This holiday has not been a holiday of the palm trees and sandy beaches type. At least not so far. So far it’s been a ‘question everything’ sort of holiday. The sort of holiday in which things unravel and are tossed about on the floor like so many balls of sweater yarn. Quandary yarn. It’s been keeping me up at night, this quandary yarn. For many nights on end in fact.
I’ve come to a conclusion that I very much did not want to come to, which is that I’m actually not as interested in being a professional author as I thought. Considering I’ve spent the better part of a decade working towards that very goal (and in many respects, have somewhat achieved it), that’s quite the revelation. (more…)
I’m using my time off to re-evaluate what I want to do in the world of fiction. Whilst searching for more bodice ripping, clavicle sniffing inspiration, I discovered a treasure trove of the best romance novel covers of all time.
Some people have love their lurkers days. I’m going to go one better, because licking is the physical embodiment of love. I’m aware that the comments are off quite a lot of the time here, which is what makes acknowledging ‘lurkers’ all the more deliciously fun. (Insert mad cackle here.)
Seriously though, I get some awesome comments when they’re on and I get amazing emails and I appreciate each and every one of them because each and every one of them represents someone taking the time to reach out and let me know something nice. Which is the ultimate loveliness.
From the department of good ideas I have had lately whilst not writing things. One of these… but big enough for an adult to climb on. Are you not strangely excited at the idea? Would you not want to climb into your very own cozy cylinder atop a pillar of fuzzy wood stairs? Of course you would.
I was looking for a human silhouette to put next to the cat gym for scale purposes (and science) and I couldn’t help but notice all the male silhouettes were men looking all Mad Men charming in business suits and whatnot and all the women ones appeared to be naked and stuck in undignified poses. Make of that what you will. Unless you have a vagina, in which case you’re probably having difficulty reading this because you’re simultaneously sticking your ass, breasts and ankles out in a way that would make a mystic Indian yogi feel inflexible. Unflexible. Something. (more…)
My dearest readers, I fear I have been struck down with a terrible malady. Some might call it writer’s block, but I don’t because it is not so much writer’s block as writer’s blauurghghhbl. If you had the image of someone deflating as if the air had been let out of them and collapsing gently to the floor, then that sentence has achieved its aim.
I want to write, but I want to write something different. Something new. Something exciting. Fatal Erection sometimes seems like a good idea in this state where the concept of ‘romance’ makes me want to poke ‘happily ever after’ (and its cloying acronym HEA) gently down the gang plank at cutlass point.
I could blame Terence McKenna for this. (Watch that clip and tell me if you don’t feel, at the very least, a little less inclined to pursue the common narrative.) But it’s not all his fault. There’s only so long you can stay in one gear before you begin to rust, only so long you can camp out in one corner of the fridge before you start to grow fuzzy green spots of mold.
I’m not sure what comes next. I’ve been, as you might have noticed, in a process of tidying things up. Old stories are being brought forward and polished anew, novels are being finished. I’m in the process of penning the final chapters of Military Discipline, which is 140,000 words and counting – reassurance that it is possible for me to come out with something longer than a novella.
Anyway, something new is coming. Something that could be so far removed from what currently exists that it might bear little to no relation to it. I hope you’ll join me in the newness. It will be, at the very least, interesting.
From the department of books that probably will never be penned…
People were talking already. Mrs Williams held court in the foodcourt, shovelling french fries into her rubber lipped mouth. “Did you see what Karen and Michael were doing in the park?” She nodded with satisfaction whilst maintaining a sneer of disgust. “It was huge… and so thick. You could barely wrap your hands around it.”
Michael and Karen are your average everyday couple. They pay their taxes, take their pet poodle to the groomers and show up to work on time. But on the weekends they enter a darker world. A world where the lights go off and their cute suburbanite clothes are swapped for rougher material that chafes in all the right places.
Like many other middle American couples hiding their real selves from the world, Michael and Karen belong to a largely misunderstood and thrilling subculture that places rigorous demands on their bodies and minds. Michael and Karen are secretly Amish and they’re ready to raise barns and break all the rules – the zoning rules, that is.
What these two amateurs don’t know is that they’re playing a dangerous game. There’s a new building inspector in town and he don’t take kindly to unplanned erections on his watch.
Will Michael and Karen capitulate to his demands for documentation? Or will one thrilling afternoon in the council planning department change all of their lives forever?
Here are two new words I came up with as I walked my doggie down to the Post Office lobby this morning.
Derodonger
A part of town boasting a higher of ratio police cars to citizens than your average teacher / student ratio in a private school and in which everyone appears to have either done hard time, or is sizing some up in the near future.
Used in a sentence: “We found driveway weed in the derodonger.”
Oshmigord
The realization that you, in your black jeans and black t-shirt walking your bull terrier type dog on a check chain, blend in perfectly.
Used in a sentence: “Hmmm, this looks like a bad part of town. Oshmigord! I am the bad part of town.”
Yesterday I got in my car and started driving. I wasn’t entirely sure what the plan was when I first set out. I thought I might perhaps get lunch at a small town an hour or so out of the city. I did that, then I kept on driving. I hit the coast and it was beautiful, the water was such a pale blue it almost seemed like liquid sky rolling white crested into the land. I stopped my car by the side of the road and spent a time just watching those waves come in, feeling the warm sun.
I got back in my car and I kept driving, this time cutting inland towards the ranges. It was a gorgeous drive and a challenging one, instead of easy straight roads there were twists and turns opening onto sheer drops. It was a drive that had to be driven, really driven with attention and caution. In New Zealand the term ‘State Highway’ can mean almost anything, including single lane bridges over ravines and sheer drops into forest. You have to stay on your toes. And breaks.
