Three to See the King

Perhaps you are familiar with the high weirdness of Magnus Mills' rather repetitive, hypnotic style of writing. If you are not, you could be forgiven for thinking, like Mister Monkey, that his books are boring. If you like him, though, you admire his ability to create whole worlds of the type you're more used to seeing in the animated films of the National Film Board of Canada.

In this book, a man lives on a windy plain in the middle of nowhere, in a house made entirely of tin. Things happen to him and around him that upset his world where he shovels the sand away from his house every morning. As usual, I hesitate to give much more away than that. This book doesn't have the same tension that some of his previous works do, because at no point is the man who lives in a house made entirely of tin doing anything he shouldn't be doing, and so at no point are you afraid he's going to get caught. Nevertheless, there is still plenty of incident and that Pinteresque sense that a lot is being said in a very short space of time.

The Constant Princess

I can't believe I've only read two new books in the last month and a half. Bit rubbish, no?

Anyway, here's Philippa Gregory again, with a book about Katherine of Aragon. Substantially less racy than her usual fare, but no less fun and interesting for all that. I never connected Katherine to Ferdinand and Isabella, and I never knew how long she was married (sorry, "married") for before she married Henry VIII. In fact, I knew very little about her, and now I know more. It's interesting also to read about the contrast between the Spanish, almost Moorish life that she came from and the English court that she came into. There was no privacy for women in the English court, no harem, no hiding from the king. If he wanted to come into your room and boss your ladies around, well, he just did. And if he wanted to make you have women he was planning to fuck as your ladies in waiting, well, he just did. And if he wanted to basically hold you as a hostage in a strange country, not pay you your allowance, betroth you to his son, and leave you sitting penniless in a little house somewhere while you figured out what to do, well, he just did that too.

It wasn't all gravy for the ladies, is essentially often Gregory's point. She makes it well.

NOOOOO! They be takin' away my Gilmore Girls!

It appears that this will be the final season, and the last episode will be broadcast next week. I am v. sad, as this has become one of my very, very favourite television programmes of all time. :(

Gratuitous post in order to include CUET photo

So I finally bought one of those quilted mattress topper things for our bed, and we have started getting up half an hour later in the morning as a direct result. Yesterday I threatened Mister Monkey that if he did not get up and make my breakfast IMMEDIATELY, the mattress topper would be removed and only reinstated at weekends and holidays.

Emergency care package arrives

Life on Mars finished last night, causing great sadness in the Monkey House. And, as mentioned before, The Sopranos is also finishing soon. Rome is gone, as is Studio 60 (even if it was rubbish, and still has not officially been cancelled). What's a monkey to do?

Luckily, a care package arrived from the Glasgow House this morning, containing several budget movies on DVD, including Paint Your Wagon, Sunset Boulevard, and Gunfight at the OK Corral. It also contained a Dr. Who box set of The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis, and Castrovalva, which are the episodes where Tom Baker turned into Tristan off All Creatures Great and Small, and which were some of my very favourite episodes when I was a kid. It's all about the scary robot.

I've also got the first four seasons of NewsRadio winging their way to me from the U.S. So, the telly wasteland between May and September can be negotiated safely once again. Phew.

Torn

Between wanting to rush all the way to the end of something you're really enjoying because you want to know WHAT HAPPENS, DAMMIT! and wanting to savour every last little bit, because you're aware that when it's over, it's over, and you can never again experience it for the first time.

Things that fall into this category include:

• The Aubrey Maturin novels
• The super expensive posh chocolates that the housemates bought me for my birthday
• The just-started-last-night final episodes of The Sopranos

I don't want it to be over.

Stranger Than Fiction

Will Ferrell is a boring man whose life is the same every single day. He is alone most of the time, but there is no real sense that he is lonely. Then things start to happen to him that could reasonably be called the beginnings of a story, and suddenly a woman's voice starts narrating his life. It's hard to know which comes first. To tell anything else about the film would be to ruin it, really.

Stranger Than Fiction got okay but not great reviews when it came out, and although I can kind of understand why--there are some bits that could maybe be trimmed from it, the wristwatch as framing device could maybe use a little tweaking and may not work for everyone, and there does seem to be some discussion about the ending--it is basically an excellent film. It's funny and sweet, beautifully shot in bizarrely utilitarian locations around Chicago, and it features some lovely quiet acting by a cast you would normally think of as being pretty hammy. It has one of those modern Brian Reitzell hand-picked soundtracks, which makes it seem a little bit like Lost in Translation at times, but without the incredibly boring bits. It's also got a lot of self-referential and post-modern stuff about the construction of stories in it, but without the kind of DO YOU SEE shiteing on of something like (oh god, how I loathe it) Shakespeare in Love.

Also it has Tony Hale in it, who I consider a mark of quality.

This goes up there as one of the lovely stories, for me anyway.

Did you have a good Friday?

Ours was brilliant. There have been a lot of miserable and even slightly down posts on this blog of late, but yesterday was brilliant, I'm happy to report. Not that anything even slightly exciting happened to us. Friends from the Big City visited us, and I had homemade banana bread to give them (even if they didn't actually want it). We spent several hours getting our garden ready to grow things in, and it actually looks half decent now, instead of the bizarre obstacle course of winter buildup and shaggy grass that was there yesterday morning. And the sun shone, and we watched an excellent film, and drank some nice wine, and even our neighbours who had a party last night weren't too loud and didn't keep us awake too late.

It was good.

I has groomin

Everybody has things they like to spend money on, occasional indulgences that they would, if they had shedloads of cashcould, do all the time. False nails, valeted car, that kind of thing.

I have just discovered that if I had pots of cash, I would send my dogs here once a month to be groomed. They look great, they smell amazing (for exactly three days, as it turns out, until they roll in horse poo again), and the women who work there genuinely seem to enjoy the company of wet, waggy dogs. €70 for two dogs was money well spent, especially as it means Cody won't be too hot in the exciting warm spring weather. It's going to be 18 degrees today! Mental.


See if you can spot the difference between pre-and post-grooming dog. I'll give you a clue: pre-groomed also includes flob on nose bridge.

Oh yes, my house is clean.

