postaday2011 – Page 3 – EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

It’s The End Of The World Again, Almost Definitely This Time, Really, Honest.

Well, I hope you’re all packed and ready. According to Christian radio show host Harold Camping, 3% of the world’s population will be gathered up to Heaven in some sort of holy Hoovering tomorrow morning. The rest of us will then have five months to wait until God draws the curtains and shuts off the lights for good on October 21st. The fact that most churches have scheduled regular services for Sunday shows how seriously Mr Camping is being taken by the religious community at large.

In eschatological circles, Harold is a bit of a pipsqueak. He’s predicted the Rapture four times thus far, giving up (or rather, diving back into the books for a bit more of a considered approach into the numbers) in 1995. This is small potatoes. Fire and brimstone preacher Charles Taylor saw the end coming 12 times between 1972 and 1992. That’s got to put a crimp into your long-term savings plans.

The end-of-the-world racket is a fascinating subject for study, and stuffed to the brim with nutballs, loonbags and conmen of all stripes. It’s surprisingly easy to pick a date for the Four Horsemen to gallop over the horizon and then backtrack when the sun sets when nary a hint of apocolypic hoof beats. For example, Edgar Whisenant wrote a best-selling book 88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988. His prediction: final trump to sound between September 11th and 13th. When those dates turned out to be trumpet-free he pushed the date forward, first to the 15th, then October 3rd. Still nothing. This didn’t deflate Whisenant, though, who released another book the following year, The Final Shout: Rapture Report 1989, and would continue to release updates until 1993.

Predictions of the end time are born out of intense, numerology-heavy readings of the Bible, and as reactions to ongoing world events. The recent triple-whammy of disaster landing on Japan has, as you’d expect, sent the scene into a tizzy. But events as varied as the Rodney King shooting, the founding of the state of Israel and any manner of celestial objects getting within astronomical spitting distance have all sparked doomy predictions. As for the close-study readings, Camping’s method is an exemplar of clarity and logic compared to some I can mention. Dan Brown’s got a lot to answer for…

None of this would be a bother if it didn’t involve hucksters conning gullible rubes out of their hard-earned, and self-styled prophets setting themselves up as cult leaders. End of the world predictions can mean exactly that. Suicide cults like Heaven’s Gate and the followers of messianic maniacs David Koresh, Jim Jones and Joseph Kibweteere are all evidence that apocalypses can and do happen, and are events that we cannot see coming, and have no way to prepare for.

As for Camping and his Rapture? Well, his past record isn’t encouraging, and frankly his methodology has holes wide enough to steer the Halle-Bopp comet through. I’m not convinced. And anyway, aren’t we supposed to have until December 2012, when the Mayan calendar runs out?

Tell you what, while we’re waiting, let’s have a little dance, shall we?

This post would not have been possible without reference to Chris Nelson’s extraordinary Brief History of The Apocalypse, which is anything but brief and will eat your day if you let it.

Out Of The Woods: X&HT Watched Hanna

A girl and her father live in a cottage in the middle of a forest. It’s a simple existence. They hunt, and read together, and every so often the father will leap out of the undergrowth and try to beat the girl up. He warns her that she needs to be ready for attack even when asleep, and she assures him that she will be in several languages.

The girl decides she is ready to leave the forest. So the father digs up a military transponder. Once she flicks the switch on it, the world and all it’s dangers will come to her.

She flicks the switch, and the wolves come running.

Joe Wright, director of so-so adaptations of literary classics, has decided to radically change direction with Hanna, his first film based on an original story. It’s an up-tempo thriller with an SF twist, backed with a killer soundtrack from the Chemical Brothers (the best I’ve heard since Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy monster). It boasts a couple of great central performances from Saiorse Ronan and Cate Blanchett and a nice story idea.

But it doesn’t hold together. The script is full of plot holes and dangling threads. Tom Hollander’s monstrous assassin is a bundle of cliches tied up in an ill-fitting Tacchini tracksuit. The nice bunch of middle-class hippies that offer Hanna a different definition of “family” to any she has hitherto known simply vanish at the end of act two, never to be seen again.

