Night of the Hats

I Don't Know; I Wasn't There

2012-01-31T11:32:00.000Z

Wrote a pantun or pantoum for the class last night. There's no non-technical way of describing what a pantun is, so if you're not interested, skip to the poem below.

It is made up of quatrains, four line verses, and each verse has a rhyme scheme abab; in other words the first and third lines rhyme and the second and fourth line rhyme. Then it gets a bit complex. The second and fourth line become the first and third line of the next verse. Then we repeat this for each verse following. So that every line appears twice, the first and third lines from the original first verse make an appearance in the last verse; as the last and second lines, respectively. I demonstrate below.

The assignment: Write a pantun (or pantoum) of 16 lines - on any topic.

I don’t know, I wasn’t there

I don’t know, I wasn’t there
They say it rained a lot that night
The boys went swimming on a dare
They’d heard mermaids don’t like to bite

They say it rained a lot that night
Chances to swim are pretty rare
They’d heard mermaids don’t like to bite
The moonlight shone across their hair

Chances to swim are pretty rare
They splashed and laughed in delight
The moonlight shone across their hair
They disappeared from human sight

They splashed and laughed in delight
They boys went swimming on a dare
They disappeared from human sight
I don’t know, I wasn’t there

In my opinion, and also at least one of the other students, the line you use for the twist is the last line of the third verse - "They disappeared from human sight". This and the first/last line are the ones you need to build the poem around.

Mermaid's bite and disappeared from human sight got the slightly disturbed reaction I was hoping for. The folktale/urban legend vibe was also picked up. The details convinced one of the class that the narrator was there; the contradictions (rain AND moonlight?) convinced another they weren't. My answer was the predictable one.

Two week break then I'm back with a sonnet. Did you want an assignment? You did? Find another pantun, or pantoum and read it! Available from most internet search engines.

Stan, Unsmiling Girls and the Death of Jane Austen

2012-01-25T11:54:00.000Z

So, the assignment for the Creative Writing class due 23/01/12 and workshopped 23/01/12 was as follows:
"Write one of each poetic form (limerick, clerihew and acrostic) to share with the group."

So here's the limerick:

Stan

There was a young fellow named Stan
Who drove around in a really old van
He fixed it with card
And sometimes with lard
Anything as long as it ran

This is, of course, based on a true story. Except the bit about the lard. The group were amused by it's absurdity. I don't plan on writing any more about Stan for the group. On to the clerihew:

She didn’t smile

The girl selling bread
Looks more than half dead
As it transpires
She’s an immortal vampire

This did cause an argument. I liked immortal. Most of the others thought it was unnecessary and spoiled the rhythm. I thought it needed a word of some sort in there. Any thoughts?

So finally the acrostic:

Jane Austen’s Death

Turns out CSI 1817,
Undeveloped as the methods of the
Bow Street Runners were, didn’t
Even look at her body. Her death
Remains a minor mystery.
Consumption. A catch-all for
Unnumbered wasting diseases that effect the
Lungs. Addison’s disease, then undefined,
Or cancer, killer then as killer now.
Some more lurid theories appear
In time to promote books about her.

So, in conclusion, no one knows.

The inspiration for this is that the last note I made at the class when we were set this assignment was WHAT DID JANE AUSTEN DIE OF? (Caps in the original). I should really have made the acrostic "Tuberculer complications arising from Addison's disease (probably)" which would have given me space for the call to action to dig up her grave in Winchester Cathedral, make away with her body and do some forensic anthropology on it. It would have been kind of long though. Noted were the isolation of Consumption, and also the last line and my bold lack of rhyme or meter. Bold is my word. Isolating words, phrases and lines in my poems seems to be a thing with me. Oh yes.

So anyway, I'm feeling pretty poemed up, back in the swing of it. This week we do a pantun (or pantoum as Stephen Fry calls it) then week after a sonnet.

Do you want an assignment? You do? Your assignment is to write a limerick! Or a poem about Stan. Or even a limerick about Stan, although then you're getting in the ring with my one above and that's not going to be a first round knock out, I can tell you.

Berg

2012-01-24T09:00:00.000Z

My poem from the homework due Monday 16th, workshopped on Monday 23rd. The assignment was "Think of a famous person, event, story or character and write about it in no more than 10 lines. It's up to you what form - and it can be free verse with no real rules or stipulations. You can partially or fully rhyme your offering - or not at all. This is just about having fun and experimenting with poetry and being 'intertextual.'"

Berg

Calved in the far North. My icy frozen
Mother left far behind. I drift southward
With brothers and sisters by the dozen.
Something unnatural, man-made, can be heard
Above the sound of North Atlantic swell.
The mechanical noise gives me unease,
A feeling that not everything is well.
A ship, a giant, Titan of the seas
Sailing careless out of the April night.
I won't miss this steel vessel of light.

So I'm being intertextual with the sinking of the Titanic. Noted were: the isolation of the word "man-made" in the middle of the line; the almost repetition of "a ship, a giant"; all the 's' sounds in the last line. All these were good. It was noted that the title (which I was unsure of) followed by calving made the iceberg seem alive; the last line made it seem malevolent.

All in all, I'm pleased with this. I'm doing a bit of my seeing the world from the villain thing (and to be fair, the Titanic is under power, the 'berg at the mercy of the wind and currents; no one sets out to be a villain in their own eyes.) It doesn't show up with the formatting blogger is giving me, but it was suggested that if you turn it on it's side, it looks almost like the shape of an iceberg, but the space between lines is less on here and if I start fiddling with the look here I'll be up all night.

Poems With Class

2012-01-17T09:00:00.000Z

So we overran and my homework poem didn't get workshopped so I'm not putting it up here. Back, back Willcox poetry fans, calm it down! Hanging my tutor in effigy won't get it up any quicker.

To tide you over, here's the stuff I wrote in class.

Assignment: in five minutes write a limerick, clerihew or acrostic, preferably one that might appeal to children.

Some of the kids on the bus
Were making a bit of a fuss
A girl lost her coat
Or maybe a goat
I'd kind of lost interest at last

As everyone in the entire world can see the last line doesn't work. The turn to nonsense in the fourth line is pretty good though.

Second Assignment: in five minutes write something based on the theme of Blue Monday[1], possibly using some of the forms above

So I go for an acrostic just because I can

Black outside
Light has gone
Under the sky
Everything's wrong

Morning's ended
Outside's dark
Nothing can be seen
Daylight's grey
A whole week to go
Yesterday's over

I'm channelling my inner 17 year old pretty full on there. As I noted the second time I read it, the start is pretty well polished, but it falls apart at the end as I was pushed for time and that makes it better. So look, the constraints improve the work. There's my personal lesson for the day.

Here's your assignment for the day: read poems out loud, preferably to an audience. If you don't want to read mine, (and, after all, who does?) then find some better ones by someone else. You're on the internet, find some goddamn poetry. That is all.

[1] Because this Monday is one of the several which is supposedly one of the most depressing in the year. Inevitably though I had this running in my head while writing (and I was the only one "How do I feel?" began another person's poem:

This then lead to me having this in my head for some of the rest of the class:

You can of course find my previous thoughts on At the Indie Disco here.

I Read Books: Rivers of London

2012-01-15T12:50:00.001Z

Yesterday I finished Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. Let me save you some time. Rather than read this review you should a. buy this book, and b. read it.

For those of you still here, please note that I have no compunction in wasting your time. So, onwards.

1. The definition of the genre Urban Fantasy is hotly debated. So when I say that this is urban fantasy, it is also a. set in a city; b has fantastical magical elements; and c. contemporary. In addition it is d. a crime thriller of e. the police procedural type[1].

2. The supernatural detective novels I have read of recent times seem to be of the gritty noir type. Harry Dresden often seems to be the 21st century magical descendant of a Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett protagonist. More interesting to me are the Felix Castor novels of Mike Carey, which are set in London[2] and are informed by the British crime tradition and, most obviously, by Carey's run on Hellblazer. However one thing that these have in common is that they are very depressing; bad people do bad things and our protagonist has to lie to and betray his friends[3] and put the closest thing to innocents this bad old city has in harms way in order to get the bad guy. It's The Big Sleep with Vampires!

3. Rivers of London is not so depressing; in fact it is exhilarating. Our hero, Peter Grant, is a copper, a member of the Metropolitan Police Service. Having completed his two years probation he doesn't quite have the aptitude to be a theif-taker and is being considered for the department that deals with the paperwork. However, while guarding a murder scene, he is approached by a witness who turns out to be a ghost, and ends up instead in the loose network of those who keep the Queen's Peace amongst the supernatural. As might be expected in a city getting on for two thousand years old, there are a lot of spirits and so forth connected to various places and things. A significant sub-plot involves the titular rivers; the spirits that embody them and a dispute among them. For most of the story Grant finds the magical world aggravating; his A-level science makes him want to look for explanations, and his police training means that most of the time he comes across problems. In the climax however, he discovers/realises that he can make them work for him. If I point out that he begins the final chase from the former site of Bow Street Magistrates Court it comes as no surprise that two hundred and fifty years of policing supports him.

4. The novel mixes actual London[4] with historical, folklore and legendary London in a way I find very appealing. It's similar to the way I see places I know about; I might point out the tiles (indicative of the era of the building) and then tell a story about how the river behind is where Canute beached his ships on his way to Denmark, then go on to explain that he was descended from the god Odin, and tie it all together with a neat bow.

The villain is telegraphed from the first, but is not obvious until the clues pile up and, as becomes clear, is a version of a spirit of London we've seen many times. I will think twice before using the phrase "knock his block off," again.

5. As I've said, it's funny and lighthearted. Yet despite that I can't help noticing that several of Grant's friends are hospitalised in the novel and he sends one away (as part of a deal in order to keep the Queen's Peace). It's almost noirish in it's ending!

Read This: If you are a human being with a fair understanding of English.
Don't Read This: If you don't like police procedurals, London or fantasy. But if so why are you reading this?
Also: The author wrote Dr Who episodes in the late 80s.

[1] a. and b. are the minimum requirements, but currently marketed urban fantasy often imply c. and sometimes d.
[2] The only city I've ever lived in. I also have a love-hate relationship with both the city and fictional versions of it. Maybe more blogposts to waste your time on that? We'll see.
[3] Who then tell him to clear off in the sequels, but always come through in the end. I don't know if they are loyal ("he was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it") or very stupid, or maybe both. Both probably, and the knowledge that if you don't back him this time, the bad guy will get away and the hero, who is at least half a step better, will die and you'll be sad as you sit alone in the underground bar drinking neat whiskey.
[4] I've walked down many of the streets that Aaronovitch describes and didn't catch him in a mistake or alteration for the sake of the plot. It's also clear to me that he's walked and driven down them many times in different seasons and at different times of day.

I Read Books: The Book of Five Rings

2012-01-12T12:47:00.000Z

1. The Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho) was written in 1645 in South Western Japan by Miyatomo Musashi. I have a 2003 edition translated by Ashikaga Yoshiharu and Rosemary Brant, published by Astrolog publishing house.

2. There have been many extraordinary claims made for the book, beginning with the author's claims in the text, and continuing throughout it's history, culminating with the cover blurb saying that the book is "the cornerstone of Japanese culture". However what we should always bear in mind is that the book is essentially a swordfighting manual.

3. It is a tremendously influential swordfighting manual. Musashi had quite a reputation as a samurai, which means that, amongst other things, he had killed lots of people. His book makes clear that his system is a philosophy and a way of life, although the aim, is always is to cut your enemy. It has a reputation as a very good swordfighting manual[1].

4. A swordfighting manual is only useful if you put it into practice. Musashi is aware of this. He peppers the text with instructions to study, or practice or understand things. He often says that it is difficult to explain what he means, and understanding must come from using what he says. This has given the book a reputation for esoteric, or hidden wisdom. I don't know for sure, but I have a strong suspicion that much becomes clear if you pick up a sword and practice with it.

5. So what do we have? Some discussion of weapons, uses, stance and movement. Suggestions that there is no one good weapon, stance etc. as all depends on circumstances. Some criticisms of other schools of swordfighting. Some talk about using spirit and mind and practice and professionalism to cut men down. And hidden amongst it some interesting ideas about how all this fits together into a way of life, which is then cleverly undercut in the final, shortest book, the Book of Void.

6. The book, it seems, was based on Musashi's own teachings to his students. It seems that he intended to pass this only to his successors, but somewhere along the way copies were made and it became widely distributed.

7. Despite it's ambiguous and esoteric language, the book is actually pretty straightforward, no-nonsense and short. I can't say how useful it is as a swordfighting manual, but as an insight into samurai thought and practice it is very interesting.

