Belonging to Night - A Labour of Love / Obsession

Though I now have a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire, this was the result of my third attempt at university.  

The first came way back in 1999.  Having made something of a buggered pig's anus of my A-Levels (my best result was an E), I had no clue what to do.  So, when Sheffield Hallam University offered me an HND in Property Management, I shrugged my shoulders and accepted.

It was crap: dry lectures in property law and building maintenance, that came to a head early in the second semester when four hours of a wet Wednesday morning were dedicated to rising damp, culminating in a documentary about the whole thing being bollocks.

A lecture, a tutorial, a lecture and another tutorial, between 9am and 1pm on a Wednesday morning, to tell us about something that doesn't exist!

It was Religious Studies all over again.

Suffice to say I quit.

The thing is university is fun: away from home for the first time; decent sized loan and maintenance grant and bank overdraft to play with; new people, new experiences, new opportunities to get royally obliterated in new pubs and new clubs.  As much as I couldn't bring myself to continue with the course, I was loath to give up the lifestyle.

The problem was, I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, so off I was sent by the Job Centre to a careers advisor who, after a brief chat, recommended something in research.  He did suggest a few jobs to get me started, but I was far more interested in the Foundation Year in Science and Mathematics offered by SHU.

Alas, interested as I am in physics, and passable as I am at maths, I always sucked at chemistry and biology.

Suffice to say I failed.

However, it was at this time that I started writing.  It was mainly just a hobby; a way of killing time during my second semester, when I should have been revising biology.  But after 6 months and a few failed exams, I'd completed half a novel and realised I'd really rather enjoyed myself doing it.

Another 8 months and a lot of rewriting later, and I'd finished my first novel!

And several months after that, it was published!!

Unfortunately, it turned out the publisher in question would publish literally anything - as evidenced by the utter bilge they'd accepted from me - and leave it entirely to the author to promote and sell the work.

I realised that, if I wanted to do this properly, it would help to know what I was doing, so off to college I went.  With a lot more focus, and a few more years behind me, I passed quite comfortably, made it to university once again, and finally came out at the end of it all with a 2:1 (my dissertation was pants).

During all this, and in the time since, I've been drawn to a number of different projects, none of which have gotten much further than a chapter or two.  To this day, Belonging to Night remains the only thing I've ever completed (that wasn't a university assignment), and the thing I've gone back to again and again in an attempt to finally get it right.

Different perspectives, different tenses, different styles, even different formats:   How ever I've approached it, I've hit a roadblock or become fatigued.  I've even started on a prequel/spin-off.

But then, every time I've set it aside, I've inevitably been drawn back to it.

This is the latest in a pathetically long line of attempts at the intro:

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Southampton, NY. December 20th

Gotta love a good funeral.  Where else is such a show put on by such a mass of sycophants?  Neutralised by their common dress; heads all bowed in faux solemnity, no matter their opinion of the deceased.  They mostly huddle in packs beneath a sea of black umbrellas: lawyers; business associates; business rivals; various investigators from various organisations.  All ashen-faced and dull-eyed; their thinning hair wintering at the edges, dappled in snow or shellacked black like a seabird in an oil slick.

The priest projects his sermon with all the self-assured elan of a lounge singer delivering his climactic crowd-pleaser: ‘This one’s for you!  Why not sing along with the ‘Amens’?’

Even the bereaved are not to be believed.  We might look the part, but there isn’t a mourner in attendance who imagines he’s leaving behind a grieving family.

Only his PA is shedding genuine tears, though I suspect they’re on account of her dearly departed pay check.

‘GABRIEL CALLAGHAN III’ reads his gaudy plaque.  I hate that numeral: it makes me feel like the next model on a production line.  My grandfather wore it like a medal; said it gave him a sense of peerage: ‘Honouring the Gabriel Callaghans that have come before us.’  Says it all that he wouldn’t share the name with his son.

“What’s with the priest?” He stumbles just a little over his ministrations, but like a true professional, is back in full flow before the gasps are done.  Josephine turns a glare to the corner of my eye, but there’s no venom in it.

“You know your grandfather,” she says beneath her breath.  “He loved the pomp and ceremony.”

For her benefit I lower my voice.  “Well he’d better hurry up.  He’s making me hungry.”

“Behave yourself, Gabriel.”

Spurred it seems, the priest hastens to a close - “…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” - and our token mourners chorus the ‘Amen’.

Josephine steps forward with the urn; heeled boots gliding over the thickening snow.  She stops at the edge of the grounds overlooking the ocean, whispers a few words and casts her brother to the breeze.  

For a moment, we all pay our silent respects, until a small voice derails my train of thought.  “Weren’t you going to put that on the plaque?”

Zara is at my hip, staring reverently at the ground.  “Something like that,” I reply.

“So, what happened?”

“Your mother said it wasn’t appropriate.  I suppose she was right.

“Bite me.”  The last I growl at a nearby lawyer with the audacity to shush us.

“So, you’re saving it for the wake?” she asks as the lawyer tries to further merge into the monochrome crowd.

“You think a change of scenery would make it any more appropriate?”

“The alcohol might.”

She has a point…

Boy Scout Blues

I've never been a big fan of Superman.  I enjoyed the Christopher Reeve films as a kid, but beyond that, I found the more-or-less omnipotent boy scout thing dull, especially next to more complex superheroes like Spider-Man and Batman.

The problem is, Superman was a character of his time, and although he evolved significantly from his conceptual beginnings, and enjoyed something of a reboot with the Richard Donner film, his relevancy dropped off a cliff shortly after Superman II, and has never really recovered, as evidenced by DC's repeated and increasingly desperate attempts to recapture people's imagination:



I bring this up because, Bob Chipman - aka MovieBob - just released an insightful little piece on why the aforementioned Richard Donner film worked, and why it (mostly) holds up to this day:



Now I don't entirely agree - certainly not on the point of how well it holds up today (taken out of the context of its time, I find it slow, clunky, cheesy and a bit silly-looking) - but he does make a particularly good point on how a character like Superman needs to be adapted for the screen, highlighting why recent interpretations since that whole mess in the 90s - not just in terms of the Zack Snyder films, but from DC in general - have failed:

"People are bored of him because he's invincible, so we'll kill him."
"Kids like Rambo-esque action heroes, so we'll give him a mullet and guns."
"People miss the old Superman, so we'll do the old Superman."
"Oh, people don't like the old Superman, so we'll put him in jeans and a t-shirt."
"Batman's still popular, so we'll also make Superman brooding and gritty."
"Okay, we've no idea what people want...so we'll make Superman lost and clueless too!"

