Category: ramblin’

ramblin’

The Daily Grind

Commuting is horrible. Yes, I know, that one’s up there with gems of wisdom like “oranges are not the only fruit” or “poking oneself in the eye with a stick is a bad idea”, but it’s a truism that somehow packs some weight. I think we treat commuting as a task that we simply don’t think about. Getting to and from work is just something that has to happen. It becomes blank time, a zero point that we don’t think about unless it becomes more difficult than usual. I think that if we properly considered the time, effort and money that goes into the simple act of getting in and out of the workplace, then there would be a lot more people simply rethinking their lives and walking away.

If a train breaks down or if there’s a tube strike, then we are confronted with the true, mind-clawing horror that we have to deal with at the start and end of every day of our working lives. It becomes work on top of work, a trial to be completed before we can get on with all the other crap we have to sort out.

Otherwise, it’s a journey that’s erased as soon as it’s over. There are days when I have walked into my suite and stopped dead, realising that I have no recollection of the steps I took to get there. The bike ride to the station, the train journey, the tube, walk or bike ride to Soho – all gone. Dropped out of short term memory like veg peelings into a bin. Scraped off the brain and composted without a second thought.

I’ve often talked about the virtues of my morning commute as valuable writing time, and that’s still true. But time spent on the netbook has a second, and almost as important benefit. It kills time, compressing the half-hour spent on the fast train from Reading into an eye-blink. On the odd occasions where the batteries on my devices have drained, and I have nothing to read, that 30 minutes stretches out to something like three days. It drags interminably, and I begrudge every wasted moment.

And I consider myself lucky. My shift pattern means that I have to do this trip fourteen times in any given fortnight. An ordinary 9-to-fiver has to do it twenty times. And if you’re driving, or if you have to stand on a bus or a train, that really is time in which you can’t do anything else. The very thought of it fills me with the fear. It feels more like a punishment then a task that we willingly impose on ourselves. It’s not surprising that we wipe it as soon as it’s done.

The Sunday Lao Tzu: Three Things

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”

I think I’m at my happiest when I’m doing simple things. Reading, writing, cooking. A life lived quietly and without fuss. Today’s teaching strikes me as not just true, but directly applicable to the way I live my life. Simplicity, patience and compassion are all interconnected, and when you start to live with these three things in mind, then you are on your way towards a more contented existence.

I have always been a patient person, to the point where it becomes something of a kink. My favourite part of Christmas is the anticipation. Waiting to see how the dinner will turn out, what gifts are under the tree. As I tend to know what TLC has bought me beforehand (with the exception of The Pot, which came as a genuine, delightful surprise) the wait until I can get my mitts on the new loveliness becomes part of the pleasure of the whole experience. It’s an exquisite torture. See, told you. Kinky.

But patience also comes out of care and preparation. It’s pointless rushing a loaf of bread while it’s proving, or a slow-cooked stew while it bubbles fragrantly on the stove top. Is it a coincidence that my favourite meals are the ones that take a bit of time to prepare and cook, filling the house with delicious smells, allowing the expectancy of the meal to become part of the whole experience? I don’t think so. And of course, the food I like tends to be simple, hearty, rustic fare. I’m not a big fan of fussy over-done stuff. Although Heston Blumenthal always makes me laugh.

Compassion is a no-brainer. If you don’t live a life filled with understanding and empathy towards everyone else, if you lose your patience, then your time on the planet becomes much more complicated. People can be vain, stupid and cruel. That doesn’t mean you have to be. For the most part, getting angry with an obstacle of any kind doesn’t help matters. In fact, it can frequently make things worse. Basil Fawlty thrashing his broken down car with a tree branch is an image that springs to mind. I’ve never seen the boys at Kwik-Ft do that. Treating the people around you with a little patience, understanding and humour works wonders. Call it a charm offensive if you like, but it works a hell of a lot better than yelling and screaming.

Now, I know this is all making me sound like some sort of annoying zen guru, answering questions with yet more questions or gnomic statements, floating smugly through life. That’s not the case. The idiot in the modded Peugeot who cut me up on the way into work yesterday got the finger and a robust curse. I get angry and pissed off. I rush stuff and grumble about it. But I try to remember that simplicity, patience and compassion do work, and that sometimes all you need to do to solve a problem is to take a breath, step back and look at it differently. Sometimes, the answer really can be simpler than you think.

