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Last month, I set up the reading list to track my 'to be read' pile. Naturally, I've now found a cute little online tool for doing a similar job. However, I kind of want to keep my reading list as a blog, with the joy of seeing how long some works languish on it, whereas all consuming net looks to be a bit more community based and doesn't have a date element to it. However, it does have a lovely piece of javascript for enabling lazy, non-MT bloggers like myself to create a 'currently reading' thingy (it's down to the right, below the weather pixie). At the moment it ought to be showing Nights at the Circus (amazon), which I am reading on Annie's rec.

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Posted @ 7:42 pm on Wednesday, April 28, 2004
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My productive run on the novel was scuppered last night by an evening in the Oldtimers bar/bistro thing with Richard of the CFZ (Centre for Fortean Zoology) and others, talking about monster-hunting and something my brain insists was "neural biomathmatics" which is apparently an expanding branch of AI research looking at knowledge mapping and er...something. I must get around to finding out more and connecting to the notebook/blogging things.

I did finish a chapter and get it off to my beta readers but my plan to proof the preview vanished due to the unusual occurance of the others being on time at the bar. I think I really ought to have called it a night when the second bottle of wine was produced at someone's house. Instead I continued, got to bed at 4.30am and then got back up for the day job at 8am.

I'm a little fragile today.

--
Posted @ 2:09 pm on Tuesday, April 27, 2004
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Clearly we need to live in a utopia in which writers get just the right weather to suit their requirements and never have to have a day job. As with the state sanctioned long holiday at the start of April, this weekend has been long(ish) and sunny. I have sunburn. It started with the 3-pint lunch on Friday at the Prospect pub and was hidden during the cocktail evening by my rather slinky purple silk top (with a mandarin collar). All yesterday during the day was spent in the garden, researching, and this afternoon was spent with another pub lunch after another long research morning. I am very pink. More importantly, I've broken the 1K+ words/day wall and simply raced away to the end of a long scene last night. I even considered forging ahead with the next scene but suspected it might all go pear-shaped and had an early night instead.

Meanwhile, I have frittered some time checking my referral links. My current favourite is Google Search: "denounced as promulgators" which led the googler to my post on John Wesley and Joanna Southcott. Just to bewilder google some more, here is a photo of a Wesleyan thing found in York back during the Jorvik meet:

Wesleyan sign


I have a odd little collection of these kinds of signs and I intend to make them into a photo archive at some point. I'm not even sure why I find them so curious. Perhaps because they are an attempt to write the history of a locale literally into the stone of that place? Here's another, which will go into the Exeter archive as well:

thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. apparently.


--
Posted @ 8:00 pm on Sunday, April 25, 2004
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Question: is it possible to recreate the life of Carrie Bradshaw in Devon? With or without the shoe collection.

Had a total S&tC moment last night, by going for cocktails with three other women in the hotel barcelona (flash req.) in Exeter. Tried their cosmopolitan which lacked the lime I put in my own and was therefore a little disappointing (I also don't bother with the orange bitters). Also the Twisted Russian which was a delightful variation on the Black Russian with added cream and cinnammon. This perfectly recreated my favourite cocktail circa 1990: the Black Russian with a Guiness top as made at the late Bart's Tavern in Exeter. Rounded the evening off with a Mandarita (sp?) which is a version of a Margarita with orange instead of lime. I was less impressed with that - a bit too sharply citric for my tastes. Those of you who know my love of real ales and decent bitters are doubtless shocked that I have a love such girly drinks. At least it's not lager.

This was my first time in Hotel Barcelona. The decor in the cocktail lounge makes you feel as if you have wandered into an Edward Hopper painting (perhaps Hotel Lobby) with lots of muted lamps, and fifties style easy chairs. The website is flash animated so I've done a couple of screen grabs instead.


the bar the Hyperion-style seating

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Posted @ 2:35 pm on Saturday, April 24, 2004
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National Statistics Online - Census 2001 - Ranking - Jedi

Peoeple with long net memories will recall the email campaign to enter Jedi as your religion in the 2001 UK census. Having discovered I am a Jedi Master, I went to check the results of the census. Jedi make up 0.7% of the UK population. Exeter has the 7th highest number of Jedi per capita, at 1.7% (1942 Jedi out of a population of 111076). The question becomes whether that is due to there being a large student population, a large hippie population or a combination of both.