While Donner and crew were focused on presenting Superman as everyone needed and expected to see him, both DC's comic-book and cinematic arms have since tried to present him as they think the audience thinks they want to see him.  The result being...



Personally, I think Superman has had his day.  There's still a place for him, but I don't believe that place is as a protagonist in his own stories.

Superman is an ideal: incorruptible, indestructible and insurmountable.  Even amongst his fellow superheroes, he's a higher presence; there for the rest to aspire to.  He long ago reached a point where, to have him flying around punching bad-guys in the face - how ever powerful those bad-guys might be - was to undermine the character.

Better now to either make a genuine martyr of him - without the usual resurrection cop-out - or to have him acknowledge his own status and remove himself from the day-to-day goings on, only to return when the stakes become universal.

A More Positive Outlook

I originally scribbled this down a few months back, while pondering the sorry state we're currently in as a species.  I often find it difficult to remain optimistic in our present global climate of ignorance, greed and distrust, but every now and then, a light shines through and I think, Y'know, we might not be so buggered, after all.

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The Earth formed four and a half billion years ago.  For more than half of its existence, it was bereft of life, but as it cooled, circumstances - temperature; atmosphere; chemical compounds; water - were just right for life to form.  The formation of that life immediately changed the circumstances - using up resources; expelling different compounds - the new circumstances gave rise to new life, which resulted in new circumstances...and so on.

By the time the Earth was four billion years old, the ever-changing combination of life and environment came together to cause the Cambrian explosion: a sudden rush of evolution that gave rise to more complex and diverse lifeforms, which spent the next hundred million years or so growing and expanding and dealing with an ice-age, until the Devonian period of fish, plant life and the earliest land animals.  That lot lasted a good two-hundred million years, before a dramatic climate shift, and second ice-age, all but wiped the slate clean and paved the way for the dinosaurs.

Things settled down again for the next hundred and fifty million years-ish, with some of the dinosaurs holding on to their reptilian roots, while others took on more avian attributes, until a meteorite hit and the whole thing required a rethink.  The larger animals couldn’t survive.  The rest either went to ground or took to the air.  Some primates, however, simply got smarter.

Over the next sixty-five million years, the primates’ intelligence grew - thinking their way to survival - and a certain branch learned to not only adapt to their environment, but to adapt their environment to them.  Tools; shelters; clothing.  They learned to grow crops; they learned to hunt rather than simply relying on the land.

A mere two hundred millennia ago, we finally emerged.  A mere two hundred thousand years, after more than two billion of evolution.

In a time when our species is so at odds with itself, I’m comforted by the fact we’re still so young.  Our capacity to learn has afforded us a great advantage over previous species: where evolution once took thousands of generations and millions of years, our thirst  for understanding, and powers of empathy and self-awareness accelerated our own.  Physically, little has changed over the last two hundred thousand years, but our ever-expanding intellect has taken us from seeing the sun as a deity to understanding it is in fact a big ball of burning gas; from thinking of the Earth as a flat plain several thousand years old to (most of us) knowing it’s a four and half billion year-old sphere; from being locked firmly to the ground to crossing the oceans by air and sea, and even walking on the moon.

While in recent millennia, we have stumbled - morality was replaced with religion; empathy with a distrust of people beyond our artificial borders; our thirst for knowledge with the desired comfort of ignorance - these things are fleeting and cannot sustain themselves.  They weaken us as a species and hold us back, but in the end, those clinging to these dying attitudes will themselves die out; left behind while the rest of us come together to seek out the next unreachable horizon...and reach for it.

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The latest inspiration for this somewhat-rosier-than-usual outlook comes from China's drive to be a significant global player in the world of science.

While chasing a dominant footing, there appears to be a prevailing attitude of global cooperation in China's scientific community: an acceptance that, without that cooperation, any advancement will only get so far, and will be soon outstripped.

On the world stage, science is tragically unique - or, at least, in very limited company - in this regard.  While national leaders squabble like children over who owns what, who has the biggest and best toys, and who's omnipotent ghost could deck anyone else's omnipotent ghost, scientists the world over are united in their goal to advance the knowledge and understanding of everyone.  Whether it be the various teams at CERN or on the International Space Station, there's an acknowledgement that the best thing for everyone is to work together.

And if even a regressive, constrictive and skittish government like China's can see the benefit of international cooperation, then there's yet hope for the rest.

Hitman Anders and the Meaning of Joy

I had never heard of Jonas Jonasson until a friend happened to mention how much she'd enjoyed The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.

Frankly, with a title like that, she could have said the thing was awful, unreadable, Twilight-esque trash, and I'd still have been compelled to read it.  As it turned out, it was a stunning, hilarious, life-affirming, decade and continent-spanning dual adventure that had me grinning from ear-to-ear from page-to-page.

That was followed by The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden: another decade and continent-spanning romp, though not quite as extensive in either regard as its predecessor.

Though the two stories were very different, they did have two very important things in common: exceptional, breezy writing, and fascinating central and supporting characters it was a joy to spend four-hundred-ish pages with.

So now we get Hitman Anders and the Meaning of it All.

As testament to Jonasson's breezy style, the opening chapter gives us the full life-story (including family history) of our first protagonist; a receptionist lumbered through circumstance with the somewhat silly name of Per Persson - "...not that it's impossible to be named Per Persson or, for that matter, Jonas Jonasson, but some might find it monotonous" - and a brief summary of the life and misfortunes of our titular Hitman, Johan Andersson.  As double biographies go, they're concise, to say the least.