While watching, I kept coming back to the transponder, the literal flick of the switch that starts the movie going. Why would Hanna’s father insist that if she was going into the world, it would be as a warrior at bay? I waited for the reason, the revelation of the long game that he had been playing. The revenge play, the public exposure of the terrible plot.

It never came. There was no point to bringing Marisa, evil step-mother and big bad wolf in one power-suited package, back into the picture. It seemed to be an unnecessary sacrifice of everything that father and daughter had shared in the forest. It started to seem uncomfortably like a fit of pique.

As a movie, Hanna is dressed up nice and plays pretty. There are some sterling action sequences, some fun camerawork, and it’s not, at least, part of a franchise. But the lazy comparisons with the work of Luc Besson do both parties a disservice. Hanna is not Nikita meets Leon. It doesn’t have Besson’s bite and fire. Worse, it has a hamfisted way with visual metaphor (count the eyes on posters as Eric arrives in Germany. We get it. He’s being watched) and a final line and shot that you can see coming a mile off.

Summary: Not quite a wasted opportunity, but nowhere near as clever or groundbreaking as it believes itself to be. What a shame.

Why I Blog

X&HTeam-mate Rob May asked me one of those questions last night.

http://twitter.com/robwmay/status/70598204093235200

I replied with a flippant fob-off, but my blood ran cold. It was too closely related to one of The Big Two Questions That All Writers Hate. One of which is “Where do you get your ideas from?” (stock answer for that one – “there used to be a guy operating out of a lock up under the rail bridge by St James St station in Walthamstow, but now I just do what everyone else does and get them online, ideas4u.ru). The big one is “Why do you write?” And there is never an answer to that one that won’t make you sound like a self-absorbed arsehole. “I knew when I was a child.” “I had to find somewhere to put all the stories.” “It’s a calling.”

The swine of it is, all of these are true to a greater or lesser extent. I’ve written since I was a scrawny, speccy runt. I was always good at it, and I always enjoyed it. Even now, drifting into the fugue state where a tale just seems to present itself and all I have to do is write it down is one of my greatest pleasures. I must have been put on this earth to tell these stories. It’s my mission in life.

See. Told you. Cain’t hep masel. Self-absorbed arsehole.

Of course, understanding the grunt work that comes out of polishing and repolishing my words until they shine is another story, There is a world of difference between the first draft that can be banged out in a six-week period if you’re disciplined (braces for howls of outrage from the Nanowrimo crowd) and making something that people would actually want to read. A story without plot holes, clunky dialogue, cookie-cutter characters, screeds of needless exposition and the hundred thousand little details that can derail a tale if you don’t get them right. Changing eye colour is a good one. Or everyone having the same eye colour. I’ve had heroines that change their age from page to page. The basic misunderstanding of Newtonian physics that sends the engine of your plot off-track and into the trees. I’m writing this on a train, you can see where the metaphors are coming from.

None of which answers Rob’s question. Bear with me.

The thing with writing is that it’s a monstrous, time-eating task that will gobble years like a sugar-starved tween presented with a handful of Haribo. Blogging is very much the opposite. It’s a quick, sharp hit, an espresso instead of a venti moccochoccolattechino with extra whipped cream and sprinkles and three flakes. It’s first draft, front-lobe spillage. It’s 4-track demo, rough sketch, workshop level output. It’s also pragmatic. I can clear out brain cruft that needs to go somewhere, I can work up ideas, try things out. It’s a place to react, to rage, to vent, to roar. It’s the mouth of the gushing hose. Twitter’s great for a lot of things, but it doesn’t let me bend the language in the way that I like. I can’t roll out a run-on sentence in 140 characters. And I LOVE run-on sentences. Blogging is as close to I get to an honest, true immediate response to the world and everyone in it. (As close as I get? Well, take a look at the title of the blog you’re reading…) Broadcasting at the click of a trackpad.

And of course, it’s an exercise in vanity. How could it be otherwise? I’m labouring under the assumption that there are people out there that want to read my views on the AV referendum, on horror, on comics, on beer, on food, on every little thing that pops into my tiny head and gets me to fire up Marsedit. Writers are egoists. They have to be. How else could you blare your opinions at the world if you didn’t think they were worth the world’s attention? Why do it if you didn’t think someone was listening? The blogger that doesn’t check their stats after every post isn’t really a blogger at all.