Meanwhile I have borrowed The Artist's Way from Carrie in prep for a writing group I'll be going to at the end of the month. A quick glance at some of the online extracts and reviews of it suggests that advises one to write something in longhand, daily. Not unlike the blog as brain-dumping then...

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Posted @ 10:31 am on Thursday, April 22, 2004
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I've only just started to read the warming up blog of Richard Herring. Yes, I can be slow to find the A-list blogs, I know. Not the point. The point is his reasons for blogging:

I sort of figured that if I could spend a half an hour at the beginning of each day writing about something that had happened to me on the previous day, then at least I would have done something constructive, and also it might get me in a writing frame of mind and help with the work I actually have to do.

I thought that if I put it up on the internet and had even three or four people waiting to read it each day, then that would encourage me to get on with it.
This ties with a remark from Carrie: she claims to know I have been hard at work on the novel because my blog posting rate goes up. It's also something I mentioned in an email to another blogger: I find this whole business to be an excellent way to turn the chattering masses of distracting thoughts in my head into (semi-)coherent prose on a screen. Having expelled all that blather, I can then get down to the business of getting the real work done.

Update on the over-length chapter: it has now lost 20% of the original length and is only a little longer than it ought to be. I've started on the following chapter which is behaving itself.

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Posted @ 4:13 pm on Monday, April 19, 2004
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The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!

Level descriptions
Take the test

I feel so proud.

Level 5 includes gloomy in the definition of types of people cast there which made me think of Eeyore and his gloomy patch. You can really see him floating in the Styx "gurgling in the black mud, slothful and sullen, withdrawn from the world. lamentations bubble to the surface as they try to repeat a doleful hymn" (according to The Divine Comedy*). Well, he'd probably be saying "I was bounced" whilst spinning slowly round in the stream.

Now I'm thinking that Christopher Robin et al are playing Pooh sticks during that story. And Eeyore would end up in the Styx. Hmmmmm...is The House at Pooh Corner a reworking of The Divine Comedy? No, don't answer that...

*that's Dante's Divine Comedy, obviously, not Neil Hannon's. Although now I'm getting unhelpful mental images of Eeyore singing Generation Sex.


Meanwhile, in a galaxy far far away...



:: how jedi are you? ::

--
Posted @ 12:45 am on Sunday, April 18, 2004
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In Exeter this Saturday? Or indeed any Saturday? There's a lovely new retro clothes shop on the Fore Street. Electric Gypsy is run by two people who clearly know their clothes, and who look like they've time-warped from a New Hollywood film circa 1973. As well as original American vintage t-shirts (unlike the Real McCoy's mass-produced replicas in male only sizing) they make their own stuff as well. There was a gorgeous little brown velvet skirt with cream floral detail but unfortunately far too little for me. Go, shop, chat. They deserve sucess because they have vision and knowledge. It's a couple of doors down from kitsch-u-like.

Just for the record, the Real McCoy is almost entirely rubbish now. There's still a few interesting pieces in the expensive corner but the stuff on the main rails is undifferentiated junk. Last time I was in, the staff were wearing Real McCoy t-shirts. The entire joy of working in the retro clothing world (not only did I work in a retro shop but one of siblings had their own business up in Manchester in the late 80s/early 90s) is the chance to wear the stuff, to pick out the best stock early. Apart from anything else, if you're in the clothing then you are quietly demonstrating how fab it can look. Branded t-shirts don't cut it. A week ago, before I knew The Electric Gypsy was opening, I wanted a couple of cheap retro american t-shirts just for the gym - as opposed to the good ones I wear to the pub - and had to resort to getting them from H&M because the ones in the Real McCoy are all modern replicas in large male sizes only. There were no retro vintage tee suitable for women at all. Phht.

Finally, an admin note. If you are linking to the grouch, please use http://moosiferjonesgrouch.blogpsot.com not http://www.moosifer.... . It seems like the mirror with the www in the url isn't updating every time the main one updates.

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Posted @ 10:06 am on Saturday, April 17, 2004
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If you are my fiction publisher or editor, look away now. I'm sure my non-fiction editor is already in despair of me.