Chapter two brings us protagonist three in the form of Johanna Kjellander, a disgruntled former parish priest, and the unlikely criminal mastermind behind the group's underhanded endeavours.  Conniving, imaginative, quick-witted and vindictive, the priest is easily the most fascinating and enjoyable of the trio - with the Hitman a simple foil, and the receptionist an out-of-his-depth sidekick for the bulk of the story - but this is nevertheless an ensemble piece: the very traits that make the priest the stand-out, and most proactive character of the group are also what make her incapable of coping on her own.

For me, it is the weakest of the three, owing mostly to a third act that grinds the action to a halt, before rushing somewhat unexpectedly to its ending.  But overall, as with Jonasson's previous novels, Hitman... is a briskly-paced, occasionally bizarre, often hilarious story, with unusually intelligent, though morally questionable protagonists, somewhat less intelligent, bungling antagonists, death, mayhem, oblivious authorities, lashings of karma, and an oddly recurring theme of a briefcase (or two) full of cash.

Most importantly, it kept me smiling throughout.

Beyond The Horizon

I love me some fantasy and sci-fi: whether it be myths, magic and dragons, or lasers, spaceships and aliens, the scale and scope of the genres have always appealed to me.

Though, as much as I've always been a fan of both, as a young'n', it was fantasy I was keenest on.  It was without limits; from beardy old men slinging lightning at each other, to mountain-sized, sentient beasts soaring through the sky, dousing vast armies with their fiery breath.

Despite being a slow reader (to this day), I read The Hobbit in a few days; The Lord of the Rings in a few weeks.  I longed to one-day write my own epic adventure, encompassing all of the classic tropes, and developed a story of such scale as to make Tolkein say, 'Sorry, you've lost me.'

In more recent years, however, I've leaned more towards science fiction.  Not necessarily in terms of reading material - I've frankly struggled to find anything that has hooked me for any length of time (beyond Drew Karpyshyn's Mass Effect novels) - but in terms of the genre as a whole.

For one, I like adventures: characters going on a long journey, filled with danger and intrigue, exotic beasts in exotic locales.  The problem is, while I believe sci-fi has far greater scope for such stories (you've the entire universe to play with, after all), I've always found good adventures easier to find in the pages of fantasy.  Perhaps the tertiary, rather than universal, setting makes such stories easier to write.

Regardless, the second - and perhaps more important - appeal of the sci-fi genre is the possibilities (imagined though they may be) it represents.

The thing is, we know dragons don't exist.  We know there are no such things as fairies, or sorcerers, or witches seeing future events in bubbling cauldrons of rat-tail and bat-wing broth.

Space, however, is out there.  Full of alien worlds, and varied solar systems, and structures so immense, it would take several lifetimes to get from one end to the other, even if we could reach the speed of light.  

And who knows what exits on those worlds?  The odds of life such as ours evolving are billions to one, but there are trillions of worlds out there in our galaxy alone.  The odds of us being alone in the universe are infinitely greater.

Unfortunately, the pages of science fiction are where such things must remain for the time-being.  We can't travel beyond (or anywhere near) the speed of light.  We can't enter hyperspace or create wormholes.  We can't even take a good look at the planets in our neighbouring systems (not yet, at least).  But while it's frustrating to have no way of finding out what's truly out there, there's still excitement to be found in the possibilities.

To that end, I've made a few attempts at writing my own sci-fi story, so far without much success.  This is the beginning (and, so far, the entirety) of the latest attempt:

---

In millennia past, man was hesitant to sail to the horizon for fear of falling from the edge of the world, into the gaping maw of some unseen beast.  Distant lands were new worlds filled with exotic, savage peoples and alien species, ancient and terrible.

But the horizon was reached, and those new worlds explored, and the Earth grew small.

And so to the moon; that mystical body so near in the heavens, yet beyond our reach.  We thought ourselves edging ever closer - scaling mountains, taking to the air, skirting the atmosphere and finally entering the void beyond - only to realise it would take one giant leap to bridge that great distance.

But the moon was reached, and the footprint of mankind planted forever on its surface.

We sent probes to our neighbours: Mars and Venus.  Our eyes reached out as far as Ceres; the moons of Saturn and Jupiter; the Kuiper Belt and the dwarf worlds of Pluto, Haumea; beyond the very borders of our solar system.

But our gaze reached far beyond our grasp.  As far as we could send our legacy out into the cosmos, we remained bound: multiplying and spreading to every corner until the land was choked; our resources failing.  And the Earth grew small.

Politicians argued over who had the rights to what, and answered contrary opinions with soldiers, tanks and bombs.  The people lamented their leaders; argued with their leaders; elected new leaders; ultimately ignored their leaders when new faces walked the exact same path as the old.

The people became insular; caring for themselves and their own, and dealing with the fallout of their leaders’ action and inaction only when it encroached on their own lives.

And without warning, the Earth was far too big.  Many died quickly.  Many more died over time.  The few who remained were disparate: alone and scared.  The horizon was a world away, and there was no way of knowing what lay beyond.

But the heart of man cannot survive stagnant and alone.  Necessity, as well as curiosity, sought the horizon once more.  People lived.  People gathered.  People grew.  Fallen leaders remained buried and forgotten, and the people rose anew, as one.

The road was long and difficult, but never without purpose.  

We sailed to the horizon and we rediscovered distant lands, and the Earth grew small again.

We rebuilt on the ashes of the past, and looked again to the heavens: to the Moon; to Mars.  And further.  We built, and we explored.  We colonized, and we explored.  How ever far the next horizon - how ever difficult the path - we ventured without pause.

And we learned.

And we grew.

And on our diminishing homeworld, The Horizon was built.

Those who desired to, stayed.  The solar system was theirs and we knew, at last, it was in good hands.

The rest of us boarded The Horizon to follow the path of Voyager.