Read This: If you are interested in swordfighting, samurai or Japan, or just want a short flavourful insight into the mind of a man in a now gone culture.
Don't Read This: If you get frustrated by by instructions that you can't follow, descriptions that make no sense or have no interest in Japan etc.
Also: A free online translation can be found here.

[1] As someone who does not use a sword any more and was never more than a novice I am unwilling to state how useful it is for reasons explained in paragraph 4.

Dream Diary 22

2012-01-10T14:26:00.000Z

Dreamt last night that Wil Wheaton and Kate Bush[1] were flirting with each other in my garden. This was particularly annoying as they were supposed to be acting in a supernatural drama but the angel suit[2] wouldn't come out of it's box properly. Time was getting on and we still had to shoot a scene in the tunnels under the city where Justin had opened a portal to somewhere to allow the spirits of the dead to escape the afterlife[3].

[1] Wheaton looked much as he does now, but Kate looked probably circa Hounds of Love.
[2] It was a green and cream armoured suit of some sort.
[3] Think my unconscious mind may have ~~stolen this from~~ intended this as an homage to Philip Pullman.

New Year, New Post

2012-01-10T10:51:00.000Z

In case anyone is reading this, two friends have websites that I have failed to plug. Firstly, Bertrand has Signs and Portents in which he puts up predictions etc. of the coming apocalypse. It's a quiet at the moment, but will undoubtedly pick up as people with even less knowledge of Mayan culture, Nostradamus and/or the Earth's magnetic field than me get over excited towards the end of the year. This then is your resource for all things eschatological.

Secondly, Dr Terror (although I know him as just plain Terror as that's what we called him when we were at school together) has begun reviewing 80s horror films at Dead Teenagers. I am merely a dabbler when it comes to horror films; in fact I have a slightly strange relationship with them. Every 2-3 months I get the urge to watch one, or sometimes two or three and then I realise I've had enough and go away again. This is unlike how I watch action films; explosions, car chases and witty half-liners hardly ever get old. So don't listen to me about horror movies, listen to Dr Terror.

If anyone has anything they think I should be reading let me know and I will be happy to advertise it to my single digit audience.

Write What You Know: Death

2011-12-17T09:00:00.000Z

Death is a part of life[1]. It is an ending, and with it a new beginning[2]. Oaths, of course, only hold until death. They are considered fulfilled with the death of the oathmaker. My narrator says:

Oaths that bind us. Oaths to serve. Oaths to protect. We swear and swear and at the end we find ourselves bound in a web of promises with no way out. But in their mercy the gods give us death, that there may be an end to oaths, an end to dishonour and failure. Death, the final answer to every promise.

Later though his opinion is threatened. There is a suggestion that death is not the end. But let's not go down that route. Instead, let's consider; if we live long enough we can't keep all our promises. Eventually circumstances will force us to break one or more. In a feudal society, this is a threat. To a feudal society with immortals this is a major problem. Oaths will be broken. Then you must live forever with the consequences.

[1] Wittgenstein disagreed in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, but he's dead, and also changed his mind.
[2] "Transformation" Tarot readers interpret the card as. To which I misquote Ragged Robin, and ask exactly what kind of transformation is symbolised by a scary skeleton with a scythe on it.

The Man Who Cheated Death

2011-12-16T09:00:00.000Z

A self-contained story from my novel, provisionally named An End To Oaths. It has a rude word in it so it can be found below the fold.

“Now listen children while I tell this tale. Even before he joined the Company, Fitaz was a favourite of the Moon Maiden. One day as he walked the earth, he met Death on the road. Death had been his companion many times, so he greeted him. ‘Lord Death, where are you going?’

“Death replied, ‘I am on the way to give a gift. Even now I travel to visit my mortal herald. I will make him my hand on earth. Within a year and a day every man, woman and child across the curve of the world will be in my domain.’

“Fitaz laughed. ‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘a bold plan indeed. Tell me though, shall we break our journey and game a little?’

“Now Death loves to game, although he only ever gambles for that which matters. ‘Why should I game with you?’ he asked. ‘Before the seasons turn again, all that you have and all that you are shall be mine.’

“’That turns out not to be the case,’ said Fitaz. ‘There are many things we leave behind when we enter your domain. For instance, perhaps I might wager my one true love against your hand on this earth.’

“Now Death knew that Fitaz was beloved of the Moon Maiden. If he won, then not just all the mortals of the world, but the Moon Maiden herself would belong to him. He agreed, and they sat by the road and diced for a while.

“At the last Death won. Fitaz smiled and said, ‘That was a pleasant way to spend the time. Would you care for another game?’

“’You have nothing that I wish to win, and gaming without reward or risk is thin soup.’

“’No, no. What if I were to risk my best supporter, the one I depend on in time of greatest need?’

“At this Death was taken aback. For he realised that Fitaz could have tricked him. Fitaz was arrogant above all men, so perhaps his one true love was not the Moon Maiden, but rather himself. Annoyed, he agreed to play again. Again, after a long struggle he triumphed.

“’It seems that you always win in the long run, Lord Death. Perhaps though you might give me a third game.’

“’If you have anything left that is not already mine,’ said Death, worry again furrowing his brow.

“’Maybe one thing – the last thing to cross my mind before I enter your domain.’

“Death was angered now. Twice he had been tricked. But all men fear Death, and at the last Fitaz would call on the Moon Maiden to save him. He agreed. ‘This is the last game. The day fades into night and I must cross the curve of the world to deliver my gift.’

“They gamed again. The dice seemed to favour Fitaz and he pulled ahead. At the last though Death rolled a perfect score. ‘I have won,’ he said.

“’Yes you have,’ said Fitaz, drawing his sword and striking at Death.

“Death laughed now. ‘Fool. Don’t you know that no mortal blade can cut Death?’

“’You misunderstand Lord Death. This blade is my one true love. It is the one I depend on in my moments of greatest need. And at the last I am sure that this is what I will think of. It is not longer a mortal blade, but Death’s blade three times over.’

“Death looked down and saw his fist lying on the ground where it had been cut off. No mortal would now be his hand. ‘Well played, Fitaz, well played. But at the end no one can beat Death. My herald will come for you, and bring my answer in his wake. At the moment you least expect it, there I will be.’”

“’Oh stop it,” said Fitaz. ‘You do that for to everyone anyway. Stop being such a bad loser and fuck off.’”

The Novel: Brain Frazzled Lessons

2011-12-15T15:21:00.001Z

So 45 days and 83,000 odd words later it's finished. Working title is An End To Oaths. It's supposed to be a gritty low fantasy swords-and-a-bit-of-sorcery thing. It sort of is! There are seven dragons in it though.

This means the first draft exists to be read. HOWEVER:

1. I'm not making it generally available, especially to random strangers off the internet.
2. It is inelegant and in some cases broken. An early section doesn't work at all. The manuscript changes tense all the time. Characters appear, change name, and wander off, then new characters who fill the exact same role appear. A city changed name a couple of times. I've redrawn the map three times and I'm not sure anything that happens is geographically possible. When I couldn't find the name I'd previously given someone or something they just became "the scarred man" "the frightened woman" "the envoy". (I actually like that quite a lot, but it ought to be consistent). Things that happen at the end don't tie in to the beginning, and things that happen at the beginning don't pay off properly at the end.
3. That said, all the coolest stuff I hoped for is there, but in many cases improperly set up. So they will be, to coin a phrase, spoiled if read in their current state.
4. Anyone who gets a draft will be requested to spot errors, problems, mistakes, inconsistencies etc.
5. Stephen King suggests leaving it for six weeks before going over it again. Well, in your face King, I'm going to print out the first section tomorrow and go over it with a red pen and a notebook to spot what needs fixing. In other words I hope to have a second draft within a reasonable timescale, And that draft should be an actual novel rather than just a bunch of related chapters.

All that said, if anyone wants a copy of the first draft, let me know when I'm feeling self-confident and I'll e-mail it over. Also, probably tomorrow I'll stick another excerpt out on the blog.

So what lessons have I learned, and can remember sitting here two hours after typing the last line[1]? Firstly it's not all that hard. Just come up with the outline for a story, visualise the scene, and force it out the brain and down to the fingertips and it appears on the screen. Easy!

Secondly - this is hard work! Starting scenes isn't too bad - a character arrives, a fight starts, someone wakes up. Finishing them is a bitch. The first five hundred words a day are not too bad. Unless I'm really caught up in what's happening, each section after that is harder.

Thirdly, I either need a better plan, or I need to be better prepared for when things go off track. Extra chapters appeared between me and the end several times. Stories I expected to appear in a couple of days and so had plenty of time to think about started to spill half-formed from characters lips. I found myself looking up swordsmithing, galleys, PTSD and pregnancy amongst other things at various times when the story made me realise I didn't know enough about those topics to make up convenient details.

I'm pretty sure there are other lessons. I'm a bit too frazzled to figure out what they are though. More post mortem later as I process what happened.

[1] "Promise me you'll kill the son of a bitch who did this to me."

Write What You Know: Feudalism

2011-12-06T19:46:00.001Z

In a feudal setting the greatest crime is to betray your lord[1]. Failure is nearly as bad. So what happens when you're the sworn guard to your lord, and he dies? When you get home and face his widow and family, what then? Even if they forgive you, you've still failed. Your oath has been broken. How do you pick yourself after that?

If I need an excuse for a broken, fanatic killing machine of a protagonist, suffering from PTSD, determined that he will not fail again, or at least he won't outlive failure this time, here it is. Of course this links to some other themes - death and family. Which by some coincidence come next on my list of Write What You Know.

[1] Unfairly treating your vassal is equally bad. However as the rights and privileges increase as you move up the ziggurat, and the responsibilities increase as you move down, plus judging it happens at the top, for some reason it rarely happens that way. Who would have thought?

Butchery and Lost Horses

2011-11-25T09:00:00.000Z

Reading Tamerlane by Justin Marozzi, a biography of Timur. Later will come an actual review. Here's an excerpt:

Husayn's death, when it came, bordered on the farcical. Doubting Temur's promises of quarter, he first hid inside a minaret until he was discovered by a soldier who had climbed the tower in an effort to find his lost horse.

No, you're not going to find your horse up there. I suppose, if this had been slightly better phrased I'd instead assume he was going to look out for his horse, but seriously? In the middle of a sack you're going to spot your horse from the tower, climb down and catch it? Here is an important mystery - what was the soldier doing in the tower? Clearly I will have to read on to find out.

Next, our author goes to Uzbekistan to visit Shakhrisabsz, site of Timur's palace and visits the market.

Butchers with huge cleavers chop away at cuts of meat that would be consigned to the rubbish bin in wealthier countries.

Has anyone ever told him what goes into sausages and burgers? Or, for that matter, has he ever been to a kitchen of a proper restaurant where the meat that can't be sold gets used for stock. Anyway, hoping for more mystery horses and butchery wrongness as I progress.

The Novel: An Excerpt

2011-11-19T09:00:00.000Z

An excerpt from my still untitled novel, currently 33,000 words of slightly disjointed swearing, fighting and storytelling. This is the first draft, so may be changed at no notice and conceivably may be deleted entirely.

A week later we were well inside Dead Tiger Shi’s domain. My lady was taking advantage of the flat terrain to ride in her carriage. Lady Alixa and her brother took advantage of her being in the carriage to talk to one of the lower orders.

“Did he really spend five minutes praising her backside?”

Kell tried out his Stennish. “Hey! Listen up! Hear me talk about these buttocks of goodness, this fine looking rear end, this saddle cushion of loveliness.”

“Stop that.” I said. Alixa looked a little surprised at my tone. “Firstly, you’re telling Dead Tiger Shi’s men you speak Stennish. If they think you are ignorant of it, his court may speak more freely about you.”

They looked at me, impressed by this reasoning. “Secondly, you’re absolutely murdering the opening of their epics. Where did you hear that?”

“Graves and Heart Break Kau were talking three nights ago, and each began in the same way. Later I heard the bard saying the same thing.”

“What epic is that the opening to?” asked Alixa.

“All of them,” I said, “The Stennish are a very traditional people.”

“You’ve disappointed her. She wanted you to tell her a story.” She punched her brother in the shoulder.

I looked at them, then out at the large expanses of pasture and the small fields clustered around the ragged villages. Nothing to see for miles.

“A story. The Stennish are a strange people and their stories have a different shape to the ones we have and expect. So you may find this disappointing.

“Still, it will be good practice, and you may learn something of how they think.”

*****

The Tale of Black Livered Ho and the Iron Men

Listen to me child, for I have something to say.

I will talk of the first steppe lords, the riders of the wind, the ancestors of the free men. Their names ring across the plains, are known along the curve of the world, will be remembered until time dies it’s long death. They were horse tamers, god hunters, man killers, arrow shooters, lance stabbers, net stranglers. It was the earliest age, the time when all was new, the days when men were what they were meant to be.

