Category: Blog

The Day Before Tomorrow

I’ve become much more politically active over the past couple of years. I don’t mean in terms of joining a particular party, going to demos and the like. This is a self-proclaimed introvert talking, after all. Some days you’re lucky to get me out of the house. But I have found that I’m reading political blogs, signing petitions and posting about issues that are desperately important to me. Things like freedom of speech and expression. The right to privacy. An unassailable Human Rights Act. Protection of the vulnerable. Tolerance for all, regardless of skin colour, religion or cultural differences.

I’m writing and acting on these issues because I increasingly see them under threat. I’ve been stopped and searched twice under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, for no reason that I can see other than the bulky backpack I toted around back then (my Gabe bag of choice is considerably slimmer nowadays, and it’s not just out of consideration towards my back). It’s becoming more and more difficult to take a photo on the street these days without a uniformed jobsworth demanding to see the contents of your memory card. Even bloody Facebook is making it virtually impossible to keep control of what I can and cannot share with the world. (I know, I know, the government has nothing to do with Facebook. But it keeps my righteous anger simmering nicely.)

But I remain hopeful, which is why I campaign and sign and write letter after letter to my MP. I believe that once people organise, pool their resources and knowledge and make a stand against issues that concern them, then things can change. I contribute regularly to groups like 38 Degrees, the anti-BNP organisation Hope Not Hate, and have been a paid up member of Amnesty International for years. I’m not telling you this to brag or to show off my wishywashy liberal credentials. I’m telling you this to make it clear that by sitting at a laptop for a half-hour a day and bashing out an angry letter or two, you can genuinely make a difference. Thanks to online campaigning, the Liberal Democrat stance on the Digital Economy Bill, the awful, flawed, rushed piece of legislation that seeks to cut off a family’s internet connection based on an unverified accusation of copyright infringement, has hardened to the point where it’s repeal is now policy.

Furthermore, thanks to blogs like Angry Mob, Tabloid Watch and Enemies Of Reason, I now feel much more secure in my ability to counter the poison spouted by rags like the Mail and the Express about immigration and Europe. I learnt early on to take anything I read in papers with a large handful of salt, and that’s considerably more palatable than the bitter gall that the Murdoch, Desmond and Rotherhithe papers gush on a daily basis. I find it worrying that much of the guff that’s spouted by the BNP and UKIP comes directly from the unsubstantiated lies that these papers serve up on their front pages and editorials.

Tomorrow, then, there’s a chance to change all that, or at least point our nose away from the brow of the waterfall. These past couple of weeks have been utterly illuminating, as the two main parties suddenly see an electorate sickened beyond patience with the current political system, and scurry wildly from one extreme to the other in a desperate bid for power. Frankly, they’re as bad as each other. Better writers than me can come up with a pretty long list of what Labour have done to the country over the last decade and a half, but I’m also absolutely convinced that if the Tories were in power at any point in that period, they would have made the same choices, if not worse. For the Cameronbot to talk about change when a cursory glance at the policies makes it clear that they’re offering the same old bullying tactics towards the poor and helpless, focussing cuts in public spending towards the services that do the most good.

I think it should be pretty plain by now which way I’m voting tomorrow, so I won’t be crass enough to spell it out. But I will point out that I’m in the fortunate position of being able to vote both tactically, and towards my conscience, towards the path that I feel will do the most good.

If anyone reading this is planning not to vote tomorrow, then can I urge you to think again? This is the first time in a generation that the public in general has been so involved in an election campaign, and I’m fascinated to see what the turnout is going to be, and whether we wake up on Friday morning to a genuinely new political landscape. Arguing that “it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in” is a specious and reductive argument, and one for which I no longer have any patience. That’s the sort of argument that has led to painfully low voter turnouts, and the smug, unrepresentative government that we have suffered for far too long. We can do better. And we have the chance, tomorrow. Get your asses to a booth, and make your voice heard.

If you’re still not sure of who to vote for, spend five minutes with Votematch, which should point you in the right direction.