I have, I must admit, struggled for far longer than I expected with an early chapter of the novel. As mentioned before, Warring States has a certain element of numerology in its structure. Not only are there a set number of chapters, each chapter is to be a certain length. I started out with the good intention to race onwards and skip scenes I was struggling with in order to get the bulk written and thus avoid the common problem, with tight deadline novels, of the rushed ending. This particular chapter, however, showed signs very early on of being horrendously over-length. So I thought I'd best get it under control at this stage otherwise the discipline on the later chapters is undercut before I even begin. Last night, I managed to cut a tenth of the problem chapter out. I still need to cut another fifth. On the plus side, it is at least under control and I can race on with the next chapter with a secure mental grip on my structure.

Note how I do not mention which chapter I am on, for fear of alarming the money publisher.

--
Posted @ 10:27 am on Friday, April 16, 2004
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The benefit of walking to work, apart from all that healthy business and lack of significant pollution creation, is that the brain idles away at ideas. I'd got the train up to town for the last two days, which gives me some much needed editing time on the novel. Obviously, it's rather harder to make revisions whilst walking, so this morning I created an entire fanzine idea in my head between leaving the house and arrving at the office.

I knew ladyfest exeter was happening, having picked up a dinky little leaflet yesterday whilst buying tickets for electric six. I had read it and noticed that there would be a fanzine fair on the Saturday. The idle thinking whilst walking decided it would be fun to do a 'zine again. As well as writing for one of the big early 90s A4 Doctor Who 'zines (the rather spiffy SKARO), I used to make a free Tav'zine called GTM. That sometimes had grrly articles not about DW. So I planned a bundle of short articles on grrly media stuff: "Reaching a Climax" on the endings of Buffy and S&tC; "Ooh-ER" on the feminization of ER; "Rachel of the Rovers", which could be either on Corrie or Footballers' Wives. That sort of thing. I wondered if my grrly writer friends could produce something quickly if I asked. I thought of a name for the 'zine.

Arriving at work, I checked the date of the 'zine fair. It's this Saturday. So I don't think I'll be doing it. Not for ladyfest 2004 anyway. A goes to the normal 'zine fair so I might find out when the next one of those is...

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Posted @ 9:13 am on Thursday, April 15, 2004
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In last Sunday's Observer, Monty Don talked about why the easter break is the moment, in Britain at least, we all get a bit enthused about life.

"The light balances between night and day, the moon swings from phase to suitable phase, the evidence of life literally pushing up through the ground is there all around."


blue flower Whilst I perhaps don't go in for the whole "I am the resurrection and I am the life" business, I do enjoy the early spring break. The good thing about it, apart from the fact it is a far, far more relaxing time than any of the other state-sanctioned holidays, is that you can sit outside and idly stare at things in the garden. This photo was actually taken a couple of weeks back but look how blue it all is. The time I didn't spend working, or faffing about with the blog, was spent in the garden discovering just what has and hasn't survived the winter.
Survivors:
  • my acer: the most expensive plant I've ever bought. It's is now showing terrifically red leaves. (that's not actually mine in the photo, just an example for you non-gardening types)


  • my asiatic lillies: all three have charged up through the ground. One is showing signs of being munched upon, I suspect by slugs. Hopefully, they will also produce blooms (very fleshy, very red) again. (still not a photo of my actual plants)


  • my lavenders: I have three, so far, and all the signs of an obsessive collection brewing. Of the three, the one which has survived to my great relief is the one my mother gave me last summer. It is a new breed, apparently, and has a delicate aroma compared to the other two. (still not my plants)


  • the hedgehog: there is a long saga with the hedgehog. I love the fleabags to pieces because they love to eat slugs (see above nibbled lillies). This little chap - and I am assuming it is the same one and male - has a taste for cat food however. I was tough and, after events such as the "waking up at 1am to find it sitting in the doorway to my bedroom" occassion, cut off the supply by barring the catflap last autumn. This led me to a natural worry that he wouldn't hibernate in time etc etc. Last night, at about 2am, there he was. Snuffling about in the flowerbeds and looking highly alarmed at the new solar lamp.