I will talk of Ho, Black Livered Ho, Strong Back Ho, Wolf Killer Ho. Ho who wrestled giants, hunted dragons, stole the secrets of the iron men. Ho, whose arrows would pass through three men and prick the flesh of a fourth. Ho, whose skin shed blows like water. Ho, whose lance made a hundred widows.

In their wanderings the iron men had come to a ford in the golden river. They settled there and built their tents of mud and wood, planted their grains and their greens. The free men came against them in the night to take their women and their goods and their lives. Their lances broke against the grey metal coats, their arrows bounced from the ferrous helms, and their horses blood slaked the thirst of the iron spears.

In his high summer camp by the holy mountain, Ho heard of this. “What is this?” he queried the taletellers. “Is the courage of the free men gone? Are the steppe lords broken men? The southerners are no true men, mere slave fodder before the nets and clubs of the riders of the wind. How do they now hold the ford on the golden river against all comers?”

“They have sorcery,” said the taletellers. “Their swords cut through our limbs like a spoon through mare’s milk. Blows struck on their harness simply bounce off. They stand as close together as bushes, and our horses cannot find a way through.”

Ho thought on this. The steppe was wide and long. A man could ride it his whole life, gathering wood and flint in the north in the summer, wintering in the south with his herds, and never need to cross the golden river. The iron men were no threat to him.

Three times the seasons made their circuit. Three times warlords took their followers against the iron men. Three times the iron men cut down the riders of the wind, spilling their blood, taking their horses. Any who wished to cross the golden river had to pay a tribute in gold or cattle or horses, and submit to being disarmed. Raiders had to cross at night, far upstream or down, and carry only what could be swum across. Ho heard of this and thought more.

The fifth spring came. The holymen, historyspeakers and clantallymen called for a meeting of the steppe lords, market and contest and prayer gathering. And they called for warlords to come and talk of the iron men who defied the free men and blocked them from the traditional raiding lands of the south.

Ho, Silent Thinker Ho, Black Livered Ho stayed with his herds in the north. His bondsmen who went to the gathering told him of the deeds that were done, the milk-beer that was drunk, the duels that were fought. They told him of the oaths that were sworn, the clans who sent warriors and the great warband of braves that went to fight the iron men, a warband of every tribe of the steppe. The hill men of the east sent lancers, the fish men of the west sent archers. Even the goat men, barely human, sent their axe men on their tiny ponies.

The ford was taken. The mud fort cast down. The iron men were slain. The warband set off south, on a great raid.

The news came with the autumn rains. The iron men had come back. An army as numberless as the stalks of grass had risen from their stone camps and defeated the warband. The scattered remnants had fled to the steppe and the southerners had retaken the ford.

Ho thought more. At last he spoke. “The iron men desire the world. They will never stop. Like locusts or marmosets or dragons they will overrun the world and eat it, and shit out their burrows. They do not know the curve of the world was given to the free men. They do not respect the authority of the horse lords over mankind. The iron on their bodies is nothing to the iron of their minds, which has shut out the rightful order of things.”

He turned to his followers, retainers, bondsmen and kinsmen. “Who here will kill for me?” They all cheered their willingness. “Who here will die for me?” More cheers from the young men, grunts and shrugs of resignation from the veterans.”

“Who will give up their honour? Who will get down on their belly and cower like a dog? Who will surrender to my enemies, break oaths, rebel against their master, spy on my enemies?”

Silence swept across the camp. Then spoke up Rabbit Hat Moh, Wolf Killer Ho’s cousin. “All my honour comes from my lord. If he requires it I can only give it up with a glad heart that I have had the keeping of it for a time.”

So Rabbit Hat Moh was taken down to the ford in the golden river, and sold into slavery there. He laboured in the dark cave of the forge, shovelling the black rock, pumping the bellows, burning in the heat. All winter he dwelt in the dark heart of the enemy. In the spring Faithful Cousin Ho came for him. The guards were covered in metal from their head to their feet. Ho twisted off their heads. The guards had swords that could cut through necks. Ho struck them as they nodded in the dark of night. The guards were many. Ho fought them so silently that they never knew he was there.

Moh and Ho united in the forge. Moh broke his chains with the tools made to forge them. They plundered the forge, taking the smiths with them as they left.

In the domain to the north Moh found iron rock. He made the smiths teach them the secrets of their craft, until the spears of Ho and his horde gleamed like a forest when the sun comes out after a rainstorm.

Their lances struck the iron men and were not deflected. Their arrows found their targets. Iron armour protected their hearts and heads and horses. The ford on the golden river was opened again.

Black Livered Ho and Slave Killer Moh learnt all they could from the iron men smiths. Then remembering the deeds of Moh, they killed them all, and built a cairn that guards the ford on the golden river to this day, and all the days until time dies it’s long death.

Write What You Know: The Ends of the Earth

2011-11-18T19:30:00.000Z

I started this before I began writing the novel and never finished. There are more Ends of the Earth - for a start I live within walking distance of the sea and you can see the continent from the coast. Here it is, unfinished.

Flee to the Ends of the Earth is one of my favourite phrases. Here's some places I've been that vaguely fit that definition.

- Port Arthur, Tasmania. It's on a peninsula in the South East of Tasmania. Many people who visit Australia miss Tasmania entirely because it's kind of small and not on the way to anywhere. Port Arthur was delibrately isolated from the rest of Tasmania as it was a penal colony.

Tasmania was intersting - temparate rather than the subtropical I'd been in Sydney. I went up Mount Wellington and it snowed; down the bottom it was raining, then the next day was showers and the day after was gorgeous warm sunshine. Almost like home, except with a huge mountain behind it and the enormous Southern Ocean swells. And all the Australians, obviously.

- The Orkney Islands. Here I've written about the weirdness that went down there as I was coming down with something nasty and here the stuff that went on in concensual reality. Also on my way there I went through John O'Groats, the least attractive tourist spot I've ever visited. If it weren't for the tacky rubbish it'd be an interesting little harbour though. A big hill and a castle and we've got a setting for an outpost at the edge of civilised lands - sounds good!

- Stewart Island, New Zealand. "Go to New Zealand. Head south to the end of South Island. On the road from Invercargill to Bluff is a ferry, which will take you 17 km south to Stewart Island." Following these instructions lead me to what the hostel manager in Invercargill claimed was the southernmost pub in the world. He may be right, but only because he's not counting any cantinas in Tierra Del Fuego as pubs, as is his right. South is onlt Antarctica[1]

Bluff is also an End of the Earth in that it has one of those signposts to everywhere and a novelty sculpture, in this case a big anchor chain to stop South island drifting away.

[1] In the Southland museum in Invercargill I learned about the sub-antarctic islands, which have no permanant inhabitants. One set of them was on the route from Australia to Cape Horn, and unsurprisingly people kept getting shipwrecked on them. In order to help them out the put sheep on the island, which lead to it becoming a nice closely trimmed lawn, and incidnetally wiping out most of the bird life. What with improvements in navigations and communication, the sheep have been removed[2] allowing the island's ecosystem to begin recovery.
[2] Well, some were removed as some of the characteristics they'd developed were of interest. The rest were shot.

Writing a Novel: 2 Weeks In

2011-11-14T12:00:00.001Z

This is day 14 of my attempt at NaNoWriMo; a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days that I have talked about before I started here. What have I learnt so far?

1. The first 500 words of the day are easy (exception day 3, which went wrong for a variety of reasons, and the morning I had just the slightest edge of a hangover). I've typed more than the 1 666 ⅔ words that are the quota every day, although in some cases it's taken me from morning to evening to squeeze them out in hundred word bursts. In other words I can probably do this.

2. I am explicitly writing a first draft. In previous projects I've noted that something is wrong and gone back and fixed it. None of them have ever gone over 30 pages as I get bogged down rewriting the same broken scenes over and over until I am sick of them and abandon it. Not on this one! Instead I make a note, usually a simple "Fix in 2nd Draft". In this way I won't get sick of rewriting the same scenes! At least not in the first draft. Rather than 30 pages of broken fiction I'll have 100 pages of broken fiction to deal with.

3. I expected my poorly planned story to run to about 60,000 words, which would be 6 December according to the quota. I'm now anticipating 75,000 words, 12 December by current writing rate.

4. It has slowed down my reading. I've finished 4 books this month, rather than the 6-8 I normally would read in a fortnight. On a related note, writing 1700-2000 words a day doesn't seem to interfere with writing status updates and comments, but does make it difficult to write anything longer, like blog posts. Partly this is due to the time commitment, but there's also a strain to changing mental gears.

5. I have been describing my novel on facebook. It is all lies. Every day I describe a novel concept, either a bad idea that sounds like a good idea or a bad idea that sounds like a good idea. After 14 days, I may be running out of stupid novel ideas. This surprised me too. Here they are:

- What if Sherlock Holmes were a circus clown?
- What if Shakspeare's plays were written by Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu?
Romeo and Juliet, but the Capulets are Robots and the Montagues are Dinosaurs.
- Gritty intrigue as two hatmakers feud in 18th Century London.
- A deep psychological exploration of the mind of an unemployed guy who spends his days writing a novel about magical rabbits who fight for truth and justice in roman empire that never was, but should have been.
- An undead coroner must investigate his own death. His best friend is a vampire parrot.
- An alternate history in which it is discovered that the Moon is actually made of cheese.[1]
- An amnesiac patient and his nurse fall in love, marry and adopt a houseful of wartime orphans. Then they discover that he was already married! Also he's Hitler.
- A mystery writer discovers that crimes based on her stories are being committed. She teams up with a romance writer who then discovers that someone is recreating the sex scenes from his novels.
- 6 couples from very different backgrounds meet for a dinner party, and while waiting for the 13th guest discover how their pasts have intersected. The thirteenth guest turns out to be Godzilla.
- Carstairs and Topper meet their nemesis, who is a philosophy professor with a smoking jacket, or perhaps a Prussian aristocrat with a monocle, or maybe an attractive young lady with a parasol, I don't know.
- A cheesemaker ignores the War of the Austrian Succession, despite all the most famous personages of the 18th century tramping through his workshop, in favour of his quest for the perfect Stilton.
- Moby Dick, but with less metaphor and powerful descriptions of sailing, and more chapters taken from a whaling manual. Also, rather than hunting whales, they're clubbing baby seals.
- A recipe notebook charts the decline of a marriage and the stuttering attempts to repair it.[2]

6. This I already knew, but have relearned over and over - the only way to find the problems is to write your way into them and then write your way out. I can plan cool bits, although sometimes it's better to let them emerge. Also constraints are your friend. Day 3's writing went wrong when I shifted away from my original point of view. The hell with that. Let's stick with one narrator (after all, I like his voice; he narrates a lot like me) and find ways to stick him into the action. As I already have people telling stories for a lot of the text, I'll stick a few more in of people telling him stuff when he can't be present.

7. Breaks are good. I'm something of an irregular break person. Hydration and caffination are both good for this. What with the slowly reducing daylight hours, it's good to get outside during the middle of the day, even if I haven't finished my quota of words for the day.

8. My subconscious (unconscious?) mind is my friend. Things that drag and seem hard to write fix themselves between closing the word processor in the afternoon and firing it up in the morning. Partly this is thinking them through and scribbling or sketching in my notebook[3], but a lot of it is sleeping on it.

There are other lessons, but I'm falling behind my typing schedule! I have scattered notes for some more of the Write What You Know series, and will dump them up here later, as well as other lessons that come to mind.

[1] Part One: Search for the Space Cow. Part 2: The Church of God-really-likes-cheese. Part 3: Dairygeddon
[2] This is not inherently a bad idea, which makes me wonder if it's a real book I've heard of but not read. Alternatively, it could very well be from a dream, especially if I'd been listening to Women's Hour on Radio 4 who regularly juxtapose recipes and books about marriage breakups.
[3] Yes, pen and paper. DON'T JUDGE ME!

I Read Books: The Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier: Dreadnaught

2011-10-28T13:04:00.000+01:00

1. Spoilers
This review spoils the six books in the original Lost Fleet sequence, which I reviewed here. Indeed the very existence of a sequel series to The Lost Fleet could be said to spoil the ending; some kind of resolution to the fleet's status has occurred, and even if it is still lost, it must nevertheless have stabilised it's position in some way. Nevertheless, consider yourself warned. Despite my most earnest wishes and the fact it would neatly tie this review together, I will not be spoiling the end of Dreadnaught. You can go to Wikipedia for that, or, perhaps better, read the damn book yourself.

