493: ramblings about nothing

So, erm, blogging and that. How's that for an opening line; quite a hook, eh? Bet you can't wait to read on and find out what gripping narrative this is the preamble to. Not much; my brain is dim after a lazy Sunday in my dressing gown, eating shit and playing Civilization VI. And having not written much or indeed anything for a day I find now that writing anything at all has become a terrific imposition. I struggle to think as I struggle to say as I struggle to write: very little means anything, or so I sometimes think. It's times like this I thank blog that I write: if I didn't write, I wouldn't think, or express, or do much at all really.

And while playing Civ VI I've been watching Breakfast at Tiffany's in which a writer, played by a young Col John 'Hannibal' Smith, attempts to court the whimsically delightful, yet impossibly difficult Audrey Hepburn. There's a cat with no name, rich posh Americans, kooky New Yorkishness, a sofa made from an old bathtub cut in half longways, and errr other stuff. I'm not really paying attention: it's divided 'tween the television and whatever it is I'm writing about now.

Breakfast at Tiffany's has finished, and we've changed the DVD to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It's DVD night in the Bradshaw household. I wish I was a New York writer or a Toontown private dic then, working on my own time, I could have a bit of a lie-in tomorrow, and not bother having a shave. Got too much real life stuff I need to sort out (taxes, wedding prep, writing, day job, this, that, the other, those and the other others, etc), soooooo..... BRB.

After that little three-paragraph breakdown I decided to print out what I have so far of my novel, in order to look at it from a slightly different perspective. To read it, make notes, edits, rewrites and begin picking up and finishing what I already have. I want to get those darn pesky three chapters perfected ASAP (a couple of months or so), and then try to get a literary agent. Worth trying; might bring me fame and fortune. Less of the fame, more of the fortune preferably. Anyway, never mind...

417: A Waste of Time

It worries me more than a little that my first self-imposed novel-writing deadline is looming (31^st October to finish three chapters and a treatment), and I seem to have lost all my initial enthusiasm for the project. Don't get me wrong, I still fully intend to do it, but spend all my time either worrying about money, fretting about life, ignoring reality with books and radio and TV, etc. When I do decide it's time for some writing I inevitably have to catch up on the blog first, and once that's done it's time for another nap, TV show, or sleep. See, reading is as essential to the writer as writing its self is, so I have been reading Ian Fleming's Bond novels in order to get an understanding of how strong plot driven narrative works. The problem is that they are so good that I can't sleep, and as soon as I finish one I pick up the next. When I am not reading them I want to watch spy movies and play spy games. With that in mind I have bought the Bourne trilogy DVD and downloaded an N64 emulator and 007 GoldenEye rom... fortunately I've just discovered it's pretty hard to play using the keyboard, without finding out what all the keys do. How do I strafe, for god's sake!?

The N64 was fantastic – how I miss my home made characters from WWF No Mercy, the finest wrestling simulation game ever created. By a long long stretch. Myself and two friends each created our own characters, and engaged in hour long triple-threat Iron Man matches for the World Heavyweight Championship. Then when one of us was eventually victorious, with a likely final score of 32-30-29 or similar, we would start again. Except this time it would be a one-on-one Iron Man match, with the loser of the previous match playing as the referee in this one. This was ten years ago, when I should have been working or studying. Instead I was smashing pixelated tables and hitting my friends avatars in the face with imaginary sledge hammers. But, I did, on more than one occassion hold the World Heavyweight Championship, so that's some achievement.

These days I have long since sold the last of my consoles (I have over the course of my life owned a Master System, Mega Drive, N64, Sega Dreamcast (which I won in a TV competition), and an X-Box) and have yet to enter the market for one of the latest generation consoles. How I yearn to get my clammy little thumbs onto my very own X-Box 360; oh, the time I could waste with one of those magical creations. There are hundreds of hours of my life that I have yet to waste playing GTA4 or any of the other games that I've not even heard of but would love. Have they made a new Hitman or Splinter Cell game yet? Probably best if I don't know.

