A Letter To Eugene Gershin

In my mailbox this morning…

“Hi. My name is Eugene Gershin. Perhaps we have met online, but more probably you don’t know me from Adam. I monitor blogs for SamsonBlinded, and came across your post.

I’d like to welcome you to look at Obadiah Shoher’s blog. Obadiah – an anonymous Israeli politician – writes extremely controversial articles about Israel, the Middle East politics, and terrorism.
Shoher is equally critical of Jewish and Muslim myths, and advocates political rationalism instead of moralizing.
Google banned our site from the AdWords, Yahoo blocked most pages, and Amazon deleted all reviews of Obadiah’s book, Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict.
Nevertheless, 170,000 people from 78 countries read the book.

Various Internet providers ban us periodically, but you can look up the site on search engines. The mirror www.terrorism-in-israel.com/blog currently works.

Please help us spread Obadiah’s message, and mention the blog in one of your posts, or link to us from theuglytruth.blogspot.com. I would greatly appreciate your comments.

Best wishes,
Eugene Gershin.”


Dear Eugene,
Thank you for taking the time to read the blog. I’m interested to know which of my posts you read to make you think I would be interested in the writings of Obidiah Shoher. Presumably not the ones featuring comedy vegetables.
Despite your dark insinuations, I found it remarkably easy to find references to his work online, and indeed the book is available on Amazon, complete with a user-friendly glimpse at an extract.
On reading the material online, I have to admit to a slight feeling of disquiet. Actually, make that a honking great lorryload.
Perhaps I misread Obidiah’s intentions. Perhaps his work is intended as a modern-day satire on Machiavelli’s book, “The Prince.” Please tell me that he’s joking when he talks about deploying biological and nuclear weapons at Palestine. Or sending troupes of “Indian mercenaries” into the region as Trojan horses. What kind of Indians he’s talking about is not made clear. If he’s expecting floods of Iroquois to tear into the West Bank on ponies, he may be disappointed. I doubt that the Native American community are that willing to do the bidding of a pseudonymous politician who doesn’t have enough belief in his reactionary, eye-swivellingly lunatic pronouncements to publish them under his own name.

Thank you for forwarding me on the link to his blog. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter. I’ve found out enough through the perfunctory Googlege that is all this material deserves to realise that the man is either a comedy genius or a raving nutbag. And we all know how close the line between the two can be.

Yours, not knowing whether to laugh or cry,

Rob Wickings.

(This is what I get for putting The Ugly Truth on Britblog. To think, I used to pine for readers.

(We return to the amusing veg and comic book references tomorrow.

eyethangyew.))

The Birthday That Cannot Be Named

Well, that snuck up on me.

I’m trying to be positive about the whole experience. A bacon sarnie, a cappuchino and R.E.M. saw me right this morning, and I now have a manifesto for my manhood.
ahem

“I’m breaking through
I’m bending spoons
I’m keeping flowers in full bloom
I’m looking for answers from the great beyond…”

thank you.

However, I am still prone to the odd moodswing.

Blogging from an armchair


Things are moving rapidly towards The Birthday That Must Not Be Named, and as the big treat for a big boy, please enjoy the sight of me giving the love to my new MacBook.
Wireless has been set up as part of the deal. Thus, TLC and I are now sat next to each other in the front room, on seperate laptops, not talking to each other.
I sent her a flattering PM earlier that raised a smile, though.

50,052

So, at midnight ought six last night, I finally hit the fifty grand mark on my Nanowrimo project. I’m now one of the (so-far) 5500 people who’ve made it to the blue bar mark, and can show off with the sexy wee icon you see here.
The story won’t end there, in all senses of the word. I reckon the finished article will be close to 60,000 words, or around the 200 page mark. A good fast dirty read, which was exactly what I’d planned. I’ll spend next week getting the story finished, then put it away before polishing it and seeing if anyone’s interested. which realistically means the new year..
It’s been an amazing experience, and one where I only felt half in control of the story. It’s gone to places I’d never had expected. it’s been like hanging onto a wild horse, being able to control the general direction it’s galloping in, but being unable to prevent it from taking jinks and sidetracks along the way. So, yay me. I’m having a day off. Off out for celebratory drinks tonight, then back to it tomorrow.

