity is chewed out of the story by this time. Well, no. This is the fun part, because there are many small-scale logic problems to work out here. How does Hero get out of that tree surrounded by alligators and rescue Heroine who's in the burning rowboat? This is the time to figure it out! But it's fun because you already know that the large-scale structure of the story works. So you only have to solve a limited set of problems, and you can write relatively fast."
It must be because I'm English. What was it Scott said? Nothing can be considered an achievement unless it's suffered for . . . something like that, anyhoo. That old English attitude seems stuck in me. 'They cheated by being better equipped, better trained and better organised than us'. There we go, one of mine that sums up the English attitude. 'The worth of an achievement can be measured by the pain endured to reach it.' Another one of mine, I think. The idea of planning Butterflies to the point where it's easy to write sticks in my craw for some reason. It's cheating. You know? I mean, there's got to be a measure of pain to every great achievement, right? That's what gives it that coppery tension that bites at the back of the throat. You can't just, you know, synthesis that. I mean, NASA planned and planned and planned, but there was still a chance that Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins weren't going to come back. Hillery trained and trained, but you'd still make a lot of money betting on him against the mountain. I'm not saying Butterflies has to be one of the peaks of human civilisation, just that it kind of defeats the purpose of doing it if I know everything perfectly. Why climb Everest for real when you can do it on the holodeck without fear of dying? Because it's there.

Anyway, I need the loo now.

New Beginnings

2006-10-24T21:54:44Z

I know it's been a while, but you know what I'm like.

I'll start of with the reason I've decided to post here again: I'm sitting down at the computer in a sleeping bag, avoiding doing work for NaNo. It feels like NaNo is starting already, like a new chapter is opening in my life. Not an amazing chapter, not some kind of seminal, life-altering thing, but more of a well-worn chapter that feels snug and comfortable, like a favourite T-shirt. It's the kind of chapter I like to live through. It's like Episode III: we all know Anakin is going to go evil, but it's still exciting to see it and find out how it actually happens. I mean, if this year's NaNo turns out like Revenge of the Sith, I might as well just give up and go for a promotion at work. Anyone can turn out a mediocre piece of time-filler, if they make themselves sit down and watch it. No, it's got to be more like . . . like Dead Man's Chest. Yeah, that's it.

Ahhhh . . . NaNo. I can feel it in the air. It's just around the corner. I'm looking forwards to it more than I'd have given myself credit for. It's the sleeping bag that's done it. I've done preparation for it this year. I've done research. Me! Research! I've been checking out graphic novels and comic collections from the library like they're becoming illegal. I've wandered around Bangor taking photographs, for goodness' sake! I know I know . . . hardly very Foxie, is it? I've got pages and pages of notes in Word, details and more details about characters and who they are and what they're doing there. Everyone so far has a reason to be there, and wants a different ending. I mean, I know how it's going to end, but not what the last scene is going to be. In retrospect, I enjoyed that about Ghosts. I enjoyed not knowing what was going to be said and who was going to do what until the words were staring me in the face. That's going to be one of the things I'm looking forwards to. Wander and Pace are going to be there, and I'm not sure who else will be, and I'm not sure what they're going to say or do before they leave. Yes, it's going to be good.

I've finished Ghosts, by the way. MS Word tells me it was around the 26th September. That sound right? Probably, yeah. That's about right. Talking about the ending, I've got to share this with you, because it's one of my favourite lines in the whole book. Martin and Sion and Carrie and Red are all sitting around the table, and Martin is making his speech, having his moment, and he's talking about everyone that's left and how they're the only family he has left, and he comes out with: (gees . . . I've just read the last couple of pages over again, and already my eyes are wet . . . anyway): 'Red, Julia . . . whatever your name is, you’re . . . some cousin, I don’t see very much." He shrugged apologetically, looking at her for some sort of bridge or acceptance of something unspoken.'
I mean, fantastic. I couldn't have written it better myself.
The at the final stop, the count was a stonking 256,859. That leaves at least 100,000 words to slice out. After Butterflies, I'm going to need to re-read it and decide what sort of story I actually want from it. I mean, with that kind of wastage, you've got more of a blank canvass with a few sketched lines on it than a finished picture. Kind of intimidating, I suppose. Still, like I always say, you've got to push yourself. No point in spinning your wheels. I'm looking forwards to it, I suppose. Not in a masochistic kind of way. I like reading through my own work when it's good. It's the only validation I get. It's good for my confidence to read through something and be proud of having written it. I don't suppose that makes me especially unique.

I'm hoping Butterflies will have a bit more humour than Ghosts did. Maybe I'll have to lighten Ghosts a little. Not in a 'bit with a dog' kind of way, just so there's some relief and engagement in there. I wouldn't want to read a 300 page suicide note, so I don't suppose anyone else would. Or, at least, no one I'd like to talk to. You've got to have some knowing smiles in there. I think you do, anyway. Gemma'd probably disagree with me, but we're different people. Nothing wrong in that.

Butterflies has it's own playlist now, and everything. It's mainly Dylan. Graceland is in there, as well as Nerina Pallot and - of all things - The Cure. I wanted a playlist with the same feel as Workin' Man's Blues and Nattie Moore from 'Modern Times', but I'm failing in that. I'll just go with what I've got and see what I end up with.

One last thing before I brew some more coffee and get down to some work: I've forgotten what I was going to say. Bugger. It must have been important, given what I've said about it.

Ermmmm . . . . . . .

Nope, it's gone. Ho-hum. It may come back.

Ah, yes! That was it!

Three wishes. What I'd wish for if I had three wishes. I was thinking about this, and I finally made my mind up. I'd wish to know the time, date and circumstances of my own death. I think I'd be able to relax a lot more if I knew that. I mean, I always prefer driving when I know where I'm going and I know the road in front of me, and I always prefer working when I know when I'm going home and when I'm getting my lunch, and I always prefer my days off when I know what I'm doing (not in a 'you must do this', kind of a way, but in a 'this is my day off and I want to do this' kind of way), so it makes sense that I'd prefer my life if I knew when I was going to go home, so to speak. The thing I tend to enjoy most about days out is knowing that I can come home to my own bed, so it makes sense.

Anyways, more coffee, more moidering by Freak Show, and some work. Maybe :)

Stuff

2006-09-15T23:38:03Z

Well, I guess it’s time for an update. A few important things have happened.

First – and most importantly – I’ve just finished writing the scene between Silver and Carrie. It’s either gone really well or really not. You see, it’s not very long and it’s kind of the fulcrum the story balances on. Now, I remember my Joyce and know full well that less can be more, but it can also be less. In fact, most of the time less is, in fact, less. (Which reminds me: I still need to write my review of ‘9Tail Fox’. But later . . .) The other thing that’s worrying me is that most of the scenes I’ve been writing recently are very short. I’m worried it’s becoming kind of staccato. That would suck. I guess I’ll have to wait for the dub. Most important thing right now is to keep the momentum going and keep rolling forwards, and worry about the direction later. It does mean, though, that I now just have to have Carrie wake up, drag Red down the hospital, do the upside-down thinking scene, do her ritual, and find a way to finish it all. Maybe by this time next week . . .

Secondly, I had my first guitar lesson today. I paid £16 for it, and I talked a lot (as is my want), and Chris Hull (my teacher) sent me away to practice my rhythm. The cool thing is I mentioned Dylan and he got me to practice ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’. Death is so stoked. She’s been hanging around for days waiting for the lesson, and I think that was the icing on the cake. It’s a real help, you know. The lesson. Given me some focus and direction. I feel better already.

In other news, work sucks. There’s no where I can relax, because we have no staff room and no room in the kitchen/stock room. There’s nowhere private for the staff. I’m sure that violates some laws. I’m going to bring my guitar in to practice. Marie’ll have kittens if I start in the restaurant. I’ll probably do it anyway, though. I don’t see why I shouldn’t. Still it’s better than going back next door. JP’s leaving. Lyndsey’s leaving. Danny’s leaving. Looks like ‘Butterflies’ is going to be set summer 2006, a time and atmosphere now lost. Destroyed, rather.

I think that’s all for now. I’m going to bed. Looking forwards to the weekend: I have both days off. After working solidly for the past two weeks, I need the rest. I mean, I had Wednesday off, but we had Tez and Anna ‘round Tuesday night so that wasn’t exactly relaxing. Fun and relaxing for me are two very different things. I need these two days, the way I need my coffee . . .

More on Ghosts

2006-09-03T20:02:02Z

Well, it's all over and Carrie is back in bed, feeling good about herself and what she's done. The observant among you may note, however, that there are still a few lose ends that need to be tied up. Yep, I'm not quite done with her just yet. I'm not one of these 'nice' story tellers, you must remember. Since when did I believe in the dramatic ending, with the fireworks and the explosions and the mists clearing to reveal closure? My life has never worked like that, so I fail to see why anyone else's would. Carrie still has one or two questions she needs to answer, and I'm sure the reader will want something a little more substantial than a few fireworks. I hope they will. If they don't then I've done something a little wrong. Whatever it is, we can fix it in the dub. Just a few more scenes to go. I can feel it. I can feel it.