Dear Rob

Dear Rob,

You must be sick of hearing from me by now, but I promise this letter will be the last one you receive before the election.

We came into this together, you and I. I had moved into the area not six months before the 2005 general election that made you my MP, and something about you made me feel that I needed to keep my eye on you. Maybe it had something to do with the way you were always in the local papers. Your slick demeanour. Maybe it was simply because you lived just down the road from me. Whatever it was, you piqued my interest, and I looked you up on TheyWorkForYou, and started seeing just what it was you had to offer my adopted hometown.

I’ll be frank, at first you weren’t doing anything to allay my suspicions. You questions in the House were partisan and party-tactical, rather than seeming to show any kind of concern for the constituency. But slowly, this began to change. Your open and honest approach to your expenses means that you are one of the very few MPs in the House who have a clear record on the scandal. Your support for local business, and the fact that you’re willing to get behind initiatives like Camra’s campaign to save the British pub have led me to view you with respect. And if I wrote to you, dashing off an angry email about libel reform or the Digital Economy Bill, you wrote back. It’s always exciting to get a letter from your MP on that lovely, creamy Commons notepaper.

It’s with no small measure of regret, then, that I have to tell you that you do not have my vote on May 6th. I don’t ever take my responsibilities as a citizen lightly, and I have carefully read the manifestoes of all three leading parties, as well as indulging in those neat little online quizzes that address policies rather than personalities. Boy, it was a shock to find out that I agreed with UKIP on something.

But for the most part, my choice is clear. My politics veer towards openness and freedom of information, towards compassion to the down-trodden and less-fortunate, towards education as a way of curing the kind of knee-jerk paranoia and blind hatred that frequently comes out of ignorance or simple misunderstanding.

Simply, I do not believe that Britain is broken. I believe that we are living in an age where there war, poverty and hatred have never been at lower levels. We live in a country free of religious and ideological persecution. We are watched, but we watch too, and our press is free to expose corruption and abuse of privilege. I choose to vote for a party that does not come up with the same old cliches and paranoia, that chooses not to demonise children and those who come to our country in search of a better way of life.

Further, I certainly will not vote for a party whose main manifesto pledge seems to be that we should do the government’s work for them, by signing up to run schools and hospital trusts. This is a bit rich following the grass-roots campaign that sprung up against the Digital Economy Bill. Hundreds of thousands of voters wrote to their MPs and ask them not to rush through a fundamentally compromised piece of legislation. They did it anyway, in rushed debates in an almost empty house.  Writing to me afterwards and saying:

Even if every single Conservative and Liberal Democrat MP voted against the Bill, it would still have passed if every Labour MP had turned up to vote.

is fair enough. But the Tories chose to abstain from the vote, which is even more distasteful. At that point it had become obvious that your party had already chosen to deal with the Government on this issue, and their absence from the house during the three readings of the Bill is galling in it’s sheer disregard for public opinion. If you’d chosen to make a fight of it, I might have been impressed, and who knows, the result might have been different. But you and your colleagues simply turned your back, choosing not to bother.

So, here we are. I honestly wish you the best in the upcoming election. After all, we’ve been through some turbulent times together.

If you win on May 6th, expect to be hearing from me.

Best Wishes,

Rob.

Oh, and I love your new website, by the way.

Rabbit, run.

I have a totem. A familiar, if you will. A spirit animal that is with me always, a nurturing friendly presence that helps to define, while at the same time disguising me. In some ways it is akin to the daemons of Philip Pullman, in others closer to a superhero’s secret identity. If you have seen me on the internet at all, you have seen my familiar too. I allow him to represent me out in the world.

I’m talking about the rabbit. More specifically, I’m talking about Frank Kozik’s Smorking Labbit, who in different guises serves as my avatar, my game face.

I have been fascinated by rabbits for a very long time. Mankind has an ambivalent relationship to them. On the one hand we view them as coote widdul bunnies, and keep them as pets, and wail like the world has ended when a fox gets into the hutch and chomps them up. At the same time, they are pests, turning verdant grassland into desert, breeding exponentially, causing massive damage and subsidence as they dig out their runs.