How ever far - how ever difficult - we are bound for the horizon, and The Horizon is now our home.

Where Should One Deposit One's Twos?

A couple of months ago, a bill was passed in North Carolina to dictate where people shit.  It is, on the face of it, the least news-worthy piece of news since Woman With Big Arse Shows off Big Arse.

Sadly, the face of things is rarely indicative of its substance.  This particular bill aims, among other things, to force people to use the restroom/locker matching their gender at birth, regardless of the gender they now identify as.

Proponents of the bill claim that they are trying to protect people's privacy: "There's an expectation that the only other people will be the same gender as they are and that's the way we've been doing things for a long time."

Governor Pat McCrory, from who this narrow insight comes, seems to believe that women are far more comfortable sharing a locker with someone born a woman, who now has all the features of a man, rather than someone born a man who now has all the features of a woman.

Might want to think that one through, Pat.

The talking (empty) heads have taken the argument further (and stupider) by suggesting that allowing transgender people to use the facilities most appropriate to them somehow endangers people, giving perverts carte blanch to go through the other door and molest people.

Setting aside the fact that, if these hypothetical perverts are out to molest people, they're hardly going to be put off by restroom protocol, this argument is still moronic and self-defeating; the suggestion being that a man can simply slip on a dress and walk into the ladies', claiming to be transsexual, then have his wicked way with whomever he chooses.  While under North Carolina's bill, the pervert in this hypothetical scenario doesn't even need a dress:

"What are you doing in here?"
"No, it's fine.  According to the law, I have to use this bathroom."

Of course, the arguments are nothing more than a smokescreen to disguise the discriminatory attitude of those pushing the bill.  Better to hide behind a nonsensical argument than admit to a purposeful attack on transgender people, and the LGBT community at large.

Conservatives need an enemy; someone they can point at and say, "Look, they're different form you and threatening your way of life!  Put us in charge and we'll protect you!"  Historically, race has been the easiest tool for this - "They're a different shade!  Suspect them!" - but with increasing social diversity, this argument has become a lot harder to make.

"Look out!  It's a terrorist!"

"Who, Suresh?  Doubt it.  He does amateur dramatics, and can't play CoD to save his life.  Kicks my arse at pool, though."

Not that discrimination against the LGBT community is anything new, but the sad irony of the increasing acceptance and understanding of society as a whole is conservatives can rile up their base with bullshit claims of a 'Gay Agenda' and the erosion of 'Traditional Family Values'.

As McCrory says: "Most people had never heard of this issue five months ago, until the political left started saying, 'We need bathroom rules and policies,' not just for government facilities and schools but also for the private sector."

In other words, the only reason this is a problem is because people have been made aware of the problem.  Ignorance is bliss, eh Pat?

And if the standard scaremongering doesn't work: "Leviticus 18:22 - 'You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.'"

Yeah, well: Deuteronomy 14:8 - 'The pig...is unclean for you. You shall not eat any of their flesh nor touch their carcasses.'  So that's bacon sandwiches and American Football out, too.  And don't get God started on polyester blends!

Side note: People with knowingly discriminatory views are always quick to quote the Bible - or whatever their preferred religious text happens to be - as a defence, but they get somewhat fuzzier on dogmatic doctrine when it comes to, say, the acquisition of wealth:  Matthew 19:24 - '...it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.'

"Yeees...but, you see, what Jesus meant was...well, he was just being hyperbolic.  He didn't really mean I have to give up my trust-fund and multi-billion dollar business interests if I want to get into Heaven.  That's just crazy talk!"

Hardly surprising from people who base their 'morality' on a 400 year-old adaptation of a 500 year-old translation of 1,500 year-old texts, based on 2,000 year-old stories adapted from several thousand year-old teachings born of ignorance and a desire to control the ignorant.

Anyway, defiant as North Carolina's governor is when it comes to his barely-closeted homophobia, it's reassuring that the cost reaches further than just a reputation as a repressed, small-minded twonk.  It's a positive age we're living in when something that, at one time not so long ago, would have gone broadly unnoticed (and possibly even been widely applauded) can now hit a state's economy, with big-name artists and businesses pulling shows and investments that would otherwise have filled the state's coffers.

Where it ALL Began?

I'm not a physicist.

Just wanted to get that out of the way before I launch into this, so you know I claim no qualified scientific backing to anything I'm about to say.  Then again, what I'm about say probably makes that opening statement redundant anyway:

I don't entirely buy the Big Bang theory.

No, I'm not about to argue the case for Genesis: I spent 12 years going to Catholic schools, and the main thing I took from all of those Religious Studies classes was that it was all bollocks (but that's a rant for another day).

My lack of conviction with regard to the birth of our universe stems from two questions:

1. What came before?
2. What happens when a galaxy dies?

There are several theories concerning what lies beyond our universe and where it all may have come from.  These are too numerous and complicated to get into in any great detail here (not least because I barely understand most of them), but as far as I'm aware, one of the most mathematically sound (or, at least, broadly accepted) at the moment suggests vast sheets of...stuff, flapping around out there, beyond our particular plane of existence.  As these sheets ripple, they will occasionally touch, and the result is a singularity that spawns a universe, much like our own.

The issue I have with these theories - aside from their unfathomability to my scientifically illiterate little brain - is they seem predicated on the assumption that our universe is not all there is, and that there must be something grander out there, beyond its borders.

But what if there isn't?  What if our universe is all there is?  What if the Big Bang was actually just a Big Bang?

Two of the biggest clues backing up the theory of the Big Bang are the motion of the galaxies in the observable universe - everything appears to be moving away from a central point (the singularity) - and background radiation, said to be left over from the initial expansion.

So, I got to thinking about that singularity.  Essentially, it's a Black Hole: a single point in space in which everything is condensed into one, solid thing, even down to an atomic level (blow up an atom's nucleus to the size of a football, and its protons and electrons will be orbiting miles away - in a singularity, even atoms' component parts are squished into a single point).