Ghosts

2006-09-03T01:03:47Z

OOooo OOOOO oooOOOO OOO oooOOOooOOoOo oOOOO Ooo!!!!!

I'm so excited I'm still twitching!

I've never been this excited by writing before. It's fantastic!! Dear god, it's all worth it. All the crap I put myself through, it's all been worth it right now. It's like . . . like . . . like I don't know what. I mean, it's like putting the final brush stroke onto a canvass and standing back to realise it's a breath-taking as you hoped it would be.

I mean, I know that this isn't the last brush-stroke. I know that I've got an awful lot of work still to do.

It's just the scene down the school. All done and waiting for closure. I haven't re-read it, but it feels exactly like it did in my head. What more can you ask for than that?

I haven't felt this light and alive in years. I feel like a lightbulb. It's fantastic!

(ZZ Top's 'Bad to the Bone' is fantastic. It's just come on. Dirty and heavy and great.)

Ghosts

2006-08-25T00:59:50Z

Right, that's that done. Can get started on the big off now. Thank fuck for that.

Ghosts

2006-08-24T23:57:49Z

Jesus, do you ever get days when things just don't happen and the stuff you should be enjoying is like eating coal dust? I mean, it's not like I'm ever going to have any crisis in my life in the next few months about whether I'm a 'writer' or not. I'm probably not even going to have any angst over whether I'm good or not. I think I've reached a point where that doesn't matter any more.

I'm just . . . fucked off right now. I'm sure other people in the world get this feeling a lot. It's like I'm staring at a half-finished picture, and knowing it's going to be amazing when it is finished, but also knowing that I've got a lot of trudging down a long, dusty, empty road before I get there. Or like driving home to see your parents. I mean, you're on the M6, sipping your coffee, and you know you're going to have a great time when you get there. But you also know that there's another 150 miles to go, and at least forty of them are on the M25, and you're sick of all the music you brought with you and even the frothy cappachino you've treated yourself to isn't doing anything to perk up you're spirits. You're just stuck in some motorway no-man's-land, staring at all that tarmac, watching as it fills your future to the point where nothing exists beyound it.

And what happens if I finish it, and it's shit? Just an inordinatly long, rambling, self-indulgent piece of angsty tripe? It's entirely possible.

It's just not much fun having to haul yourself so far for so long. Every time you fall down, you can't wait for someone to help you to your feet again, so you just have to pick yourself up and get on with it. I've run out of spices to put into the pot, so now all I have is plain bread and that's only interesting for a very, very short period of time. I'm tired and feel like I deserve a rest, but I can't just rest and relax at the service station. It's a place designed for going to the loo and getting something hot to eat, not somewhere you can renew yourself.

I know that there's no one actually reading this, but I'm going to imagine that there's someone out there reading this who isn't a writer. They're probably in their early twenties and have a job and think they know everything because they've finally moved out from their parent's home. Anyway, to them I want to say: whatever you're thinking, fuck you. Just fuck you. You haven't got a fucking clue what it's like, so just fuck you. I'm an addict and there's a point where you stop getting high and start needing to do it. Maybe I'll fall in love with my muse again, but right now I'm eating ash.

Of course I will. I guess other people may experience this as writer's block. I don't get that, of course, because I'm far too bloody-minded. I'm making product, not Art. That's what this whole exercise is about, after all. But you just stare at a blank screen, reach inside yourself to try and fill it, and realise that there's nothing left inside you and no way to make it be there. All you've got is just a whole bunch of nothing and you just want to go away and cry. I'd much rather be playing computer games, or even reading 9Tail. But no, I'm at my desk, trying to write.

Even this rant hasn't made me feel fresh. Not even a little bit. I was hoping it would. The chance to just cut lose and write whatever came into my head might put some flavour back into the chewing gum, but no joy. Ho, hum. I'll just keep listening to Penny: 'Do you want to be a writer, or do you want to watch television? Is this show more important to you than becoming a writer? So why are you watching it instead of writing?' Way harsh when you already have a significently battered brain, but all the more damaging because it's true. Everyone has off days but has to work anyway, no matter who you are or what you're doing. It'll be better when I can play an instrument, because I'll be able to get hit that and get some instant satisfaction, like having a wank. There are times when I need that, but don't have the skill.

Anyway, I'd better get back. I need to finish this fucking thing. I'm going to hold a fucking party when I do. It's going to be great. Fucking party. Yeah. Fuck you. Fuck.

Baby boomers and stuff

2006-08-23T09:42:56Z

I was just in Londis, queuing up to buy my sugar, and the guy in front of me was chatting to the girl behind the checkout as she was scanning his shopping. I found myself angry, snapping inside my head that we didn't all have all day to stand around and chat so shut up and get a move on. I then realised what an horrendous thing that was to think. I mean, here were two people, chatting, interacting as human beings, and I was getting angry at them for doing that? That’s absolutely horrible. Something else about myself that I’ve got to change.

Anyway, baby boomers have been in the news again recently, as Mister Clinton turns sixty. And, we are, of course, getting the usual tired old crap trotted out by those proud to be part of the post-war generation: we broke down barriers; we invented feminism; we liberated the gays and the blacks; we invented pop music; we invented television as entertainment and a view on to the world; blah blah blah blah. All true, of course, but only from a certain point of view.

You see, I feel that it’s not unfair to judge a generation by the society and by the generation they leave behind. The legacy of the baby boomers? Reality T.V., the war on terror (I’m not going to give it the decency of capital letters), consumer-centric culture, call centres, benefit culture, unparalleled amounts of consumer debt . . . I mean, this is the generation that demanded everything right here and right now, and now leaves their parents slowly dying in nursing homes because they can’t be bothered to look after them. The live out in comfortable suburbs and drive to work in their executive cars while chowing down on factory farm meat laced with preservatives because they want the food they want when they want as cheap as possible because they deserve it, so screw everyone else and give me a cheap sandwich I can leave in my glove-box for two days before I eat it. They’re so proud their children had the chance to go to university but have ensured the only thing that university education will get their children is tens of thousands of pounds of debt. And their children end up just being faceless peons in faceless companies who don’t do anything and don’t mean anything, easily replaced cogs in a machine that turns for the sake of turning, so they have to go out every night and get pissed to escape their lives for a few brief hours. And then they have children of their own, and the selfishness and ignorance is magnified with each generation. And we end up with Scallies, and people who storm around shops demanding everything and demanding it now, demanding the whole world revolves around them and getting pissed of when it doesn’t. People who treat those in the service industry like their personal slaves, faceless and thoughtless avatars of a company which exists purely for their own benefit. We get people who are incapable of any empathy with another member of the human race, who don’t understand what it means when someone else cries and who don’t want to be bothered with anything which may tie up their time for five minutes and doesn’t give them any immediate benefit. We get generations who don’t understand art and music and are only happy when someone is feeding them cotton wool and minipop. Anything else scares them and they burn it.

I mean, the baby boomers did break down a lot of barriers. They just then realised they needed real jobs, and started selling everything to every one. Their ideal of freedom turned into selfishness, this idea that whoever I am, and where ever I am, I want what I want and I want it now. And if I don’t get it, I’ve got the right to lose my temper and feel aggrieved, because you owe it to me.

The environment is in a death spiral because it’s better for business if we all keep using fossil fuels and so no one is giving us an alternative, and the baby boomer’s children are up in arms because wind farms spoil their view. ?!?!?!?! I’m sorry? How can you make people like that realise that, without the wind farms, YOU WON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING VIEW, BECAUSE WE’LL ALL BE DEAD! No oil means no power and no industry and no electricity, and if you had to go out and find your own food and make your own heat and light, tell me, just how fucking long do you think you’re going to last? And our roads are choking with cars because people don’t want to live in the dirty city centres, they want to live in the nice suburbs. But still work at HSBC and shop at Tesco. And that means that all the big shops have moved out of town and so we all need to have cars, because pubic transport is shit. I’d love to use it, but when I can get to Bangor in fifteen minutes in my car and it takes over an hour on the bus and costs £1.50 each way, how can I? And I love trains. Trains are great. I love riding on trains, so long as they’re not too busy. I’d take a train over any other form of transport any day. But they’re dirty and unreliable. Any luggage I bring with me in a hindrance and other passengers hate me for it. And if someone else is coming with me, the price instantly doubles. I mean, no, it’s not really that much more expensive for me to go back to Kirkstone one the train, but if Gemma comes too, then it becomes over twice the price. And I’m at the mercy of the trains. I get left on cold, wind-swept platforms for half an hour, an hour, waiting for my connection, too scared to wait anywhere else in case I miss it.