Rob, I’m sorry, I’m still not sure that i’ve answered the question. X&HT is a huge part of my writing life. It’s a home, a platform, potentially a shop window, a shelter, a stage. It’s me, in some ways, and a weird simulacrum of me in others. It’s a distraction and a workspace. It’s me and the cartoon rabbit-eared, fluff-tailed version of me all at one. It’s an excuse, Rob. It’s a half-truth.

Why do I blog, Rob? Because I can. Because I must. Because.

The Food Feeds You Should Be Watching On Youtube

The Internet is an unending fount of goodness for the curious chef. Although I have certain favourite cookery books I go back to again and again, I will often dive onto the web if I simply need a recipe for blueberry muffins or a decent quick flatbread. My netback has become as essential as good knives and pans in my kitchen.

On my travels I’ve found several YouTube feeds that balance instructability and deliciousosity in a most entertainifying fashion. I would like to share those feeds with you.

First up, Epic Meal Time. The brainchild of a group of extremely hungry Canadians, the aim of the site is to create the most calorific food on the planet, and then eat it so we don’t have to. Bacon features heavily. Very heavily.

For something a little lighter, perhaps you should try My Drunk Kitchen. Hannah Hart teaches you the basics of late night cookery while blasted on red wine. This is an essential for those of you, like me, who were heavily influenced by Keith Floyd at a formative stage of their kitchen lives.

A new addition to the oeuvre, and the prizewinner for doing exactly what you’d expect in a four word title, is Vegan Black Metal Chef. His detail-oriented approach, coupled with a crushing riff and death grunt or two make the show the ideal place to help you polish your vegan pad Thai-fu. Just the one ep so far, but I’m eager for more.

You can see how healthy the internet cooking scene is. Any favourites I should know about, Readership?

Boom Bang A Bang: How Twitter Saved Eurovision (for me, anyway)

So, here we are again. The day after Eurovision. We’re all feeling a little grainy, a little dull around the edges, perhaps a trifle embarrassed at how much time we spent on Twitter last night.

Twitter has transformed Eurovision for me. It turns the show into a community pastime. I wouldn’t be caught dead at a Eurovision party, but I’m more than happy to sit at home, drink copiously and rant on the webs about the silly minutiae of Moldovan headwear or the relationship status of the Azerbaijani pair. And I know full well that there are hundreds, thousands of people out there all doing the same. I’ve bitched about the show in the past, but I simply couldn’t resist, despite fair warning from Twitterpal Selcaby:

@Conojito if you tweet about every single song like last year, I'm unfollowing you.

— Eleanor (@selcaby) May 14, 2011

(I missed out a couple. I was cooking dinner at the time.)

It can seem that the whole thing devolves into a scrum where everyone is shouting at the telly at once, and you do sometimes wonder whether the songs are getting the fair judgement that they deserve. But then there were some genuine clunkers and deranged decisions at the Dusseldorf Arena that needed commentary. And more and more celebs seemed to be joining in this year. Charlie Brooker, Chris Addison and Caitlin Moran all added a welcome dose of acid to the event.

Eurovision has become, despite (or perhaps because of) the obviously partisan voting a genuinely exciting and unpredictable contest. I was certain, to the point of nearly putting money down, that the Hungarian entry would romp away with the prize. She never got out of the bottom eight.

Ireland’s blatant attempt to make sure that they didn’t winning by fielding sugared-up quiffbots Jedward looked as if it could backfire, and at one point midway through voting they were looking dangerous. Well, as dangerous as a pair of ADHD-twitchy bubbleheads in red leather can look, anyway. Which just goes to show that Eurovision is as much about the performance as the song, and a dose of surrealism can actually catch you some mileage.

As for the UK, well, at least we’d moved away from the talent-show method of picking an act, and for that managed the best result we’ve had in years. Untouched by partisan voting (six points? THANKS, Ireland) we stayed resolutely mid-table, but with none of the embarrassment of the nul points years. The song was a bit of a clunker, but the back-to-business approach worked. It’s something to build on for Azerbaijan. A proper, honest-to-goodness pop band doing a proper, honest-to-goodness pop song, with none of the amateurism that’s marred our recent entries.