New Culinary Definitions: SMOZZ

Smozz is the stuff added to food to make it extra perfect. Vinegar on chips. Parmesan. Ketchup. Sweet chili sauce. It’s an embellishment. A grace note, but one without which a meal can be perfectly fine, yet not …quite …there.

Smozz is dependent on the tastes and proclivities of the individual. Most people like a dollop of ketchup with their chips, which to me is a culinary crime. Mayo, on the other hand, is a must. Those crazy Dutch really hit on something there.
Smozz is not just a savoury addition. Sweet smozz can include marshmallows on hot chocolate, or a snappy, plasticy Flake shoved at a jaunty angle into an ice cream. A grating of chocolate on your cappuccino is the very essence of smozz.

Origin: the word was first seen on a bill at an Italian restaurant, where TLC and I had ordered a small garlic bread with extra mozzarella. Garlic bread does not need a blanket of sizzling, string-melty cheese on top, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The bread was itemised on the bill as s.mozz. A new culinary term was born.

The Sunday Lao Tzu: starting small

(In the attempt to keep the blog fresh as I make the attempt to give you something new every day, I have decided to theme my Sunday posts arounds the teachings of Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism. Expect the Sunday X&HT to be a bit more philosophical, if not necessarily spiritual).

“All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.”

I don’t do new Year Resolutions, for the same reason that I no longer keep diaries. They always seem like a good idea, and I start off strongly, entering whole-heartedly into the agreement with myself to be a better person, to journal my every move. I have a stack of notebooks that have entries through the first week of January, an apologetic second burst somewhere in mid-February (when I was a teenager these usually coincided with Valentine’s Day, and consisted of bursts of woeful spite and, if things had been going really badly, love poems) then nothing. Rueful, shameful blank pages. Most of my resolutions have started and ended this way, and I view it as a sign of finally growing up that I stopped making unrealistic pledges that would be quickly abandoned.

I’ve realised that I was going about things in the wrong way. Rather than launching with both feet into a project and losing interest in the face of the hard and sustained effort that was required, I would have been better starting gently, easing into the task. This was a lesson that Lao Tzu teaches, but that Nanowrimo allowed me to apply to real life. By doing something every day, the task soon becomes a habit, then a part of your daily routine. No matter how little, the daily bit is the important bit. (Sidebar: yes, I know Nanowrimo is a 1667 word a day challenge, and that doesn’t sound like a little thing. By by breaking that task down into further 500 word chunks, it’s surprising how quickly you make your daily, weekly and monthly goals.)

The Habit is something that I hope to achieve with the PostaDay exercise. The point where I feel twitchy if there’s a danger of not posting is the point where I know I have accomplished something important.

When your objective stops being a chore, and becomes a daily pleasure, then you have succeeded in your goal.

2011: The Cleardown

NewImage.jpg
The beacon is lit. The Gateway opens. The sleeper awakes.

A sense of peace and order descends on Casa Conojito as the Xmas deccoes are packed up and put away, signalling the end of all merriness and joy for the next eleven months. It’s been a straightforward clearup, as we went minimal on the froth, frippery and frou-frou this year.

The exception to that rule is, as ever, the unknotting of the lights from the tree, a process that requires the application of non-Euclidian geometry and much swearing to complete. I was quite proud of the amount of quantum entanglement I achieved this go-round. It was an exercise in four-dimensional shared-plane dynamics that took some thought and a tearful breakdown before I applied good old Gordian theoretics to the problem and took the tree apart with the lights still attached.

Even then, the bastard things were tighter than Kylie’s dress on New Year’s Eve. The final knot-form that the lights evolved to once I had finally freed them from the tree was unsetting, otherworldly. The bundle of green wires seemed to twist serpent-like in my hands as I stuffed them back in the box. ‘Twas if somehow the form had described a pathway, a map to eldritch other dimensions. A beacon that the dwellers of these side-shifted places could follow to find their way here.

I fear for what awaits me when I go back up to the loft next Christmas. I fear that the deity whose arrival we celebrate on December 25th will not be the one we usually greet.

Ho ho ho. Cthulhu fhtagn.

This Was The Year

…that Twitter turned me into an activist.

