Read: here and here
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Bus Stop
I’ve been out of the country for the last week, but I’ll get to that some other time. I want to show you this first - this is what was happening in another timezone, right in front of the industrial estate / hellhole where I work.
Some background: In the early hours of last Wednesday, a bus pulled out of the bus station, straight through both lanes of traffic, whacked a car, went through a wall and straight into the offices at the front of our estate. (A tiny bit more detail can be found here).
But that’s not what makes this picture interesting to me. What amuses me is the ad for Saw III on the side of the bus, and the tag line: “This time…he’s pulling out all the stops!”
Juxtaposition – you gotta love it.
Some background: In the early hours of last Wednesday, a bus pulled out of the bus station, straight through both lanes of traffic, whacked a car, went through a wall and straight into the offices at the front of our estate. (A tiny bit more detail can be found here).
But that’s not what makes this picture interesting to me. What amuses me is the ad for Saw III on the side of the bus, and the tag line: “This time…he’s pulling out all the stops!”
Juxtaposition – you gotta love it.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
And stay out!
Change is good, isn’t it? Before Donald Rumsfeld leaves the news cycle for ever, let’s remind ourselves of some pearls from the swine:
“I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligent work.” - House Armed Services Committee hearings on February 15, 2005
“…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.” - Department of Defense news briefing, February 12, 2002
“I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty.” - The New Yorker, 17 June 2002
“Look at me! I'm sweet and lovable!” - Foreign Press Centre, 21 June 2002
Right then. Who’s next?
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Them’s writin’ words
In the worlds before Monkey, primal chaos reigned.
Heaven sought order.
But the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown.
The four worlds formed again and yet again,
As endless aeons wheeled and passed.
Time and the pure essences of Heaven,
The moisture of the Earth,
The powers of the sun and the moon
All worked upon a certain rock, old as creation.
And it became magically fertile.
That first egg was named "Thought".
Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said,
"With our thoughts, we make the world."
Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch.
From it then came a stone monkey.
The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!
Maybe some kind of explanation is in order.
So, at some point leading up to June 8 2006, I looked Sucker Punch hard in the eyes and thought “I wish I knew how to quit you.”
I had other things I wanted to do with my words, both online and off, and Sucker Punch was gnawing away at a disproportionate amount of my headmeat, so I pulled the trigger on it, and it was gone. Easy, eh?
Well, no.
One of my plans had been to start another new blog, with a totally different remit. I played with this on and off for months, but the sort of thing I had planned would have been an even bigger timesuck than this was. So that idea died on the vine quite quickly.
The other ideas, though, took fruit. I was a writing machine, frantically chipping away at my latest idea. The working title is Rotten Timing and, the more I think about it, the more I like it. What’s it about? Well, it’s about time paradox and Buddhism and zombies and London and fate and sacrifice and love and kick-ass fight scenes. Amongst other things.
I want it to be a novel, but sometimes you have to let stories take you where they want to go and, despite my best story-wrangling efforts, it is fighting me to become a screenplay. You win this round, Story!
I’ve been reading and writing, writing and reading for the last three months, filling pages, solving problems and building worlds and, slowly, slowly, all the bits and pieces are coalescing into a bigger whole. I’m loving it.
But I can’t do that all the time. Sometimes I need to exercise (and exorcise) other, different writing muscles. And then I realised that there was somewhere where I could do exactly that and it was sitting fallow in a neglected corner of cyberspace. So I pulled open the shutters and threw up the sign reading “I ASSURE YOU, WE'RE OPEN”.
Because I am, and we are. I’m back for the long haul. I hope that you are too. It’s going to be fun. Promise.
One last chunk o’fun today:
Heaven sought order.
But the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown.
The four worlds formed again and yet again,
As endless aeons wheeled and passed.
Time and the pure essences of Heaven,
The moisture of the Earth,
The powers of the sun and the moon
All worked upon a certain rock, old as creation.
And it became magically fertile.
That first egg was named "Thought".
Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said,
"With our thoughts, we make the world."
Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch.
From it then came a stone monkey.
The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!
Maybe some kind of explanation is in order.
So, at some point leading up to June 8 2006, I looked Sucker Punch hard in the eyes and thought “I wish I knew how to quit you.”