A particularly big (Super Massive, you might say) Black Hole lies at the heart of every spiral galaxy: it's what gives such galaxies - including our own - their shape.  We're effectively water going down a plughole, which means our precious Milky Way won't last forever.  Eventually, everything that makes up a spiral galaxy will be devoured by the Black Hole at its heart, or the Black Hole itself will reach a point where it can no longer contain itself.  Either way, the time will come when it explodes, throwing all that made up that galaxy out into the cosmos, to be picked up in the wake of other galaxies, or clump together to form new nebulae and, eventually, new galaxies.

If that's the case, then couldn't the effects we attribute to the birth of the universe not simply be from the death of a galaxy?  What if 14 billion years ago, a galaxy reached the end of its life, went the way of Thunder in Big Trouble in Little China, and spread its guts out into the deep, dark infinite, to continue the universe's eternal evolution?

My Head is Full of Numbers and Gunge

It's nice to have a job that allows me to work from home, and handy, due to an on-going issue with my back that has occasionally prohibited me from getting into the office.

Certainly, there are advantages: cosy, familiar surroundings; comfy couch; coffee on tap; access to YouTube, Netflix and Steam (just for use during my lunch break, you understand).  I don't even have to worry about rush-hour.

That said, I often find it difficult to focus (curse you, YouTube, Netflix and Steam), and it's not quite as practical as my office set-up, where I have a proper mouse & keyboard, and separate monitor for my laptop.  I could, of course, hook said laptop up to the mouse, keyboard and monitor I'm using right now, but as my home set-up consists of my PC being plugged into the lounge TV, and the couch being further than the reach of a monitor cable, it wouldn't work (besides, I don't want to sully my TV with work-stuffs; that's just not right).

Add to that the fact that, this week, it has been by sinuses rather than my back that has me home-bound, and it's not all as rosy as you might have first imagined.

Yes, I have a cold.  And it sucks.  Now, I'm not as bad as some when it comes to dealing with a cold - I typically don't start scrawling my Last Will & Testament with a frail, tremulous hand, as the bony claw of the Grim Reaper drags me through a man-flu mire of snot, sweat and tears - but I'm hardly all sunshine and rainbows either.  Not least because I was looking forward to some karaoke on Friday.

I am a 35 year-old male, and neither a student nor Japanese, so I'm perhaps not the usual demographic for a karaoke night, but I enjoy it nonetheless.  My standards are Billy Idol's Rebel Yell, The Beatles' Come Together, Bobby Darin's Mack the Knife and, if I'm feeling brave, Foo Fighters' All My Life.

Recently, however, I've had a hankering for this:



Ambitious, I know, but it's stunning!

Sadly - quite apart from the fact I'd be surprised if it was on the list - even with my cold on its way out, I'm not sure I'll be in a fit state for it (especially that finale).  Let's face it, whether I'd be up to at my peak is a question few music lovers would want to risk me answering...

And this isn't the only untried track on my mucus-filled mind right now:



Don't make things easy on myself, do I?

Feverishly Elective: an update!

Well, who'd have thunk?!  A mere two months after announcing that all schools were being forced to become academies - after a mere two months of a feckless halfwit failing to convince people who know far better than her that, 'no, really, it's a great idea!' - the government has yanked up the handbrake and swung a 180 that would make Ken Block fill his helmet with yesterday's Frosties.

"This is about being a listening government..." says the twit in question.  "Better to have reforms than have none at all."

And what are those reforms?  "We absolutely support those strong local authorities where schools are good and outstanding - they can make the choice to convert," while those that are failing or can't be supported by the local authority will be 'compelled' to convert.

Soooo they're scrapping the whole idea and going back to Labour's plan.  Way to stamp your authority, Nick.

In other election news, bugger-all has changed.  Oh, everyone's claiming some kind of victory: the Tories are now top of the lowly pile being sniggered at from on high by the SNP; Labour have held on, despite everyone assuming they'd lose big; UKIP and the LibDems have actually made some gains; and Sadiq Khan looks set to become the new Boris, despite once spending a brief evening in the same building as someone with extremist views, clearly marking him out as a terrorist sympathiser (though, when Zac Goldsmith did exactly the same thing, it was meaningless).

However, to look at these 'victories' another way: it doesn't matter who has the most of the measly number of seats left open by the SNP--being the second party in Scotland right now is like being the biggest of five field mice arguing with the farm's angry tabby; given the shit the Tories have been pulling, and their deepening well of failures, Labour should be stomping on their bacon-smelling bollocks, not merely holding on; the LibDems have risen from the doldrums of insignificance to become a protest vote for people who can't bring themselves to be racist; and the best London can hope for from a new mayor is him talking slightly less gibberish than the last one.

 

Democracy.

Yay.

First Impressions

Last night I finally got around to watching this...


...and it was awesome.  Fast, funny, fearless, and staggering performances from not only Dicaprio as Jordan Belfort (seriously, Academy, you must've been sampling some of the substances on display to have chosen McConaughey over him), but from the entire cast.  Jona Hill, in particular, was a revelation!

I immediately gave it 5 stars on Netflix.

This morning, however, I found myself questioning if it really was that good.

The performances I still cannot fault - there wasn't a single weak link, with almost the entirety of the main cast being asked to play comedy, tragedy, quiet drama and balls-to-the-wall outlandishness at the drop of a hat - but the more I thought about it, the more holes I found elsewhere.

For a start, it's predictable.  As outlandish as the characters behave from scene to scene, the plot is so by-the-numbers you can chart it from the most generic of generic synopses: It's a decadent rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall story.  Scarface, Wall Street, Goodfellas; if you've seen any of them (or a hundred others) you know exactly how it goes.

Then there's the timeline: We're given musical cues throughout to represent the period, but the timing often suggests we've been in this particular year for some unknown time.

There's also little character closure beyond Belfort.  Yes, it's his story (and a 'true' one, so any extraneous info is, presumably, out there somewhere), but I was still left questioning what happened to the supporting characters: How did they deal with the crash of '87?  What happened to her?  What happened to him? Who was charged, what with and what punishment was dished out?