2. Nitpicks unrelated to the content
John G Hemry, writing as Jack Campbell, has had great, and deserved, success with his Lost Fleet series. Amongst the positive results of this are timely publication of his books in this country and the re-issuing[1] of his earlier novels the Stark series and the forthcoming JAG in Space series (originally the Paul Sinclair series). Thank you Titan books.

However the renaming of the Sinclair series to describe it brings me to my nitpick[2]. This is a follow-on to the Lost Fleet series, but the publishers don't want me to be confused about this; it's still Black Jack Geary, still the Alliance Fleet, so they name the series The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier, and as each novel in the sequence is named after a (capital) ship in the fleet, the novel's full name is The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught[3]. Which is biggest on the cover? The Lost Fleet. Or rather the LOST FLEET.

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm actually in the target audience for these novels, as the insistence that "Yes, this really is a continuation of The Lost Fleet" slightly annoys me. I know it is! It's by Jack Campbell and the blurb on the back cover make it clear! Why not use that space to say "Beyond the Frontier: Black Jack Geary and the veterans of the Lost Fleet (also available from Titan Books) face a mysterious new enemy!"

Also, as my current title format for book reviews is "I Read Books: [Insert Book Name Here]" this means I have 3 colons in the title which just looks odd. Anyway, I have wasted more words on this issue than it deserves, which is probably none. This is superior military space opera - well thought out and morally nuanced but at the end of the day heroics will be performed and ships will be exploded - so expecting the marketing to be subtle and clever is silly of me.

3. Momentum
Dreadnaught's big problem is getting the story moving. The first 5 Lost Fleet books all open with the fleet in the middle of enemy territory, and with time, space, logistics, enemy action and internal conflict all requiring action. With so many constraints, any time things threatened to slow down, the next one reared up; if they avoided the Syndics then the internal divisions in the fleet flared up; if they fought the Syndics they needed supplies to repair and replace the losses etc. The last one, Victorious, begins with the Fleet returned, but wars still to fight; it nearly bogs down in the politics at the start but then gets moving.

Dreadnaught starts similarly. The transition from war to peace has revealed many fractures in Alliance society. As Geary returns to duty with an interview with the political leaders of the Alliance, Fleet Headquarters does something very silly, which nearly causes a mutiny. This attempt to kickstart the story doesn't quite work for me as the solutions seem obvious. Geary is very popular in the Alliance, which worries politicians; those who don't know him worry he would be a dictator and those who do worry that someone will perform a coup in his name. They make a deal with Geary; he and the veterans of the Lost Fleet will go and find out what's going on with the enigma aliens who we almost saw in Victorious. Then we get a couple of chapters where Geary does the administrative dance with distant headquarters; interesting but saps momentum again.

4. To the Frontier... and Beyond!
After one last bureaucratic attempt to sabotage the mission, they get underway[4] and from there the story doesn't let up. Some of the captains cause trouble, as always, and a detour to rescue prisoners of war is problematic in several different ways. As they cross the frontier, the enigma aliens get more and more mysterious, an excellent choice by Hemry. Everything the fleet learns makes them question what they think they know! Unless Hemry pulls something really unexpected out of his writing bag mysterious aliens who try to hide everything are much cooler than weirdos with a privacy taboo that we know all about anyway.

Meanwhile clues seem to show that not everyone in the Alliance wants or expects Geary and the fleet to return. The ships - wartime builds in a war that had horrific casualty rates - are beginning to fall apart after a handful of years of (admittedly hard) use and the last order from Fleet HQ was to strip the fleet of half it's repair ships (Geary finessed this and left before any queries could return). Finally we get a big battle and a new mystery. What will happen? We have to wait until May 2012 for the release of The Lost Fleet: Follow-on Series One: Beyond the Frontier: Maybe That Should Be Beyond The Frontiers: Invincible.

Read This: If you liked the Lost Fleet series; it gives enough information to stand alone, but if you enjoy this, why not start from the beginning?
Don't Read This: If Old-School Space Opera is not your thing, even if it's been polished to a fine modern chrome-steel sheen.
Final Nitpick: Geary and Desjani are married but regulations mean they have to maintain a professional relationship on board ship, even when off duty and no one blinks an eyelid at this situation? What what what?

[1] This may be the first time they've been published in this country. I don't know.
[2] To be consistent they should have renamed the Stark novels as Broken American Military Mutinies On The Moon series, although I've only read the first one.
[3] I'm okay with the alternative spelling as it differentiates this novel from the recent Cherie Priest steampunk novel Dreadnought.
[4] Or underweigh? As in weigh anchor?

Write What You Know: Unreliable Narrator

2011-10-26T12:02:00.002+01:00

Show me a reliable narrator and I have a Nigerian Prince with a cashflow problem I'd like you to meet.

I have a somewhat broader view of unreliable narrator than literary (etc.) criticism usually uses[1]. Without going so far as to say that all fiction is a lie, so all narrators are unreliable, I might note that no one is omniscient; that all narratives are edited; everyone has biases; and radical honesty is not popular or commonplace. Omission from a narrative is at least as important as what is actually said. My second drafts usually lose about a quarter of the sentences, although I then replace about half of the removed word count either within sentences or adding new ones (often brief bridging sentences replacing fully descriptive passages). What I cut out is just as necessary as what I leave in.

[1] Their definition is, of course, narrow enough to be useful for their purposes. Mine is broader for my purposes; story options.

Trafalgar!

2011-10-21T09:00:00.003+01:00

Never forget what Villeneuve said before the battle:

What? Half my fleet is Spanish, we've been at sea for five months crossing the Atlantic twice, our best officers were killed in the revolution and we've barely had any sea-time to train new ones. We're up against a guy that beat me once before, and has only one eye, one arm and one leg[1]. On top of that, we're probably too late to clear the channel for an invasion of England.

This boss fight is bullshit.

[1] This is the clean, and incorrect[2], version of why 111 is known as Nelson's number. It is considered unlucky in cricket, and if following the lead of David Shepard, one should stand on one leg while a team has that score to avert it.
[2] Nelson never lost a leg.

Write What You Know: Food

2011-10-19T09:00:00.000+01:00

As I see it my food options are:

1. Just make stuff up. Rename grains, beans, the animals with fantasy versions that do the same job. Frankly, this seems silly. I'm pretty much a full on Gygaxian naturalist; I like things to make sense, or at least follow rules. If I make up an animal, it takes the niche of another animal, or I have to construct a new niche for it. The second sounds like hard work and ends up a bit silly ("The Yakox, a small six-legged horned hairy herbivore spends autumns in the forest eating the nectapples, an apple that tastes like a nectarine and is bright pink.") If it fills the same niche, why change the name? Instead, fantasise it up in the details ("The Norland cattle are long legged with a black and white striped hide.")

2. Just use regular food. In this way I can bring all my cooking knowledge. I don't cook classical or medieval or renaissance style, but you know, faking it is easy, right? Instead of using a food processor, press everything through a sieve, and instead of using a sieve crush everything in a pestle and mortar. Instead of a nice cast iron ceramic pot, use a copper one, or a tin one, or a pottery bowl. Instead of the electric oven, use a cast iron stove, and instead of a stove use a clay oven, and instead of an oven use an open fire. It all comes out the same in the end doesn't it?

As I hope is clear, this is okay[1] if you don't spend too much time in the kitchens. Who cares if your fantasy Romans are using tomatoes and potatoes and chillies and other new world ingredients, and preparing them in ways that would require hours of back breaking labour. If we're in a castle, that's what the servants are for. If we're not in a castle we'll eat stew[2].

3. Restrict to Old World ingredients[3], and generally old school cooking. Since I want to maximise writing and minimise research for the first draft, I'm thinking basically North European. So lots of pepper, beef, apples, honey for feasts. Fish and Fowl as well. The rest of the time we're mostly eating porridge with vegetables and some sort of meat broth (because our heroes aren't going to do great deeds if they're half starved all the time). Imported luxuries include citrus fruits and spices. The further north you get the harder it is to make salt, so fat and ice cellars will be used as preservatives.

3a. Fantasy world! So why not have New World ingredients as magical stuff from far away? Chillies and tomatoes as exotic flavours, potatoes as magically nutritious foodstuffs[4] (also bananas). Sounds pretty good.

[1] Okay is not high praise from me.
[2] It's always stew. This is because when we're on our world spanning quest to find the Mighty Axe of Kloblock we need food that is light and lasts, which means dried. If we have a cooking pot, then with firewood and a supply of water we can cook our dried meat and beans and make something edible. It's always stew and always will be.
[3] Or New World ingredients if I fancy a challenge.
[4] Liking the idea of Elves having their own version of Three Sisters agriculture.

Write What You Know: Dragons

2011-10-18T09:00:00.000+01:00

Dragons, I think, work best when they're in the far background, as a distant threat[1]. They have a tendency to hog the limelight if allowed on stage. This is okay if your novel is all about dragons. But I want to do something else, so dragons will do better as myths legends and travellers tales.

Dragons, as we all know, live on that bit of the map you've not been to, but your uncle's trading partner did. None of you ever saw a dragon, but that grizzled veteran who spends all day in the alehouse fought one in the war, although as he never tells that story without several drinks, which war and where is unclear. Dragons used to live here - after all Old Loggins dug up some dragon bones when he dug his new root cellar - but not any more. The last was killed by King Eros, or Cham the Mighty, or maybe Fal the Wightslayer.

Also, from fossil evidence dragons -> dinosaurs, which arguably gives us giants -> Gigantopithecus and orcs -> Neanderthals.

[1] Or promise

Write What You Know: Dark Lords

2011-10-17T09:00:00.002+01:00

If I was going to write extruded fantasy product, I'd have to write it from the point of view of the young lad growing up with poor but honest folks somewhere in middle earth who discovers that he's destined to grow up to be the Dark Lord, overthrow the established order, and start a revolution.
- Charles Stross

As I've previously noted, and Charlie goes on to explain in his post, the problem is not Dark lords, it's having any lords.

At the time Charlie's agent said this was going to alienate his readers. However 10 years have passed since then, and fantasy is dark and gritty and the new weird is being overtaken by the new swords and sorcery[1]. Some authors have begun approaching this idea. The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan seems to be heading this way at the end (and it's publication date is around now, I type this so maybe we'll find out! Book Tralier here). K J Parker's novels are more tragedies, but from a certain point of view her protagonists who are so obsessed with their goals that they will tear down the world could be Dark Lords[2].

A really interesting one is in Well of Darkness, the first in the Sovereign Stone Trilogy by Tracey Hickman and Margaret Weis. It has interesting twists on regular fantasy tropes (Japanese Elves, Horse Nomad Dwarves, Seagoing Orcs) and a clear and smart turning to the dark side of the protagonist. It all turns crap in the second novel, and I never finished it. Something similar happened to this reviewer.

A Dark Lord is a fantasy supervillain. Supervillains tend to have the problem of motivation. Here though, that's easy. Nobles are bad. Even good ones. Magicians keep secrets, secrets that could benefit everyone. Elves tell us they're better than us, and when we ask for help, they tell us we can never be good enough. The king fights his war against the orcs, and we do most of the dying, but when we go home, he goes to a palace to hear songs of his deeds, and we go home to find we've missed the harvest, and taxes have been raised to pay for the war, and rebuilding the city. "If you do what we say, we will protect you" they say. And we do what they say, and we do all the work of protecting, and when we get home the village has been burnt by raiders and it turns out what we've been protecting is the nobles.

I think I'm on to something here.

[1] Probably not. But The New Swords and Sorcery is the subtitle of Swords and Dark Magic, an excellent anthology of stories from this subgenre.
[2] The real difference is that most of them aren't doing it because they think it's the right thing to do, as heroes do. Rather than gloss over the fact that saving the city will require the deaths of an entire nation doesn't matter, because they're just orcs, Parker's characters will acknowledge that these are real people and go ahead and kill them anyway. AND IT WON'T SAVE THE CITY.

Family Stories

2011-10-16T09:00:00.001+01:00

During the war my Grandfather worked on the railways. However he was also a special constable[1]. Most of his job as a special constable was guiding convoys on his motorbike - getting lost being a serious concern when navigating at night in blacked out countryside with all the signposts removed to confuse Nazi invaders or saboteurs. Many of the convoys were Americans heading to or from Long Marston Airfield, adding an extra layer of possible confusion.

However my Grandfather, a very tall man[2], was occasionally called on by the local constable, a somewhat smaller man, to be the quiet threat in tricky situations. One day some travellers, probably referred to as gypsies at the time, set up camp in a field near the airfield. The Constable called on my grandfather to loom in the background. Arriving at the site, he pulled out his notebook, looked around, then spoke to the men watching him. "Well Gentlemen, I'll be back tomorrow to check on you vehicle and dog licenses."

The next morning they left. Different times.