The baby boomers ultimate legacy is people like me: people twisted with modern guilt but without the power to do anything about it; people scraping a living, suffocating under an impossibly high mountain of debt with anything above an hundred pounds or so out our reach and any form of credit unthinkable; a history of depression and self-abuse, because that’s the only way we know to deal with things; people married to their car, despite their income and real need for it . . . People, in short, who’ve been given the opportunity to be shat on by any one, of any sex, colour, orientation or religion, and who spend their lives at the bottom of increasingly vast barrels of shit. We have no power in our lives and instead are intravenously fed the false power that adverts spew at us, the power to, ‘have it our way’ at anyone else’s expense, and as we become more and more powerless, the tighter and tighter we cling onto this false power and the more and more we abuse the fellow human beings around us.

I am a long, long way from perfect. It’s my life, it’s my choice, and at the end of the day, I’m the one responsible for my actions. But I’m fighting against what society is trying to make me and has been trying to force me to be all my life. And it’s hard, and no one ever says, ‘well done’, or, ‘you’re doing the right thing’. People just sneer at me and mutter to their friends about me, and hurl abuse at me, and tell me to stop being so stupid.

Anyway. That was my rant.

Ghosts

2006-08-22T22:42:02Z

I've done about 3,000 words today. It's not great, but it was the end of the last scene between Carrie and Red before the big all off. Now that's put to bed, I just need to fill a scene with Carrie unable to sleep properly and then we can get down the school. With a bit of luck, the school scene will be done by the end of the week. Then, that just leaves Silver's scene, the cantrap scene, Red's scene down the hospital, Paige and Carrie's scene, and the resolution scene. What do we reckon? 10k for that lot, another 5 for the school?

I'm still not really sure how it's going to end, you know. I'm hoping my characters will work it out for themselves. By that time, they should know what they're doing and everything should slot nicely into place. The ending needs to, you know, end this story without making everything blatent or tieing up all the lose ends. After all, it's never 'over' until you're dead, and not even then in Ghosts. Their lives keep going, we just stop watching them. I can't just put them in a box and stuff them on the shelf when I stop writing. That's far, far too unnatural.

What's the total word count now?
207,987.
Wow, that's a lot.

Let's call it 210k, and assume my estimates are right. That gives us . . . 225k. Hmmm. And that means I'm going to need to lose around 90k to get it down to 135k, which is where I want it. Jees. That's 40% of my novel that needs to go. That's a lot. That's more than most people will write in their life times. That's a whole novel, right there. I suppose it means I can be as brutal as I need to be, though. There's a certain freedom there.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

More list

2006-08-22T12:23:32Z

I've thought of an amendment, and an addition that needs to me make.

When I'm at the North Pole, I want to see the aurora borealis. I want to lie on my back at the North Pole, and stare up at the Northen Lights. Seriously, check this shit out. The greatest light show on Earth.

And,
6) I want to set up my own school. I mean, I suppose that's the dream of everyone with a social and/or political agenda, but that doesn't make it a bad one. It's going to be an entire intergrated education system, from when children are 2 or 3 right up until 17 or 18. It's going to have it's own farm that the pupils will work and care for and look after. They're going to have to look after the animals, mucking them out and feeding them and milking them, and then they're going to eat them. It's going to teach children about food and where it comes from, breaking down the barriers that modern society is erecting. I mean, how many people can seriously connect a hamburger or a sausage with a cow or a pig? How many people can even connect a potato with something growing in the ground? It's all just abstract stuff we pick up at the supermarket. And then people freek out when they find out that a pig is going to be killed to make a sausage. And it's also going to teach them about life and death. It's going to teach them that it's the quality of life that's important, rather than fighting to stretch it out as long and thin as possible. It's pointless to try and engage is some prolonged battle with death, because you're going to lose it. Children need to be taught that. They need to be taught that death is something natural and good and not something to be feared. But by the same token, it will teach them an empathy with other living creatures, human and non-human. It will teach them that pain is a bad thing and we should do everything we can to strive to avoid suffering. It will teach them to help other people in pain, and not be scared of them.
It's going to teach them a lot of other things that children aren't being taught these days. It's going to teach them the importance of language and communication. People are manipulated and misled every single day and they don't have the tools to recognise that. I mean, how many people can tell you if a news report is biased? How many people can look at an advert, and not just get swamped in the cotton wool of the packaging, but see through all that to the actual message behind the advert? Not nearly enough. And films, how many people can see films as a series of strung together cliche? When 'Sin City' and '8 Mile' came out, everyone hailed them as masterpieces of high art. Film at it's best. It's not. They might be good, nice and polished, but they're not high art. They just have a few snappy visuals and a story that can hold water. It's a bit clever. Not hugely clever.
And muisc. Music is so much unoriginal, uninspired, recycled crap these days. The same words over the same few notes and progresions, or the same pre-programmed beats. Children need to be given the tools to disect the art around them and understand it, because art is how humanity expresses it's emotions.
Comparative religion. All faiths are equal but hold different beliefs, none right, none wrong. Teach them to understand and analyise the structure behind people's faiths.
Of course, I'm not going to ditch the study of language and science and maths. They are all vital to an understanding of the world we live in, vital tools in anyone's ability to think for themselves. But pupils are going to be engaged and interacting. It's not going to be some authoritive teacher standing at the front of the class and preaching. Classrooms are going to be noisy, with people talking and exchanging ideas and finding things out for themselves.
It's a nice dream, isn't it? Rather hippy-esque and, I suspect, totally unrealistic. Of course, no one can tell me that with certainity until I've tried it.

A few things

2006-08-22T00:03:24Z

Now, I'll be the first to admit that, before sitting down to write this, I've had a few joints. Enough to give me giggles. However, for the following piece of news, I think that a positive bonus.

I've had a fantasic idea for the film, 'Tez and I'. See, when I get asked to make a screenplay of my life (the way I inevitably will be) I will create 'Tez and I', a drug-fueled rampage across the North Wales coast in the attempt to create, 'perfect art' and insist it's a genuine representation of my life. The film will end, as, having discovered the perfect art, we erect a giant phallas on the end of Llandudno pier. It's going to be super-pimp.

Anyway, that wasn't what I came here to say. It was worth saying, but not why I started typing.

No, what I was going to say was this:

Life. I mean, we're built in with a certain way of seeing things. Us at the centre of this universe that at some point over which we have no control it all gets destoryed. And everything is over. So people ignore it, and then run around and panic. And they look for ways to make it okay.

But I've started looking at it a different way. It's a finite amount of time we've been alloted here, and it had a start and it has an end. I mean, it's like going to Chessington for a day. You get out the car, and you know that at the end of the day you're going to get into it. And that's fine, because that's the way things work, so you go around the park, enjoying yourself and not letting the thought of the day ending spoil it. I'm not talking about a significent day, just, you know, a normal day out. You look at life like that, and the whole picture makes a lot more sense. You've got from open to close to enjoy your day out. At some point, you've got to go home again. When you accept life as something finite rather than as this infinite expanse that's going to be crawly destroyed, then things become a lot easier.

Considering that, look at it like a meeting: you wouldn't arrange a meeting with all the department heads, all pile into the room and spend the next four hours agonising about what the meeting was about with intermitant periods of depression when you think about the unmoving knowledge that the meeting will, at some point, end. That'd be daft. You'd get everyone together, have an agenda, and work through the points. You'd know that the meeting was going to end so there's this pressure to get through all the vital stuff, but it wouldn't be this crushing weight which actually made doing anything on the agenda impossible. It would be a spur.

Now, I have my agenda of stuff I need to do. That's not what my list here is about. It's more like being in Chessington, and making a list of rides you wanted to go on before leaving. I mean, this world is a pretty amazing place. There is no alien world ever created by any human mind which rivals the complexity, changability, and varity of the Earth. I mean, from mountains to underwater trenches to deserts to everything else, there's just so much . . . wonder out there to be enjoyed. So much glamour, pouring out the Earth like great columns to some point beyound the stars and they're just there, sitting there, free and wanting to be drunk. So, this is kind of a wish list. An unrealistic wish list. My current plan is to turn my adventure into a television programme, and have some rich producer pay me for it. Anyways . . .

1) I want to go to those valleys you see in New Zealand, the ones which are thousands of miles deep, with the water falling down the sides and those so-green plants, and people sky jumping off the sides.
2) I want to go to both poles. Before they melt. I mean the top and bottom of the world, a landscape and environment so totally alien from the rest of the world, how can you not?
3) Everest. Top of the world. Has to be done.
4) The Equator. I'm not sure where yet. But it's a big line around the Earth, the only place where water goes straight down the plug hole, not spirally either way. It's another of those places where the Earth defines itself, just like the poles and Everest.
5) Space. I know it's not technically on Earth, but seriously. How can every single individual not have the burning desire to go into space? It's the only place in the universe which isn't Earth. You can go to as many wonders on Earth, but you're still always going to be on Earth. Space is . . . the only place which isn't Earth. Everywhere else is. How can people not want to go and travel that far away from home, from the place they've been locked in their whole lives?

Anyway, that's it for now. I may add to it later.