Even an Animal House-style blurb ahead of the closing credits would've been welcomed: "Rugrat was indicted on 600 charges of market manipulation, 300 charges of substance abuse and 1 charge of fraudulent hair.  He served 4 years as a McDonald's scrubber, before being promoted to fries and dying of a salt overdose."

But here's the thing: Should I judge the film on my immediate reaction, or mark it down because of the problems I've thought of after the fact?  Is my initial enjoyment more important than analytical hindsight?

Looking at it from the other side, when I first saw The Dark Knight Rises, I was underwhelmed.  No, it was never going to live up to The Dark Knight, but it was more than that: the film felt bloated and ponderous, the plot was silly, the tone was a mess and the ending as crap.

However, I did enjoy it a lot more the second time around.  Already being aware of the issues, I was able to ignore them and enjoy the spectacle: the airborne heist; the bat-pod chase; Hathaway's Catwoman; the climactic battle; Hathaway's Catwoman...

Did any of that make it a better film?  I'm inclined to say no, because all of that was there before, but was undermined by its issues.

So does noticing Wolf of Wall Street's issues after the fact make it a worse film?  That, I find more difficult to answer.  On the one hand, those issues were already there, but I didn't notice because of how much I was enjoying the rest.  If anything, this elevates the quality of what did work.  On the other hand, when those issues do come to mind, it means that enjoyment can be lessened over time, reducing its lasting appeal.

Maybe it's more of a scale thing.  I thoroughly enjoyed Die Another Day when I first saw it; now I see it as a depressing piece of shit.  I didn't get The Life Aquatic when I first saw it; now I adore it!

You see, none of this is to say I now consider Wolf of Wall Street to be a bad film - issues or not, it's a tremendous and highly entertaining piece of work - it's just that it did get me thinking about how I judge films.

An intro

I'm not entirely sure to what, yet.  This is more of a tone setter...

I straddle a rickety chair by the window, blowing Cuban smoke into the dense night air, listening to the languid jazz humming from a pub down the road.  The singer’s voice is warm honey down my spine, though her limp-wristed pianist lacks the heft to back her up.

The hotel room is a gaudy affair: all white-wood furniture trimmed with over-polished brass.  A lazy ceiling fan swirls crisp air around the lounging form in the middle of the bed.  The whore’s shallow breath is drowned out by her heavy pulse.  She stares at me with vacant, emerald eyes.  Thick, red hair; child-baring hips; freckles; skin a shade less pallid than my own: What more could an old Irish boy ask for?

My sister once told me I should admire them for the lives they lead despite their brevity.  And I do, I suppose.  The spectre of death looms large over the precious few decades they have, yet still they carry on.  I just wish they’d make better use of what little time they have.

“Take you, for example.  You’re young.  You’re beautiful.  You have, what, five, maybe six decades to play with?  If you’re lucky.  And what are you doing with it?  Opening your legs for any fucker with a fat purse to stick his prick in you for five minutes, slap you around for ten, then stagger home under the illusion of satisfaction to his wife and spawn.”

The fan stills.  Her heart stops.  Cuban musk hangs in the air like a heady mist.  In an instant, to her offended eyes, I’m on top of her: her thick hair curled in my fingers; her wrists pinned.

“Your species,” I tell her.  “You piss away your lives on monotonous ventures, for a handful of paper you’ve been told is important, so you can hand it over to some other feckless shite to hand back a bottle of booze, or an illicit iconograph to help you forget your pathetic, mundane existence.”

She struggles, and I tighten my grip.  Anger flares in her emerald eyes, but it’s tinged with fear.  Yes, I admire her.  I admire her spirit; her passion; her sense of self-preservation.

And I’m disgusted by her wasted potential.

“I’ve seen exceptions, of course: those who’ll put aside their pride for a morsel, or will fight to their end for the life a stranger.  Great minds and great people doing great work for the betterment of you all.  Squandered, because some areshole told you some benevolent ghost says it should be otherwise.”

“What are you?”  The question is choked out through barely suppressed tears; her throat dry with rising panic.

I smile, with a flash of fang.  “You shouldn’t ask questions to which you don’t want an answer.”
That strong heart of hers is now defening.  I feel her pulse run up my arm, filling my chest and pounding behind my eyes.  The fiery hair, pale skin, freckles, emerald eyes: all lost to me now.  There’s only the quickening of blood; the life surging through her; the desperation to survive!  She’s more alive now than she will ever be.

Two hundred thousand million of them in the world: take one away and what changes?  Her family will grieve, and move on.  Her Madame will briefly lament, then replace her.  Her ‘colleagues’ will continue under the same veil of fear that clouds their lowly existence.

I should really stop feeding on whores; they make me maudlin.

Feverishly Elective! (a political rant (sorry))

It's [Local] Election day!

*w00p*

And here in Cheltenham we have the democratic privilege of voting for our Police & Crime Commissioner (from a list of people I've never heard of and have no idea about) and our Ward Councillors (from a list of people I've never heard of and have no idea about).

Can you feel the excitement?  Taste the eagerness?  Smell the anticipatory sweat?

No?  How about sense the soul-numbing apathy?


Yup, that's more like it.

Twenty years ago, there was a genuine sense of excitement in the run-up to the General Election.  After a close run fight in '92, the Tories were flagging and Labour were in a position, for the first time since the '70s, to give them a good kicking.  They had a charismatic leader, a positive message of hope heading into the new millennium, a raft of aspirational policies, and even a catchy theme song:


(I didn't say it was a good theme song)

Sadly, as is the way with political parties, it was soon apparent that New Labour was little more than old Tory light, and '97's +70% voter turnout dropped below 60% by 2001.

Politicians on all sides blamed an apathetic generation, disinterested in politics, but from my point of view, the problem wasn't a lack of interest so much as a struggle to see the point: New Labour were two-faced, the Lib Dems were weak and the Conservatives were...well, Tories.