Master and Commander

There are times in a person's life when, for one reason or another, she is a little low. It could be that she's been coughing constantly and violently for four months and has recently been to the doctor and received a tentative diagnosis of possible asthma, with the recommendation that she gets rid of her cats. It could be that her house is still crowded and her parents have been in and out of hospital for minor procedures that could turn into major procedures down the line. It could be that she hasn't really been doing a whole lot of anything lately and just feels a bit meh.

At times like these, a person needs to re-read Master and Commander. There just is no finer antidote to a dose of the meh. If you are a regular reader of this blog, or anyone who has come into casual contact with me over the last few years, you already know how I feel about this book and the books that follow it. I will simply remind you, therefore, of the tender friendships and the sharp humour, the nautical noise and the naturalistic quiet, and the bright fresh air of the open sea.

IM PLOTTIN MY EXCAPES

UR PUNY PRIZZIN CANNOT HOLD ME!

IM ON UR DESKS

LAFFIN AT UR ASTHMAS

Daybreak

Imagine if, in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray had had to, instead of becoming a nicer person, solve a mystery in which he was being framed for the murder of an assistant district attorney. Now imagine that instead of Bill Murray, it was Taye Diggs. Well, that's Daybreak. It's a fun programme that they had on in the U.S. while Lost was on its ten-week hiatus, and now it's being shown in the U.K. on Bravo.

We've been watching it, partly because it's on telly, partly because it has Adam Baldwin in it, and who doesn't love him? And partly because all our U.S. shows are on hiatus again for another few weeks. I really liked the non-fucking around of the first episode, and the fact that Taye Diggs' character does not spend ages wondering why this is happening, but just tries a different approach to solving his problem every time he wakes up in the same day.

There is one thing that really annoys me about it, though. In the very first episode, the first thing he does when he gets up in the morning is to go to his apartment, having spent the night at his girlfriend's. His dog is waiting in his apartment for him to get back so it can get outside and, presumably, take a shit. It has, again presumably, been sitting around since some time the previous evening waiting for him. I know this because one of the neighbours says to him "your dog has been going crazy in the apartment", by way of a CLUE. To me, though, this just means that every time he wakes up on this day and doesn't go to his apartment, his poor dog has to sit there all day long, unfed and unwalked. Forever. That seems kind of mean.

Birthday cards

It was my birthday a little while ago, and I got nice presents, including a new lens for my camera and dinner out and the theatre and HMV vouchers and nice chocolates and CDs of Durutti Column and Talk Talk.

But sneakily, my favourite things I got are these two cards, one from Ed and Claire and the other from Eoghan. The one Eoghan sent is from the New Yorker collection and would be funny to anyone, but Claire chose the other one just for me, from the Punch collection. See if you can guess which is which.

Ha! They don't know they're being funny

Thanks to Big Boss for sending me the link to this. You can get your context from here, and you can read a wider selection of comics hilarity here (which I think is where the first guy got his from).

Never forget

... how good the Eurovision used to be.

Watch out for Glenn Wool on the left!

Missed!

It was supposed to be my job , according to Queenie, to give the Scots a good kicking for not letting us win the Six Nations at the weekend, but sadly I failed to do my job, because I missed my flight. I hit that weird little pocket of everyone piling into Dublin airport at the same time and everything going slightly wrong and managed to miss check-in by about five minutes, which of course means missing the flight completely, because you can't check in online for the Glasgow flight, even if you've no baggage. So, thanks, mister drunken arsehole (I assume) who drove precariously in the fast lane in front of me on the motorway at 60mph between Balbriggan and Donabate, and who I was afraid of overtaking on the inside for fear you would choose that exact second to pull into the inside lane.
Thanks also to the good people of the long-term car park, who had one single barrier open when I arrived, so I had to sit in a queue of cars to get my ticket, and then park in Zone Y.
Thanks very much to the driver of the bus from the car park, who didn't notice that our bus was totally rammed and that we were all sitting or standing there, waiting to leave, for ten full minutes before a passenger got off the bus and shouted at him to get us to the terminal so that we could get our flights, please.
And a final thanks to the good people at Aer Lingus, who have done away with all their actual check-in desks, and now only have Bag Tag 'n' Drop desks, so that if your flight has just closed and the machine tells you so, you have to go to the Ticket Sales desk to plead to be let on, and there's only one of those, and the queue was, I am not exaggerating, all the way to the door of the Departures section. So I gave up and went home again, stopping to pay €8.50 in parking fees for the privilege of parking for half an hour.

Still, at least I went to the correct airport, unlike some people in my family who were also flying that day.

Also it was the perfect excuse to start reading Master and Commander again.

Official seal

Windy

I pity anyone flying across the Atlantic in this weather.

Poor Mister Monkey.

Phear teh CUETNESS

Okay, okay, I saw it on Ian's blog, but holy crap, look at the cuteness of this.

This is my favourite picture of the lot. "I'm helping! I'm helping! Don't kill me in three months!"

Ha ha, I am the best wife ever

I was talking to Mister Monkey on the phone the other night and he asked me what I wanted for my birthday.
"I don't really want anything," I said, "honestly, I have all the books and films and music I need."
Then yesterday I bought two new albums off the Internet, and today I was in HMV's 3 DVDs for €30 sale, and I got The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers set that has four films in it, and yes, I know it's sad, but a copy of Wimbledon also.

So I guess there was stuff I wanted after all. Ha ha.

Oscars 2007

Or, who cares anymore?

Maybe that's not fair. I'm glad that Martin Scorsese finally got a best director Oscar, even if it's for a film I haven't seen, but I'm of the opinion that the Oscars started to matter less when

• they stopped saying "and the winner is..." and started saying "and the Oscar goes to..."
• all the men stopped dressing in formal wear and started looking like they were going to one of those soap opera funerals
• I stopped recognising half the people there
• I stopped fancying anyone there

Although my trusty People magazine feed did provide me with this great exchange between Joan Rivers and Michael Sheen, who plays Tony Blair in The Queen.

Rivers: What do you think about Tony Blair? Cause you're English
Sheen: Well, Welsh.
Rivers: I know, but Wales IS in England.
Sheen: Well, over here it is.

Got a birthday coming up?

I know I have.

What do you get for the pet owner with everything? One of these.