In short, this was the year when I learned to relax and enjoy Eurovision. Saturday night saw TLC and I both curled on the sofa, hammering away on laptops and cackling like loons. It was my FA Cup final, with an end result that had a certain poetry and ironic charm. Especially when the winners couldn’t stay in tune for their second performance.

A Foto For The Weekend: From London Bridge

On the subject of Rev Sherlock. Took this snap a few weeks ago. The Beeranauts were in Southwark, celebrating his approaching 40th birthday. There are some very fine pubs round there, and a couple of awful tourist traps. Readership, we tried them all.

We gathered on the bridge as the sun was dropping, and I couldn’t resist this snap. It has a calm serenity that waa not reflected in the day. Then we all piled into taxis and headed east, at which point the evening went downhill rapidly. That’s a story for a different forum.

Take The Computing Out Of Computers

If you’re at all tech savvy, then there is always going to be one phone call you dread. That moment when the parent with the computer calls you up unexpectedly to say “I think I might have done something to my laptop.” Or worse, “it’s gone funny.” And then expecting you to do something about it. Sadly, I don’t have enough command-line-fu to be able to drill into their file system over VPN and figure out what they’ve managed to do. Although getting them to delete the hundred gigs worth of material in the trash often work wonders.

I met Rev Sherlock for a livener yesterday, and he took the opportunity to wave his iPad at me, the dirty bugger. He loves watching me trying to explain why my netbook was really a much more sensible choice while the big WANT sign above my head flashes and klaxons. I hate Rev Sherlock.

Over the course of the conversation, we commiserated with each other over the endless hours and unpaid tech support we’ve done on behalf of our parents. The conclusion was reached that actually, an iPad isn’t such a bad idea for the person who thinks that file structure is something to do with building a cabinet. There’s very little you can do to the inner workings of the device, but it’ll get you online, playing music and videos and even handling basic word processing in a trice. All the primary boxes ticked. It’s just a shame that you need to hook it up to a machine with iTunes to manage the media.

Potentially, the new Google Chromebooks could solve our tech support woes. Putting content onto the cloud and running a minimal hard drive solves that annoying sync issue. However, depending entirely on the interwebs has its own issues, and gods help you if the wireless goes down. Might be worth splashing the cash on a 3G model. Dunno about you, but the prospect of troubleshooting a hinky wi-fi over the phone fills me with chills.

It’s good to be a geek, but there are times when it’s good to get the computers out of computing. Especially when you find that you’ve spent an evening troubleshooting your parents instead of repartitioning your significant other. So to speak.

Inspiration – or plagiarism?

It’s tough to get inspired sometimes. Coming up with fresh new ideas is difficult enough when you’re a simple-minded unpaid blogger like me. If you work in advertising, and creativity on demand is an important part of the job, then the pressure to be a bright spark of inventiveness must be unreal.

Fortunately, there’s an answer. YouTube has all manner of neat short films, sketches and animations from which the discerning ad executive can take inspiration. Or just shamelessly rip off. Take the T-Mobile ads that use the well-known JK wedding entrance dance. The re-emergence of the Haribo Starmix ads that replicate Will Ferrell’s Good Cop, Baby Cop. And so on. There are plenty of other examples here (be advised, extremely robust use of the vernacular.)

The latest example in this distressing trend involves British beatboxer Beardyman, He was approached by McVities after they saw this brilliant clip to help them advertise their new Medley bars. He didn’t like the script, and refused. McVities went ahead anyway, hiring other actors to fill in the role, and then claiming that they didn’t have to pay anything as they had the idea before they saw the clip. Classy, huh?

Sadly, there’s no sign of this behaviour going away. If advertisers are going to copy the artists they find on YouTube, the very least they can do is compensate them appropriately and make sure they get recognition for the part they played. Of course, that would then mean that advertising creatives would have to admit that they’re not quite as clever as they make out, and that the huge sums they earn might not be so justified if it turned out that their best ideas were cribbed wholesale from other people.