I had other things I wanted to do with my words, both online and off, and Sucker Punch was gnawing away at a disproportionate amount of my headmeat, so I pulled the trigger on it, and it was gone. Easy, eh?
Well, no.
One of my plans had been to start another new blog, with a totally different remit. I played with this on and off for months, but the sort of thing I had planned would have been an even bigger timesuck than this was. So that idea died on the vine quite quickly.
The other ideas, though, took fruit. I was a writing machine, frantically chipping away at my latest idea. The working title is Rotten Timing and, the more I think about it, the more I like it. What’s it about? Well, it’s about time paradox and Buddhism and zombies and London and fate and sacrifice and love and kick-ass fight scenes. Amongst other things.
I want it to be a novel, but sometimes you have to let stories take you where they want to go and, despite my best story-wrangling efforts, it is fighting me to become a screenplay. You win this round, Story!
I’ve been reading and writing, writing and reading for the last three months, filling pages, solving problems and building worlds and, slowly, slowly, all the bits and pieces are coalescing into a bigger whole. I’m loving it.
But I can’t do that all the time. Sometimes I need to exercise (and exorcise) other, different writing muscles. And then I realised that there was somewhere where I could do exactly that and it was sitting fallow in a neglected corner of cyberspace. So I pulled open the shutters and threw up the sign reading “I ASSURE YOU, WE'RE OPEN”.
Because I am, and we are. I’m back for the long haul. I hope that you are too. It’s going to be fun. Promise.
One last chunk o’fun today:
Thursday, November 02, 2006
CSI: Cardiff
So, Torchwood…
We’re three episodes into the “adult” spin-off of Doctor Who, building on the phenomenal success of Russell T. Davies’s relaunch of the much-loved BBC sci-fi classic, so now is as good a time as any to pin it to the table, stab a scalpel into its guts and see what we can find.
And I’ve been struggling all week to articulate exactly what it is about Torchwood that is bugging me. And I can’t.
It’s not just the lazy pilot episode Everything Changes, which is an uninspired imitation of the Doctor Who relaunch pilot Rose, following exactly the same path: A disenchanted woman (Rose / Gwen) is bored with her mundane life and her dreary boyfriend, until she is unwittingly hurled into the life of a mysterious charismatic stranger (The Doctor / Captain Jack Harkness) and a scary yet exhilarating world of aliens and monsters lurking around every corner.
It’s not just the transparent gimmick of having Gwen saddled with the thankless audience POV role, helping us wade through all that pesky world-building exposition. (Just like Rose in Doctor Who). Good writing should cleave to the maxim of “Show, Don’t Tell”, rather than having the characters sitting around explaining everything.
It’s not just Davies’s self-indulgent insistence on having a different member of the core cast engaged in a same-sex kiss in every episode for no apparent reason.
It’s not just the truly risible second episode Day One, which confirmed all my worst fears of what an “adult” show would mean. The orgasm monster, or whatever the fuck it was, was a horrible idea. The men reduced to little piles of dust after climax was a laughable visual. Silly me, I thought “adult” meant grown-up, intelligent entertainment, as opposed to bolting gratuitous sex onto bog-standard evil alien set-ups.
It’s not just the fact that I think Davies has failed to capitalise on one of his biggest assets in the character of Captain Jack Harkness. In Doctor Who, Jack was the ideal foil for the Doctor. Whilst the Doctor is an adventurer and scientist with a dry wit and unapologetically quirky ways, Jack was his mirror image - a swashbuckling con-man overflowing with charisma and gung-ho machismo. Jack is rampantly pansexual, whilst the Doctor is virtually asexual. In Torchwood, Davies has dumped all of that characterisation, and Jack has become a much darker, brooding figure. Granted, there may be a story-driven reason for this, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
And, in fairness, the show is getting better. It has its moments. It’s OK. It’s thoroughly watchable. But I’m still disappointed by the whole package. And yesterday I finally worked out why that is.
Nigel Kneale, the creator of the Quatermass series, died yesterday. And Warren Ellis posted a small obit on his website on Kneale and the cultural impact of Quatermass. Here’s a small excerpt: “…Britain used to shut down on Quatermass night, and it’s all people would talk about the next day.