Don't believe the impact it can have? See it on the cover of the Portland Mercury.

Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke

In possibly the least catchily-titled book ever, Rob Long brings us another volume of What It's Really Like to Write for Television. Apparently what it's really like is a lot of sitting around, either worrying or thinking of stuff to write, or listening to other people's problems, or listening to network people give you notes, or trying to interpret fruit baskets that have come from the network. If you read his very funny Conversations With My Agent, you will already know what this book is about, more or less.

This time, however, it seems a little different. Everyone in his cohort is a little older and they're starting to get pushed out by younger people, even the writers. Everyone has a little less job security than they used to. The shows get lower ratings, they have less of a chance to make it before they get pulled, and everyone just seems to have a narrower window of opportunity and a greater air of desperation as a result.

It's interesting that this is his perception of things, because he is, essentially, a bit of an outsider who, if IMDB is correct, hasn't had a show on the air since 2001. So of course he would feel out of touch and wary. I'd be interested to read something from the point of view of someone who is actually working, but of course, they don't have time to write about what they're doing, they just have time to write.

30 Rock

Please. Do yourself a favour. Find it somewhere and watch it. It is the best thing on television. Really. And there isn't even anyone in it I fancy, so you know that must be a strong recommendation.

American Buffalo

Currently running at the Gate, this is a beautifully designed and excellently acted production of a slightly bewildering David Mamet play. Slightly bewildering in that, unlike other David Mamet plays, you're kind of not really sure what exactly has happened by the end of it, but you know it's something really bad. Or maybe nothing at all has happened and you kind of imagined the whole thing like when you look at something out of the corner of your eye and it looks weird and out of place, but then when you look back it's completely normal again and nothing has changed.

The play concerns Don, played to perfection by Sean McGinley, who runs a shop that sells, you know, stuff. Bits and bobs. Whatever he can get his hands on. He just kind of opens his door and lets things collect inside on the shelves, and they do. People also collect inside on the shelves, and Don gives house room not only to Bob, the slacker idiot man-child guy, played by Domhnall Gleeson (who steals the show right out from under the other two, doing a great impersonation of a very laid-back David Thewlis) but also to Teach, the twitchy, angry, well, David Mamet character, played by Aidan Gillen. Between the three of them they plan to do a thing to or with a guy, concerning a coin. The coin may or may not have been stolen and may or may not be stolen again. There's no way to really tell. Okay, I'll confess that maybe there is some way to tell, but when you're just trying very hard not to cough and that's all you're concentrating on, it can be easy to miss things.

I remember seeing the film of this some years ago and thinking it was very boring. The play, however, is excellent. The three actors play off each other so well, and the whole thing is fast-paced and funny, as well as completely bewildering. I recommend it, if you like Mamet already. If you don't, this isn't going to help you any. But things are... what they are.

Warp Spasm! part 2

There is a bit in an episode of Friends where Ross, having stayed up all night reading Rachel's letter detailing how he is to blame for everything that went wrong in their relationship, flies into his standard "we were on a break" rage. The funny thing about this is when he says "oh, and by the way, Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E spells YOU ARE. Y-O-U-R spells YOUR!"

If you are a warp spasm person, you understand how this feels.

Today's warp spasm is brought to you by the good people at some stupid Irish advertising agency, who currently have an ad running about how you should buy glasses if you can't see (no, really?). The ad goes like this:

JULIET: Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

ROMEO: Eh, I'm right in front of you. In fact, you're standing on my foot.

ACCENTMONKEY (not actually in the ad as such): OHMYGOD! Wherefore means why, you fucking morons, not where! Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name or, if thou wouldst not (wilt not? I can't remember), be but sworn to me, my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet. WHY! Not WHERE!

Exeunt, pursued by a bear.

You are completely surrounded by armed BASTARDS!

Life on Mars is back. Okay, it's lost a tiny bit of the shine of the first series, but it's still great.

Antony and Cleopatra

While we were in London recently, we went to the RSC's production of this, which starred Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter, two marvellous actors. As usual, it is funny to see how much of the chat in the play deals with Cleopatra's advanced years and how much she is knocking on, when Walter is in fact ten years younger than Stewart. But never mind. The play itself is quite strange. There are not many familiar lines in it, apart from the bit about age not withering her nor custom staling her infinite variety, and I'm not really sure what it's trying to say about anything, other than it's nice when your bloke loves you enough to top himself when he thinks you're dead, and it's a pity women are a bit mental (familiar Shakespeare themes, some might say). It does have the feel of a late play to it, and I believe (which means I've just looked it up) that Shakespeare wrote it just after Macbeth, which is interesting, because I was just remarking to Mister Monkey how, for all that Cleopatra comes over as a bit flighty in it, she is nevertheless supportive and does not interfere in his work at all, making her the exact opposite of Lady Macbeth, who was somewhat ambitious. Everyone in the play seems kind of tired of fighting, and the battle scenes don't have the same vim and vigour as they do in other plays. Perhaps Shakespeare was tired.

That said, it's a fun play, with plenty of "my lord, some important action has just taken place offstage!" moments, and it seems much easier to follow than other Shakespeare plays, but that could be because I actually know who most of the characters are already, and don't need the members of different factions colour-coded in order to help me out, though they were anyway. Thanks, RSC, for admitting that Shakespeare can be a bitch to follow sometimes.

Even apart from the colour-coding, this production had several of the strengths and weaknesses I have noted in RSC productions (I R CULTUR) over the years: amazing leading performances that actually manage to make Shakespearean dialogue seem almost conversational and naturalistic, combined with some slightly ropey and earnest supporting characters (including one particularly bad messenger, who got a great write-up on the billboard outside, for reasons that escape me) and a basic set. It's all about the stars. Of course, for Antony and Cleopatra, that was the case anyhow.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

First can I say how amusing it is to me that my husband FORBADE me to buy a copy of this book in case it frightened me, and so I borrowed it from a friend, in true underground style. I have now left that copy with another friend to loan around his circle, and will buy first friend a new copy to cherish and loan out to more people. So it goes with truly classic books that don't have an enormous marketing push behind them.