Costa

2006-08-21T00:18:19Z

I got the job! My god, I was relieved. I am so, so glad to be getting out of KFC. So glad I can't put it into words. I've just got a long, drawn out two weeks notice to work through. It's looming like death. Like the last ten metres of a marathon. I can't wait to start at Costa. A whole new start, in a new place with new product and mostly new people (Lexi has a job there, and Gemma has an interview tomorrow, which I really, really hope gets her a job). I can breathe in different air.

Also, Gemma's decided to start going vegetarian so I'm doing it to. I didn't have any chicken at work today, and it felt kind of good. Felt like I was doing something right. Anyway, I guess we'll see just how long my paper-thin resolve lasts. A couple of days? Will I have chicken tomorrow? Maybe not. I just feel as if I've reached total KFC saturation point. I stare at the stuff in the display cabinate, and it's a struggle to make myself eat it. Why do I? Because it's free food, and I've been hungry enough to never turn away free food. Even so, though, I really, really can't face the thought of eating it nowdays and the only way I do is thinking about something else.

I hope I get to watch some Diagnosis Murder tomorrow. I like that show. One of the few highlights a day can offer me.

Butterflies and Ghosts

2006-08-21T00:08:03Z

Ghosts, my epic novel atempt, is slowly progressing. Carrie and Red have one last scene together before I can break the storm that's been gathering the whole novel. Another couple of days writting, and I think I'll be there. I have to confess that I'm looking forward to the day it's finished and I can start Pounding it. That point where I have all the clay I need, and I can start moulding it. I'm getting a twitchy editing hand. Still, see it through the blood and teeth, and the long journey gets you more gems than the short one. Currently, it's around 205 thousand words. It's an awful lot, especially when you consider that I'm aiming for the final piece to be around 135k.

In other news, I've been thinking about Pace and Wander's first outing. As you can see, it finally has a name - Butterflies - and I've been working Jean, understanding him, getting into his head and trying to get some idea of a voice for him. I'm hoping a lot of it will come with the writing, the way it's done with Carrie and Ghosts, but I only have the start and no where to go after that. I shouldn't worry too much because I know it'll come and I know I'll force it if doesn't, so I guess we'll see. Also, I've finally found out what animal Wander is. I've been trying to find it for so long and thinking about it so hard, and I knew it was a small animal commanplace in Britan, but I thought it was something avian. The only thing which fitted was Wren, which was okay with me because it ticked all the interlect boxes. Then last night I had a dream with him and Pace in, and he was a rat. I have no idea why and it contrasts sharply with his character, but it just sits so right in a way that none of the others have, so go figure. Guess you've just got to go with what people are telling you, sometimes.

I've just written some stuff in Ghosts which I think is going to be a definite keeper. Carrie's sitting on the sofa in the calm before the storm, her mind drifting and she starts thinking about Dannie and how his poetry was fixated on this idea of people being trapped or things trapping people or not being able to breathe, and she figures that it was Dannie's way of trying to understand the Dark he was constantly fighting. To quote, if I may, "Maybe he wanted to look at it, study it, understand it, and the only way he could do that was to attempt to personify it. He needed to draw diagrams and the came out as poems." So yeah, that was a highlight. I really like that bit. Just hits a nail right on the head for me, emotionally and within the plot.

Lets hope I can get this thing finished soon. It's crying out to be beautiful. I just have to finish getting all the material in place.

More on Googlewhacks

2006-08-15T14:46:09Z

Another one . . .

'Splatter' and the clinical name for someone who's afraid of dogs. That word (the one that isn't 'splatter' isn't underlined in Google's dictionary, but it is a word).

Points here: http://bookworms.org/aws.cgi/mode_dvd/search_Scott%20Davidson/

Googlewhack

2006-08-15T11:33:35Z

I finally found one!

I mean, I obviously can't tell you what it is, because then it won't be one any more. But it links to a PDF file on this page here: http://ehq.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/36/1/7.pdf
and it's a fear of Spanish people, and a list of things in a particular order in the past tense. It's a valid page with contact details, but there are two sponsored links. Do they count? I think they do.

Bugger.

Stuff

2006-08-15T10:53:03Z

I hate that subject thing. It's like the mood thing. It's just a tag and I don't know what it's going to be until I've finished.

Anyway, I went of Chester for a work trial at Costa Coffee yesterday. An hour there, an hour back, half an hour driving around the damned town trying to get in and get out, about forty minutes work . . . and I have to wait until Thursday to find out if I've got the job. Apparently, the managers are 'in meetings' until then, which sounds like crap to me. Huge piles of it. And I've agreed to work Ken's shift on Thursday so he can go to an interview at Blockbuster, so I'm starting work at 11 a.m. and finishing around 12 a.m. I'm going to have to call her before I go to work.

God, damnit, I want this job. I really, really want it. KFC is getting worse and worse and worse and I really enjoyed my work trial. Well, for work, at any rate. But I didn't ask any questions, and I had some to ask, but driving around the town centre made me forget them. You have no idea how much I hate driving around town centres. I mean, it's bad enough when you know where you're going, but when you don't, it's about a billion times worse. Anyway, I want the job.

The trouble is, I don't like investing much emotion in situations where I have no control over the outcome. I mean, football is good because, at the end of the day, I'm not risking anything. We lose, well, no big. My life goes on. But with things which do affect my life, I've learnt to anticipate the worst because it usually happens. And that way, I'm not crushed when it does.

Recently, I've been thinking that maybe this is a bad thing. Maybe this is a cause of a lot of the troubles in my life. But then I remember how frikkin hard it is to pick myself up again, to make myself get up and get on with things when I just want to crawl into a small, tight little cupboard and sit in the dark. I hate it. That's how I'm going to feel if I let myself go and really, really want this job but don't get it. I don't want to have to deal with that.

Anyway, I want that job. I guess I'll have to wait.

In other news, I've been looking for Googlewhacks. I'm yet to find one. I'm not very good with word games like these. It was that Dave Gorman show that started me. It's like an itch on your leg, and you can't stop until you've scratched it. All in the name of avoiding my novel. Much like Mister Gorman. Gods, I want it to be published. And then I can start writing Butterflies, and then my police guy can get in touch and I can do that one, and with that money I can go to the Shetlands for six months - maybe a year - and write my Victorian one . . . It's like trying to wait until Christmas when you're eight years old. Between that and Costa it's a wonder my brain hasn't split in two. So much yearning, so much desire . . . Anyway, I keep finding word lists on-line when looking for my Googlewhacks. That sort of thing kind of spoils it, really. I mean, why is it that whenever someone creates a new game that everyone really likes, other people have to go out of their way to spoil it for everyone else?

Anyway, I've avoided stuff for too long, and Gemma's just got out the bath, so I'm going to sign out.

KFC Bangor (Gwynedd, North Wales), and how Gastronomy Foods made it all go so wrong

2006-08-13T12:26:06Z

Let me tell you a little story. It’s a story of how a company turned the best job I ever had into the worst in less than six months. A story of how fast food turned an arrogant young man into an humble old one, and then into a cynical and jaded one. It’s the story of how Gastronomy Foods is quickly running the KFC in Bangor, Gwynedd into the ground by destroying the staff who work for them. I mean, when the main aim of staff is to prevent people coming into the restaurant, then eventually the customers are going to start noticing. It’s the story of how I’m struggling to maintain my humanity in the face of impossible odds.

And, it all starts over a year ago . . .

Last April, I got myself a new job at KFC in our local town, Bangor in Gwynedd (formally, of course, Kentucky Fried Chicken, a marketing decision which has caused the general public an awful lot of confusion – the number of people wandering in and asking for cheeseburgers, Happy Meals and fish burgers depresses the mind). Now, I’m an intelligent man with a lot of certificates to prove it, and the idea of someone with my towering intellect working in a fast food establishment rubbed the fur of my soul the wrong way. Still, bills needed to get paid and I needed a job. The prospect of lowering myself to this level was still, in my eyes, less degrading that admitting defeat and going back to England where the idea of spitting on someone because of their nationality is something of a taboo.

So, I started my work. Minimum wage, of course. I cooked chicken, served people who couldn’t even pronounce the word ‘colonel’ and yet still treated me like scum, and scrapped the crap out of fryers. I came home covered in flour, smelling like crap and caked in sweat. Some days I wouldn’t get home until three or even half three in the morning. And, after a month or so, a funny thing happened.

I realised one day that – against all the odds and every idea of what is good and pure and right in the world – that I loved my job.

I mean, it goes without saying that the work was shit and the customers were shit, but I realised that these things weren’t important. The people I was working with were great and that management were great. They were, you know, part of the team. Part of the pack. Part of the posse. Just one more of the guys. No one wanted to be there and so everyone there just wanted to have a bearable time, and because of that the atmosphere was very relaxed and accommodating. People could swap shifts around as and when they needed to, you could arrange to have certain times or days off with the manager, and most importantly, no one hassled you. So long as the customers got served, so long as the chicken got cooked, no one really minded what else happened. And surely that’s the way it should be. The customer gets the product they want and go away with no complaints, the staff know their jobs and what they’re doing and so they’re left to get on with it. It may not be the most monetarily efficient system in the world, but there’s a lot to be said for a management style which has staff in a minimum wage job putting in extra hours for no pay, the way I used to. Or even staff caring about the company. I used to. I wanted a career there. My future was going to be fried chicken. It was a weird thing, but I’d finally found my niche.