It was ever thus. Creatives will cobble together mood tapes from all kinds of different sources, from YouTube to Hollywood blockbusters, mixing and matching until they find something fresh. That’s a viable part of the creative process. Everything is influenced by everything else. But these guys seem to have taken Picasso’s quote “Bad artists copy. Great artists steal”, and treated it as both a manifesto and standard operating procedure.

And that’s exemplified by this very post, which has been at the very least “influenced” by sketch comedian Bec Hill’s post on the Beardyman story a few days ago. I urge you all to read it in full, and check out her brilliant tampon ad concept. I’m as guilty as anyone of using other people’s work to bolster my own. I’ll cheerfully admit to it and put up a link to the original source. That’s plain good manners nowadays. It’s just a shame that professionals who really should know better don’t feel the same way.

Less Is Sometimes Too Much

I loves me the Twitter. It keeps me in touch with the world, with friends and with interesting strangers. It gives me cool stuff to read, and fun things to watch and listen. It gives me solutions to problems, and answers to questions (and sometimes questions to answers). It allows me to vent, rant, enthuse and generally jump on the furniture and misbehave. It’s the freest vector of free speech – and as we all know, free speech can be troublesome.

In this article for Slate, Jack Shafer notes a few celebrity examples of tweets gone wrong – people in the public eye saying things that they perhaps should have kept to themselves. It’s US-centric, but the point is universal. There are moments in every day when you say things that can be easily taken out of context or simply misunderstood. It’s easy for the wrong end of the stick to be firmly grasped in an email or text conversation (gods know, I’ve run into a few of those brick walls in my time) and Twitter is no different. Or, as Jack put it, that a reaction was sought by the celebs in question – just not the one that they got.

I think part of the issue is that tweeting is both intimate and public. It’s you, at your rawest and least edited, railing at the latest idiotic politician or delayed train. You vent, and although you’re dimly aware that it’s going out to your followers, it feels more like a tiny catharsis. I tweet because I can, because in some small way swearing at First Great Western makes me feel a little better about being stuck on a train. With a small audience or group of followers, there’s never likely to be a problem. When your reach extends to hundreds and thousands of people, then the likelihood of saying something that one of that group finds offensive goes up stratospherically.

Of course, you don’t need to be a celeb to get into trouble on Twitter. Paul Chambers sent out a frustrated missive when he realised that the flight to see his new girlfriend out of Nottingham’s Robin Hood airport was badly delayed. End result? He was hauled up on criminal charges. Although he’s had a ton of support from some heavy hitters including top Tweeter Stephen Fry, the general consensus is that it wad a silly thing to do, and he was a dope to do it. I disagree. He was frustrated and angry, and said what was on his mind. It was no different to you or I saying “I could kill *annoying person* sometimes. The events that followed afterwards were an expensive, pointless over-reaction.

I guess the lesson, tweaked for the 21st century is “tweet in haste, repent at leisure”. And I have to admit that there are times when I’ve spat out an angry reply or grump, looked again at it, and then quietly deleted it. Sometimes, the act is enough, and you don’t have to publish at all. Contradictory, I know. But then in 140 characters, it’s often difficult to say what you mean. I have enough problems with 500 word blog posts.

A Flavour Of Spring

As the weather becomes kinder, I’m finding more excuses to get out into the garden. An unfocused potter, pulling weeds, listening to birdsong, can be useful to clear the head. And, more importantly, to stimulate thoughts of dinner.
The new early spuds are sprouting nicely, which should start to reward us in a month or so. The cauliflower I planted has succumbed to the evil that slugs do, but some of the Italian lettuce I sowed in its stead is ready for picking and eating. Garlic and shallots are waving their flags bravely.
Our herb patch looks magnificent. I mean look at it.

The furry stuff is fennel. We’re both big fans of the sweet aniseed flavour. I love the purple of the seed heads on the chives. Underneath, a lowgrowing oregano, which looked very sickly last winter, has carpeted the ground keeping those darn weeds at bay.

There seem to be a lot of bees around this spring too. Next door have a nest in their roofspace, and every so often they’ll spill out of an air brick and swarm. They sound like a B52 going overhead. That’s a bit unnerving, but in small doses the little fellers are charming. They’re welcome in our herb patch any time.