[1] A lot of this kind of thing went on. With a large number of the country's men in uniform there were a lot of extra jobs that needed filling. Dad's Army gives a flavour of that, with the men of the platoon coming from their day jobs to drill with the Home Guard, and ARP Warden Hodges being the Greengrocer by day. As well as doing needed work, it turns out that being a special constable gets you a fuel allowance, something not to be sniffed at in heavily fuel-rationed Britain.
[2] How tall? I'm not sure. He seemed pretty tall when I knew him, but I was much shorter at the time.

Write What You Know: Immortality

2011-10-15T09:00:00.003+01:00

As I noted at the end of this non-descriptively named post classic writing advice is "write what you know"[1]. So the first element I'm interested in including in my novel is immortality. No not immorality. Stop that. I'm just going to throw words and ideas at the screen to see what happens so this doesn't really have a conclusion.

1. Excluding old age and disease, human life expectancy seems to be about 600-800 years. So death would not be unknown in a community of immortal-but-human people. However with accident, natural disaster and violence being the main causes of death I'd expect those deaths to cluster, and for there to be a really long tail giving a significant population of multi-millenarians[2].

2. Elves. Sodding Elves.

Here's an interesting thought from this guy's D&D campaign. Immortal Elves have a horror of death. As they age however, their diet becomes more and more exotic. When they have to give up their vegan diet they move from the Summer court to the Winter court. As they age in the Winter court they eventually become undead. Of course this ignores my statistical stuff above, but that's okay because these are Elves out of legend rather than naturalistic Elves. I don't really see a way of using this but it's interesting and makes the elves closer to folkloric and mythical roots rather than sub-Tolkienien pretty guys with pointy ears[3].

In one or other of the extended versions of The Lord of The Rings films, there's a scene where Elrond describes what happened at the end of the Siege of Barad-dûr[4], and he has the same haircut as he does 3000 years later. Brilliant! The only thing better would be if he took a scar during the War of The Last Alliance and still had it at the end of The Third Age.

Galadrial is even older. I don't recall exactly, but I think she's born during the Years of The Trees, before the sun or moon are created. Sadly no elves are awakened during the Years of the Lamps, when the world was still flat and everything lit by two giant lamp posts. No really. But nevertheless she's lived through a change of the entire cosmology, seen evil rise, and fall, seen kingdoms of Men rise and fall and generally a whole lot of history. Middle Earth's history is a fall from a golden age, so she probably sees each new battle as more petty and grubby than the one before.

3. What do you do with all of time before you? Back to sodding Elves, or in this case, sodding Space Elves, I recall in one version of Warhammer 40000 the Eldar followed paths for a time. So you might spend a century as an artist, then apprentice as a pilot or engineer until you master it, and then, it being a wargame, spend time as a warrior. Some got lost on the paths becoming Exarchs, Masters of the Path, who were simultaneously honoured for their mastery and pitied for losing their way and becoming obsessed with it. Interestingly, when ordinary Eldar formed Guardian squads as a militia, their leaders were those who had previously walked the Path of the Warrior and left it, using the experience gained in their previous career.

Ordinary ambitions do seem to fade a bit with all of time ahead. After a century you'd probably master any skill you had an aptitude for. Would you move on, or would you keep on, obsessively trying to creep towards perfection? Political objectives might be more durable, but then again there's this from my thoughts on Supervillains - having gained power, what then? An immortal ruler, no matter how revolutionary they are to begin with would eventually create a perfect conservative (small c) state, with change carefully controlled to preserve the state for the long term. No matter how pleasant it would be like one of those perfect utopias just ripe for Captain Kirk to smash with a speech about self-reliance and freedom of choice.

4. Vampires. Heh. I like the idea of vampires-as-immortals. They have a reason to hide their immortality - several in fact[5]. They exist parallel with, but not separate from human society. There's something to work with here.

But I went through a vampire phase 10-15 years ago and frankly had enough[6]. I'm also getting in the ring with Stephanie Meyer and behind her is a line of great Horror writers 114 years long. So, no.

However, for idiosyncratic reasons I tend to put Highlander if not in the vampire-genre niche, sitting next to it. Secret immortals, who can be killed by decapitation[7], with a mysterious and secret destiny[8].

5. Well, no conclusion here. I like the idea of secret immortals with an unknown agenda. Add to this rumours, legends, fakes and con men claiming to be these immortals and we've got something interesting, but not enough to build a story on. In fact I'd want to keep them in the shadows as much as possible because they would be much cooler that way. So I need more ingredients, which means more Write What You Know posts.

[1] "You write what you know because — like there's another choice? The trick is to try and know as much as possible."
— Lois McMaster Bujold
[2] Suicide would be the other big killer, but that would tend to occur in discrete cases.
[3] Ironically since I'm looking for human immortals this ought to be a better match, but frankly most of this type of Elves are just guys who live a few hundred years, you know, and love trees and all living beings man, except trespassers who must be arrowshot like a rack of kebabs.
[4] Elrond is already 3000 years old at the end of the Second Age.
[5] There's the blood-drinking thing. There's the consorting-with-dark-powers thing (usually these two aren't disentangled). There's the vulnerability during the daytime thing. And there's the people wanting immortality thing (including in this set people who want to study vampires because it's never for the benefit of the vampire).
[6] Which is not to say that I've gone cold turkey. This year I've read Anno Dracula and also watched Vampires Suck, an entertaining parody of the Twilight films which has several good jokes in. I especially like that the theme for the prom, [SPOILERS].
[7] The Kurgan seems to be driving the quest towards there being only one. It's not clear why the rest of them can't just get along. Supposedly the last one will be given power over all mankind, but, they're immortal, so why?
[8] Which we never find out because there was never a sequel. What's that? La la la, I can't hear you!

Depression

2011-10-14T09:00:00.001+01:00

Scott Lynch is the author of two Fantasy Novels[1]. The reason he's not the author of three or four fantasy novels is due to depression, anxiety attacks and the break up of his marriage. He wrote about it with the skill of a professional writer and the bit that connected for me was this:

The worst aspect of my depression is what I've come to think of as "black dog time," when my enthusiasm for anything takes an Acapulco cliff-dive. It's a hard state of mind to describe-- in fact, it's a hard state of mind to even detect, and even once you have detected it it's hard to give a damn because you're, well, depressed. It's a mental cloud in which one remains perfectly capable of taking action, but primarily obsessive action, self-centered action. Not caring, conscientious, or constructive action. A depressive is supremely skilled at entertaining themselves now because now is all depression ever lets you have. It sharply retracts your chronological horizon. Now is everything, even if, to parahprase Patton Oswalt, now is consumed by sitting in bed and watching The Princess Bride 17 times in a row.

Yeah, I recognise that all right.

The whole thing is here.

[1] The essential The Lies of Locke Lamora, a con/heist/revenge novel and Red Seas Under Red Skies which is more of the same, but with pirates, more egregious cliffhangers and a plot that makes slightly less sense. The recommendation: Read Lies, and if you like it try RSURS.

Fifty Thousand Words

2011-10-13T11:48:00.000+01:00

Every November an event called National Novel Writing Month[1] takes place. The challenge is to write a novel of 50 000 words in the month, which works out to 1 666 ⅔ words a day[2]. I'm planning on having a go, if only to finish something. Firstly though, here's what I won't be writing:

1. Novelised versions of any of the stuff on this blog

Frankly none of them have the legs to be longer stories, which is why they got finished in their current form and stuck on the blog! Also:

ROBOT DEATH TANK - is a one trick pony.[3]

Carstairs and Topper runs into the problem of Topper - is he just a tophat, or is he actually Carstairs' partner? Or what? I prefer not to answer that question. It'd be like tracking down Bill Watterson and asking him if Hobbes is real or a figment of Calvin's imagination[4]. Also, I'd have to work out a mystery plot of some sort, and making that watertight is a good way of NOT writing a novel[5].

Professor Lovebody is a no because I am Steampunked out at the moment[6].

Major Squick could work, but would probably be a sub-standard comedy Flashman. Also researching the 19th century British Empire is a great way of NOT writing a novel. Just go and read Flashman and sequels. I can't lend you all of them as someone has wandered off with some of them. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

The Ravenswood stories have some potential. On the other hand they're just me taking folk stories, folk history, apocryphal stories, fairy tales etc. giving them a bit of a twist and plonking them down in the Ravenswood. I don't object to a novel set in a folktale nowhere/everywhere place but it's a bit limiting as the people aren't characters but stereotypes and the events don't occur but have always occurred.

2. That fantasy novel I always intended to write more than 30 pages of

I've had this great idea of using Xenophon's Anabasis as the basis of a fantasy novel for years and years. An army of Greek Mercenaries marches into the heart of the Persian Empire, win the battle but lose the war, are betrayed and have to march back. Xenophon has prophetic dreams and everything[7]. It's hardly original, but I thought a modern gritty twist might lift it a bit. Also the sequel is a Fantasy Alexander[8] which almost writes itself.

It's such a good idea that I suggest you go and read The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney which has a fantasy Anabasis[9], and also a sequel Corvus that sets things up for a Fantasy Alexander. It's modern and gritty[10]! Damn it.

3. Supervillains

I've been thinking about Supervillains for at least three years now. I have a plot and characters and everything. Unfortunately it has Nazi human experimentation in the first act which is kind of harrowing to research, and frankly after reading about it I stop writing and just flop around in a grey haze for a couple of days. I could make it up, but that's going to be one or more of a. trivialising; b. disrespectful; c. disturbing in it's own right; d. disturbing on another level entirely.

4. A big modern talky novel

One problem with this is it tends to be about relationships and personal problems[11]. When writing I get bogged down in conversations and explanations and descriptions and so forth. The way to break out of this is to introduce some urgency; an emerging situation that requires at least the attention of the characters and usually some action by them[12]. In a non-genre novel this kind of thing can be easily overused, swiftly resembling a soap opera style lurching from car crash to affair to break in to house fire to children running away from home. Better to write a genre novel where these things are not just accepted, but expected.

5. Technothriller / Historical Adventure

These fall straight into the target area defined above. Unfortunately to do properly they require lots of research to work. It would be entirely possible to write a first draft and find that reality made the entire plot risible[13]. No, I need a genre where making stuff up is a positive attribute.

6. Science Fiction / Horror / Romance

Naah. Making stuff up for SF ties me in knots of research / plausibility / coolness / rinse-and-repeat. I'm not such a fan of horror or romance that I want to spend 30 days building a plot.

Classically, writing advice begins with "write what you know"[14]. So it's clear that I should write a nice fat fantasy novel. Or, as I'm aiming for 50,000 words, a nice slim one. Good work everyone! Now to come up with some stuff to go in it.

Next: Things that interest me to write about.

[1] With the hideous abbreviation NaNoWriMo
[2] Tempting! But my personal rule will be to write an integer number of words a day, unless quoting or reporting partial words in dialogue.
[3] Actual Robot Death Tank stories exist. I suggest checking out Keith Laumer's Bolo stories for an example.
[4] The answer is "Yes".
[5] A long-form Carstairs and Topper would mash together two Sherlock Holmes stories to make A Study in Bohemia, or unless it turned out to be a bit racy in which case it would be A Scandal in Scarlet.
[6] You can find Steampunk novels all over the place - Waterstones had a display of it a couple of months back. As noted I've had enough for a while so will not be recommending here.
[7] Socrates interprets it for him, and tells him off for asking the wrong question in the first place.
[8] Hardly original as two of David Gemmell's best novels follow just that template.
[9] Also a Katabasis. Hey, look it up if you can't keep up.
[10] Probably a bit grimmer than I would make it. The Ten Thousand make their way through by endurance and willpower, while mine would have been all about sudden forced marches, clever strategies, seizing forts and bridges by surprise and things like that. Something a little like the Chain of Dogs in Steven Erikson's Deadhouse Gates.
[11] Ugh!
[12] Hereafter referred to as an emergency.
[13] This hasn't always stopped other people.
[14] In Junior School they'd say "No aliens, magic, spies, gangsters, ghosts..." and list everything I wanted to write about, so all my stories were about going on nice walks and finding dead animals, or funny shaped trees or seeing ships and aeroplanes, except one time when they left spies out of the list by accident.

ROBOT DEATH TANK: Carstairs and Topper

2011-10-12T12:50:00.003+01:00

It's the inevitable crossover between the two most "popular" fiction series I've created this year! Not available in 3D.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm sure you have guessed the reason for calling you all here. This crime has rocked our country house party, and I'm sure that we all want this cleared up before the storm that has isolated us blows over."

"You're right!" said Major Bellows. "The reputation of us all - indeed the reputation of the house itself - is in danger! If the good name of Little Hampton is besmirched I doubt I will be able to find a trout stream as good as this that will have me as even a weekend guest."