And then, of course, something happened. Our branch of KFC is a franchise, and the franchise was sold by the then owners, Direct TT Supplies, to a new company – Gastronomy Foods.

Okay, well, don’t fuss me none, I thought. Change of name on my payslips, no hassle. I hardly even blinked.

Oh, dear. How young and foolish I was.

Remember that image of me working in the kitchens with fried chicken and happily envisioning my future there? Well, contrast that picture with last night when I was sitting in the pub with two colleagues who had just walked out of their shifts and out of their jobs, toasting them, congratulating them, envying them, and promising not to cover any of their shifts. From future manager to agent provocateur and rat fleeing a sinking ship in under six months? Pretty impressive.

It started off slowly, of course. We had ‘security’ cameras installed first of all. Cameras which weren’t used for security at all, but instead were used to secretly monitor staff (a contravention of both the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act). We then had a multi-thousand pound ‘automatic air freshening system’ installed in our two loos (I mean, literally, two . . . not two sets of cubicles and urinals, but two loos), while at the same time we were told that it was, ‘too expensive’ to hire bouncers for Friday and Saturday nights. Bangor has over 45 drinking establishments at last count, and our shop is only one of three open after chucking out time on Fridays and Saturdays. One of the others – a smaller takeaway than ours – has employed door staff from the day they opened. The police hate us because of the number of fights that break out in our restaurant. They want our late licence revoked because of all the trouble. A few months ago, a fight broke out which meant the staff having to spend three hours cleaning up blood and discarded body parts, and a further hour giving statements to the police. They weren’t paid for talking to the police, of course, and were expected to clean up the blood despite doing so being illegal (blood is a hazardous substance from which you can catch any number of life-threatening diseases, and as such must be cleaned up by someone suitably trained and equipped). A week or so ago, we were giving statements to a local officer following a car crash we’d witnessed (entirely unrelated to our jobs), and when we mentioned where we worked he rolled his eyes and told us he’d been called out there more times then he could remember and wished we’d shut early. This was just a random bobby, out of the thousands who work our area.

More was to come. New regulations were brought in which meant we couldn’t clean certain things until half an hour before closing. Of course, this meant we had to stay later. (And, yes, they used their ‘security’ cameras to check what time we were cleaning things.) Our staff meal allowance was decreased from £4.50 to £4 the same week that prices for the customers were increased. It took our restaurant manager five e-mails to his manager before he was allowed to buy a new mop bucket. The number of staff on each shift was steadily decreased to the point where, now, every single shift is understaffed. Holiday booked three months in advance was ‘forgotten’ about and not honoured. Rotas were not given to staff until a day or two before they were due to start (our contract states that we are to be given our hours at least seven days in advance). Temperatures in the kitchen reach over 34 degrees centigrade, and the legal limit is 30.

Upset but proactive, a number of staff decide to write to management to voice their concerns, namely the illegal use of security cameras to covertly monitor staff and the illegal temperature in their working environment. In return, we have nothing. No word, no answer, not even any acknowledgement that they have received the written notification of our legitimate concerns. This was over a month ago now.

So, picture the image. It’s a busy Friday night, and there are three staff on when there should be five. The temperature is pushing 30 again, and everyone is fried, working their socks off. There’s a queue to the front door, which has been there for the last few hours and shows no sign of abating. We’re busier then we’ve been for a long, long time. One of the senior management comes in (from Gastronomy). He doesn’t say a word to the staff, but goes upstairs to the office and plays around with the computer for an hour. The queue doesn’t show any signs of leaving, and everyone is still working hard. He then comes back down and, on the way out, berates the staff for working slowly. He’s upset about the queue. We need to work harder when it’s busy, he tells us. And then leaves. Fortunately, he left people speechless and by the time they’d got their voices back, he was long gone. No one, though, was surprised at his conduct.

A week later. Another busy Friday night, again only about half the staff we actually need, another queue to the door, another hot, hard night’s slog for our £5.05 an hour. But it gets done and people go home.

Next day. Team members on counter are, apparently, no longer to be trusted with filling the boxes with Popcorn Chicken, and so this task is taken over by the shift runner. Over-portioning cost the company £50 last week, we’re told. We also know from our own experience that we’re raking in over £2,000 a shift (two shifts a day), and it would be more if we had more staff. The counter staff are too fried with stress and heat to make sure that the exact amount of Popcorn Chicken gets put into the box (10 for a small, 21 for a regular and 32 for a large, if you’re interested) and are instead concentrating on serving the customers. I mean, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind queuing for an extra fifteen minutes if it meant you got the exact amount of Popcorn Chicken you paid for, right?

Later the same day. The same member of senior Gastronomy management phones up and says he’s very angry and upset because last night equipment was cleaned before regulations permitted, and customers weren’t served quick enough by staff. They had a queue to the door of the restaurant for over four straight hours, and only one member of staff at a till taking orders. One member of staff making burgers, portioning up fries, cooking all the frozen foods. One member of staff preparing the fillets, mini fillets and chicken pieces, cleaning the equipment and making sure everywhere stayed supplied with cups and boxes and cheese and suchlike.

That’s when my two colleagues walked out. Every single other member of staff was phoned and asked to cover for them, and every single one refused. I’m interested in what’s going to happen next.

The two members of staff who left worked close to or over fifty hours a week. If someone called in sick, it would be one of them or one other person who would cover for them. The third person has decided he’s had enough and won’t cover any more shifts.

There’s a new shop, a Costa Coffee, opening next door to where our store is. I know of at least four staff members of KFC angling hard for jobs there. One of them has said he’s quitting at the end of the month, new job or not. So, out of a workforce of fifteen, six will be gone within a month. Three are students who are at home right now, and will be until the end of September. So that leaves six people. One is the manager, one is the manager’s wife, and one is the assistant manager (who’s on holiday all next week, and thus being paid not to work). One is wholly uncommitted and probably only there because it hasn’t occurred to him to get a job somewhere else. The other two . . . well, they’ve not got any special attachment to the place, beyond paying their bills.

The rats are leaving the ship. I want to tell anyone who’s thinking of applying there what they’re getting themselves in to. I want Gastronomy Foods to realise that employees are human beings and deserve to be treated as such. I want them to realise that customers aren’t their most important asset, because you’re not going to shift much product without staff. I want . . . hell, this is a blog, isn’t it? I wanted to sound off and put all my thoughts into writing with the vague hope other people are going to read them. Thanks for reading them. Post a comment, if you want – support, derision, grammatical corrections, your own fast food horror story . . . We’re supposed to be a democracy, so why do I feel so powerless?

Anyway, as said, thanks for reading.

Doctor Who

2006-07-12T19:33:21Z

Well, the new series is now over, and we all have to wait until Christmas for our next dose. Okay, well, that's a lie. We have to wait until Christmas for our next dose of original episodes staring the tenth doctor. I've been looking on Amazon, and the sheer amount of D.V.D's available is impressive. I mean, I know the show ran for 26 years before it was axed, but it's still impressive. All I need now is the money to buy them. The seventh doctor is the one I want to get a look at, as well as the first doctor. I mean, I grew up with the seventh doctor, so of course he's going to have a special place in my heart. But what I like about him is the fact that he's a manipulative git who doesn't mind playing the long game and hurting people's feelings to get what he wants. It's just nice to see that. And the first doctor, well, he strikes me as the sort of person I could grow to like. Cantankerous, superiorist and not even a little bit human, that's what the doctor should be like. It is, of course, the fashion to wax lyrical about the fourth doctor – Tom Baker’s doctor – but I’m not sure I like him. He’s just . . . arrogant, you know? Just swans around the place expecting the world to revolve around him, and the worst part about it is that most of the time it does. Plus he’s all very 1970’s, and by that I mean the kind of disco thing, rather than the hard rock thing. Number five, well, maybe I could grow to like him. Six . . . an acquired taste, by all accounts. And number two only has two extant episodes, the rest having been wiped or left in a box in the BBC cleaning cupboard, or something.

Incidentally, the BBC has a wonderful archive of video clips that you can look at, all the way from the first doctor to the seventh. Beautiful stuff.