In myth and popular culture the rabbit is seen as both trickster and messenger. I’m thinking of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, the herald to new and psychedelic experiences. This figure reappears in the Jefferson Airplane song of the same name, and in The Matrix. When Neo is invited to “follow the white rabbit”, you know he’s not going to be led to the nearest McDonalds.

As trickster, of course, the popular embodiment is Bugs Bunny. Ostensibly, his battles with Elmer Fudd are simple hunter/prey stories. Except we know that the end to the story will not be Elmer sitting down to wabbit stew. But there’s a sheer glee to proceedings, and you know that Bugs delights on getting one over on his foe. He’s not looking to get away from Elmer. He’s looking to beat him. Br’er Rabbit’s adventures in the Song Of The South have a similar resonance. In those tales, though, danger is a little closer to the surface. You get the feeling from reading the stories that Br’er Rabbit is really thinking on his feet, surviving on his wits. If he fails, he’s dinner.

Finally, of course, there’s Roger Rabbit. He’s motivated by love of Jessica of course, but also by a creative urge. Witness the point where he and Eddie Valiant are handcuffed together. He can free himself, of course. But only when it’s funny to do so. This speaks very clearly to me as a writer. Going through hoops purely for comedic or dramatic effect – that’s me all over.

All these characters are masters of disguise too. They are fluid, ever-changing, trying on new clothes and faces in a whirl of re-invention. Bugs is especially mercurial, and his penchant for cross-dressing is well-known, and has led to endless internet discussion on his sexuality. I’m not so sure. I think it’s more the case that he’s bursting to constantly try new ideas, new ways of winding up Elmer, and he knows that dressing up as a girl is one way of getting a rise out of his enemy. Erm, figuratively speaking, of course. Although the question should be asked…

Me neither. Jessica Rabbit, now…

Ahem. Yes, well, moving on.

Frank Kozik is an American artist best known for his concert posters, coming out of the underground rock scene of the early eighties. But to me his most enduring creation will always be the Smorking Labbit. It embodies everything I love about their mythic qualities. It can be cute and decidedly not at the same time. And, because of the nature of the drawing, open to reinvention and reinterpretation. This really speaks to me. I love the idea of my disguise being able to wear a disguise. He can be custom fitted for different events and fora.
This here is the classic black labbit, sweet but a bit fierce. My icon of choice, and possibly ink someday.

This little fella is was up until recently my Facebook … face…,
Until I replaced him with this Kent Culotta image, which somehow seemed a bit more me.
And this chappie is ideal for SF and steampunk forums.

This is really just scratching the icing on the metaphor. Do an image search on smorking labbit and you can see how multifarious my little daemon can be.

One last story, which in a way describes where the rabbit idea came from in the first place. When TLC and I first started seeing each other, we were living a five minute walk apart. It was easy for me to spend more and more time at her place, until I had practically moved in. At which point I discovered that her flatmate had coined a nickname for me.

I was “Bobsy Rabbit, the lodger.”

It’s all been downhill from there, really.

In Defence Of The Thong Song

I am here to celebrate one of the more extraordinary moments in modern music of the last 10 years. A moment that marries head-wreckingly crass lyrics to music of astonishing grace and power. A moment that would redefine the way young men and women comported themselves on the dance floor. A moment that, for a fleeting instant, made platinum hair dye the thing.

You’ve got it. I’m talking about The Thong Song.

Monday night’s Glee (fantastic show. Are you watching it? Why aren’t you watching it? What are you, some kind of idiot? It’s got hotties of all kinds, musical numbers and Jane Goddamn Lynch. Go, hit a catch up service. This’ll wait.) featured an attempt to mash up My Fair Lady’s I could Have Danced All Night with the aforementioned Sisqo classic. The project was doomed to failure. Well, of course it was. The My Fair Lady song is trite, by the numbers Lerner/Loewe songcraft, designed to shunt the story of Eliza and Professor Higgins forward. The Thong Song is much, much more than that. Musically and lyrically, it’s on a completely different plane.