By the '05 election, it wasn't apathy keeping people away from the polls, it was wilful non-participation: Why vote if there's no-one worth voting for?

Jump to 2010 and we had a dull, unrelatable, unelected Prime Minister going up against a resurgent Tory party under their first leader since Thatcher with genuine balls; and the Tories still failed to secure a majority.  Of course, this was in part due to a Liberal Democrat leader who, unlike his opposition, could engage with people from behind a lectern.  It wasn't enough to make the Lib Dems a genuine 3rd contender, but it did make the country indecisive enough to result in the ConDem coalition.

However, engaging leader or not, the Dems proved as weak as ever, and a more apt. name amalgamation there has never been.

So here we are with a Tory majority* back in the saddle and back to trying to put everything in the hands of their business chums, albeit with slightly more subtlety than their straight-forward privatisation of the '80s.  This time around, they've put a pair of expendable imbeciles in charge of Education and the NHS, each with an aggressive simpleton's approach to 'improving' their respective areas.

*Quick side-note: Cameron, please stop using the phrase 'mandate from the people'.  You secured just over a third of votes from the electorate that bothered to turn up.  Of the 30.7 million people who voted, 19.4 million voted against you.  More people cast their vote in the bin than cast it for you.  Until we have a truly representative voting system, no party - whatever their majority - can claim a 'mandate from the people'.

Nicky Morgan has looked at the way a few schools have improved since becoming academies, and decided that ALL schools should do the same (because, obviously, every non-academy school is exactly the same).

Jeremy Hunt was handed a bunch of numbers he was told indicated some hospitals were a bit iffy at the weekend, and decided it was down to all junior doctors not working hard enough.

As far as the party's concerned, their moronic ideas are ideal, given that they are so staggeringly unpopular among the professionals who know better that they will lead to crippling strike action by the unions, denigrating each service to such a degree that they can be snapped up for a pittance by grateful Tory donors.

Just like the coal mines.

Then, come 2019, both proven failures can be put out to pasture (to deflect all the public backlash from the party as a whole), the Tories can put some seemingly competent people in charge of the sales, and claim, in the run-up to the election, that by replacing the 'old guard' with experienced business folks, they're in the best position to ensure the fallout is as beneficial as possible to the whole of the UK.

So what of our local elections?  Well, Cheltenham is currently in the hands of Alex Chalk; a typical Tory drone who supported cuts to child tax credits and disability benefits, and rejected the condemnation of VAT on women's sanitary products, because that was the party line, and he's so lacking in will, spine and individual thought, he couldn't possibly do something sensible without a line of blue-tied bureaucrats telling him which box to tick.

Unfortunately, his position isn't up for grabs, and so our only recourse is to surround him with enemies.

You see, my outlook has changed somewhat since those 'apathetic' days of the mid-noughties.  Everyone should vote, regardless of how samey, useless or vapid every candidate might be.  If there's no-one decent to put in place, the second best option is to remove the cretin already there.  Part of the problem with UK politics stems from the majority settling for the familiar, not because they're the best people for the job, but because the other lot don't appear to be any better.

If, however, incumbents were constantly under threat of losing their seat, they'd be forced to put the effort in, listen to the people and not be arseholes.  And the only way to light that fire under them is to show that, if they don't do a good job, they'll be replaced faster than a shit-stained toothbrush.

Civil War

When it was first announced that the Russo Brothers were being handed Avengers: Infinity War, I was a tad worried. Yes, Winter Soldier was awesome - one of the best Marvel films up to that point - but their inability to frame an action scene and KEEP THE SMEGGING CAMERA STILL put them in my bad books, and I envisaged big, explosive, overblown action scenes with Transformers level clarity. 

Civil War has put those fears to rest (and not just because they apparently bought each other steady-cams for Christmas). 

Every character is as well-played as they've always been. After 12 of these things, that's hardly surprising - I think RDJ's been playing Iron Man about as long as June Brown was Dot Cotton - but the level of performance extends to the recent additions. Paul Rudd is having as much fun playing Ant Man as his character is meeting Steve Rogers, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Betany have more chemistry after 2 minutes on screen together than Ed Norton and Liv Tyler manager through the entirety of Incredible Hulk (did you even remember they were in that?), I cannot wait for the Black Panther film, and Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man... 

Sam Raimi directed 3 Spider-Man films: one good, one great and...another one. Marc Webb directed 2 Spider-Man films, and we're all trying to forget (especially Sony). The Russo Brothers directed 5 Spider-Man minutes and I'd take watching them on a two-hour loop over watching four out of five of the previous films. 

But, for me, the most notable thing about Civil War is that it clocks in at just under two and a half hours; about the same length as Batman v Superman. The difference is that, while the plot is by no means simple - featuring twists and turns and characters old and new with shifting loyalties and complex motivations and a core moral dilemma that is in no way easy to reconcile - there was no point in Civil War where I thought, 'Wait, why's he doing that? That's stoopid!' 

As Mark Kermode said: "It's film you're meant to enjoy rather than endure." 

It makes sense, moves at a well-measured pace, features some of the best action of the entire series so far, and manages to be deep and meaningful without sacrificing fun.

Some Amateur Advice for Renters (and a renter’s plea to Landlords)

My partner and I are looking for a flat in the centre of Cheltenham.  With little by way of savings behind us (I admit we were not as financially responsible as we could have been in our youth...or later), there is little hope of us affording the deposit required for a mortgage right now, and so we must rent.  

At present we’re renting a reasonably sized duplex above a salon, for £500 a month.  It’s fine: a spacious, two bedroom flat with just enough room for us and our cat.  However, between the lack of kitchen (we have an ‘open plan’ nook), the lack of suitable heating (electric storage heaters) and the lack of a level floor (suspected subsidence), we’d be happy to splash out a little more for something better.