Now, on to my point. As we all know, what we – the little people – write up in our humble weblogs (or ‘blogs’, if you will) can actually alter the fabric of reality. Somewhere, secreted among the windswept hills of Snowdonia National Park, there is a building. It’s a nondescript, 1960’s flat pack type of affair, the sort of thing that you might drive past and not notice or register only as a vaguely offensive eyesore. Just to the side of the sliding glass doors which lead into the reception, there’s a simple white sign with black letters cut into it, and lets say that it says, ‘Association for Altered Harmony’, a phrase somewhere between mystic and corporate that has no real meaning and instantly fails to stick in the mind. But the building is big. Only two stories of administration exist above the ground, but tucked down in the roots of the mountain, where the magma that makes our world floats and flows, the building reaches down, and inside those depths rank after rank after rank of precision trained, single-minded people sit, concentrating, shaping. Every single method of communication we use today is monitored. Every single world or syllable is heard or read and understood and acted upon. Every single blog, forum, text message, chatroom and anything else is monitored, listened to, sympathised with. And these people, these people that listen and understand, they reshape the world. They understand how we’re feeling, and they reshape the world around us, change us so it makes us happier. So posting on a forum or in your blog changes the world. You’re not simply shouting into the darkness. You’re not just some sad idiot with delusions of grandeur. You’re not some prat who can’t even punctuate a sentence properly but still thinks what you put on your pathetic little MySpaz account (‘I have my own website!’) should have some influence in the world. Every time you post something, you change the world! OMG!!!!!11

Anyways, on to my point. The new Doctor Who series. I like it. I mean, you know, I make time for it, and I enjoy watching it. It’s a good show. Fun, you know?

But the phrase I keep using is, ‘this isn’t what I paid my money for’. And it’s not. This new series is far more touchy-feely then the previous incarnations, and that’s only to be expected. People are told that touchy-feely emotions are what they want, and so they get upset when they don’t get it. I don’t really have a problem exploring the character’s feelings and, well, it can be interesting. Please note, Russell, can.

The trouble I’m having is that, at the end of the day, feelings isn’t what Doctor Who is about. Coming to terms with life isn’t what it should be about. It should be about adventure. New civilisations. Challenging your perceptions of your own society by refracting it through a latex and animatronic mirror. Challenging your hopes and dreams by showing you the nightmares which are just as much a part of them. Making you question your future and making you sit down and work out what you want it to be and how you can get there. And, with Doctor Who, all that applies to the past as well. You can humanise and understand the past, not as a series of events, but as the experiences of the people who endured them. I mean, the man who dropped the Cyclone B into the hole – who was he? What did he dream of? Why did he do it?

This new series is far, far too terra-centric. Out of 27 episodes broadcast so far, 19 have been set on Earth. 11 have been set in present day earth. 17 have been on earth, within 60 years of the present day – i.e. within living memory. And every single one has been about humans. We haven’t seen one, single alien culture. We haven’t even had any developed alien protagonists. The closest we came was the Sisters of Plenitude. There were different, interesting, developed, motivated, slightly sinister, easy on the eye and entirely underused.

What the hell’s the point in having a TARDIS if you’re just going to pop to the Second World War and back to a London council estate. You have the most advanced piece of hardware anywhere in the universe, and you’re using it do the weekly shop.

I don’t, as a rule, have any problem engaging with characters and exploring their relationships. It can be very interesting. But, when I tune into Doctor Who, it’s not what I pay my money for. If that was what I wanted, I’d go somewhere else. I watch Doctor Who to explore strange and startling alien civilisations with a person who is human enough for me to connect to but too alien for me to understand. That’s what I pay my money for. Not this Eastenders-Titanic-great-unspoken-love-affair crap. If I wanted to see what life was like in the 1980’s, I’d find some shows from then and watch them. If I wanted to see what life was like in the Blitz, I’d watch ‘The World at War’, or one of the other zillion documentaries that are out there, or the billion dramas. If I wanted to see what life was like on a London council estate, I could just watch Wife Swap or one of those programmes that follow the police around. If I wanted to explore a teenager’s relationship with her mother, I’d watch Hollyoaks or some other teen-angst claptrap. If I wanted to know what it was like to feel isolated and alone, I’d pay more attention to my own frikkin’ life. I watch Doctor Who to escape all of that.

Because, you see, at the end of the day, I have testacies. It is an undeniable and unavoidable fact. Hang around with me enough, and you’ll probably get to see them. I seem to be developing a habit for whipping them out at parties. I’m not sure why. But this means that I much prefer being intellectually challenged than being emotionally challenged. I like gadgets and gizmos and pseudo-science. I like little references and nods that you have to be a real anorak to understand and smile at. I like plot arcs that take 27 episodes to set up and 17 to resolve. I like kung-fu monks, things with four heads, and people in silly costumes surrounded by special effects. Most men do. And, you know what, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not being juvenile, or emotionally retarded, or insensitive. I’m just being the way that God built me.

Now, people who like love stories and like having their hearts put through the mill are good. The world needs people like that.

You see, humanity can be divided into two parts. It’s not a finite, discrete line because we carry both parts with us, and they way that they interact with each other and influence each other is what defines us as people and what defines us as human beings. You have emotion, and you have intellect. And to understand who we are, we need to understand both halves. Before my time, so I hear, the emotional side of ourselves was beaten into submission and left cowering in a corner, whipped every time it moved. Then the 80’s and 90’s changed all that. The trouble is that I grew up in those decades. I’ve been told all my life that they way I think is wrong, the way my head is wired is up wrong. I just accepted it as fact and tried to change. But the more I come to understand people and society, the more I realise that it’s just not true. What I’ve been told my whole life is to embrace the emotion and deny the intellect. I’ve been told that the intellect is wrong and emotion should rule the heart and the head. But that’s just as dangerous, juvenile and irresponsible as denying the emotion. In my head, emotion is a scared, quite, backwards child that needs a lot of care and attention. Intellect is left with the burden of life and the burden of looking after that child. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know I have problems. I have big problems and I know things are unbalanced in my head. They should be equal parties, a symbiotic pair of twins who work in harmony. (Of course, I’d be willing to bet the shirt on my back that not one single living human being has that privilege, but that’s another rant.) My point is that indulging the dominant twin is just as healthy as supporting and nurturing the submissive one, which ever way around they are.

Doctor Who should be about indulging your intellect. It should be about taking an hour or so out of your week for a spot of pure, unburdened indulgence with the stronger brother, not having to worry about looking after the weaker one for once. I mean, he can come along if he wants to, but the focus should be on intellect and emotion can come along to add spice and flavour. That’s what I pay my money for.

Last Day of the Month

2006-06-30T22:20:02Z

Yes, June is fifty minutes away from being over, and I've done it again:

30 days, and 50,000 words.

Well, 50,388 to be exact. Played for, and got.

The story itself is progressing, and things are beginning to happen, but I'll confess that it is beginning to frighten me a little. At the time of writing, it stands at 163,611 words long. That's a telephone number, not a word count. It's not over yet. There's still all the dramatic stuff to happen before it's over. How long is it going to be? Am I ever going to finish it? And what about if I do? I've got to edit it then. How the hell can you edit something like that? It's like being told you have to get three prime fillet steaks from a whale.

*sighs*

With a little luck, we'll get there in the end. I hope we do. I can't wait until we do. I really can't.

Stuff

2006-06-27T12:41:01Z

Still here, still working through my words. Red and Carrie are still on the near ether, and I'm trying to poke them downstairs. There's plot down there. But I have a feeling Carrie's about to duck back next door and grab her drink first. Is it possible to get drunk on the ether? I suppose it is. It'd certainly help with the plot. Anyway, I'm just avoiding work. Nothing really to say. This novel had better bloody well be worth it. The amount of time and effort I've put into the damned thing. If people read it and aren't inspired to tears I'm going to be very upset. Sometimes I can't help but think it's nothing but trite and crap that's thinly strung together by wishful thinking. I mean, if it was this easy to write something amazing, more people would be doing it, surely? It's not like I can just pull down my pants and shit gold, much as I'd like to believe that it is. Ho-hum. I suppose I'll see. I'd hate to think I've wasted all this time and effort, but I may very well be just pissing up a wall. It'd probably be worse to get this far and then just give up, though. I think I'm going to have some more coffee and go to the loo.

At least if I was sitting at the piano, I'd know if I was hitting the right notes or not. You've got no way of knowing if you're writing. You're just shooting in the dark.

I'm looking forwards to the new Superman movie, though. And the new Pirates movie. My life should have more of that sort of excitment in it. They're bound to inspire me in some way. I love something which just reaches out and touches you with a glamour hand. It's what I live for.

Coventary Cathedral

2006-06-25T13:41:52Z

An object's use is determined by the use people put it to. I mean, you could design the perfect corkscrew, but if everyone uses it to wax their cars, then it's a car-waxer. In this vein, the use of blogs must be for people to impart vital information (normally about themselves) to the six billion other people in the world, who frankly don't care. It is, however, the act of imparting and the perception that people are listening which is important.

So, I'm going to use this blog the way it's meant to be used. Only I'm not going to talk about myself, I'm going to talk about Coventary Cathedral.

I'm not a religious man, by any degree. I'm more agnostic than anything else, following a complex philosphy that basically boils down to, 'I'll worry about all that stuff when I'm dead, I have far more important things to do right now'. But I do believe in people, and in the things that they can create. Things like Coventary Cathedral.