Alas, gone:
  • a plant in the big bed. No idea what it was. I probably bought it for a quid somewhere so am not overly concerned. I think it had dark red flowers but it might have been the white thing I didn't really like anyway.
My zombie frog fear increases, however.

To recap: last year there was An Accidental Death of a Frog. I did the burial business, and was suitably contrite. I did however, express my guilt over the frog death to someone who teased me about the whole idea of renevant frogs returning to wreck revenge upon me.

Yesterday, I was having a cup of tea and beginning the annual war on bindweed (when Monty Don mentions how you can marvel at the growth rate of your plants, he neglects to mention that bindweed seems the most enthusiastic of the lot and is capable of growing about a foot a day). I spot two frogs in the pond. Oooh, I mutter, you've survived. The frogs failed to respond. Not that I expected them to but they don't even blink. Or breathe. I spot a third. All three have their heads up and their pallid little limbs resting on weeds. None are blinking. Or breathing. I try the tried and tested 'pebble throw' method where the plop of a pebble nearby causes a froggy reaction. Nothing. I wave an ivy frond at them. Nowt. Hells, I think, three dead frogs. This leads me to think about how horrific pulling out the slimy weed, replete with frog corpses, will be. And a quiver of zombie frog fear runs through me.

I have several more cups of tea. I prepare a bin bag and try not to imagine the stench this is going to entail. I consider leaving them, since they will eventually sink to the bottom and rot. However a) the pond is too small to cope with that and b) zombie frog fear. I'd just keep imagining them in their watery graves, like amphibian Orphelias. I go back to the pond. The frogs have all gone. With relief, I do some weeding instead. I turn about. All three are back, but in different positions. The little buggers are playing tricks on me. They somehow know of my zombie frog fear and are exploiting it in revenge for the Accidental Death of a Frog last year.

Lest it be thought I'm a real country girl, I think I'd better point out that I live within 15 minutes walk of the city centre and on one of the main roads out of town. I just like a garden with wildlife. One day I hope to catch a grass snake and show it to the kid next door.

--
Posted @ 12:45 am on Wednesday, April 14, 2004
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This was in yesterday's Observer: Double income no idea, apparently

Welcome to two-income family life. He works, I work, and baby is taken care of by nanny and granny. It's the only way to afford a nice lifestyle. It is also a recipe for divorce, according to the latest marriage manual from America. The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Dr Laura Schlessinger urges that a wife should be flirtatious, wear a negligee, and always appear gagging for it. That's the bedroom routine. Elsewhere, she is to bake cookies, listen to his woes and never 'bitch'.


Oh how times have changed from this 1950s advice on how to be a good housewife:
HAVE DINNER READY: Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal--on time. This is a way to let him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned with his needs.

PREPARE YOURSELF: Take fifteen minutes to rest so that you will be refreshed when he arrives. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay* and a little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift. Greet him with a smile.

SOME "DO NOT'S": Don't greet him with problems and complaints. Don't complain if he is late for dinner. Count this as a minor problem compared to what he might have gone through that day.
*given this is a 1950s handbook, I don't think they meant "les up with your best mate".

I find it utterly implausible that this reactionary rubbish not only gets printed but sells. It's all one with rubbish like The Rules (on how to catch a husband) and the fact that so much of pulpy culture is about finding that one true love, that perfect blissful wedding.

I know people who are getting married. I know married people. I get that other people like that state of being. Yet not one of my married/partnered friends acts subserviantly towards their male partners. And they all seem to do just fine. This reactionary bollocks - the just keep quiet dear claptrap (to be said in a Micahel Winner voice, obviously) - pisses me off more than anything else. No, you are equal. You have rights. If you chap has any brains whatsoever he doesn't want you simpering in a bit of lace and serving up meals with a smile. If he does, ditch him.