The dynamic way in which The Thong Song changes and mutates through it’s agreeably short running time means that you’re never more than a minute away from a new surprise, another revelation. The song starts simply, with a pretty string filigree. This is soon superseded (although never overwhelmed. This simple figure is the sinuous backbone of the track) by a lithe, bouncing backbeat, the
perfect accompaniment for Sisqo’s sing-rapping.

This in itself is a wonder, veering from clever wordplay and neat quotes from other songs (the “Living La Vida Loca” moment springs to mind strongly here) to sheer grunting neanderthal monosyllably. The prime example is the moment leading up to the chorus.

“She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck,
Thighs like whut, whut, whut,
Baby move your butt, butt, butt…”

Which would be bad enough, but he’s so pleased with that clanging chunk of proto-rhyme and rotten imagery that he repeats it. After telling us he’s going to repeat it.

“I think I’ll sing it again.”

Please don’t. Or if you do, at least, find something to compare your subject’s thighs to.

But even here, there’s a purpose. The delivery and repitition are entirely deliberate. Sisqo sounds breathless here, literally panting with lust. Of course he’s gonna sing it again. He wants to make sure we get it. By acting dumb, he’s playing clever.

The chorus is a different entity, taking our hero’s grunts and pants and transforming them in an instant into a thing of beauty. Two harmonies wind around and about each other like a pair of dancers. Sisqo is hollering at the top of the stack, giving the mix some fire.

The third verse is the point where I would argue that the video improves on the original mix of the song. Note here how during the dance on the beach Sisqo and his back-up dancers do a pronounced stomp that kicks up a little CGI shockwave. This shock is echoed with a heavy bass thud that hits on the offbeat and is perfectly in time every time. It’s a lovely addition, and one that means I find the standard mix of the Thong Song ever so slightly lacking.

(Caveat: the video is otherwise dreadful. You’re best bet is to run it in Youtube and tuck that tab away. Unless you like watching oiled-up girls in thongs, of course.)

After all this, the best is still to come. There has been a steady but stealthy build in the intensity of the track, but the gorgeous key change at (3:17) just kicks things up into orbit. Sisqo is in a state of glory here, transported to the point where he can barely string a coherent line together. It’s an orgiastic, euphonious peak to a song that interweaves the sacred and the profane in a way that only the best pop music, hell, the best music full stop, can do.

It’s poor and lazy of the Glee writers, who are normally spot on with their musical choices, to make the blunt assertion that the show tune is in any way superior to Sisqo’s masterpiece. Making it the favourite song of the brutish football coach Tanaka merely compounds the error, painting The Thong Song as a track that only jocks and lowbrows could love.

Well, sorry, I’m neither, and I think it’s the nuts. It’s a track that rewards repeated listens with new treats and flourishes. Also. it’s a hell of a lot more fun to dance to than anything from My Fair Lady.

Who’s with me? Let me see your booty go.

Coming up: Will Smith’s Boom! Shake The Room.

A (Quiet) Word In Your Ear


In the process of wandering the great and echoing halls of the interwebs over the past few days, I’ve come across several posts and a whole site dedicated to the subject of the introvert. You know the type. Shy, retiring. Doesn’t talk much. Bit of a downer. Clumsy in social settings. Keeps himself to himself.

Well, that’s the common conception, anyway. My reading on the subject have brought up a very different conclusion. One that had me bookmarking pages in delighted relief, as I recognised myself more and more in what was being said, and the discussions afterwards.

The epiphany came at the end of this post in The Atlantic by Johnathon Rauch. I realised that being an introvert was not a choice, but an orientation. This was simply who I was.

So, Readership, the time has come to out myself.

My name is Rob Wickings, and I am an introvert.