So, to the book itself. Well, you're either the kind of person who reads and loves zombie books and watches zombie films, or you're not. I can't really explain the joy of having the shit scared out of me by zombies, although the friend who loaned me the book did liken it to the creepy experience you get from watching a load of old Protect and Survive films, and it is a similar feeling. It induces, in me at any rate, a genuinely thrilling and almost paralyzing fear of the dark, of walking on the beach alone, and of being in a house in the country that has a ground floor seemingly composed entirely of flimsy glass (burglars take note), such as my brother's. The result is a satisfactory period of about a week of sleepless nights, and possibly many more nightmares to come, depending on how often I think about the book.

There's a lot to think about. Max Brooks has considered almost every possible aspect of a global zombie outbreak which results in boggling figures, such as the idea of the continental U.S. playing host to some 220 million zombies, and chilling stories, such as the one about the family that flees north above the snow line only to find itself in the midst of brawling, starving families and a bleak future. The little touches are amazing. The big sweep is incredibly detailed and beautifully faithful to current political and topographical regions. And, like all the best horror or science fiction, the zombies can stand for any major threat you care to name. Eurabia, greenhouse gases, the suffocating crush of an uninsured aging population, dumbing down of society, they can stand for anything.

This is one of the most frightening, most inventive, most fun books I have ever read. Just please don't ask me to read it next to a darkened window.

Is this the greatest news story EVAH?

See it here.

Thanks, as usual, to the greatest news aggregator site EVAH!

The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Not a lot of reading has got done round these parts since the trip to Paris in November. I blame novel comedown for this, although I could just as easily blame this book, because I've got to conclude (sorry Eoghan, who bought it for me, back at Christmas 2004) that I just didn't really like it. I'm very hard to please with comic novels, and this one just outstayed its welcome, had too much detail, a lead character I didn't really care about, and a bunch of secondary characters who just don't really do anything. It also commits the greatest sin that a comic novel can, which is that it is not only not very funny, it's nothing like as funny as it thinks it is.

In a way, though, it does make an interesting companion piece to Of Human Bondage, which I am ashamed to say was the last book I read (back in November!), because it is also about a young, feckless man making his way in the world without much in the way of guidance. He also gets in over his head because of a woman, and ends up travelling to other countries and living on not very much money. But there the similarities end. I'm not sure I'd recommend this to anyone, but I suppose it could just have been me and the mood I was in when I read it.

Have you read it? What did you think? (I keep forgetting to put these little questions in. Not that it matters, noone answers them.)

Red setters

I had a dream last night that we owned three huge red setters. They were enormous, much bigger than real dogs. Any time we tried to make food in the kitchen, they would circle around and wag their tails and the wagging would sweep all the food to the floor, and the floor of our kitchen was covered in broken crockery and we didn't care because we had these beautiful dogs.

I've always loved red setters. I love the red and white ones too and, yes, even teh setters of teh oppressor. I don't know what it is, but they've always been the dog I've wanted to own. Some day I will have one, but they seem to have completely fallen out of fashion (maybe the breeders are more responsible than other breeders, or maybe it's just because they have such a reputation for being kind of crazy and destructive, although very sweet) and they don't even show up in rescue. Which is good in one way, but in another way, it means I would have to buy one in order to fulfil my dream of owning one, and I just am not someone who buys dogs.

Perhaps, as usual, I am overthinking this.

Let's post drunk!

I've had a large measure of sippin' tequila and a couple of beers and I'm pleasantly drunk. What shall we talk about? I've been talking about the horrors of Celebrity Big Brother all day with my internet pals, and I'm bored doing that now. I'm only still watching it because I am fascinated by older Dirk Benedict. I haven't seen him, even a picture of him, since about, what, 1985 or something? It's so strange to look at him now. I feel like I went to school with him or something. He looks so much the same, but older. And more right-wing. It's so strange.

Celebrity Big Brother would be greatly improved by less bullying and racism, and more Dirk Benedict face down in the mud scrambling under a net with Jermaine Jackson and H from Steps singing the music from the A-Team out of the back of a limousine at him. I mean, how could any Sopranos dream sequence compete with something like that?

You know what? I feel down. And why? Because I haven't finished reading a book since the middle of November, and I kind of miss writing my book.

And I miss Jack and Stephen.

Feel warm though. Yum yum. Sleeps.

ATP countdown starts NOW!

Mister Monkey got tickets to ATP for Christmas. Okay, he didn't actually get the physical tickets, because that would be against the law or something, but he got to look at the charge for them on the credit card. We were talking about it today, and we are kind of excited about the fact that we seem to be the only people we know who are going. This would be bad if we had booked a four-person chalet, but there will just be us in our hotel-like room.

It turns out that loads of people we like are playing, such as Joanna Newsom, and Papa M, and some interesting acoustic thing which may or may not be members of Spiritualized and Spacemen 3, and of course Low and Dirty Three. Oh, and various Nick Cave/Dirty Three side projects.

Cat Power is also playing. She is someone I have not been well disposed towards in the past, but People say that her album from 2006 is amazing, so maybe I will have to try and hear it and reevaluate her and become a huge Cat Power fan.

No comet

Mister Monkey and I got up at 7.30 both yesterday morning and this morning to see Comet McNaught (or McNaught's Comet, in the old money ). Clear skies above us for miles around, but a nice line of clouds all along the horizon. What is the point, I ask you, of having a completely clear view of the eastern horizon if you cannot use it to look at comets heralding the end of the world or somesuch.

Oh well. At least there was a knifing wind.

You could say our expedition was FOR NAUGHT!

I thank you.

Insert joke about having started and finished here

Magnus Magnusson has died. This is very sad. He was an excellent host of a very hard quiz, a solid historian, and an avuncular all round good bloke who remains one of the TV icons of my childhood.

Not looking well

Step up to the plate, my first Dead Pool candidate for 2007. You are Hosni Mubarak. Apparently little Hosni is not very well. So he is number one. Number two is Fidel Castro, of course.

Now I only need to worry about the other eight. And some sort of retribution for wishing harm on Mubarak and Castro.

Things you learn on a Friday night

Number one: Jade Goody is rubbish, but friendly.
Number two: Not even David Tennant can make the Friday Night Project watchable.

Dead Pool 2007

Well, I was rightly arsed over in my 2006 Dead Pool. Only one of them died, and he was what, 81? So that gives me 19 points.