--
Posted @ 7:50 pm on Monday, April 12, 2004
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Link overload alert! Sometimes you come across a site which reassures you that there are people with as cluttered and eclectic tastes as your own. Since my time-wasting activity of the day has been faffing about with my blog, I even reached the level of checking my referrals list at site meter. Apart from the usual bizarre google results, I also found many referrals from thingsmagazine.net: daily links, photos and new writing about objects. I'm not sure how I got on there (though I think I can guess) and I'm very sure I don't know how to leave. So far, from the front page alone, I've been unable to resist the following links:

the Museum of vintage computer graphics
vintage supermarket photos
the origin of the wire coathanger (that bane of every wardrobe)
the escape from colditz game
pam am memorabilia
follow the sun (1950s travel posters)
For any of you looking at the fads microblog, expect many, many {via}s for things.


  1. Grab the book nearest you. Turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says.
    Discounting my working notebooks:
    "of the professors. Once introduced to the ladies of their families, his"
    Right at Last, Elizabeth Gaskell in Victorian Love Stories, ed. Kate Flint
    If you want to count my working notebook:
    on strict astrological principles

  2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?
    Air. If I lean over a bit, the muslin curtain of the attic window.


  3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?
    Not counting films (see question 15)...Newsnight on Thursday night.


  4. WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is:
    19.10


  5. Now look at the clock; what is the actual time?
    19.20


  6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
    the dusk birdsong. muted traffic.


  7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
    half an hour ago. moving some old fence posts to the back of the garden, siting a solar-powered lantern partway down the path, pulling up some unwanted apple tree saplings and beginning the annual war on bindweed.


  8. Before you came to this website, what did you look at?
    Rogue Semiotics


  9. What are you wearing?
    black combats (my writing trousers - most writers have a hat but I have trousers). An old purple and red striped long-sleeve top I found lying on the ground at Glastonbury festival 1994.


  10. Did you dream last night?
    Yes. There were books.


  11. When did you last laugh?
    finding that HG Wells quote and wishing I could steal it.


  12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?
    Oh gods. I wish I was answering this on my laptop downstairs: there's not that much on those walls. OK:
    • in front of me (west wall): photo of two friends in SoCal; photo of myself and Current Ex on Dartmoor; Pratchett publicity poster for Carpe Jugulum; cover of magazine reading "Smile: You'll be caught on camera 14 times today"; Buffy postcard; aboriginal art postcard; hand-written letter from Terry Gilliam; signed still from Amber Benson's Chance movie; photo of "Morrison of Peking"'s grave; old page torn from a Dark Horse Tank Girl comic reading "the preposterous bollox of the situation"; photo of friend Gren at Ashton Court festival circa 1997; hand-painted scroll of a dragon and phoenix; bull-fighting poster with 'Fitz Kreiner' block-printed on it.

    • north and east walls bare except for an old oak-framed mirror

    • south wall (window to my left): Delicatessen print; Brazil still; poster for an exhibit at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford; postcard of a glass of milk (I have no idea why); badges from various conventions; a photo of some rats on sticks; a flyer for Catatonia's 'Mulder and Scully' single; a drawing of moosifer jones by the Arty Ex; a cover torn from The Modern Review which demands we "look at the lovely kitten!" (from an article about sentimentality); a cover ripped from the electronic times showing Armstrong on the moon, one arm raised towards his visor and the strapline of "I can see your house from here" (this is under the window, obviously); a bunch of postcards; a b&w photo of my mother; a string of orange paper lanterns; a Chinese lovers' wish ball.
      Don't dare ask what's on the desk...


  13. Seen anything weird lately?
    Define weird.
    Well, OK, let's discount seeing birds bathing in the pond as that's not weird, just new to me (I suspect moosifer was the Norman Bates of the bird world, attacking the things as they bathed). Let's likewise discount photos in the Fortean Times or I'll be here all night. Someone is advertising their band by sticking up stuff in the underpass. That in itself is not weird. How they are doing it, however, is to take photographs of a hand-scrawled poster stuck to a wall and then sticking up a glossy photo on the actual wall of the underpass.


  14. What do you think of this quiz?
    Can I go home now?


  15. What is the last film you saw?
    At home, An Ideal Husband. Rupert Everett and Oscar Wilde - I can't resist.
    At the cinema, er...Big Fish. A fiver thrown away.


  16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?
    I'd buy off my mortgage. Then an apartmento in a small fishing village on my secret volcanic island base. After that...I dunno...I'm not materially ambitious, really.