The original cathedral was built hundreds of years ago, around 1043. Feel free to read the history of the place in more detail on their own page. The point is that, by the beginning of the 20th century, it was one of the most beautiful gothic cathedrals in the British Isle. I mean, it had a lot of very stiff competition, but after a certain level of attainment, it all becomes subjective.

Now, a quick lesson on Gothic archiecture. Anyone who's looked at places like Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame, or York Minster can not have failed to be impressed. Unless you're some kind of cultural retard. I mean, you've got to bear in mind that these places were built in the so-called 'Dark Ages'. They were built in a time before we had boats that were sterdy enough to sail the Atlantic, before we had gun powder, before we even had slide rules. They were built while we still laboured over the yoke of the absolute rule kings and when God's law suprassed any law made by man. Technologically, we had the bare basics. Socially, we were far more backwards than any of the places we look at today and decide we need to 'liberate' - image some kind of amalgamation of Iraq and Afganistan before the recent invasions, and you're pretty close. Yet still, we were able to create these master pieces of architecture. I mean, these things were built in a time when most buildings were still made of wood and no taller than two stories. These cathedrals would have totally dominated the landscape. You would've been able to see them for miles and miles, a huge momument to the glory of god . . . Like I say, I believe in people. Anyway, the real genius of these places was how they were built, the physics behind it all. You stand inside them and look up at the ceilings, and you've got to think about how many tonnes of stone is there, just hanging above your head. Tonnes of stone, just hanging in mid-air, dozens of feet above the ground. And in four, five hundred years, it hasn't shifted, hasn't slipped, hasn't fallen. For hundreds of years, it's just sat there, just as the architect intended it.

In all honesty, I'm not sure how it all works. It's all to do with arches and equal forces. It's all very complicated, and even with my A level in Physics, most of it escapes me. The Wikipedia article already linked gives you a good basic idea, and I'm sure Google knows the rest.

But on to my point: Coventary. During the Blitz, the cathedral was destoryed. All that was left was a few walls and a whole bunch of rubble. So, we us being British, the decision was made (the very next day) to rebuild it. By the early sixties, it was finished.

The final result is, without hyperboyle, breath taking. I mean, to look at, it's almost depressingly 1950's. You can almost imagine it as some sort of community project for people who'd lost their house in the Blitz. But, just as the original was very much a product of the tastes of the time, so is this one.

What I find so beautiful about it is that it's such an amazing statement about our age and what we can achieve. The spire was flown in by helicopter and fitted into place in eight minutes.

The truely amazing thing, though, is the roof. You need to take the virtual tour to see this, because I've not been able to find it any other place on line. Go to the cathedral's website, and take the virtual tour link and it'll bring up a new window, blah blah blah, start the tour. In the New Cathedral, click on the South Nave. Now, you see those six pillars? Zoom in on one of them, right at the bottom. You see that tiny strand of material under the pillar? Six of those hold up the entire roof. Six. The entire roof is held up by six tiny, tiny things.

Tell me that's not breath taking. Tell me that doesn't give you faith in the genius of the human race.

Going to bed now

2006-06-24T01:01:17Z

I've done 4,929 words today, and even Penny agrees that I'm allowed to go to bed now. I'm only 500 or so words behind, and with a bit of luck, I should be able to catch those tomorrow.

I'd just like to say that when I'm wearing these headphones and listening to music, I keep hearing things. Like people talking in the next room, and I can't hear them properly because I have the music on, but as soon as I turn the music off, they stop. Or sometimes I can hear people calling my name. Sometimes it sounds like Gemma. Very strange.

Stuff

2006-06-23T23:15:33Z

Looks like I'm back for a little bit. I've never been sure why people feel this desire to keep a diary. Or a dairy. No, wait, milk. Milk is good.

Anyways, I've just been reading through some of my previous glories, reminding myself of a foreign land, words written as if by a stranger . . . only not.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all with the Romance of capturing a moment of time, and then being able to travel back and visit it again. I just, I dunno. It's just a bunch of stuff that happened to me a while ago. Hardly some halcyon moment in my life when I was a stranger. Strangely, though, I did like reading about my dreams. I'll have to do more of that.

So why am I typing in it now?

Well, that's easy. I have around 3,000 words to write, and I'm avoiding them. Red is just guiding Carrie through her first ethereal trip, and I've done 3k already today. Sometimes words arrive on your doorstep like the morning tide, and sometimes you have to chase the clouds. And sometimes you're just sitting there, working through the admin. Shrug. Much like life, really.

A few things

2004-10-05T11:57:40Z

I watched the special edition Star Wars DVD box set yesterday. I enjoyed it. A lot of people got upset when George Lucus started 'remastering' the originals to better suit his original vision now the technology was available. They complained that he was spoiling a masterpiece, overplaying it, using it as an excuse to cash in on the series. I must confess, a few of the same thoughts crossed my mind.

But I've been thinking about this, and long before 'director's cuts', 'remastered' and whatever edition DVD's started coming out, artists were 'remastering' their classic works the whole damn time. Take Pope, for instance. When 'The Rape of the Lock' was first published, it was about a third the size of the version we know today, and only two verses long. X-rays of famous paintings have shown 'key' elements to have been added later as fashions and styles changed or the artist's own style and tastes developed. Sometimes it wasn't even the artists. Look at Rembrandt's 'Night Watch'. But having a few inches lopped off to fit a frame a few hundred years ago, the whole picture has been changed. It wasn't even called 'Night Watch' when he painted it, that name was only given to it a few decades after he died.

So the point is that there's a precedent, like it or not. Whatever George Lucus' motivations, he 'enhanced' what has become an icon of the 20th century. Not changed, but added to.

And I'll be honest. I like the new special effects. For years I tried to deny it, but I do enjoy a bit of the old eye-candy. The x-wings and light-sabres never looked better. I don't mind new AT-AT's and whatever in the background, because I can see how it fits in with George's 'original vision'.

But the very ending of 'The Return of the Jedi' struck me dumb for a good five minutes. You'll remember that I'm fairly open-minded and easy-going about this whole remastering business. I don't regard it as some sort of sacred text, more an attempt to externalise a vision that George Lucus had in his mind, and being an artist I can understand how one has to compromise when bringing one's vision into the material world, how frustrating it is and how unsatisfactory it can be to look at something you've created and see it not quite fit what you wanted it to be. The closer George can bring the trilogy to his original vision, in theory, the better. It's interesting to see the creative development, if nothing else.

What struck me dumb is that, at the very end, when the Jedi 'ghosts' appear to Luke (Yoda, Obe-Wan and Anakin), they had replaced Anakin. The old ghost from all the other versions up until now (whom I'd always assumed to be David Prowse, the man in the Darth Vader suit) has been replaced with the ghost of the guy playing Anakin in the new movies. Surely this is an entirely sensible, logical, kinda cool thing to do? Well, yes it is, but in 'remastering' there's always a step too far. A point where 'remastering' becomes 'revising'. Replacing the old ghost smacks of Big Brother-esque revisions of history. The old ghost doesn't exist any more. He's been wiped from history. He as good as never existed. This isn't bulking out the Imperial troops, this is altering the old films to fit better with the new ones. Something deep inside me objects to that sort of revisionism on a primal level. What's next? Replacing Alec Guiness with Ewen McGregor? Reshooting all of Darth Vader's shots with the new guy in the suit? Redoing Vader's V.O.? Altering the sets is one thing, altering the characters is another. Like I say, I can't really explain it fully, but something deep inside squirms at this.

In other, almost related news, I finally began to understand something yesterday. We learn about and hear about dictorships and totalitarian regimes in school and on the news, and hear phrases like 'living in constant fear', but we don't really understand or appreciate them. We live in what is, in reality, a fairly safe world. We have a reasonably fair and safe justice system, and system of government. It's not transparent, it's not perfect, but it's fairly reasonable and reliable. Don't get me wrong, we're not 'lucky'. Thousands, tens of thousands, fought hard and died for us to enjoy this luxury. British Parliamentary Democracy has been around since the 1600's, but it wasn't until the 1950's that everyone over the age of 18 was granted a vote. That's 350 years. That's a long time to wait, and a long time to fight. Fuck George Bush with his 'we're lucky to live in a country where we are free to express our views'. Anyway, back to my point. There was an AA van parked outside our house for around half an hour last night, and it had a flashing yellow light. Like a police light, but yellow. Now, I owe people in power (i.e. the banks) a lot of money that I haven't been paying recently, due to the fact that I can't. I fear the post in the morning in case it brings another bill. I fear a knock at the door in case it's the bailiffs.

When I saw this light outside, and I didn't know what it was, my only thought was, 'my God, please don't let them be here for me'. For those few minutes, I was terrified.