RUBBISH!

Frankly, Team Monkey is going to have to come up with something better this year. I will be doing my research, I can tell you. The Economist will help me, I'm sure.

Who do you suggest?

Actually, three questions in and the question thing is already really annoying me, so I'll stop.

Joel Stein does not care

And he is right.

I too have had enough of listening to radio programmes where half the programme is made up of listeners' texts, or watching television programmes that have text messages scrolling across the bottom of the screen, or people in general who think that just because they have an opinion about something, it automatically gives them as much authority as everyone else.

The sad thing is that it's not confined to telly and radio, but has leaked into the wider world. In a recent issue of Big Brain Journal I was reading, scientists were talking about the current state of the relationship between science and politics in the U.S. (not very good, in case you were wondering) and what could be done about it. One of the problems, as they, the trained scientists, saw it, was that any politician or muttonhead off the street seemed to be able to go around and make decisions on things like stem cell research or nuclear fission or evolution, without having any knowledge at all of the thing they were legislating for or against or talking about. Scientists do not think that that is the best way to get science done, or run a larger society. And I agree with them. People should shut up and do as they're told by people in authority, and not ask awkward questions.

No, wait, I don't mean that. But that's what muttonheads want you to think I mean, because they want you to think that the logical conclusion of preventing people without special expertise from making decisions that require special expertise is that we end up living in godless vats while our eggs are sucked out of us to be experimented on, killed, and then ghoulishly reanimated in front of us to wander the earth as undead atheists wishing they came from safe, two-parent, heterosexual, godly families. The scientists in Big Brain Journal offered a couple of solutions to this problem.

1. Make people learn more about science.
2. Make scientists learn more about people who don't know about science, so they can talk to them better.

At no point did they suggest a text poll.

How do you feel about science and politics?

New blog, new danger

Recently I read an article in The Economist about Mena Trott, who is the (I'm sure) nice young lady who owns Six Apart, along with her husband. If you have a TypePad blog or a LiveJournal, then she owns your soul and doesn't like you putting pictures of your breasts on the Internet (ha ha, humour, please don't sue me). But apparently 30 million people don't mind that, because they blog using her blogging tools. The Economist got excited about her latest blogging community, which is called Vox. I decided to step over to Vox and see what it's like, and it's basically like a combination of the good bits of LJ--community, fun, people popping in and out to say random stuff to you, handy tagging, nice ways of organizing your information--with the good bits of Blogger--clear interface, good blogging space, er, you know. I suspect it also has many of the OMG LOLZ bouncing kitty avatar bits of LJ as well, but you get those kind of nutters everywhere.

Anyway, I set up my own blog there just to see what it is like. I think I will crosspost for a month or so and see what happens (obviously after this post. Not much point in crossposting this post). I don't feel like migrating another blog, and to be honest, I sort of like the slightly curmudgeonly air that Blogger has. "Oh, are you part of some lovely online community where everyone has polls and chats and friends and family?" "No, I'm on Blogger. Read or don't read it, I couldn't give a fuck." So loads of really good people will need to end up wanting to be my virtual friend or I will forget about the whole idea.

Apparently the way to lure loads of people on to your blog is to ask stupid questions, as if you were a radio station trying to generate revenue by getting people to text in. Apparently that's what all those memes are for. Then you can build up your advertising. What do you think?

It is a new year

And of course the antsiness sets in something rotten, doesn't it? You want to paint things, move things, throw stuff out, get fit, get healthy, call your friends more, but mostly you want to sit on the sofa and watch repeats of ER and make resolutions that are easy to keep. Preferably things you've already started doing some time in December, because you're already halfway there. That's the trick people always use when they're making out their Objectives and Key Results in their jobs, isn't it? Of course, you know you're in trouble if your resolutions are indistinguishable from your OKRs. That means you care more about work than you do about you.

There is never any danger of this happening to me.

I have, therefore, made some good old-fashioned resolutions for 2006 (wait, it's 2007).

1. Go into Dublin twice a month. I was originally planning on it being once a week, but there's no point in setting yourself up for failure straight away.
2. Read all the unread (almost wrote undead there) books in the house before buying any new books. Luckily, I went on Amazon and bought all the books off my wishlist to add to the pile, so I will have plenty of reading material for the year. Of course, if I carry on reading at the rate I'm going, I won't need any new books.
3. Start volunteering again. It's been six months since I did anything for anyone other than myself, and that's not really acceptable to me.

You will notice that these are all positive resolutions. Doing, rather than denial, is the key here. Wish me luck.

Do you have resolutions?

Wot's goin' on?

Recently I have fallen out of love with EastEnders, having been an avid viewer for twenty years or so. It just got rubbish. The day I decided to stop watching it for good was the day that Ian was about to set off for a weekend with the Walford Round Table (or some such organization that had just been invented) and was going to pass Dawn off as his wife, because of some hilarious mixup that had happened at another event. Utter rubbish.

But, over Christmas, like everyone else, I got sucked in by the promise of seeing Pauline's sour face get a smacking and then seeing her end up dead. Unlike my mother, who pronounced the whole thing "stupid", I actually loved the couple of weeks leading up to it, in which Pauline pretended to have a brain tumour, then confessed that she didn't have one after all and walled herself up in her smoke-damaged house to live like some demented Dickensian withered widow woman, sniping at anyone who wandered into the frightening shell she called home.

And then today, well. Today was the funeral, filled with such classy moments as the traditional East End horse drawn carriage, the quiet threats from Martin toward poor old Mr. Benn, and Peggy's magnificent line in response to Mo's "what you doing 'ere? You didn't even like 'er." "I just wanted to be sure," said Peggy. "And I 'ad this 'at."

But the final scene, where the police come for Sonya during the funeral, while Dusty Springfield sings "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and the curtains close on Pauline's spectral face in a hideous framed photo and the obligatory flower display spelling out "Mum" (presumably from Shell, who didn't bother her arse to come to the funeral, which just proves what a miserable old bitch Pauline really was), was a moment of pure, over the top genius. Happy New Year, the BBC. Perhaps I will have to start watching Stenders again.