  17. Tell me something about you that I don't know.
    I have a shoe obsession but don't find feet remotely erotic. Oh! That's what I'd spend my multi-millions on! Shoes! And boots. And silly little strips of leather which cost a fortune and are allegedly sandals.


  18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
    does removing capitalism and/or social inequality count as political? Cure cancer and AIDs without involving animal experimentation.


  19. Do you like to dance?
    Yes.


  20. George Bush: is he a power-crazy nutcase or some one who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?
    Nutcase. Not to say that the problems of fundementalism don't need resolving. But I'd put American fundementalism in with the problem and I wouldn't resolve it by blowing things up.


  21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
    Georgina


  22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
    George


  23. Would you ever consider living abroad?
    Not permenantly. I could cope with a month away from Britain in say, January, every year but I actually like it here.

--
Posted @ 9:03 pm on Sunday, April 11, 2004
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No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own.
HG Wells, The War of the Worlds (1897)
Since it's Easter and I therefore have a four day weekend, I've been doing some serious work on the novel. Friday was sunny, so I cleared the garden enough to be able to sit out in an old wicker chair with a large cup of tea and a very fat book from the library on the social history of London in the 1890s. I even managed to fall asleep over it. Waking up, I read the chapters on mysticism and on imperialism. In the latter I found the HG Wells quote. Back when I wrote History 101, I naughtily stole and reworked the opening line of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I can justify that: it introduces the key elements of time, history and Orwell with two simple sentences. I only wish there was some jusitfication for borrowing this opening line from War of the Worlds but I can't and am having to struggle with creating my own. Nevertheless the line is wonderfully appropriate and I am anxious to make use of it in some way. Although not as anxious as these people were: Radio play upsets Americans (the original 1938 report from the Guardian's online archive {via})

I also realised something else with all constant musing on the novel. It's not really a spoiler to the three of so people who read this and who will read the novel for me to reveal that it will have 33 chapters and that this number is deliberate and significant in terms of the plot. It wasn't until this last week, when I had my birthday and got the inevitable "same age as Jesus"* comments at my age, that I realised the number of chapters is also the number of years of my life. Very odd and, as one of those people who sees patterns in numbers, I am of course convinced it is significant. I will be encountering the number 33 endlessly this summer, just as I couldn't stop spotting 101 a couple of years back.

*the same age as he was when he was crucified. Not two thousand and a bit.

Banksy (who I've waffled about before) continues his museum work by getting the Natural History Museum to exhibit an unnatural specimen.

The rat was stuffed and clad in wraparound sunglasses, scaled down to fit the top of its head, a rucksack on its back, and with a microphone in one paw.

A miniature spraycan sits at the departed rodent's feet, while above it is sprayed in graffiti-style lettering "our time will come".

The piece called "Banksus Militus Ratus" was displayed with a text that said the common sewer rat had some remarkable new characteristics.


(news via the big smoker)

--
Posted @ 10:38 am on Friday, April 09, 2004
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I'm finally happy with my reading list blog.

I did, to my horror, buy a second copy of a PKDick novel I already had (as previously wondered). This, and the horrified realisation that I added 16 books to my 'to be read' pile in March alone, made me think I ought to start cataloguing the amount of reading I keep buying. Possibly as a means to make me stop going into charity shops: the Oxfam on my street seems to have remarkably well-read doners, for example, enabling me to pick up Calvini and Marquez for 50p each. Well, copies of their books, not the writers themselves. Magic realists are not noted for hanging about the fairtrade chocolate rack in a charity shop on the wrong side of the river. At least, not in this town.

Naturally, the thought of cataloguing became instantly transformed into 'blog it!' and so the reading list was created. After some faffing about, I've decided each book will get its own entry which I can then update when I actually read the damn things. Rather disappointingly the first two read since the idea was implemented have been Archangel by Robert Harris and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, thus suggesting I'm in a light crime reading phase.