299: A Wasted Opportunity

Still can't figure out why I love
Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Can’t.  Stop.  Re.  Watching.  Old.  Buffy.  D.  V.  Ds.  It’s.  Season.  Four.  Buffy.  Fueds.  With.  The.  Initiative.  Spike.  Has.  Chip.  In.  Head.  And.  Battles.  Demons.  I.  Can’t.  Stop.  Watching...

It’s just not healthy.  I’ve seen it all already.  This is what a lack of internet does to people.  Only two days with no super-duper fibre optic connection to the larger world out there, and I’ve resorted back to old pre-industrial habits.  Scrambled eggs all over my face, what is a boy to do?  Good night, Seattle, we love you.  Good night Sunnydale, time to go patrolling.  (Get a grip Kevin, cold-turkeying from internet withdrawal is so unbecoming of a fellow.)

I can’t let my mind and my browser wander all around the world; I can’t automatically generate pointless concerns to distract me; I can’t spotify or Last.fm or YouTube or twitter or Facebook.  I can’t use google images, Wikipedia, or make all sorts of pointless links.  What can I do other than formulate a finer, more concise blog post than I usually would?  Nothing, and yet I seem to be wasting this golden opportunity by climbing up inside my own arse.

Successful writers are often asked to produce 10-point guides to better writing, and one tip given as much as any other is don’t write on a computer connected to the internet. On the surface this seems like a good idea.  It immediately removes a million worlds worth of distractions from within fingertip reach.  And yet here I am – offline – and entirely unable to do anything worthwhile.  I feel like crying.  Oh, I’ll cry and type my only-human passion and rage onto the page.  Boohoo.

See, what’s going on is this:  right, Buffy has been getting on pretty well with Riley, and also quite likes her sociology or psychology or whatever lecturer (she is a co-ed college student now, having graduated high school in Season 3).  Willow is no longer with the werewolf geek, but is getting along nicely with Tara, a fellow witchcraft enthusiast.  Zander is at going from job to job and is living in his mom’s basement, but he is doing the sex with Anya, a former vengeance demon.  Finally Giles is at a loose end; he lost his job as a librarian when the apocalypse happened at Sunnydale High and is no longer Buffy’s official watcher, as a result they have written in a pointless character for him to play with; if only he had something cool to do, like run a magic shop.

Meanwhile Buffy becomes aware of a secretive military organisation operating from a top-secret underground bunker.  They are capturing and experimenting on demons of all kind for some nefarious purpose.  One such demon is old favourite Spike, aka William the Bloody.  He has had a chip implanted in his skull which gives him incapacitating pains whenever he tries to attack a human.  When he discovers he can still attack other demons he goes on a rampage. 

Turns out that Riley is one of the army dudes and the sociology professor is head of the army dudes, and the nerd scientists too.  She is involved in some sort of crazy project to create a Frankenstein’s monster out of human, demon, and mechanical parts.  She calls her project Adam and tries to kill Buffy.  Riley can’t cope and runs off.  He then gets ill and it turns out he was being fed some crazy chemical to make him a better soldier; now he has got the cold turkey.  Adam wakes up, kills the professor, then calls her mommy; roll credits... grr, argh.

If I had the internet I could be doing something more productive.  Like illegally downloading and watching epic American serials I haven’t already seen.

199: geek code, and more time wasting

Eee by gum; what should I write about?  Don’t really fancy going through lists of ‘things to do before you hit 30’ stuff, and declaring what I have and haven’t done, and what I could or couldn’t do.  It’s not that I don’t think it might be fun, or that adding a few more strings to my bow isn’t a good idea; it’s more that it’s late and even the thought of imagining adventures and sexual escapades makes me want to run for the slippers, and pop a tea cosy on the pot.  The internet has many of these lists.  One of them is here at geeks.co.uk (no, I’ve never heard of it either, and it’s not as good as it sounds).  Top of their list is to have “worked out your Geek Code and use it somewhere, blogs [...] etc”.  I’ve never heard of a Geek Code, and it is indeed a thoroughly pointless way of spending five minutes, but if I have to do it before I hit 30 then do it I must:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

Version: 3.1

GFA/L>S d-(++) s--:-- a- C++ U/P/L/E? W++ U/o/K? w 0? M- V?