It's beginning to feel a lot like not-Christmas

For me, Christmas has always come in two separate bits. There's the Christmas bit, and the New Year's bit. And since I no longer really celebrate New Year's Eve, there's just the Christmas bit. And I know that technically Christmas finishes on the 6th of January, but for me, this year, it finished tonight. Not in a bad way, you understand, but tonight was when we said good bye to Queenie and Himself, having already waved off all the brothers from the parents' house earlier in the day. Now I am back to work and ready to tackle my New Year's resolutions.

For Christmas this year, I got cool things, including a canvas Death Star print, new shelves, and a bluetooth adapter for my phone which is shaped like a very old phone receiver. The effect when I pull it out of my handbag is great, but is slightly marred by the fact that it doesn't work quite as well as I'd like it to. Apparently this is my fault. I also got some lovely necklaces and a nice tea set, and a fluffy blanket. Oh, and loads of yummy treats from Peckham's, as well as various marvels from elsewhere. Excellent work, Santa.

End of year meme alert

I'm not much of a one for memes. If I was, I'd be on LJ. But I like this review-the-year-using-the-first-post-of-each-month thing.

January: The kids on ILE are playing this Dead Pool, but most of the people I wanted to pick are not available and I'm too much of a luddite and a non-joiner to figure out how to add them.

February: .. that wasps are just the creepiest things on earth


March: An Fear Moncai's birthday present to me finally arrived.

April: Things are looking up.

May: Joe Bennett is an award-winning New Zealand columnist and this is his book about travelling around New Zealand.

June: Even though yesterday morning dawned grim and scary in Laytown, with white-suited forensics experts searching the ground outside Pat's supermarket and two young kids somewhere in Laytown missing their nineteen year-old mother, nothing stops the Irish summer juggernaut for long.

July: Daleks and Cybermen together could upgrade the world!

August: When are all my stories back on?

September: I'm not well.

October: I am not a pill-taker.

November: Here are the first 445 words.

December: Madam I'm Adam

There's not a lot we can learn from this, except that all the interesting things that happen to me seem to happen around the middle of the month and therefore do not fall within the remit of this study. I mean meme.

RIP Peter Boyle

Monday's Panel

It was good to see Richard Dawkins on, particularly because he didn't claim at any point that women have 30% fewer connections between the left and right sides of their brains, like some "expert" dickhead was claiming the other week.

He was everything you want him to be. Unthreatening, charming, avuncular, and atheist. Good job, Panel.

I have ruined Christmas for everyone

I accidentally mailed details of Mister Monkey's Christmas present to a list that he is on.

I am surprised by how loudly I can shout "FUCK!" without warming up my voice.

God bless Newry

It's only a 50 minute drive away, and you can get the lovely English beer there. Like Adnam's Broadside. Strong (6.3 percent), chocolatey, yummy. Also with a picture of a ship on the bottle. Recommended. I'll just have a little nap now.

The true meaning of Christmas

With thanks to the kids at Freaky Trigger.

Trip to Paris

Because it is vital to blog about things that happened a month ago, I am now going to get around to talking about my trip to Paris. Some of you may remember that Mister Monkey and I took a trip there earlier this year, which was a little constrained by the needs of our travelling companion. Our solution was to go again ourselves, and so we did, booking a studio apartment in the Marais and spending a week there in November.

I heartily recommend Paris in November. It's cold but not horribly windy and not always raining like here. The cafes all have heaters outside, ensuring that the national pastime of sitting around and jawing while openly staring at people is still viable in the winter. This is, of course, the thing I love best about Paris. You can spend hours sitting with your lovely notebook and newly-purchased fountain pen (Parisians love their stationery), scribbling away, drinking your coffee and eating your pie and just gawping at the sheer range of people going past.

The other thing I love best about Paris is walking around. We did a lot of this on this visit. The first night we were there we went to the restaurant three doors down from our apartment, which is recommended by the Rough Guide, ate a lovely meal, and then went for a two-hour walk. Another night we took a walk by the Seine from our apartment up to the Champs Elysees, which took us a little over an hour and was great, except for the mice. In fact we bought a carnet for the Metro when we arrived and had tickets left over when we were coming home.

The other other thing I love about Paris is that although the big museums cost money to enter (best value on this trip: The Museum of Modern Art, which costs €10 to visit, but takes at least three hours to cover, and that's with one whole floor closed to the public, and has loads of space in it so you can look at things in comfort. Worst value on this trip: The Orangerie, which costs €8.50 to enter, is completely packed full of people, and takes about an hour to cover before you get sick of it), there are still loads of free things to do. Okay, these mainly involve being outdoors and mostly involve walking, but if you like those things, you're quids in. The nicest free thing (if you don't count the train fare) if you have loads of time is to go to Versailles and visit the gardens. They are extensive and beautiful and even if you forget to bring a packed lunch with you, you can buy a sandwich for only €4.50. Versailles is very romantic, for promenading around hand in hand and all that jazz.

Our eating out wasn't as extensive as we'd planned on this trip, because we were walking a lot so we got tired a lot, and also because we like to eat our dinner earlier than Parisians do. I am always amused by Parisian restaurants. They open at 6pm, are completely empty till 8.30pm, then everyone rushes out for dinner at the same time and sits in the restaurant till 11pm, and then they close. And most of them are tiny. How do they make any money? Ah, the mysteries of the continent.

Madam, I'm Adam

You can find the book here...

For some stupid reason, my Google account keeps telling me that I do not have access to this blog. For shame.

Anyway, I've published the document on the web for anyone to see. You can look at it here.

Finished!

In a haze of steroids, I finished my 50,000 word masterpiece today. My intention is to put it up here, so if you want to read it, you can do so. However, I don't want to hear any criticisms of it, because it is, after all, a 50,000 word first draft written in 30 days, with only a week of prep time beforehand. And, because of the daft version of Word I have, I haven't even been able to spell check it.

So, don't expect too much. Nevertheless, it turned out a lot better than I expected, and writing it really was a lot of fun. I will certainly be having another go next year, although it would be nice if some people I knew in real life could be persuaded to join in.

Thanks to all who minded me and did my share of the washing up while I was writing. And to Google, without which none of my half-assed "research" would have been possible.

Infected!