--
Posted @ 11:48 pm on Thursday, April 08, 2004
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I'm back in the office again (to be sung to the tune of 'Back in the Saddle Again', obviously). I have managed a grand total of 44 units of alcohol in the space of one week. The government's recommended guidelines for women is 14 units a week. Oops. Went to the usual pub and then the Cavern on Saturday, then lunch at the Prospect on Sunday, then the usual pub again last night. I've also started going to The Oldtimers bar/bistro/thing. This is a bar/bistro/thing in the ramshackle old building where Timepiece used to be in the 80s/90s. Unnervingly, it still retains enough of the old chaotic interior to be utterly familiar. That it is a bar/bistro/thing also makes me feel horribly like I am rapidly becoming more like someone in Black Books every day.

Quiz results time (delayed from Friday on account of being lazy):

How much do you know about Marlon Brando? (via)
You scored 8 out of a possible 10.
Coulda been a contender. You know the ropes and nailed most of the questions. But a few fumbled tango steps let you down at crucial junctures.


You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


You are the grammar Fuhrer.
All bow to your authority. You will crush all the inferior people under the soles of your jackboots, and any who question your motives will be eliminated. Your punishment is being the bane of every other person's existence, because you're constantly contradicting stupidity. Everyone will be gunning for you. Your dreams of a master race of spellers and grammarians frighten the masses. You must always watch your back. If only your power could be used for good instead of evil.

What is your grammar aptitude?
brought to you by Quizilla

(I'd just like to point out that the latter of those grammar quizzes was in no way, shape or form difficult. You can't trip me up with a they're/there/their, foolish quizilla person!)

--
Posted @ 9:01 am on Tuesday, April 06, 2004
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I am giving serious consideration to banning myself from visiting the Doctor Who New Series News Page at Outpost Gallifrey. Not due to spoilers, since Shaun has set up a lovely little bit of html to put them behind a spoiler button. No, my problem is that each time there is a big bit of news I get stupidly excited and am unable to concentrate on my work. Losing an entire day of writing time because Christopher Eccleston gives his first interview about being the Doctor on BBC Breakfast with two nonentities on a sofa (or whatever it's called these days) is just not useful or productive. If I'm like this now, how much worse will I get when there is the inevitable Doctor in costume photo shoot in June/July? By which time I will be a scant month away from the deadline on two books. Maybe I need to move to Spain? Except that won't stop my using the internet to get the news...

Why do I get so distracted though? I think it must be the technology. When Davison, Baker and McCoy were announced, photoshot etc., I was a pre-teen or a teenager with no video and certainly no internet connection to fans. I could go to school the next day and discuss it but that was it. With McGann, I had a VCR (a toploader, mind, that the cat liked to sleep on) but had only just convinced the office that we ought to have some kind of internet connection. And, it being dial-up, I daren't spend too long looking at non-work stuff. I was also deeply, deeply cynical about the TVM. Not because it was American, or that it was 90 minutes or any of the rumours about the Doctor kissing...no, I was so utterly cynical that I didn't really believe it was going to happen until the BBC started showing trailers. Online fandom was nascent, rec.arts.drwho seemed positively lovely compared to how it became and my main connections were via the printed fanzine world. We'd seen the tv show vanish, we'd had the various rumours of new shows, we'd hoped each one were true. So with McGann, I wanted to be excited but my experience told me not to believe anything until it was on-screen.

With Eccleston, I believe it. I can't believe it, in the sense that it's a good main writer, it's got good other writers, it's got a bloody excellent Doctor and it's being filmed by the BBC with a stupidly good budget a mere 2 hours from me. Yet the cynicism of the 90s has worn off and I can get excited before the series is actually on screen. And the level of instant communication with other fans means we can get into a spiral of rising enthusiasm very quickly (unless you go to the BBCi boards). Hence my total lack of focus and hence my horrified realisation that I may have to stop going to OG and its forum.

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Posted @ 12:34 pm on Saturday, April 03, 2004
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I'm having two days off from the day job. La, la, la! Look! I'm still in my jammies at 11:50 on a weekday!

Later today I will be popping into town to collect the bundle of books waiting for me at the R'n'R bookshop and making a list of all the books that have been added to my "to be read" pile in the last month. The R'n'R bookshop is like a sane version of Black Books. Books everywhere, no coffee, no sofas, no tinkly easy jazz. (To be fair, my favourite bookshop in London is Foyles and I will always use their Jazz cafe because it has something curiously boho and 50s about it.)