The 38 Degrees and Avaaz guys had me signing petitions and writing angry letters to my MP (admittedly, I’ve been annoying Rob Wilson for a while now, but surely the point to democracy is to make sure your elected representative to government is aware of your needs?), forwarding links on, and in general becoming one of those people that the mainstream press like to demonise as a kneejerk reactionary. I make no apology for that. I’ve watched in horror as we ended up with a government that nobody voted for, that seems dead set on a swingeing series of cuts to essential services that is not only unjustified, but un-necessary. Not only un-necessary, but ideologically motivated. This, from Adam Ramsay on the @ukuncut blog:

…what George Osborne spotted is what right wing politicians around the world have known for the last 40 years: a disaster is a great time to radically change a country. From the privatisation of New Orleans’ schools after Katrina, to the corporate plunder of Iraq after the 2003 invasion, this trick is nothing new. Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine describes in detail how it has been used the world over.

There is a big problem. People understand this might require a big solution. And so they accept policies they would never normally countenance – policies not designed to solve the problem, but to radically change society in a way no one ever voted for.

And like this sleight of hand, Osborne’s “solutions” too are nothing new. The Conservative students I studied with at university – the generation who were born under Thatcher, and are now the researchers and aids to this government – were arguing for 30% spending cuts long before the recession. And their predecessors did too – in fact, in 1910, the Conservative Party brought down the Government rather than allow the people’s budget, the foundation of the welfare state, to pass. And they have used every opportunity since to rid this country of what they see as a dangerous socialist experiment.

And this “solution” is, of course, nothing of the sort. The idea that you solve a deficit caused by unemployment by cutting jobs is economically illiterate. Don’t take it from me – look at what is being said by the world’s leading economists, including most recent Nobel prize winners: Britain is embarking on a radical economic experiment which is not only un-necessary, but probably going to make the recession worse.

(The whole post is well worth reading if you want to whip yourself into a spiralling rage about the lies and nonsense that we are being fed about the state of our economy, it’s causes, and why the phrase “We’re all in this together” is the sickest joke of 2010.)

Twitter has also been the sharpest way to stay up to date on the happenings of the happy pranksters that have been shutting down tax avoiders Vodafone, HSBC, Boots and Topshop every weekend for a while now. Reading the streams from participants like @pennyred as stuff was happening had a giddy, unprocessed thrill to it. In events like this, the mainstream news media was left floundering to catch up.

Rest assured, there’ll be a lot more of this from me next year.

 

…that I was up on the main stage at FrightFest.

A seriously heady moment, as the writers and directors of Habeas Corpus (with the exception of Ben Woodiwiss, sadly) introduced the teaser, which was shown on the giant main screen at the Empire Leicester Square. This is a big deal, and we’re working towards getting the whole thing done in time to be screened next year. Once we can get the funding, of course… In the meantime, the final shot of the teaser is getting a rep on YouTube as “The Most Revolting Kiss EVAR”, which fills us all with a quiet sense of pride.

…that I wrote my head off.

Count ’em up. Nanowrimo and Script Frenzy this year left me with a completed 100 page graphic novel and two-thirds of a first draft of the second “Moon” novel. Five short stories. Innumerable blog posts. The thing is, I still feel like I’ve been slacking this year. God only knows what could happen if I light a fire under myself.

…that I made short films.

Dom and I finished Time Out, finally. It’s off to festivals, and we’re quietly hopeful of a screening somewhere. Meanwhile, experiments with a dirt-cheap Kodak digicamcorder and Garageband led to a flurry of creative output in July as I squirted out five short mood pieces in short order.  They were fun to do, and worked as document and commentary on a quiet moment. It’s a zen approach to film-making, and one that suits me. There will be more of these next year, promise.

…that I changed my reading habits.

Thanks to the Kindle. This thin, light, clever piece of kit has turned me back into a voracious reader and helped me to rediscover the hidden gems I had tucked in the depths of my hard drive as PDFs. My early worries about the open nature of the device were calmed as soon as I realised that it would flawlessly open just about any book format out there (and if it couldn’t I use the brilliant Calibre to convert it) and I am now a complete drooling convert. Much in the way that 2010 marked the end of my purchasing music in physical form (and, thanks to Spotify, barely buying music at all), 2011 will give the over-worked bookshelves at X&HTowers a much needed break. I’m eyeing up a couple of magazine subscriptions, as well as revisiting glorious indulgences from the past for surprisingly small amounts of money. I’m a blissful little bibliophile, I can tell you.