"Quite," said Lady Peabody, "I'm sure Major Bellows speaks for all of us."

"I began my investigation by trying to determine when the crime occurred and what everyone in the house was doing at that time."

"You don't mean to say you suspect one of us?" said Standish, monocle dropping from his eye socket.

Carstairs gave him an incredulous glance, then continued. "Topper determined the time as 12.07, yet the chambermaid heard a suspicious noise at 12.21, and I deduced that the latest the crime could have been committed was 11.54. A conudnrum indeed!"

"There was a ruby stolen as well?" asked Benson. "No, a conundrum, not a corundum," muttered Mrs Benson.

"I then attempted to determine who had a motive. Unfortunately like all house parties we are over supplied with them, ranging from jealousy, envy, revenge, blackmail, fear of blackmail, envy, greed, unrequited love, concealing another crime, worship of the elder gods, political ambition, madness and complete blithering incompetence."

"Also incompetence," said Duff-Johnson.

"Indeed. Topper even uncovered a ring of smugglers using the sub-cellars, but we left the rounding up to the children on holiday in the cottage. So having got nowhere on motive or opportunity, we examined the means by which the crime was committed. It became clear that the perpetrator would have to know many details about the house, including being able to collect a particular bottle from the wine cellar in the dark; have military experience on both the North West Frontier and in South Africa; speak fluent Japanese; be able to clean ladies boots to a fine sheen in a mere jiffy, or perhaps even faster; to stuff three birds inside one another, then serve it for dinner; to be able to handle a yak and make butter from it's milk; to be able to dance the merengue, and perhaps also play La Cucaracha; and have a familiarity with methods of putting down the undead. After hours of painstaking analysis, I have come to conclusion that only one person, other than Topper, fulfills all these requirements, and thus is the criminal. And that person is..."

"I say Carstairs - look at that!"

"For God's sake Duff-Johnson!" said Carstairs, picking the revolver off the mantlepiece. "Will you shut up for a moment? Do you want the butler to get away with it?"

"No look! Out the window! It's ROBOT DEATH TANK!"

They looked out the window and saw ROBOT DEATH TANK. They fled.

ROBOT DEATH TANK: The Colonel and The Lieutenant

2011-10-06T12:16:00.002+01:00

As the door closed the Colonel spoke. "Now listen to me girl. Up there you're a hotshot flyboy, and those kids piss their pants when they hear the callsign FudgeDragon. But down here, you're plain Lieutenant Martin and you will obey orders dammit! Am I makin' myself clear?"

"Yes Sir!"

"So enough of these hotdoggin' stunts. No more Split S landings. No more buzzin' the strip clubs. No more practical jokes. Do you know how long it's goin' to take to clean up your avocado strafin' run?"

"No Sir."

"Well you're goin' to find out, because you're grounded until the General's quarters are sparkly clean. You're on the maintenance detachment until it's done. Is that clear?"

Before the Lieutenant could answer the door burst open. "Not now Sergeant! I told you I didn' want to be disturbed!"

"But sir," gasped the Sergeant, "look out the window! ROBOT DEATH TANK!"

They looked out the window and there was ROBOT DEATH TANK. They fled.

ROBOT DEATH TANK: Gerald and Marjorie

2011-09-28T09:27:00.005+01:00

"Gerald. We need to talk."

"Marjorie!" He turned and switched on the kitchen light. "I thought you'd be in bed."

"This can't go on Gerald. You come in late, you leave before the children get up, you're in the office all weekend and on top of that you go on business trips. We never talk. I never see you. We never see you."

"It's late. I'm tired. You're tired. Can this wait until the morning?"

"When you have a breakfast meeting to go to?"

"Hush darling. Hush. We're... it's just a bad patch. We'll get through it. I'll make it up..."

"Mummy Mummy!" cried a voice.

"Bobby? What are you... go back to bed."

"No Mummy! Look! ROBOT DEATH TANK!"

Looking out the window they could see ROBOT DEATH TANK. They fled.

The Perils of Fictive Relatives

2011-09-06T09:00:00.002+01:00

Who is your relative and what that relationship means differs between cultures (and sub-cultures). But there are always rules, and with all rules there are exceptions. The typical one in English-speaking cultures is an adult who is not a relative by blood or marriage who is referred to as Aunt or Uncle[1].

Anthropologists refer to this as fictive kinship. I've done a bit of this, most recently when I decided that my uncle's partner was my aunt. Nice and neat, right? Anyway this has opened a new can of worms, as does this mean I've just gained a veritable hatload of fictive cousins, some of which I've never met? More relatives! Or just people related to my aunt? I don't know.

[1] Godparents get this quite a bit.

Space Oddity

2011-09-05T09:00:00.000+01:00

Comics Alliance has put up a comic of David Bowie's Space Oddity drawn as a childens book here. It has the music as well. I suggest going there, playing the song and reading the comic. Do it! It's good. And will only use upp 5 minutes of your valuable time.

Choose Your Own Napoleonic War

2011-09-02T09:00:00.001+01:00

From my abortive run through the online version of the Lone Wolf books it's clear that hyperlinks were what gamebooks were groping towards. However in an age of sexy graphics, first person shooters and really stupid plots, does anyone really want a text based adventure with limited choices? Other than me, obviously.

Enter Choice of Games who make this very type of game and allow you to play them on their website. My favourite of their games is Choice of Broadsides in which you begin as a midshipman in the Royal Navy of Albion locked in a death grapple with Republican Gaul. Essentially this is the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic war and you get to be Hornblower, or Aubrey or Bolitho. At the start you make some choices about your background - will you have plenty of influence to smooth your career, be a brilliant sailor or a highly skilled swordsman who closes at every opportunity. If you're smart and play to your strengths you may rise swiftly through the ranks, but if, for example, you're rubbish at gunnery and keep trying to engage the enemy from long range you'll undoubtedly lose. The game is fairly forgiving, at least up until the climactic battle, but victories lead to early promotion and probably make you more attractive to the opposite sex whilst on shore.

I say you start as a midshipman but the game is designed to be as inclusive as possible, so an early question says:

This game is set in a fictional world, similar to our own but with some differences.

For example, perhaps the ships are crewed by women. You are a young and gallant officer, but are you a young gentleman or a young lady?

and if you're a midshipwoman it replies:

The place for a man is domestic, rearing the children and making a pleasant home for his wife. We put men up on a pedestal so that they do not need to face the hardships that women are more constitutionally suited to bear.

This begins as hilariously straightfaced, but as you go on the gender-swapped regency world highlights some of the strangeness.

All in all I enjoyed this. It has some replay value - I did pretty well as a highly skilled officer with little influence or charm, then turned around and made a big hash of things as the son of a peer with immense charm who always got away with things. I only wish we had an opposite rival, so the poor but brilliant officer would be one step behind the influential guy, and a player with connections would be annoyed that some unworthy oik who happened to be a good sailor kept hogging the glory. There are a couple of good characters, although the common sailors are generally undistinguished.

Play This: If you want to have an amusing hour or two being a literary naval officer and like the whole gamebook thing.
Don't Play This: If the Napoleonic wars aren't your thing, or think that choose your own adventure is stupid.
Also: Choice of Games has three (or four) other games: Choice of Dragon, Choice of Vampire, and Choice of Romance and it's sequel Choice of Intrigue.

What Do They have Against Hampton Wick Anyway?

2011-09-01T09:00:00.002+01:00

"Who is in charge of updating Cockney Rhyming Slang?" was Stan's question. With outdated references such as syrup of figs[1] (although someone's grandmother apparently swore by it) for wig, Ruby Murray[2] for curry and even Alan Whickers for knickers, sometimes Rhyming Slang seems to be from my grandparents' generation. But it's part of a living dialect and does get updated. It's a good question, which I will now fail to answer several times.

1. No one

It just happens. One day flares are referred to as Lionels. The next, some bloke becomes Prime Minister and they're Tonys. Popular things that rhyme are obvious and just get made up all over the place. Because they're obvious everyone who uses the slang figures it out and picks it up. End of story.

This version of events ignores several factors, including why it's known as Cockney rhyming slang.

2. The population within the sound of the Bow Bells

The traditional definition of a Cockney is someone born within sound of the Bow Bells of St Mary-le-Bow[3]. More usually it refers to working class East End Londoners, who speak with a distinctive accent and feature rhyming slang.

Under either definition Rhyming slang begins in East London, presumably in the pubs and workplaces. There, the classic cheeky cockneys with their cliched wit and eye for the main chance while away the hours trying out new slang on each other, always trying to keep their dialect one step more confusing to those not so blessed as to be born in London.

A problem with this is the interconnectedness of modern life. In earlier times many references obvious to Cockneys would be obscure to outsiders (and vice versa). Many modern slang words reference events and people that are nationally and internationally famous, so rhyming slang is not so much obscure as an affection. Of course this may have always been the case. However with the rise of working class cool over the last 50 years, it's an affection that has spread beyond it's origins, which is why this site allows you to rate slang as classic, modern and "mockney".

(The pub theory does help to explain why there are so many rhyming slang words and phrase for urination.)

3. Mockneys and Estuary English

As a nice boy brought up in a secure and comfortable middle class family in a small town in the home counties, I obviously attempted to ape working class urban speech as much as possible. London being the closest metropolis my accent is probably closest to Estuary English. As might be expected, when I lived in London I picked up quite a bit of cockney slang[4] making me that most despicable of creatures, the Mockney.

The traditional East End Working Class roots of rhyming slang acknowledged, modern versions acquire their references from popular culture. Those of us who have grown up speaking a cockney influenced language and are equally part of the popular culture make up our own slang terms. In addition, Cockney culture is now part of popular culture (and arguably has been since Dickens, and certainly from My Fair Lady) with one of the most watched TV programs being Eastenders.

But wait! Am I really arguing that rhyming slang is being invented on television, like here from the 1 minute mark? I've clearly gone a bit Pete Tong.

4.All of the above, maybe

I may know more than when I started, but I'm at least as ignorant of the actual answer when I started. Like many things in language and popular culture, even if you can identify a particular starting point, the way it spreads and how it becomes accepted is unclear. So Stan, if you want to update rhyming slang I guess you'll have to get on your Dick Van Dyke and have a go yourself.

[1] A laxative, still available but out of fashion.
[2] A famous singer of the 50s. Here she is singing a Johnny Cash song, which kind of surprised me when I discovered it. It turns out this was when Cash's career was taking off and Murray's was slowly declining. Also, it was still the period when the song was as important as the particular recording, so British and Irish singers would often pick up American songs (and vice versa) and make them part of their act.
[3] Referenced in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons
[4] Also some Mancunian leading to such horrific constructs as "Let's have a butchers, our kid".

Boil me a Bagel!

2011-08-10T09:00:00.002+01:00

Bread, as we all know, is baked. Boiling bread would just be weird! Except, maybe dumplings, which are bread-like and boiled. Although they're more like a pudding, right?

Anyway, bagels are boiled before they're baked. This probably answers all the boiled bread-related questions that came up in the pub. I don't really have anything more to say on this, so here's some stuff grabbed off the internet:

The BBC Brunch Bagel recipe if you feel like making your own. I have not tried it.

Here's a video of a bloke boiling, then draining bagels.

A longer video that shows all stages and is essentially an advert for the Seattle Bagel Bakery is here.

I have to say I am unconvinced by bagels. Not the texture or flavour, but the shape. If you try to fill it with something you either have to make an annular filling or it drops out the hole. I don't know, am I missing something?

Stan brought up pretzels (the big bready ones) and it seems in Germany these are dipped in lye (sodium hydroxide) solution, sometimes boiling, before baking. This sounds much more dangerous (and this bloke, who has a good grasp of the scientific method agrees) so I will stick to bagels for the moment.

Conversation of the Day

2011-08-09T09:00:00.000+01:00

Dad: Hey!
Me: Yes?
Dad: First you were over here, now you're over there.
Me: Yes! I changed my location over time using a process I call "movement".

If you want to model "movement" you could do worse than considering the following equation:

ds/dt = v

Where:
s = position
v = velocity
t = time
and ds/dt is the first order vector differential of position with respect to time.

Another Crime Fighting Duo

2011-08-08T09:00:00.000+01:00

Clara decorates cakes. Jack is a part-time coroner. Together they fight crime! Not a true story.

The Adventure of the Mysterious Murder

Clara: There's been a murder!
Jack: I'll be the judge of that.

[Several weeks pass]

Jack: Misadventure.
Clara: Damn it.

Retitled: The Case of the Straightforward Verdict.

Conversation of the Day

2011-08-04T19:58:00.002+01:00

Me: It's... bendy?
Dad: If it's bendy then hatred is... onion?
Me: Hatred is onion? No, onion is hatred! They've got it the wrong way round.