My last relationship had (and indeed, still has) truly ended and I needed space. I have found it out here in the countryside where the horizon meets the land without interruption from man, where the sound of some idiot playing bass heavy music loud enough to give his neighbors a nervous breakdown is simply not heard. I loathe the brash sounds of the city, the danger that lurks in every building waiting to crumble. In the countryside there is peace and space and beauty. There is solitude and most importantly there are friends.
My life has changed. In change there is always some melancholy sorrow, because everyday routines have a weight and comfort to them that can be very seductive in their plain way. At almost every stage of the drive I could feel that gravity wanting to claim me back. Wanting me to slip back into the cocoon of my old life, forget what could be in exchange for what certainly was. Comfort is the enemy of passion and dreams. It is the aspiration killer. It is too easy to decide that what you wanted for your life is impractical or ‘unrealistic’. It is too easy to defer your dreams for the dreams of another.
Change is always scary, especially when you have no idea what comes next. Anything could come next. But that’s the thrill of it all and I’ll chase that feeling, as uncomfortable and prickly as it is until I find something that resonates more deeply.
A Softer World is a webcomic that I rather like. It is sometimes humorous, sometimes a little obtuse, but occasionally it just kicks you right in the kickable spot. This comic did that for me and I wanted to share it:
Lucy Lawless has boarded a Shell Oil ship preparing to set sail to the Artic to drill for oil. Not just boarded either, but scaled a 53 meter high drilling tower with other activists and prepared to hang out atop the structure until such time as Shell decides oil isn’t worth ripping up every single part of the planet for.
Lucy said: “Deep-sea oil drilling is bad enough, but venturing into the Arctic, one of the most magical places on the planet, is going too far.I don’t want my kids to grow up in a world without these extraordinary places intact or where we ruin the habitat of polar bears for the last drops of oil.”
This isn’t the first involvement Lawless has had with environmental causes in New Zealand and around the world. Here Lucy and Robin Malcom (another amazing New Zealand actress) get sexy with fossil fuel.
I’m not saying that new Twitter is evil and wants to hurt you, but new Twitter is definitely evil and it wants to hurt you.
I’m as much a fan of unecessary and impetuos change as the next guy or girl. Feel like changing the road layout whimsically at any time of the day or night? Be my guest! (That happens rather a lot here on account of all the buildings that may or may not fall on your head, depending on whether or not engineers have had a look at them and gone white with fear or not. It is rather amusing watching people drift aimlessly between lanes, cutting off other traffic out of a deep sense of confusion over where they’re supposed to be – but I’m getting off topic.) If you want to repackage your product, I will buy the new box as easily and willingly as the old. If you want to change your name, your hair, your sexual orientation or even how much rent you feel like charging (looking at you landlord) I’m good with all of that. I will call you Moonbeam and smile benevolently whilst you marry your cats, if that’s what you want.
But Twitter. Fucking Twitter, seems to be intent on twisting its users to the very limit of their twistyness with new iterations that take what used to be a very logical and ordered interface and shove it into new and exciting places that may or maky not make sense.
Features of the New Twitter:
You can now ‘open’ tweets. Because the mere displaying of 140 characters was no longer enough.
If @replies were involved at any stage of a conversation, opening tweets displays conversation threads. This is excellent if you were unable to follow the thread of a conversation you were taking part in. It is not excellent if you don’t enjoy experiencing conversational deja-vu every time someone adds to the conversation, as the entire conversation is displayed anew. Even those with the most eroded short term memories find this annoying. I know this because I have the short term recall of a gnat.
Direct messages have been shoved under a decapitated head, where they never see the light of day.
@replies may or may not reach you. This has been a problem ever since Twitter decided it was more important to make things opaque and move the menu from the right side of the page to the left than actually get the basic functions right.
Replacing the ‘Timeline’ ‘@ Replies’ and ‘DM’ tabs that used to be at the top of the page, allowing one to easily follow conversations and engage in private discourse in a timely fashion, you now have a #discover tab at the top of your page, which is full of shit you don’t care about and never will.
The ‘compose tweet’ box has been moved from the top of the page and shoved under your follower / following count. Because nothing makes more sense than taking the primary function of a website and making the user hunt for it.
If you’re idle for more than ten minutes, a badger leaps out of your screen and stabs you. This last one might not be true yet, but will probably be standard on a future iteration.
Long story short, I’m pretty sure if Twitter launched today with the interface it has now, it would die an ugly and lonely death. I can only conclude that the business has been taken over by the forces of evil and that we continue to use the service at our peril. That is all.
Which is just an observation. You shouldn’t be offended by that, because rats are awesome. One of mine has taken to playing a game where he repetitively tries to dart under the desk to climb the computer cables. This, of course, is not allowed.
When he tries to ascend the live electrical wires, I catch him, turn him around and let him go. He invariably makes a hop of glee and scampers away (rats are the best scamperers in the world), then, without warning, Z turns and speeds back towards the forbidden cables again. Sometimes I catch him, sometimes he gets by and I have to dig him out from under a pile of electrical cords. But the game always repeats itself. Because he knows he’s not supposed to go under there, and the simple fact that he’s not allowed is what makes him want it so much. He doesn’t even resist when I get him out from under the table anymore, because that’s the point of the game. He’s thwarting authority for no reason other than the fact that it is fun. By the same token, getting caught is also part of the fun. If I ignore him, he’ll start poking his nose out to see why the human isn’t coming for him. That’s textbook brat behavior right there.
Clearly there’s a biological basis for brattishness. Probably a brat gene. Further studies are needed of course, fortunately there’s quite a plethora of human subjects who fit the brat criteria, so there will be no need for animal testing.