PS++ PE Y+ PGP? t+ 5? X+ R-- tv+ b+++ DI? D+ G e++ h- r++ z+

------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Ok, one down.  How many more to do?  But I said right at the start of today’s blog that I wasn’t in the mood for ‘...before you’re 30’ lists, and here I’ve gone ahead and babbled on about them.  But while I’m at it, here is another list; I think I’ve done 11 out of 50.  Some perspective might be gained from the fact I had done 12 (possibly 13) out of 30 on the geek list.  Anyway, let’s forget all these stupid lists.  If I need a list (I don’t need lists, but I do like them an awful lot) I should do my own.  Probably counts as a slightly more productive way to spend five minutes than working out your Geek Code.  Fucking hell, geek code; what the hell was I thinking?  At least I won’t have to do that again... unless any of the variables change, and I need to update it...

I wonder if there is any chance I might make it into space at some point over the next year.  Obviously it usually requires a lot of hard work, intelligence, dedication and training, but most of these ‘list’ things are the sort of thing you might accidentally achieve on a drunken night out.  So there is a chance I might pass out after 28 shots of whiskey and wake up on the International Space Station.  And besides; I really, really, really want to do it, and it’s not fair, so please, please, please.  Etcetera.

182: Structure. Timetables. Self-discipline. Ahh, Ma tidge.

Structure.  Timetables.  Self-discipline.  Often writers are portrayed as vicious self-destructive hell raisers, and many like to promote that idea, scribbling in barrooms on notebooks sodden with spilt whiskey, forgoing sleep, sanity and a stable life.  I think the reality is much different, and the hard-working prolific writers to be truly admired and emulated stick to tight regular routines.  Getting up at 8o’clock settling down to write by 9, and remaining concentrating and undisturbed until it’s time for a spot of lunch.  After lunch it’s back to the desk for more focussed and intelligent work.  This is something to strive for I think, because otherwise I may never achieve anything.  The effort and dedication to write a daily blog is only the first step in a long looooong process.  Just lean over there, into the future, and let me know what you see; is it worth it?

Blog complete by 9:30am covering any noteworthy events from the previous day, any thoughts worth discussing, or any short bits of creative writing I need to purge from my system.  Follow that up with a tightly choreographed day of brief intense work interspersed with breaks for tea and crumpets.  Perhaps a walk should be scheduled in.  Exercise keeps the mind alive, and helps prevent the body from blobbifying and the bum hole from haemorrhoiding.  Add to the schedule some paid work and a chance to socialise, and I think we could be onto a winner; a day well spent, ending in a satisfied feeling and a job well done.  Time for a cup of tea, and those sausages should be ready soon.  Better go and buy some lentils.

Any reference to lentils with regard to me is an in-joke so obscure and insular only a select group of my closest and oldest friends will understand or care.  And now I’ve mentioned lentils I can put them back in the box alongside Choco Flakes, Phil Ahh ma tidge!, Fiendish Feet, Foetus, and measuring the angles of this stupid shape.  Then it’s off to Morecambe to buy a teenth, then to Halton to smoke lungs out of the window and listen to Insane Clown Posse and N.W.A.  But that was then, this is now.  Now I’m all growed up and a big boy now.

Still the same easily distracted wastrel I always was though.  Even now I’m half writing a story, half cooking soup and half writing this blog.  How many halves is that?  I’m also half reading the day’s news on the BBC and half about to watch the lost Russell Brand episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks which has just appeared on iPlayer.  Five halves?  Does that make a whole?  Sure, whatever.  I started the blog hours ago early this morning, yet because I’m not really saying anything interesting, I got bored of writing it probably even quicker than you got bored of reading it.

Today I pottered to the shops and back.  Yesterday I did the same thing.  What adventures will tomorrow hold?  I’d better consult the timetable.