Our problems are two-fold:

First, Monty.  The overwhelming majority of landlords in the area have a No Pets policy when renting.  This wasn’t a concern for us when we moved into our current flat as we were yet to be blessed with our adorable (occasionally rambunctious) little bundle of fur and whiskers (and teeth...and claws...), and wasn’t a problem when we wished to expand our little family, as long as we signed an amendment to our contract promising to cover any damage the moggy might cause. Unfortunately, we’re afforded no such allowance when looking for somewhere new.

Secondly, fees.  An up-front cost is to be expected when renting: it would be silly to expect a landlord to take on a tenant without a security deposit and a month’s rent up-front.  The size of the deposit can be a bone of contention, with landlords charging another month’s rent, a month’s rent +£100 or a month and half’s rent (which can be particularly jarring if one’s budget restricts them to £650 per month: £1,625 (£650 for the first month’s rent, £975 deposit) is a significant sum to put up before you’ve even moved in), but the up-side of the security deposit is it will be returned at the end of the tenancy (assuming you don’t trash the place).

Alas the same can’t be said for the fees charged to tenants by letting agents.  Back in July 2014, a bill was put before parliament to prohibit these charges, but was dismissed without debate.  More recently, Tom Brake MP (LibDem) sponsored the Landlord and Tenant (Reform) Bill, which seeks to cap letting agents’ fees.  And tonight (3rd May 2016), Maria Caulfield MP (Con) is set to bring it up again.  It remains to be seen if this will get any more than a passing glance.

As things stand, every letting agent in the area charges fees, ranging from the ‘reasonable’ (around £140) to the average (around £250) to...well £425.  And these without taking into account ‘if applicable’ check-in/check-out fees, guarantor fees, or fees for Saturday or ‘Express’ moves, any of which can range from £30 to over £100.

To take the most extreme example: to rent a £425/month room in a flatshare through RA Bennett & Partners, the would-be tenant must pay - according to RAB & P’s own Tenants’ Guide - the first month’s rent (£425), a security deposit (£637.50 (or £525 when searching on rightmove: *other property search-engines are available*)) and fees for administration (“processing and storage of documentation in hardcopy and/or digital formats” (£50)), referencing (£75 per tenant), check-in (£72 (min.)) and the tenancy agreement (£300 (one can only assume each is handwritten by an expert calligrapher, on vellum, with ink procured from the sack of an elusive giant squid)).

That’s a grand total of £1,559.50.

Up front.

For a £425 per month room.

To rent at the top-end of our budget, our up-front cost ranges from £1,540 (‘reasonable’) to £1,650 (average) to £1,972 (RAB).  And that’s assuming the deposit is a month’s rent +£100.

This can, of course, be avoided by going private, but this too is far from ideal.  For a start, there are few properties in the area that aren’t being rented through agents, and those few generally fall between ‘have potential’ and ‘seriously?!’.

Then there are the landlords themselves.  Based on my experiences as a student and beyond, the majority I’ve dealt with have been perfectly reasonable, but there has been one post-student landlord that was not so much.

My suspicions should have first been roused by his insistence on taking the first month’s rent and deposit in cash, or that wifi access (which wasn’t listed on the contract) was an extra £20/month, but I was ignorant and impatient back then, and thought nothing of it.

However, two months into my stay he claimed I’d underpaid him £5/month for the wifi (and, without prompting, jumped straight to the argument, ‘If you remember any different, you must’ve misheard’).  It might seem a trivial amount, but it was then I realised he was a bit iffy.  This was confirmed after a quick search on the Shelter website told me I should’ve signed a Tenancy Agreement (the one he used was a Lodger Agreement), and my deposit should have been placed with a Deposit Protection Scheme.

So I asked which DPS he’d used.  He gave no answer, and instead accused me of trying to change the terms of our contract, which he took as my two weeks notice, as stipulated by said contract.  My deposit would be sent to the forwarding address when I left.

I, in turn, pointed out (thanks to what I’d gleaned from Shelter) that, regardless of what was printed at the top of the contract, the fact that he didn’t live in the building made ours a Tenancy Agreement, under which he was legally obliged to give details of the DPS he’d used within 30 days of me signing, and if he wanted me out, he would have to obtain a court order.  The court order would, of course, not be forthcoming if he couldn’t prove he’d secured my deposit, and even if he could, it would give me at least 2 months to leave, regardless of what it said on the contract.

After a month of back-and-forthing by text - during which he started referring to my deposit as ‘the month in advance’ (he dropped this when I pointed out I still had his text about returning my deposit) - I’d moved in with my partner (which had been the plan anyway), and received my deposit back in full.

Renters, if agents fees do force you to go private, a few things to keep in mind (incidentally, this is all unqualified advice and can be confirmed/clarified/elaborated upon by visiting Shelter and/or a qualified advisor):

1. Make sure you’re signing the right kind of contract:
1. If the landlord lives in the building, and you’re renting a room with shared habitat/facilities, you’re a lodger, and the notice period is determined by the contract
2. If the landlord lives elsewhere, or you’re in a self-contained flat/apartment, you’re a tenant:
1. Tenant’s notice to landlord is determined by contract, but landlord must obtain a court-order to evict
2. Landlord obliged by law to secure deposit in a government approved Deposit Protection Scheme, and give details to tenant within 30 days of contract being signed
1. Failure to do this enables the tenant to sue the landlord for the deposit, and the same again for each month the deposit hasn’t been protected (up to three months)
2. Make sure everything you’re paying for is stipulated in the contract: e.g. Council Tax, wifi, gas, electricity, etc.
1. I personally wouldn’t accept the contract stating ‘All bills included’ in case of a difference of opinion as to what constitutes a bill
3. Do not pay cash.  There is no reason for a landlord to refuse a cheque/bank transfer, each of which is fully trackable

To landlords, a plea: if you find that you’re struggling to rent out a room/flat/house/shed through a letting agent, hold off on reducing the rent until you’ve made sure your agent of choice isn’t pricing your property out of the reach of prospective tenants with their own fees (and maybe show a little consideration towards cat lovers).

And to both renters and landlords who do choose to rent privately, remember, just because the law is skewed in the landlord’s favour, no tenant is without recourse.