If you're interested, bendy was actually bumpy making hatred odium.

Martian Mash-ups

2011-07-28T09:00:00.000+01:00

What with a (new) film of John Carter of Mars scheduled for early next year and me having had a recent touch of Edgar Rice Burroughs then it's time to recycle his collaborations with Frank Herbert which I previously discussed on another site in 2008:

Muab'dib of the Apes - After his parents are killed, Muab'dib is brought up by desert apes and leads them on a jihad to reclaim his birthright as Lord Atreides.

A Princess of Dune - I'm a bit hazy on this one, but don't confuse it with the film and book The Princess Bride of Dune.

As might be expected everyone remembered The Princess Bride of Dune, especially Paul Duncanson:

"Hello. My name is Paul Muad'Dib Atreides. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

To which I had to respond:

And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Crime Fighting Teen Detectives

2011-07-27T09:00:00.001+01:00

Teen detectives are great protagonists. Teens are curious, unhampered by pre-formed opinions, clearsighted, close to their education and mentors. Sometimes they are troubled, often ignored by adults, but they are idealists who believe in and seek out truth, justice and ~~the American way~~ happy endings. But what if you had the wrong sort of teens - the slackers, the drinkers and smokers, the ones who'd rather sit around calling each other dude?

Kate Beaton is a Canadian cartoonist best know for history comics and Canadian comics. But she's also tackled this important question. Her Mystery Solving Teens have "taken on" several cases. I've failed to tell you before because, well, you know, I should maybe write a blogpost about every comic on the web I like? It doesn't say "Webcomic Review" at the top of the page or anything. But I've been broken out of my apathy by the introduction of a new character, Vanessa the Girl Reporter. Being part of the Mystery-Solving-Teen-verse her self published "newspaper" is called "The Shit Talker" and - look just read the whole series okay? Work Warning: there's some swearing because, you know, they're those sort of Teens, right? Anyway if your work is cool with you looking at webcomics, I don't see why they should get uptight about a bit of profanity but then that's why I'm not your boss.

The Docks Mystery.
The Ghost in the Library.
Halloween.
The Snow Mystery.
The Principal's Office.
Boy Detectives, Girl Reporter. (Be sure to check out the sketches below this one).

Some other Kate Beaton stuff I like: A bunch of comics, Charlie and the Turnip Factory, Sexy Batman. Or maybe just read her whole site! It's not like you were going to get any work done today.

For actual mystery solving non-teen* comics, may I suggest John Allison's Bad Machinery.

* They're tweens. I cringe writing that word.

Areography

2011-07-19T09:00:00.002+01:00

Weekend before last I was on the train reading Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds, which the back cover describes as "a snarling, drooling, crazy-eyed mongrel of a book, equal parts steampunk, western, planetary romance and far-future SF"[1]. It begins in Spearpoint, the last city on Earth, an atmosphere-piercing spire. Then on page 106 our protagonist Quillon has a look at a map:

The other side of the map was not much of an improvement, but at least he recognised more of the landmarks. Soul’s Rest was the largest community anywhere on Earth, with the exception of Spearpoint, and that really was halfway around the world. It lay far to the west, beyond the Daughters, the three mountains punched in a sloping line with the regularity of bullet holes, beyond even the Mother Goddess, the tallest of all mountains, so tall and wide that from its footslopes it no longer seemed a mountain, but merely a gentle steepening of the ground. It lay west of the shrunken waters of the Long Gash and the Old Sea - marked in black on the map, although he had a suspicion that the waters had retreated even further since the map was drawn.

I recognise this terrain and it's not Earth. It also casts light on this later description of a character - "In his thirties, certainly - perhaps even his forties, but with the vigour of a man a third his age." - and some other passages.

Which of course leads me to wonder, when did I become so familiar with the distinctive features of another planet that I can pick them out from a brief description, the day after a quite savage stag night?

[1] This could describe my journey home, except replacing "far-future SF" with "near-future SF" and "book" with "rail journey".

Conversation of the Stag Weekend

2011-07-18T09:00:00.001+01:00

Me: Do you want a paracetamol?
Stan: No thanks.
Me: Go on! All the cool kids are taking them!

The Last Thing I Have To Say About Harry Potter

2011-07-15T12:03:00.003+01:00

Here's my brief summary of the Harry Potter series for those of you who've forgotten.

Harry Potter and the Stone Philosopher

Harry discovers a talking statue of Wittgenstein. Harry is unable to understand what it says.

Harry Potter and the Secret of Chambers

Harry thinks Statue of Wittgenstein is telling him information about a suite of rooms. Eventually he gets them assigned to him and discovers a secret!

Harry Potter and the Ass Cabana Prison

Following the events in Secret, Harry is sent to a tropical island and is made a guard at a traditionally built jail for donkeys. There he uncovers more secrets and engineers a daring jailbreak!

Harry Potter and the Fire of Goblets

Clues from Statue of Wittgenstein, the Chamber and the Magic Donkey has lead Harry to the obvious conclusion; he must gather lots of wooden beakers and burn them, before Voldemort gets his hands on them!

Harry Potter and the Phoenix of Order

Rising from the flames, the Phoenix of Order has put Voldemort to flight. But regrouping, they are more dangerous than ever. The Phoenix leaves some cryptic clues to Harry's next quest!

Harry Potter and the Prince Half-Blood

Thanks to the Phoenix of Order, Harry and his friends have corrected the imbalance in magic and restored it to it's true power. It is still at risk, unless the lost heir to magic royalty can be found. Can they find the last prince before Voldemort?

Harry Potter and the Hallowed Death

Harry is the True Heir, the King Who Was Promised. But he is also the Sacrifice Who Goes Willingly; as king, he must be willing to lay down his life for his people. Will he do it? Or will Voldemort steal his death, make Harry immortal breaking the compact and destroy the line of kings forever?

Conversation of the Day

2011-07-15T09:56:00.003+01:00

Mum: We're just waiting on You-Know-Who.
Me: I don't know who. Is it Voldemort?
Mum: Yes!
Me: No it isn't. He's fictional. And as the last film comes out today he's definitely dead.
Mum: Oh.
Me: Oh, right, spoilers.

I should note that Mum is not a fan.

I Read Books: Tarzan of the Apes

2011-07-06T09:00:00.002+01:00

I am not in love with origin stories. When you introduce me to your hero I want you to tell me something worth hearing. It should be the most interesting, the most awesome, the most important, maybe the most horrible or the funniest thing that happened to them. It should be their best[1] story. If not why are you wasting my time? "Wait a minute" you say. "I need to tell you where my hero comes from to make the story worth hearing!" Sometimes this is true. But sometimes you begin at the beginning for the sake of beginning at the beginning. YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME.

Tarzan of the Apes is the first Tarzan novel, and is, of course, his origin story. You know this story, of how Lord and Lady Greystoke are marooned on the coast of Africa, they die and their son is brought up by anthropoid apes, how he becomes the most fearsome killer in the jungle and then saves a group of Americans[2] and is introduced to civilisation. So why am I wasting your time with this review?

Mostly because this is not quite the origin story you know. Tarzan, as it turns out is a superhero[3]. After some experimentation, his standard method of lion-killing involves a noose and a hunting knife[4], but at one point he gets one in a wrestling hold and unable to let it go, for obvious reasons, breaks it's neck. He can also swing through the trees, (from branch to branch rather than pendulum-like on vines as in films) with a full grown man over his shoulder. His athleticism is not the most extraordinary thing however.

Brought up by ape-men, he learns their language. When he discovers his parents' cabin, he then teaches himself to read and write English from the illustrated dictionary and other children's primers and books. This despite being unable speak English. Having the shyness of a wild beast, he rescues various Americans and Europeans, but as he cannot understand them leaves them notes[5]. This makes them think there are two men in the forest; one the silent "Forest Lord" and Tarzan of the Apes, a literate but invisible man.

Eventually they are rescued by a French cruiser and leave, while Tarzan is caring for a French Officer who has been injured by a local tribe. This officer teaches Tarzan to speak, although he teaches him French. They return to civilisation, leading eventually to Tarzan rescuing Jane, his love[6], first from a forest fire in Wisconsin, then from marrying a man who her father owes a debt of honour. Jane, scared by her feelings, then decides to marry William Clayton, Lord Greystoke. At this moment evidence arrives proving Tarzan is the son of John Clayton, which makes William Clayton his cousin and Tarzan Lord Greystoke. And so Tarzan...

Says nothing and tells no one and the book ends.

Tarzan's life as a beast is fascinating. He has no introspection, and exists in the moment and hardly knows what he is doing, let alone why. The other characters are less interesting. The comic relief comes from Professor Archimedes Q Porter (Jane's father) who is an absent minded professor and Esmeralda (Jane's servant/companion) a "Negress" who weighs 280 pounds, is sure they'll all be killed[7], speaks in slang and "hilariously" mispronounces words. It is not very funny. The mutineers and blacks who provide the villains are mostly undistinguished, and are the scum of the earth and savage cannibals respectively.

Jane Porter, the love interest is not entirely passive - when left behind by the men and a lioness tries to invade the cabin she tries to shoot it, and then decides to shoot Esmeralda and herself - but mostly exists to be rescued and loved. D'Arnot, the Frenchman who Tarzan rescues and then teaches Tarzan to be civilised, is little more developed.

If the novel has a moral it is an old fashioned one - breeding will out. Tarzan is tempted to eat a (black) man he kills, but doesn't because he is the son of an English Lord. Jane is kidnapped by an ape and will suffer a fate "a thousand times worse than death" and is rescued by Tarzan who is then overwhelmed by feelings he "barely understood". He then builds a bower for her and, to assuage her fears gives her his knife and sleeps outside as a guard with the chivalry of an English Lord.

So it is old-fashioned, and exciting, and has many bad characters, and a really good character who is almost characterless, and is full of incident, and tells us that the status quo is good and true, and we have a hero who is undefeatable, who gives away the only things he wants. This is not a great novel, but it is a good one, and an entertaining one, and an interesting one. It is not a waste of my time.

Read This: If you want to read an old-fashioned tale of adventure with the original character who popularised the tension between savagery and civilisation.
Don't read this: If casual racism, sexism and classism offends you, or you have no interest in ape-men and rescues and all that.
More Tarzanry on Night of the Hats - in which I criticise one passage in The Beasts of Tarzan, the third novel in the series.

[1] Or most filmic if you are making a film.
[2] And an English lord.
[3] He is referred to as a "Forest God" and the captain of the French cruiser uses the term "super-man" to describe him. Clearly a fan of Nietzsche.
[4] Which he stabs into the (savage) breast a dozen time. This is his standard method of dispatching dangerous animals. Frankly most of the time he ought to cut their throat; one or two slashes ought to do it.
[5] Signed Tarzan of the Apes. He can't speak English and doesn't know what it sounds like, but still manages to spell his name (meaning "White-skin" in Ape language). This is the not mere impossibility of other events in the novel, but a logical paradox.
[6] And not coincidentally the first white woman he has ever seen. Mere days before meeting her Tarzan takes to wearing a breechcloth, because it's fine to be nude for the first 20 years of your life as long a white woman doesn't see your tackle.
[7] They've been marooned by mutineers on the uninhabited coast of West Africa. It is not unreasonable to be afraid.

I Read Books: Signal Catastrophe

2011-07-01T09:00:00.001+01:00

Signal Catastrophe: The British Retreat From Kabul, 1842 by Patrick Macrory, 1966

1. This is the 1967 History Book Club edition. The same book was published in the United States under the title Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan, 1842. Due to some confusion on this issue, my brother managed to order both the edition I'm reviewing and the 2002 American edition. As the newer one is smaller and lighter being in paperback, that's the one he took with him, leaving this one to me.

2. This was sent by Rothwell and Dunworth Ltd, Antiquarian Booksellers. I can say that these people know how to pack books. No shove it in a jiffy bag for them. The book was placed in a paper bag which was folded tightly around it and taped shut. Then a well fitting cardboard form was folded around it and again taped. Finally it was wrapped and sealed. The old fashioned compliments slip was a nice touch, and is currently holding out well as a bookmark.

3. George MacDonald Fraser referenced this in his novel Flashman which covered most of the events of this history. He was very complimentary. However I can't find the wording as someone has half-inched my copy.

4. Written in 1966, it's in clear modern language and is easy to follow. However it feels very old school as a history. We're well into Great Man theory of history (or, in this case, Great Pillock) territory. Concentrating almost entirely on written sources we get a good view of the upper ranks of the Army of the Indus, but the view from ground level is minimal. It's also anglocentric as most of the records consulted were in English.