 

And as for 2011? Well, I want to be looking at getting something available for download on Amazon – probably Satan’s Schoolgirls as a start. Who knows, maybe even make some money off it.

Work continues on Habeas Corpus, Ghosts Of The Moon and Dom’s ongoing Banksy doco, which he hopes to have done by the end of January.

I want to start drawing more, as a complement to TLC’s interest in crafty stuff. A life drawing class is going to be vital, I feel.

 

Oh, and I pledge to blog more. No, really, I mean it this time. I’m signing up to WordPress.com’s PostADay initiative. That’s something new from me every single bloody day. You’re going to be sick of me by the the time I give up some time in February. There’s a very good chance, therefore, that X&HT will devolve into single line posts, photos and the occasional recipe. It’ll be different, that’s fur shure.

Right. 2011. Here we flippin’ well GO.

 

 

 

Life During Nano: Something for December, Perhaps

OK, this has nothing to do with anything apart from the fact that working on NanoWriMo tends to tune your brain into slightly different frequencies and you pick up on connections that you maybe wouldn’t normally notice.

Also, that you write in run-on sentences more. They normally get cut in half in the edit. But anyway.

Charlie Stross recently wrote a wonderful, curmudgeonly piece on steampunk (here it is). He made the point that the innovations of the early stories have devolved into mere set-dressing. If steampunk authors took the time to look at the worlds they were building, there would be very little glamour to be had, and a great deal of poverty and deprivation. He also cracked the joke that steampunk is what happens when goths discover brown, which made me snort tea back into my mug through my nose. He called out SF sites Tor.com and i09 as being particularly to blame for the spike in interest in the genre.

This is pretty nicely timed, as Tor have just been running a Steampunk fortnight. A lot of the critical thought and articles have been on the reinvention of the genre. Amal El-Mohtar’s piece, Winding Down The House is especially good in this regard, and successfully makes the point that steampunk’s tropes and conventions really are holding things back. If steampunk is to grow and stay interesting, it needs to move away from the Victoriana/Old West/Ruritanian bit, and find new directions.

Amal points out her frustrations neatly here:

I wrote a story in what, to my mind, would be a steampunky Damascus: a Damascus that was part of a vibrant trading nation in its own right, that would not be colonised by European powers, where women displayed their trades by the patterns of braids and knots in their hair, and where some women were pioneering the art of crafting dream-provoking devices through new gem-cutting techniques.

Once I’d written it, though, I found myself uncertain whether or not it was steampunk. It didn’t look like anything called steampunk that I’d seen. Sure, there were goggles involved in gem-crafting, and sure, copper was a necessary component of the dream-device—but where was the steam? My editor asked the same question, and suggested my problem could be fixed by a liberal application of steamworks to the setting. Who could naysay me if my story had all the trappings of the subgenre?

Syria, you may be aware, is a fairly arid country. There are better things to do with water than make steam.

Both articles are worth a read, not just as criticisms of the subgenre, but as roadmaps to a new future past.

And I have an unfinished steampunk book that could use a little attention…

 

RED and the finer points of growing up rather than old

TLC and I went to the pictures yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed RED, a movie about Special Ops killers coming out of retirement after their lives are threatened by a spectre from their past. This makes it sounds all grim-faced and dark, and that’s exactly how the graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner reads. It is a dark little tale with very little in the way of humour or even light patches, and a very unhappy ending.

The film is nothing like that. It takes Warren’s themes and setpieces and ties them into a story that bears only passing resemblance to the book. This is a very good thing. It’s one of the most entertaining films I’ve seen in a while, with a script that understands the mechanics of the action movie, but winks and blows them a kiss as it breezes by. It’s a lot of fun, but it also has a heart and backbone, and takes time to make the point that being retired doesn’t make you useless. Far from it. Frank Moses, the RED of the title, played as Bruce Willis by Bruce Willis, is always one step ahead, always capable of thinking on his feet. He’s not an impotent old man or an easy target. And he’s even mature enough to shrug off the jibes about his hair.