Let me explain myself. I came across the Atlantic post, and the astonishing reaction to it while I was at work. (ahem. On a lunch break, of course.) My job ensures that I spend large portions of the day alone, and in relative quiet. Visitors often wonder whether I have been driven mad by the isolated nature of the work. Not so. In fact, it’s very much the opposite. I’ve always been completely comfortable in my own company. I can think, perhaps play a little music. Mostly, though, I’m just happy to sit quietly and watch the images flow across my screen.

The good part of the job is it’s shift-based nature. I get time off in the week. This is a rare delight, padding around the house on my own, cooking, writing, maybe wandering into town to browse bookshops or catch a movie. I’ll chat amicably to shop assistants or passers-by if approached, but otherwise I’m fine just to be quiet and do my own thing.

This is starting to make me sound like a bit of a hermit, which could not be further from the truth. On a day off, I’m happiest at the moment that I hear the key in the door that tells me TLC is home. I have a tight circle of good friends, who I see regularly. I’ve even done karaoke, furfuxache. The one thing I am not, is shy. (OR entirely conversant with sentence construction, it would appear. Hi ho.)

But I’m not especially gregarious. Large parties bother and worry me. I’m terrible at small talk, lousy at gossip and a little bit deaf. This makes clubs and pubs with loud music a bit of a nightmare, unless I’m with a core of people I know and trust. I’ll do them, and can have a good time, but you’ll find I want to go sooner rather than later. Dinner parties, smaller gatherings, barbeques – yeah, fine, no problem. I love people … in small doses. Big gatherings just fluster and exhaust me.

My main bugbear is the telephone. I want to apologise to everyone I know who have ever felt that I have rushed or needlessly cut short a phone conversation. It’s not you. It’s the vector of communication. It cuts off at least half of my chatting skills. If I’m on the phone to you I can’t pull faces, flap my hands about, sketch in the air, shrug, flinch or mime. I tend to think before I speak, which means there’s usually quite a bit of dead air. I just can’t chat on the phone the way I can face-to-face, and it drives me nuts. It should not, then, be a surprise that my choice of phone is one that puts texting and email capabilities front and centre. In fact, the argument that the iPhone’s telephony is it’s weakest feature was just another plus for me.

And yes, I am embarrassed to say, I do screen my calls, and if I’m not in the mood to talk I will let that call drop to voicemail until I’m feeling more chatty. It’s nothing personal. Honestly, it’s not. I’d just rather talk to YOU, not some ghostly approximation. (There are exceptions, of course. Get me on the phone to my best mate from school, and I will happily yak for hours. I think that’s mostly because this is the only way we’re able to talk at length is on the phone. On the rare occasions we DO meet face-to-face, well, then it is kind of difficult to shut us up. And I don’t let calls from TLC purposefully ring out. That’s one voice I don’t tire of, ever.)

The internet has liberated the introvert. It shouldn’t be a surprise that I spend so much time on it. I can express myself in subtle, rich and expansive ways. I CAN SHOUT or whisper. You can always tell when I don’t really mean that insult ;-). Plus, I love to read, and I’m insatiably curious. Frequently I will have a laptop and a book open at the same time, and often the telly will be on as well. My headspace is the place where I feel most comfortable, and the web has given me access to the world and lots of new friends, meeting socially when I feel ready, and on my own terms. It’s a win-win for me, and for a lot of people out there just like me who have absolutely blossomed without all that tedious mucking about in clubs, bars and cafés. Does this make the introvert socially inept? No, of course not, and screw you if you think that. We simply socialise in a slightly different way.

So, what have we learnt? Well, we’ve learnt that I can’t shut up when I get the bit between my teeth, certainly. I’ve discovered that I’m not quite so much of a weirdo as I thought I was, and that’s incredibly liberating.

Your required reading for the day is The Introvert’s Corner, in which Sophia Dembling talks wittily and insightfully about living a quiet life in a noisy world. I can recommend the comments thread on each post, by the way. Typically for a site full of introverts, they tend to be erudite, clever and funny. Features of the persuasion in general, I have to say. We may not be loud, but we’re as sharp and bright as a box of new pins.