And that was down to Nigel Kneale, last of a generation of writers for British television who were determined that this common culture should always be entertaining, intelligent, challenging and groundbreaking.”
Ellis nailed it. That’s my problem with Torchwood. Despite Davies’s claims that the show is “dark, clever, wild, sexy”, it’s just not dark or clever or wild or sexy enough. It’s perfectly serviceable, but it is startlingly unambitious television. What could have been a wonderful opportunity to challenge us with a smart genre piece has been squandered on endless sequences of Men in Black running around the streets of Cardiff, labouring under the weight of an oppressive score and some shonky special effects.
In the pilot episode, Captain Jack proclaims that “The 21st Century is when everything changes, and you gotta be ready.”
Well, I’m ready. And still waiting…
We’re three episodes into the “adult” spin-off of Doctor Who, building on the phenomenal success of Russell T. Davies’s relaunch of the much-loved BBC sci-fi classic, so now is as good a time as any to pin it to the table, stab a scalpel into its guts and see what we can find.
And I’ve been struggling all week to articulate exactly what it is about Torchwood that is bugging me. And I can’t.
It’s not just the lazy pilot episode Everything Changes, which is an uninspired imitation of the Doctor Who relaunch pilot Rose, following exactly the same path: A disenchanted woman (Rose / Gwen) is bored with her mundane life and her dreary boyfriend, until she is unwittingly hurled into the life of a mysterious charismatic stranger (The Doctor / Captain Jack Harkness) and a scary yet exhilarating world of aliens and monsters lurking around every corner.
It’s not just the transparent gimmick of having Gwen saddled with the thankless audience POV role, helping us wade through all that pesky world-building exposition. (Just like Rose in Doctor Who). Good writing should cleave to the maxim of “Show, Don’t Tell”, rather than having the characters sitting around explaining everything.
It’s not just Davies’s self-indulgent insistence on having a different member of the core cast engaged in a same-sex kiss in every episode for no apparent reason.
It’s not just the truly risible second episode Day One, which confirmed all my worst fears of what an “adult” show would mean. The orgasm monster, or whatever the fuck it was, was a horrible idea. The men reduced to little piles of dust after climax was a laughable visual. Silly me, I thought “adult” meant grown-up, intelligent entertainment, as opposed to bolting gratuitous sex onto bog-standard evil alien set-ups.
It’s not just the fact that I think Davies has failed to capitalise on one of his biggest assets in the character of Captain Jack Harkness. In Doctor Who, Jack was the ideal foil for the Doctor. Whilst the Doctor is an adventurer and scientist with a dry wit and unapologetically quirky ways, Jack was his mirror image - a swashbuckling con-man overflowing with charisma and gung-ho machismo. Jack is rampantly pansexual, whilst the Doctor is virtually asexual. In Torchwood, Davies has dumped all of that characterisation, and Jack has become a much darker, brooding figure. Granted, there may be a story-driven reason for this, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
And, in fairness, the show is getting better. It has its moments. It’s OK. It’s thoroughly watchable. But I’m still disappointed by the whole package. And yesterday I finally worked out why that is.
Nigel Kneale, the creator of the Quatermass series, died yesterday. And Warren Ellis posted a small obit on his website on Kneale and the cultural impact of Quatermass. Here’s a small excerpt: “…Britain used to shut down on Quatermass night, and it’s all people would talk about the next day.
And that was down to Nigel Kneale, last of a generation of writers for British television who were determined that this common culture should always be entertaining, intelligent, challenging and groundbreaking.”
Ellis nailed it. That’s my problem with Torchwood. Despite Davies’s claims that the show is “dark, clever, wild, sexy”, it’s just not dark or clever or wild or sexy enough. It’s perfectly serviceable, but it is startlingly unambitious television. What could have been a wonderful opportunity to challenge us with a smart genre piece has been squandered on endless sequences of Men in Black running around the streets of Cardiff, labouring under the weight of an oppressive score and some shonky special effects.
In the pilot episode, Captain Jack proclaims that “The 21st Century is when everything changes, and you gotta be ready.”