I have a chest infection. How bad is it? I'll tell you how bad. I actually went to the doctor, which for me means it must be bad. And now I have antibiotics, steroids, and an inhaler. Most importantly, though, I have a sick note from school work and so I can stay on the sofa and watch Pebble Mill Firefly for the rest of the week. And finish my novel.

Here's a top tip for you. If you, like me, often choose to accompany your blog posts with random pictures you find on the Internet, do not ever conduct an Internet search using Google or some other search facility (because Google is not a verb, let's remember that, kids) for images of chest infection. MY BLASTED EYES!

Instead, I have found you these lovely puppies. Aw.

Consumer tips for winter

Hello everyone. Regular readers of this blog (all four of you) will remember the only time I ever gave consumer advice before, which was when I advised people living by the seaside in the winter to stock up on their Silcock's Base. Well, now I have another piece of winter advice for you, and it is this: do not buy Kleenex anti-viral tissues. They are so rubbish! Here's why:

1. they cost €4.20 for a box
2. they're so fat there's only about thirty tissues in the box
3. the middle layer of the three balmy layers is covered in these stupid blue dots (they're the anti viral!) which, if you're particularly ill, you don't notice until you've blown your nose and then you think "oh shit, blue is coming out of my nose, I have space tuberculosis" and you become convinced, in your less lucid moments, that you will die

Mister Monkey kindly struggled down the chemist in the teeth of a howling gale to get me these tissues yesterday, and they are already nearly gone. Useless. Do not buy them.

As an added, supplementary piece of advice, can I suggest that you do not start reading a book about the great influenza outbreak of 1918 either? It does not make you feel better.

Heroes, the best way to take your mind off a bad cough

It's just great. It's got comic book stuff and sci fi stuff and crazy paranormal stuff and it's creepy and gory and full of people who make you go "don't trust him, he's very bad" and full of stuff that makes you go "holy crap." We are loving it, here in the Monkey house.

The most fun thing we've learned about it is that the dude who plays Hiro still works part time at Industrial Light and Magic as an animator, which presumably makes him a huge enormous geek.

Here is better whingeing

Phear my speed writing skillz

41,001, bitches!

This is the best book EVAH!

Five days to go

You eejit. Oh noes, the Brain Science man on the Panel last week was right! Women can't do hard sums!

Man, I wanted to punch that guy in the nose. Typical woman's response, get all emotional.

Four days to go/four weeks to go

37,000 words written. But my cough is so bad that I can hardly write. If only I was in a garret somewhere. Still, Molly and Archie are back on track, bless them. They are fun, I wish I could do them better justice.

Still, at least I still have my favourite Saturday night programme to console me. There was a lovely atmosphere on Strictly Come Dancing tonight. I guess everyone knew Claire and Brendan were going home, and everyone just seemed really cheery. The sad thing is, I don't really have anyone I'm cheering for in the finals. Naturally, last year I wanted Zoe Ball to win, but this year my underdog is Carol Smillie. Not really for her, necessarily, more for Matthew. He's such a pro. He always looks at her like he's madly in love with her, which is exactly how your dance partner should look at you.

Although I reckon Louise and Vincent will win. He is also top class, very funny, and she is genuinely a really good dancer.

Six days left

NaNoWriMo finishes in six days, and I have 20,000 words left to write. Fun, huh? Luckily for me, two of those days are weekend days, and today I am sick in bed with one of those awful colds that has gone to my chest and so I sound like I'm breathing through a bowl of thick soup, so I don't have to work. Molly and Archie have let me down a little, or I've let them down, in that I've left them speeding through Europe, Molly at the wheel of a car belonging to a classical pianist, and Archie in the boot of a car having been kidnapped by a Hungarian film director. The Hungarian film director's girlfriend, who was driving, has just crashed the car into the wall of a furniture factory outside Eferding in Austria. They have been stuck there for a couple of days now, because I wasn't sure what to do with them, but I think I've got it now.

Buy me this!

I have never seen Antony and Cleopatra , and the RSC are running what looks like a wonderful production of it in London in the new year.

Oh, I want it.

Of Human Bondage

I read this book on the recommendation of several people on ILB. It was wonderful. It is the story of an orphaned boy with a club foot who gets sent to live with his parsimonious vicar uncle in the south of England during the latter half of the 19th century, and tells of his life there, in public school, and trying to find his way as an adult. He has a disastrous love affair and lives in almost constant threat of running out of money. Along the way he learns about art, philosophy, people, love, hate, responsibility, religion, and all the Big Things in life. It's very funny, warm, epic, sprawling, terribly English, and I loved every single bit of it. Maugham is, I think, deeply unfashionable, but shouldn't be.

New album at last

I downloaded this last night off iTunes. I should probably have gone out and actually bought a physical copy of it, but hey, it's instant gratification.

I don't know if I like it. I loved Pulp so much, and it's easy to think that the reason you love a band so much is because you're hopelessly in love with the front man--and who can resist him, really--but you forget that all those other people moving around out there on the stage are doing their important things too. And gradually, as they dropped away, the Pulp sound changed, and then, gradually, Jarvis got older and his politics changed too. So everything's different now. And it might take me a while to get used to it. Nobody gave We Love Life a chance, but it is a truly great album. Perhaps, after I've listened to it incessantly for many months, I will love this one as much.

Hey, who wants to hear my Yves Klein joke?

"I study at the Yves Klein school of Judo."
"Really? What belt are you?"
"Blue!"