There’s a wonderful moment towards the end of the film when he explains to his opponent Cooper (played with aplomb and empathy by Karl Urban, who I’m now very excited to see as Judge Dredd) about what it has taken to bring him here, and the awful lessons he’s had to learn. He is the lonely, unstoppable ronin because he has lost everything he’s ever cared about. The last hurrah that RED documents so entertainingly is his last chance at redemption, rather than revenge. It’s a chilling moment that brings home a few home truths about the process of growing up and growing old, and the things we have to lose along the way.

For me, RED’s major strength is in the casting of its female characters. These are front and centre, the engine of the story rather than the brakes. Rebecca Pidgeon is sharply efficient as the cold Control of Urban’s killer. Helen Mirren is regal and deadly, and you can just tell she was having a blast with the heavy artillery. [SPOILER ALERT] Even the commuter that John Malkovich’s character threatens with a gun comes back at him with a rocket launcher. [/SPOILER ALERT]

But it’s Mary-Louise Parker that makes the show for me. Goofy, sweet and tough all at once, always ready for a challenge and an adventure. There are no simpering dolly-birds here. You can see from the first minute of the film why Frank is so smitten with her. I am too.

Interestingly, there were a bunch of screensurfers in the back row. You know the sort, kids that’ll get in for one film then stick around all day moving from screen to screen. They were clearly intent on just chatting and pissing around, until the cinema as a whole made their feelings perfectly plain. A cinema, incidentally, full of people in their thirties and forties – the target audience for RED. An aural eye-roll (how do kids DO that?) and a muttered “Cuh, old people” was the closest we got to rebellion, and they sloped away minutes before the explosive end to the film. Their loss, in all kinds of ways. There was a lesson to be learned, if they could have been bothered to listen.

Warren gives us his insight into the story and themes of RED in a piece for the Guardian HERE. The figure of the Unretired Hero isn’t going away anytime soon.

Sibling Rivalry

I guess you have to have a brother to appreciate the evil genius of Ed Milliband’s stealth insult to his brother David during his acceptance speech as the new Labour leader. It was beautifully crafted and exquisitely judged for maximum impact in an arena where the older boy could do nothing about it.

Ed, while describing his brother in glowing terms, could have called him talented. He could have called him skilled, a great statesman, a credit to the party.

No. Ed called his brother “special”. And I just bet he had to resist the temptation to slide his tongue between his teeth and lower lip and jut out his jaw while he said it. It was a playground diss brought starkly into the adult world, and short of flapping his hands at right angles on either side of his face while doing it, I don’t think Ed could have made his point more clearly.* David, the heir apparent to the Labour throne, has been beaten to the prize, and Ed found a way to really rub his brother’s nose in a big stinky pile of defeat.

It’s telling, doncha think, that David has decided to back out of a role in the Shadow Cabinet. His reasoning? “Ed is my brother.” That says it all. David’s clearly at the point where he can’t even stand to be in the same room as the smirking brat who’s just stomped on his dreams. Christmas should be interesting round at the Milliband’s this year. Hilariously, the Asian Tribute has suggested that their mother may become involved in mediating disputes. “David. GO TO YOUR ROOM. I don’t care what your brother called you! ”

Like I said, you need to have a brother and be a brother to understand the dynamics at play. The battle for turf, the struggle for supremacy in the most minor way perceivable (who gets the last spud, the better birthday present, the later bedtime) is the red thread that binds the fraternal relationship together. And victory HAS to be celebrated, or else it is hardly a victory at all. Even if it’s the face pull, or the whispered insult. The fact that Ed has pulled off this simple feat in such a classy way is cause for applause. This man has what it takes to make his way in the brutal playground of the political word.

It’s a real shame that the Millibands won’t be in the Cabinet together. I have a very clear image of the first meeting under the new regime. The brothers will be seated opposite each other. There will be lots of glowering eye contact. David will make a snide comment, or Ed will mutter something under his breath. Someone will call someone else a mong. It won’t take much. The meeting will end in chaos as David launches himself across the table at Ed, his face a snarling mask.

The image of Harriet Harman prying the Brawling Millibands apart would have kept me warm all winter.

*I understand the moral and social issues behind the word and the gesture, but they’re a subject for a much more wide ranging post. This is not the time. If you take offence at the fact that I find playground disability taunts amusing, then please, meet me in the comments and we’ll talk.