Eventually, I went to check, saw it was an AA van, and went back to watching 'Return of the Jedi'. But it got me thinking. What if you felt like that every time you heard a car drive past? And every time you heard footsteps, or saw a shadow pass outside the window? And you knew there was nothing you could do about it. What if every time you heard the phone ring, you were scared to answer it, but too scared not too? What if when you rang your friends, or your parents, you were scared because they may not answer, or someone else might answer? What if you dreaded the post every morning, not because of bills, but because it might contain something which would mean your life would - effectively - be over. What if every morning you went to work in the system that did this to you. That every day, you went to work, and in doing so tightened the throttle-hold the state has over you and everyone else, but you went in and did it anyway because otherwise you'd have no money, and then they would be coming for you. So, you went in everyday and did everything you could not to think about it. What if the only way to ensure that it wasn't you they were coming for was to know who it was they were coming for, and the only way to do that was to turn them in. And what if you lived under the constant threat of someone else turning you in, so there was absolutely no time you could let your guard down?

I thought about how I felt for those few minutes, and then I thought about all of that, and I began to understand what people mean when they say, 'living in constant fear'. I began to understand why it's important we appreciate the freedom we have, and I began to wish that I could explain this to everybody. All these neo-fascist twerps and everyone else, including David Blunkett. He's a twat. And George Bush. I began to wish that I could sit these people down and make them understand. But I realised I would never get the chance, and they probably never would understand. And I realised that the majority of people are like that. The majority of people stumble through life, fighting for whatever, because they don't understand so many things. I want to understand and appreciate our society, our history and our politics. It's important to me that I do, because those are the things that make us as people, and as a people. These are the things that determine how we interact with other human beings, how we treat them, how we affect their lives. These are the things that will determine what we leave behind when we die. These are, essentially, the framework that defines us as individuals, in every sense of the phrase. But most people just wander through life, not understanding and not caring, drifting aimlessly where ever the winds blow them with the illusion of making their own choices. Most people don't chose who they vote for in elections, they get told. They just don't realise that.

I've still been thinking about death a lot. Perhaps it's because I've been reading 'Wraith' books for the past week. But it's a good thing for me. I think it's a path I need to walk, one that I've been needing to walk for a long time, but not known about. The more I begin to understand, the more comfortable I become. Death is the ultimate goal in life, whether you want to see it like that or not. It's were we're all going to. Everything stops, decays and dies. That's the nature of the universe. So we can either accept and try to understand that, or we can ignore it. As I'm sure you realise by now, I like to try and understand these things.

What I've realised is that any conclusions about the afterlife need to be based on assumptions. There's no other way to do it, because we have not truth about these things.

Here's what I'm assuming at the moment:

There is nothing new in the universe
As I said before, things change form, but are never 'created' or 'destroyed' on a quintessential level. This applies to everything from stars to atoms to thoughts.

There are a finite number of things in the universe
When I say 'things', I suppose I really mean 'building blocks' of any sort. Just like there are only eight musical notes, there are only so many atoms, so many narrative structures, so many social structures etc etc. But, just like musical notes, there are billions of different ways all these elements can fit together.
I mean, consider the difference between Beethoven and the Sex Pistols. Think about the values of a hippie commune powered by the machinery of a totalitarian state.

Things work in cycles
I don't mean this in a strictly literal sense of the words. Consider stars, for instance. I talked before about how stars form. Slowly, they burn themselves out, and die. In dying, they fling out vast quantities of matter that, eventually, trigger another nascent star somewhere else to start forming, and the whole process starts again. The new star won't be the same as the old one, and the solar system the new star creates will be entirely unique in thousands of ways.

The universe works on universal, consistent laws
These aren't necessarily the laws set down by science, or really any laws. What I mean by it is that what applies on a fundamental system on one level can be applied to a different system on a fundamental level. Stars are born, affect the universe, and in dying bring in new life. Animals are born, affect their environment, and in dying bring in new life. Societies are born, affect their history, and in dying bring in new life (social structures and ideas).

People, no matter who they are and where they are, will always be people
Just like there are only so many musical notes, there are only so many different personality factions. But, just like the musical notes, there are hundreds of different ways that they can fit together. And the fundamentals of human motivation never change. If you look throughout history, you can see different people doing the same things, again and again and again. People thousands of years apart, thousands of miles apart, who have never heard of each other, doing the same things and reacting in the same way, striving for the same things. Societies, essentially, are governed by the same laws, no matter how they are structured.

They are some fairly bold assumptions, but I don't think any of them are unreasonable. Each one is drawn from observation, and though I'm only a small thing who can only see small things, I'm doing as best I can.

Assuming that there is an afterlife, these assumptions lead to some conclusions:

Any society of the dead will mirror the societies of the living
People will always be people. They will always strive for the same things, hope for the same things, do the same things to get there, whether they are dead or alive.

The elements of the afterlife are drawn from the universe around us
Star dust, by degrees, becomes people. Our physical bodies, when they die, become plants and rocks. Anything external to the universe we already know must be drawn, at least in part, from the universe that we already know. What happens to our thoughts when we stop thinking them? What happens to our memories when we forget them?

Transferring to the afterlife is a process
Nothing in this universe simply ceases to be one thing and then becomes something else. Things change shape, form and substance via a process. Water doesn't just become steam, it needs sufficient input of energy to break apart the bonding, the bonds break down and the smaller molecules rise, as they are now lighter than air. A lot of religious thinkers describe this idea as a 'journey' that the soul makes. Tunnels of light, ferrymen on a river etc etc.

Those are all the conclusions that I've come to so far. I'm sure the more I think about it, the more I'll come up with.

But I'm not just an analytical thinker. Sometimes things just 'feel right' for me. Sometimes something slots into place so perfectly, I can't ignore it and I don't have a clue where it comes from. On the subject of death, I have two of these so far:

i) the 'process' needs faciliting in some way. Just like water doesn't spontaneously become steam, we don't just become spirits. There's a price we have to pay.
ii) Jade and gold are very important. I don't know how or why, but they are.

A lot of religions have the idea of 'paying' for your crossing into the afterlife. Either paying the ferrymen with two pennies, answering riddles or questions etc etc. A lot of religions have the idea of certain material or objects having a spiritual importance to the dead. But there's lots of other things lots of religions say that I haven't included, because these are the only two that seem to slot in.

I think what I'm trying to do is work out the 'truth' about death, and in doing so work out the 'truth' about life. I know it's all a fiction, but we all have to find our own path in life, no matter how we go about doing that or in what terms we decide to construct and explore it. Some people pick up a book and find it there, waiting for them. Some people have it just smack them in the face one day. Some people never know. But, like all things in my life, I think I have to work and keep on working and keep moving tiny pieces of the jigsaw around until they begin to fit. I'm a talented writer and always have been, but it's taken years and years of hard work to began to tap into that. I am a talented artist (as in drawing), but I've struggled my whole life, and struggled hard, and been absolutely crap for the most part of it. I've worked hard, really really hard, and I'm only just beginning to scratch the surface. I have so much more to go before I'm anywhere even within sight of being close. But the potential is in me and always has been, I just have to work like a miner to find it, and work like a smithy to realise it. And those two jobs are two of the hardest there are.

Anyway, I think I've taken up enough of your time, so I'll leave you in peace for now and go and unpack the shopping my parents sent me. I'm surprised there's anything left in Tescos!!

Talking Another 'Inspired' Parody Blues

2004-09-27T15:06:05Z

You'll only really get this if you're familiar with Bob Dylan's 'Talking John Birch Blues', and the life and works of Christopher Marlowe.

So . . . this one's for you, Gemma:

Talking Kit Marlowe Society Blues

I was feeling sad and kinda blue
I didn't know what I was gonna do
That dramatist was talkin' at me
When I was alone
Or trying to pee
He was all over

So I ran down must hurriedly
Joined the Mark Rylance society
Got me a secret membership card
Went back home to the yard,
Starting looking for Marlowe,
On the sidewalk, 'neath the Rose bush

Well I was looking everywhere for that god-damned man
I went do Deptford, I found a man
And he threw a piece of paper in my face
Told me Marlowe was at 'Nonesuch Place'
Wouldn't tell me where that was though . . .

I looked in Henry IV, Merchant of Venice,
But all I found were rhymes real graceless
I figured some of 'em plays just weren't hole
So I looked deep down my toilet bowl
But they got away . . .

I heard some footsteps by the front porch door
Grabbed my shotgun from the floor
I snuck around the house with a huff and a hiss
Saying 'Hands up you dramatist!'
It was the mailman
He punched me out

Well, I quit my job so I could work alone
Got a magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes
Found some paper with writing upon it,
Found Marlowe's name on Shakespeare's sonnets.
You guys know about the buds of may?

Well, I was at home, starting to doze
And I figured he was hiding at the Globe
Peaked behind the scenery
And the bloody thing fell on me
Them actors did it,
Them ones in As You Like It

I finally started thinking straight
When I ran outta things to investigate
I went down the pub to get a drink
Finally starting to think how he would think!
Hope I don't do anything too dumb . . . good God!