Well, I’m ready. And still waiting…
Monday, October 30, 2006
Drunk Man Walking
From my office window, I can see the murky, rancid waters of the Grand Union Canal. It’s awful. It’s just filthy brown water, full of plastic bags and coconuts, topped off with a grimy meniscus of duck feathers stuck in a greasy rainbow of oil that’s trickled down from the car repair place next door.
On the other side of the canal, on a stretch of pavement stained with calcified duck shit and discarded bottles of cheap Polish beer, there is a solitary piece of messily scrawled graffito. It reads “The Truth Is Out There.”
It’s been there for a while now and, due to the combined abuse of the sun, the rain, and the relentless scuffing of feet, it’s starting to fade. But, for now, it’s still there.
This morning, though, there was something different. At about 8.30, there was a human head poking out of the canal, thinning white hair slapping against the brown ripples of the canal.
By 9, the corpse was laid out flat on the pavement, surrounded by a small contingent of TV cameras and policemen. The cops said that it looked like he’d been in the canal between 8 and 10 hours. At a guess, I’d say that he was walking home from the pub last night and fell into the canal, too drunk to get himself out.
I’ve scoured the news sites all day and I can’t find anything. I suppose a drunk drowning doesn’t merit any coverage.
By lunchtime, the body was gone, whisked away to who-knows-where. I walked down there. There wasn’t a trace of the body that had been there mere hours earlier. Just a wet, body-shaped stain slowly drying.
Why am I writing all this down? What does it mean? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it means “life is short”. Maybe it means “don’t walk by the canal when you’ve been drinking all night”. You can take whatever you want from it.
To me, it means “Make it count. All of it. Make the journey just as important as the destination.”
But what the hell do I know?
On the other side of the canal, on a stretch of pavement stained with calcified duck shit and discarded bottles of cheap Polish beer, there is a solitary piece of messily scrawled graffito. It reads “The Truth Is Out There.”
It’s been there for a while now and, due to the combined abuse of the sun, the rain, and the relentless scuffing of feet, it’s starting to fade. But, for now, it’s still there.
This morning, though, there was something different. At about 8.30, there was a human head poking out of the canal, thinning white hair slapping against the brown ripples of the canal.
By 9, the corpse was laid out flat on the pavement, surrounded by a small contingent of TV cameras and policemen. The cops said that it looked like he’d been in the canal between 8 and 10 hours. At a guess, I’d say that he was walking home from the pub last night and fell into the canal, too drunk to get himself out.
I’ve scoured the news sites all day and I can’t find anything. I suppose a drunk drowning doesn’t merit any coverage.
By lunchtime, the body was gone, whisked away to who-knows-where. I walked down there. There wasn’t a trace of the body that had been there mere hours earlier. Just a wet, body-shaped stain slowly drying.
Why am I writing all this down? What does it mean? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it means “life is short”. Maybe it means “don’t walk by the canal when you’ve been drinking all night”. You can take whatever you want from it.
To me, it means “Make it count. All of it. Make the journey just as important as the destination.”
But what the hell do I know?
Return of the Mack
There are many things I could say. Reasons and excuses, glorious truths and brazen lies, and many, many other things…
I could say that you should never irrevocably close off a valid outlet for the manifold ruminations that skitter across the rippling grey mass between the ears.
I could say that this beats scrawling rude words on the walls of public toilets.
I could say that I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time.
I could just say that I’ve missed you…
But I’m not going to, because all of that would detract your attention from the most important message I want to impart…
I’m BACK!
Oh yes.
I could say that you should never irrevocably close off a valid outlet for the manifold ruminations that skitter across the rippling grey mass between the ears.
I could say that this beats scrawling rude words on the walls of public toilets.
I could say that I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time.
I could just say that I’ve missed you…
But I’m not going to, because all of that would detract your attention from the most important message I want to impart…
I’m BACK!
Oh yes.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
This is the end, my friend
This will be the 236th and final blog posting on Sucker Punch.
This is not an impulsive decision. This is something I have been thinking about for many months. In an attempt to reinvent and streamline my daily life, it was time to shake things up, change things around, and take that jump off a cliff.
Sucker Punch has outlived its usefulness. I don’t need it any more. Neither do you. There are new mountains to climb, instead of trying to plough the same ol’ furrow on an irregular basis.