More nano talk

Mister Monkey correctly pointed out that if you're going to write a book about SPIES who are also ACTORS, then you have to have them both SPY and ACT somewhere at the beginning of the book, rather than just talk about it. He came up with the great plan of having them start with ACTING in a film, and then, after a day's shooting, head off to do some SPYING. This is what I have now done, and I am so stupidly pleased with the new and improved first section of the book that I am putting it here:

Somewhere off the coast of Chile, a ship of His Majesty’s fleet bobbed like a cork on the sea. Had there been any qualified observers, they would have noted that it was beam on to the swell, and that at any moment, if it did not right itself, the slightest change in the weather could have it over, sails flopping in the water like washing in a puddle.
The captain of the ship was all too aware of his predicament, but at just this moment he had not the luxury of doing anything about it, for he was trying very hard not to be stabbed in the neck. A vicious prisoners’ mutiny was underway, led by a hellion they had picked up in Chile and were bringing back to England to undergo a show trial which, it was hoped, would put women everywhere off following her example. The woman in question, it turned out, knew how to take a hostage, and knew how to climb. She also knew how to inspire her followers, and as the captain fended off his assailant with some considerable skill, he saw her shrug the outer layers of her garments and proceed to swing herself aloft.
“Mister Bragg!” he shouted for his first lieutenant, finally managing to unbalance the mercenary who had been lunging at him and deliver a sharp stab to his upper thigh which would lay him out but hopefully not kill him before the doctor could get to him. His first lieutenant looked up at the rigging to see the young woman slithering up it as lithe as a leopard. Both men sprinted for the ropes and began to follow her. The captain gained on her after very little time, for he was an athletic sort, much given to races with his subordinates on feast days when there was time for sport. Fast though she was, the young woman could not outclimb him, and she realised it as she drew closer to the maintop. She left off climbing and shinnied out to the end of the yard, wrapping her hand and foot in the clewlines and turning to face the captain with a brandished short sword, a flashing smile, and panting breath.
“Give this up,” the captain said. “Your fellow prisoners have made a sorry show of things below, and there is nowhere to go.”
She cursed him.
Somewhere below them, the captain’s crew had regained control of the wayward vessel and turned her to run before the freshening wind. The sails began to belly out, and the captain and the woman found the rigging a lot livelier, and their movements more greatly hampered than before. The ship began to move. The captain was now on firmer ground than the woman, as the whole structure they stood on began to sway and pitch with the roll of the ship. The woman looked less sure of what she was doing. She looked anxiously at the deck below.
“They’ll kill me,” she said eventually. “You know they will.”
“It’s no more than you deserve,” the captain said. “You killed twelve people.”
“They started it,” she argued. “They came after me first. I was minding my own business. I was a missionary, and they came after me. God abandoned me, so I’ve abandoned him and his laws.”
The captain’s feet edged ever so slightly closer to her, and the blade came up again between them.
“I’m not a judge,” he said.
“You could plead for me,” she said.
“After what you have done here?” he said. “You did things nobody should do.”
Her face took on a wild look. She dropped the blade. “And them?” she asked. “They did things to me that nobody should ever do.”
“I know it,” he answered. “And god help you, they have made you mad.”
“Mad is right, captain,” she said with a wild sob. She turned from him and without warning, launched herself from the end of the yard toward the glittering sea. She seemed to fly, and at least had the good sense to jump out as far as she could.
The captain barely had time to understand what she had done before he had followed her. They hit the water within a split second of each other with an ungodly smack. The captain could swim well, however, as was part of his competitive nature, and he pulled himself to the surface like a seal and immediately began to search for her. From the ship he heard a cry of “there, cap’n, she’s behind you!” in among the frantic ringing of bells and cries of “Cap’n overboard!”
He allowed himself a second of relief that she had survived, and struck out after her. Even here, even after everything that had happened, she still fought him. As he came up beside her she kicked out at him. As he pulled himself up along her clothing, hand over hand towards her head, she lashed at him while struggling to stay afloat. She was not as strong a swimmer as he, and she was already starting to tire.
“You are a fool,” he said. “You could have been killed.”
“So could you,” she said.
They bobbed for a moment in the ocean and the captain looked back to see the men lower the jolly boat and pull towards their position. In a last, desperate bid to be free, she kissed the captain. “Please don’t let them kill me, Edward,” she pleaded.
To her immense surprise, he passionately returned her kiss, holding her head with one hand even while he held them both afloat with the other. “They will not have you,” he said, “not while I am alive to defend you.”
A shout of “CUT!” came from somewhere to their starboard side, and they could hear the sounds of an outboard motor. Archie squinted upwards towards the hot, Mexican sun. “Good this, isn’t it?” he said, continuing to hold on to Molly. As the zodiac buzzed towards them over the sea, they trod water and spread out their arms to the side to enjoy the warm sea. “I can’t believe how clear the water is,” said Molly, looking down.
“Did you remember the plan of the plantation?” Archie asked.
“Yes,” Molly answered, just as the zodiac reached them. “Don’t worry, we’re all packed. You just need to get dressed.”

C'est le fromage, no? But fun.

And we're off...

Here are the first 445 words. I will not be posting any more of the book until at least the beginning of next week (unless it somehow turns out to be amazingly good). But I'm pleased to have got started.

Molly felt the ladder slip out from underneath her. She had, of course, overstretched, which Archie was always telling her not to do, for this very reason. She tried to hook her trainer around the top rung and hoosh the rickety steps back into place, but they were too far gone, and if she tried too hard she would go with them. She let it fall. Dangling from the cross beam, she sighed heavily and waited for her legs to get themselves settled long enough for her to think about pulling herself up. She could already feel a tingle in her hands from the not-quite dry creosote (or whatever it was) on the cross beam, and she realised she hadn’t got a great hold and might start to fall soon if she didn’t do something. Her belly was suddenly cold. The zip of her hoody was stuck up under her mouth and she tried to spit it out but couldn’t. So she bit down on it, steeled herself, and tried to pull herself up. It was a really long time since she’d done anything like this. Her arm muscles weren’t quite sure how to pull her, and her joints weren’t quite sure how to lever her, and she found herself wondering if she’d put on any weight, or if her hands had lost their strength, and as she thought, with great effort but no noise, she managed to haul herself up so that she had her elbows hooked over the beam. From there it was easier to swing her legs out a bit in order to swing the rest of her up until she was stomach down over the beam, poised for a smack, but safe and willing to wait for someone to come.
It was half an hour before anyone did. She flattened herself against the beam a little in case it was Archie, making the split second decision not to let him know what had happened. She couldn’t bear to hear him complain about the whole thing one more time. It was a terrible idea. It was a stupid way to spend your life. When he had agreed to spend two years doing whatever she wanted, he didn’t think it would be anything like this. It was pure stupidness. He would say stupidness as well, and even in her impersonation of him in her head, she corrected him.
But then it was Fergus who came into the church, and although she was relieved to see someone who would just do what he was told with no argument, she was disappointed that he wasn’t Archie.