I spent last night drinking red wine and watching the entire season 2 of Black Books on DVD. The BBC had an utterly stupid Best British sitcom ever poll recently and Black Books didn't even make the top 50. Philistines! Fools! (Admittedly Father Ted, co-written by Graham Linehan who created Black Books, just missed the top 10 so I'm assuming it is merely the lack of age that prevented Black Books from getting anywhere). The show also suffers, reputation-wise, from a mind-staggeringly slow production rate of one season of six shows every 2 years so don't expect it to ever appear in America. Unless badly remade.

So here are my reasons for Black Books being a great sitcom:


  1. Situation, situation, situation
    It is one of those dreadful truisms about sitcoms that the good ones work on the principle that the main character is trapped in a situation from which they wish to escape. Be it the tedium of suburban life (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin), old age (Waiting for God), the hospitality trade (Fawlty Towers) or prison (Porridge, taking the idea of inescapable to its logical end).

    In Black Books, Bernard Black has no interest in escaping the situation. He likes the situation. Manny and Fran are the two who occassionally try to escape the shop. Or, more precisely, they try to escape Bernard. Manny frequently leaves, only to find himself at the whims of people even worse (the bear pornographer in He's Leaving Home, the corporate bookstore culture in Manny Come Home). Fran's attempts are more subtle but just as doomed. The three characters are utterly trapped by their co-dependency and Bernard fully intends to keep it that way. These aren't Friends' or Coupling's lot: this is a social group whose co-dependency is acknowlegded as an alluring trap.

  2. Characterization
    There've always been ensemble sitcoms. Most tend to assume that four is the very minimum (Red Dwarf when it began, The Golden Girls). Even Father Ted had four. Black Books decides to make it even smaller. Three characters. You can't do a sitcom with just three characters. Yet they do. Each one is a cliched stereotype on paper: the drunk Irish slob; the sandal wearing beardy hippie; the hypertense single woman. And every one works perfectly on screen because the three actors don't seem to play the parts, they embody them. I saw Moo-ma and Moo-pa being filmed and, in breaks, Bill Bailey would be the one to come over to chat to the audience (saving us from a truly dreadful warm-up man who actually managed to cool us down). There is something horribly plausible to their playing of the parts.

  3. it's black
    I can't get into the pretty world of things like Friends. Not just the tone of the narratives but in visual terms. Black Books looks skanky: the shop is chaos, Bernard and Manny look like single men who have never quite got to grips with laundry or clothes shopping. It's plausible rather than the usual TV neatness. And the tone is relentlessly bleak, cynical and dark. This, again, comes down to Bernard's acceptance of his place - anything upbeat is undercut with his pessimism.

  4. it's about books
    Yes, Ellen was set in a bookshop too but that was a corporate drone bookshop. I just adore the notion that Bernard loves books so much he doesn't actually want to sell them. Anyone who spends much time wandering about second hand bookshops will be familiar with that aspect of the trade. I would chat for ages with Dawn, the propriatoress of Barbican Books in Exeter's New Bridge Street, and as she was in the process selling up she told me that anyone who works in the second hand book trade is there because they love books. They want to spend their time surrounded by them. Bernard is unusally grouchy with the customers, true, but he loves his books.

--footnotes--

One thing that confuses me though, and which I never noticed till I went to the filming: there are too many staircases. There's one at the front of the shop, with its own door - quite clearly the usual seperate flat above a shop thing. And there's one going up from the kitchen, at the back of the shop, leading to Bernard and Manny's bedrooms and a bathroom (seen in season 2 during the Wallace and Grommet section). So how the hell is this building divided up? The angles are all wrong. Possibly thinking about this is a sign of my own insanity. I should go write something proper...(update: so I checked The Fixer on the DVD - not only are the stairs all wrong, there's a window where no window could possibly be. Perhaps it's a side effect of the well-known TARDIS effect in bookshops? Or the 'magical shop' thing?)

On the rather good C4 microsite for Black Books, the 'diary' notes that Bernard has Doctor Who underpants. The mental image of Dylan Moran with Tom Baker's beaming face on his crotch is very very disturbing...

update for LJers - no I don't see or get notified about comments. You should go to the blog and post any there.

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Posted @ 11:50 am on Thursday, April 01, 2004
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