I hope you’ve enjoyed coming here as much as I have enjoyed writing here. If you have been here more than once, then Thank You for indulging some of my more skewed flights of whimsy and strangeness over the last few years. But we had some fun, didn't we?
I have no doubt that I will blog again at some point in the not-too-distant future. And when I do, it will have my real name slapped on to it. No more hiding behind a flimsy alias. Time to stand by my words with a big badge pinned to my chest, proudly proclaiming who I am once more.
This is not an ending. This is a new beginning. There are other, new, different and exciting words to write. Somewhere else. So keep your eyes open. The Internet is a Small World, and you never know where I might pop up next…
Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.
This is not an impulsive decision. This is something I have been thinking about for many months. In an attempt to reinvent and streamline my daily life, it was time to shake things up, change things around, and take that jump off a cliff.
Sucker Punch has outlived its usefulness. I don’t need it any more. Neither do you. There are new mountains to climb, instead of trying to plough the same ol’ furrow on an irregular basis.
I hope you’ve enjoyed coming here as much as I have enjoyed writing here. If you have been here more than once, then Thank You for indulging some of my more skewed flights of whimsy and strangeness over the last few years. But we had some fun, didn't we?
I have no doubt that I will blog again at some point in the not-too-distant future. And when I do, it will have my real name slapped on to it. No more hiding behind a flimsy alias. Time to stand by my words with a big badge pinned to my chest, proudly proclaiming who I am once more.
This is not an ending. This is a new beginning. There are other, new, different and exciting words to write. Somewhere else. So keep your eyes open. The Internet is a Small World, and you never know where I might pop up next…
Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Pain In The Grass
Seasonal allergic rhinitis. Pollinosis. Hay Fever. Call it what you like. Me? I call it a month of neverending discomfort and nasal horrors.
I wake up every morning with my eyes glued shut like the cast of Facial Humiliation after a particularly gruelling shoot. After scraping the gunk away so that I can finally see again, my eyes remain puffy, swollen, itchy and ever so-slightly watery for the rest of the day.
I have to splash my face, hands and hair with water regularly throughout the day to get rid of any stray pollen that has decided to take up residence on my person in an attempt to make my whole body rebel in snotty anguish.
The sides of my nose are forever tender from blowing, wiping and removing the copious amounts of mucus that I seem to be generating. On particularly unlucky days, I get a nosebleed too.
Hay fever sufferers can never really enjoy the good weather of the summer, because of all the unpleasant side-effects.
The pollen forecast for the immediate future remains on High Alert. And all the anti-histamine in the world isn’t going to save me from a world of pain.
Give me an arctic cold winter, a raging fireplace, a good book and a generous tumbler of bourbon over this bullshit. What have I got instead? A host of physical annoyances, made infinitely worse with the constant intrusion of either Big Fucking Brother or the World Fucking Cup, straddling the popular consciousness of the nation like two over-fed, brain-addled colossi, raining shit down onto our heads at irregular intervals.
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
I wake up every morning with my eyes glued shut like the cast of Facial Humiliation after a particularly gruelling shoot. After scraping the gunk away so that I can finally see again, my eyes remain puffy, swollen, itchy and ever so-slightly watery for the rest of the day.
I have to splash my face, hands and hair with water regularly throughout the day to get rid of any stray pollen that has decided to take up residence on my person in an attempt to make my whole body rebel in snotty anguish.
The sides of my nose are forever tender from blowing, wiping and removing the copious amounts of mucus that I seem to be generating. On particularly unlucky days, I get a nosebleed too.
Hay fever sufferers can never really enjoy the good weather of the summer, because of all the unpleasant side-effects.
The pollen forecast for the immediate future remains on High Alert. And all the anti-histamine in the world isn’t going to save me from a world of pain.
Give me an arctic cold winter, a raging fireplace, a good book and a generous tumbler of bourbon over this bullshit. What have I got instead? A host of physical annoyances, made infinitely worse with the constant intrusion of either Big Fucking Brother or the World Fucking Cup, straddling the popular consciousness of the nation like two over-fed, brain-addled colossi, raining shit down onto our heads at irregular intervals.
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
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