Twenty Grand

After some frantic typing this weekend, I bumped my NaNoWriMo word count up to 20,000 words. Big glow of achievement there, but I still have an awfully long way to go, and the days are slipping past rather more quickly than I’d like.
But what an experience it’s turning into. The story has taken twists and turns I honestly wouldn’t have believed. Characters have changed, their motivations flipping 180 degrees. I’m loving it, although I still have to force myself to open the laptop sometimes. I could get into this writing every day bit…

On Cinematic and literary horror

The Frightfest all-nighter at the ICA last weekend was a huge laugh, and if some of the films were a bit on the lame side, one at least was very worthwhile.
My capsule reviews of each, in order of reverse order of suckiness:

5) Re-Cycle: the Pang Brothers watch Mirrormask and decide that pretty looking incomprehensible fantasy about the blurring between the real and the fictional world is a good idea. Muddled, disjointed, syrupy, maudlin, dull. It was saddled with the worst subtitling I’ve seen in a long while, that kept switching the sex of a fairly pivotal character. Although I had to smile at the writer’s report of a mysterious vortex in the alley behind her building. “The sucking force accumulates.” How very true. Everyone caught a nap while this was on.

4) Gone: Working Title move into the horror field, and come up with a thick slice of bland cheese on white bread, no crusts. Two British backpackers meed up with an American guy, who may not be what he seeeeems. Except he is, and is so unrelentingly creepy throughout that you wonder why any sane person would come within 50 yards of him, let alone drive across the Northern Territories in his skanky old van. The first half hour is effectively a promo for the Australian Tourist Board. Not much of anything, really.

3) Heartstopper: A serial killer comes back from the dead to hunt teens in an abandoned hospital. Directed by Bob Keen, the FX guru, so the goop quotient is high, but everything else is horror by numbers. The script is absolute bobbins, the acting not much better. Robert Englund’s in it. Once he gets killed you may as well not bother. (oh, sorry. SPOILER. Don’t read the previous sentence.)

2) The Raven: a reissue of Roger Corman’s 1954 horror comedy. Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson chew up the cheapo scenery on a bizarre little number exceedingly loosely based on the Edgar Allen Poe story. More charm, invention and bad jokes than any of the other three films put together.

1) The Chumscrubber: Not really a horror film, first of all. It’s been described as kind of like Donnie Darko. My feeling is more American Beauty, or maybe Brick. It’s a tale of dislocation, paranioa and psychosis in the American suburbs. The hugely impressive cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Alison Janney and William Fichtner largely play caricatures. It’s down to the kids, Camilla Bella and notably Jamie Bell to pull out the realism and give this tale of a kidnapping gone wrong some heart and guts. Chumscrubber contained the one moment that made a room full of hardened horror fans cry out in disgust, which has to be a good thing. This was a last minute replacement for Turistas (Hostel in Brazil, pretty much). It’s a brave choice, and an absolute corker.

Recommendations when stumbling out of a central London cinema at quarter to eight on a Sunday morning – the Stockpot on Panton Street. A decent sized breakfast for under a fiver. And the look on the manager’s face when the living dead came stumbling through his door was just priceless.

In NaNoWriMo news: ticking away quite nicely, and just barely on schedule, although a weekend hammering away on the laptop couldn’t hurt the wordcount. Clicking on the participant logo in the sidebar will take you to my profile page (I’m calling myself Conojito online at the mo, don’t ask why, it’s a dull and pathetic story) where you can read the prologue and the first couple of chapters. You should notice a word count widget underneath that logo, so you too can keep track of my lousy progress! 23 days to go. Speaking of which, I’m out of here. I should be novelling.