And the mailbox for Johnathon Rauch’s original article is well worth a look, too.

Thank you for listening. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a little quiet time.

So Long, Dan O’Bannon

I was very sad to hear of the death last week of Dan O’Bannon, one of the greats of SF and horror cinema. As the co-writer of Alien, he gave us Ellen Ripley. With Total Recall, he wrote one of the best Philip K. Dick adaptations to make it onto the screen, and certainly the only one where Arnold Shwartzenegger pulls a tracking device the size of a tennis ball out of his nose. With Return Of The Living Dead, he hit the hat trick, with the first appearance of fast moving zombies, giving the genre one of it’s most enduring tropes (BRAAAINS!), as well as writing one of the best lines in horror movies to date.

And of course, he was there at the beginning of John Carpenter’s career, co-writing the script of Dark Star as well as starring as the nutzoid Sgt Pinbeck, whose battle with a rubber ball alien is one of the sheer joys of the movie.

Coilhouse has a fine tribute of clips and previews up for a man that has had a significant impact on the genre and movies I love the best.

Some More Thoughts On Genre

This post will be a bit random, I’m afraid, but I can’t really find a way to make anything coherent out of them, so feel free to view it as a bit of a braindump.

1. I like cross-genre stuff best. My favourite John Carpenter movie is Escape From Precinct 13, which is effectively a zombie siege movie hashed up with a blacker-than-black film noir and fairly explicit tips to the hat to the westerns of Howard Hawks. My favourite fantasy writer is KJ Parker, whose novels are exquisitely-researched military procedurals that just happen to be set in a made-up land. To my mind genre fiction of any kind is at it’s best when it takes the standard tropes and furniture and tweaks it.

2. I love zombie films (hi to everyone at Zombie Command who wanders in, BTW) but I reckon the reason I like them the best is because they are effectively dystopian science fiction. They’re end-of-the-world stories writ large. They’re infection-panic, fear of the silent invader/Red Menace noir. Think about it. Zombie films rarely have star casts, mainly because you like that frisson that just about any character in there could be turned. No-one is safe from the de-humanising influences that batter at your doors and windows, waiting patiently to grab at you and infect you if you let your guard down for a second. That’s classic 50s I Married A Communist From Outer Space paranoia.

I’d go further and say that the recent trend for running zombies makes this even more explicit, because a running zombie simply isn’t scary. A horde of running zombies even less so. Then you’re in the arena in which James Cameron’s ALIENS played so effectively. I thought Zac Snyder’s remake of Dawn of The Dead was one of the best SF films of recent years, but I didn’t jump or scream like a girl once. (another reason why TLC hates going to see movies with me. I do so get sucked into the action…)

The best example of this cross-connection between the two genres to my mind is Philip Kaufman’s 1979 version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. It’s genuinely creepy, and utterly disorienting as everyone you think you know and trust becomes something … other.

3. Moving back to my earlier post for a second, the brilliant quote from Tamzin Outhwaite came from Dave Langford’s Ansible, the most Hugoed fanzine ever, and a must read for SF fans anywhere. It’s particularly good on the media’s view of SF as a whole, and those that enjoy it in particular (hint: it’s never a particularly flattering view) and skewers the increasingly prelavent claim from actors, writers and directors that the piece of SF that they’ve written/directed/appeared in isn’t SF because… well, try out the random sampler of quotes and see what I mean.

4. One last thing. Fans of the fantastic in general must have been saddened by the news that Robert Holdstock, one of our greatest fantasy – no, scrub that, one of the finest English novelists of the last 40 years, died suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of November. His work, most famously in the extraordinary novel Mythago Wood, dealt with the power of myth and legend, and in the way that our history and the lives of our imagination can frequently intertwine. Here’s the Guardian obit, but really all I can suggest by way of a memorial is to ask you to read Mythago Wood if you haven’t already done so. A whole new world awaits you.