This is not entirely a bad thing - it's about the British Retreat From Kabul rather than a broader history, so it should emphasise the British point of view. Some Afghan sources are referenced, and, indeed, Macrory notes that historians asking Afghans about the war got stories that matched up well with the historical record. However there was the interesting tendency to mix up incidents from the First Anglo-Afghan War with events from the Second and even the Third. A little more documentation from the Afghan point of view would not have hurt the book.

5. Who is to blame? Like everyone else, this book blames Elphinstone. He was too old, too tired and too ill and so made bad decisions, no decisions and changed his decisions from bad to appalling depending on whoever spoke to him last. Elphinstone apparently tried to refuse the command, but not hard enough. 19th century ideas of honour, reputation and patronage did not allow him to resign because to do so would have marked him as a coward and simultaneously destroyed any influence he might have had.

That said, a 21st century professional army would probably have retired Elphinstone rather than send him to Kabul. If by some mischance he did end up in command there, he would have been relieved before the disaster was complete. Of course part of that is because of modern communications. Until reliable telegraphy became widespread commanders in the field had an immense amount of authority and discretion. For this reason it was impossible for officers junior to Elphinstone to alleviate the situation and, as he had been appointed by the Governor-General, he was independent of the civilian authority of Macnaghten.

Several factors leading to the British position becoming untenable came into being before Elphinstone took over; the decision to garrison the army outside the city in cantonment; the poor positioning and design of the cantonments; the storage of supplies and ammunition outside the cantonments. Nevertheless Elphinstone made no attempt to improve the situation. His second-in-command Brigadier Shelton was unhelpful and uninterested in Elphinstone's problems; his aggressive and straightforward suggestions would probably not have improved the situation, but frankly any decision would have been better than Elphinstone's dithering.

6. The British response to the massacre was pretty brutal, but in the end they retreated from Afghanistan. By this time, it had become clear that the country was not about to become a Russian puppet state, so there was no longer any reason to remain. This happy state of affairs continued until the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War.

7. I enjoyed it. It is, of course, a tragedy, although not a classical one. Elphinstone is not brought down by his pride or his strengths, but by his illness, his lack of grasp on the situation, his indecisiveness and his appalling choices of who to put his trust in. And he brings down the whole army with him, which brings down vengeance onto the whole Afghan nation. The worst of it is that, as Pollock proved when he forced the Khyber pass in the aftermath, even after the decision to leave the cantonments is made, a swift and decisive march to Jallabad might just have made it. Instead they started late, stopped early, waited for escorts from the Afghans - the list of errors goes on and on.

8. Read this book: If you want to know about the British retreat from Kabul in a light and, if you'll forgive the word, entertaining manner.
Don't read this book: If you have no interest in the topic or prefer your history to concentrate on ground level foot soldiers.
Note: In Signal Catastrophe, the name of the book, signal is not a verb, but an adjective, meaning serious or extraordinary.

I Read Books: Irons in the Fire

2011-06-28T09:00:00.005+01:00

You know how it is. The Dark Lord oppresses the kingdom until the One True Heir comes forward and defeats him and there is much rejoicing, except for everyone who has had friends or family killed, or who has had their homes destroyed and now has to work for room and board or who is starving and ill.

But then in the sequel, a new Dark Lord arises, or the old one returns and again there is fighting and disease and magical firestorms. And at the end, rather than try and reconcile with their enemies and bring them into society, they're driven into the mountains, or under the ground, or across the sea and shunned. Dark Ones they're called. Evil. Orcs.

And no one ever asks if maybe the problem isn't that evil kings are bad, but that all kings are bad. The problem isn't the dark ones, but the ones who say they're better than us - the true heirs.

Anyway, Juliet E McKenna is asking some of those questions in Irons in the Fire. Lascar, known from her previous novels as fertile ground for mercenaries and spies has been wracked by war since the fall of the old empire 20 generations ago. Since then the Dukes have been competing to become High King. Worse still, one of them managed it briefly, before it all fell apart again, so they know it can be done. So the wars go on and as always it's the commoners who suffer.

Then a group of exiles, or maybe emigres is a better word, come up with a plan to end the wars. If all the ex-pats they stop sending money home and instead pay the mercenaries not to fight, the Dukes will have to stop the conflict. This won't work, but is enough for an intelligencer to put them in contact with others, who improve the plan; if they combine that with what is essentially a general strike perhaps that will do it?

As they work through the problems it becomes clear; at every step the problem is the Dukes. So rather than paying mercenaries not to fight perhaps they need to be targeted better...

Mckenna's world has always been Early-Modern-Without-Gunpowder rather than Medieval*. With printing and widespread literacy, a rising merchant class and peasants leaving the farms to seek fortune in the cities it's clearly ripe for revolution. There's even a new kind of magic that doesn't rely on being mageborn; anyone can learn it! How very democratic.

If I have a problem with the plot it's this: I can't figure out how they're financing the revolution. I know how they're supposed to be doing it - with ex-pat money diverted from being sent home. But it doesn't make sense. Up until the moment they reveal themselves, striking at the northernmost Duchy, they've kept what's going on very quiet. So how did they convince people to hand over the cash?

"We have a plan to end conflict back in Lascar."

"Sounds good! Can I help?"

"Sure! Rather than send home the money to support your family you can give it to us to stop the fighting!"

"How will you stop the fighting?"

"I can't tell you. But it'll really work!"

"If it's alright with you I'll pass."

Apart from that the book is pretty good. There's a lot of sneaking around and plotting and changing plans and recruiting, as might be expected. And of course we end just as the revolution kicks off and the 5 remaining Dukes realise what's going on. The story continues in Blood in the Water and concludes with Banners in the Wind. Yes it's a fantasy trilogy. We wouldn't want to be too revolutionary now, would we?

Read this: If you want to read some fantasy with plenty of intrigue and logistics and no true heirs.
Don't read this: If you don't read fat fantasy trilogies.
Note: Although I have read 9 other Juliet E McKenna books, I have not read the sequels to this one.

* In the lands of the old Tormalin Empire, anyway. Other parts of the world are weirder.

Fish of the Day

2011-06-18T19:36:00.002+01:00

Me: What kind of fish is it?
Dad: Pollock
Me: Hey, if you don't want to tell me just say so. No need to be rude.

I'm betting Jackson Pollock got really bored with people making fish puns about his work.

I Read Books: The Lost Fleet Sextology

2011-06-16T09:00:00.005+01:00

In which I begin to review my backlog of books. I note that 1. this is space opera, so if you are uninterested in this sub-genre, feel free to leave; and 2. a sextology is not the same as a sexology.

The Lost Fleet is a 6 book long space opera series by Jack Campbell. The protagonist is Captain John "Black Jack" Geary, who disappeared a hundred years ago while making a heroic rearguard action against the Syndic fleet. Frozen after his ship was destroyed, he is picked up by an Alliance fleet making a deep strike into Syndic territory in an effort to end the century-long war. However it is a trap, and when the Admiral is killed Geary, as senior captain, finds himself in command of a fleet that is lost behind enemy lines...

My description of the setting reads like the pitch for a mediocre sci-fi Tv show, in which ~~"Buck" Rogers~~ "Black Jack" Geary introduces the 25th century to such things as rock and roll, unlikely fighter manoeuvres and sexism. But that's not what's going on here.

Geary is a hero to the Alliance fleet. However, like all dead heroes, he's used as an example to justify things he did not and does not subscribe to. He's remembered for his the courage of his last charge, when to him this was a manoeuvre of desperation and even failure. The long apprenticeship required to learn to control a fleet over relativistic distances combined with the heavy casualties in the early part of the war have left both the Syndic and Alliance fleets with a "doctrine" of mass charges and individual action on the part of captains. As might be imagined, this has led to a war of attrition.

Worse still, the war of attrition has lead to widespread atrocities in an attempt to break the deadlock. Geary* ends these, which leads one of the more perceptive officers to say

It seems so obvious, really. Deplorable practices adopted during the last century were repeatedly declared necessary if regrettable in order to end the war. Oddly enough we've yet to win. You'd think somebody would have asked before this why the regrettable but necessary measures haven't actually produced the promised results. Not until you came along and started us really thinking about it instead of just accepting it.

Courageous

As also might be expected the economic, human and political cost of the war has strained the stability of both the Alliance and the Syndics. As well as having to fight the Syndics, Geary faces opposition from within the fleet from those who think his tactics are dishonourable, those with political ambitions that will be derailed if legendary hero Geary returns. He also finds himself the target of a faction who believe that he should be made dictator, and, awkwardly, won't take no for an answer. All of this, before the mystery of the cause of the war and the destructive capability of the hypernet gates begin to be revealed...

The books never stray very far from their Military SF/ Space Opera roots, but they are very competent and pretty intelligent. For all the talk of "honor" the Alliance Fleet is much more like modern navies rather than the loosely Napoleonic-era fleets (IN SPACE!) popular at the moment, which is refreshing. The point of view is exclusively from Geary, who simultaneously has to have modern situations explained to him, while explaining his old school tactics and strategies to other characters. The set up is very like Xenophon's Anabasis; the end though is closer to de Bello Civilli, or maybe Cincinnatus****.

I have the American editions, which have covers of Geary in Space Armour, often standing on moons and planets. Geary never wears anything but regular uniform** and doesn't leave his flagship, the Dauntless*** during the first five books. The recent UK editions have ships in orbit with a moody face (presumably Geary's) in the background, which reflect the text better, although the ships are described as sharklike, which isn't quite the vibe I get from the pictures. Anyway, the books are all named after ships in the fleet and are:

The Lost Fleet: Dauntless (Geary is daunted, but never despairing)
The Lost Fleet: Fearless (Geary is not actually fearless)
The Lost Fleet: Courageous (No arguments here)
The Lost Fleet: Valiant (Again, fine)
The Lost Fleet: Relentless (Ironically Geary actually dithers a little in this book)
The Lost Fleet: Victorious (Spoilers!)

Read this: For smart, well written Mil-SF/Space Opera that has relevance to current concerns, without being heavy-handed about parallels.
Don't read this: If you're not interested in spacecraft blowing up.
Be warned: That it is, of course, a love story.

* I don't think it too much of an assumption to suggest that Geary's position is also Campbell's (the author is a former US Naval officer).
** Actually, there are some scenes when he's in the nip, but we'll gloss over those.
*** The Alliance has ocasionally discussed naming ships after planets or people, but no one could agree on who got named, which is just as well as otherwise Geary would inevitably have found himself onboard the John Geary which would be embarassing as Honor Harrington found out.
**** Cincinnatus is of particular interest to Americans who consider George Washington to have been inspired by him in giving up his powers once the crisis of the American Revolution was over.

Conversation of the Yesterday

2011-06-15T11:10:00.003+01:00

Mum: I see you're having fun.
Me: Fun? If it was fun we could get a small child to do it.
Me (Deep Voice): Stop scrubbing that pan. It's clean!
Me (Squeaky Voice): Awwwww no.
Me (Deep Voice): Stop it! Go and play on your Wii.
Me (Squeaky Voice): Do I haavvee too?

Frankly I should probably stop talking to myself while washing up. In other news polenta is pretty tasty for cheesy-buttery slop.

Clara's Cakes

2011-04-29T11:32:00.002+01:00

This is based on a true story. It is not a true story itself, which is why the names have been changed.

2005

Steve: Clara, I hear your cheesecake is delicious.

Clara: Thanks. Would you like me to make you one?

Steve: Please.

Clara: Baileys cheesecake or cookies and cream?

Steve: Ooh, Baileys.

2008

Clara (by email): I like that plan - maybe I could make Steve a guiness cake to distract him from the fact I've still not made him a bailey's cheesecake yet

Steve (by email): Mmmmm Guinness Cheesecake

Rita (by email): Hmm. Chocolate guiness cake. It just so happens I could rustle one up in no time at all...[1]

2010, New Year Eve, Steve and Val's house

Clara : Hello! I've brought a Baileys cheesecake.

Val: Thanks Clara!

Steve[2](mutters): About time

Later that evening

Nigel: Clara, your cheesecake is delicious!

Clara: Thanks.

Nigel: Would you make me one?

Clara: Sure.
Clara takes out her order book and opens it to page 2.
Clara: Baileys or cookies and cream?

The End

[1] Actual emails
[2] There was an actual Steve present so to avoid confusion I will refer to him as Stu if he appears

Royal Hats: Charles II

2011-04-27T18:39:00.007+01:00

Officially Charles II succeeded his father, Charles I, from Charles I's execution. In fact the interregnum of the Commonwealth intruded[1], which is why the period of Charles II reign after he was restored to the throne is known as the Restoration. Charles II was known for his dissolute ways - it was said that any vice was tolerated at court except hypocrisy - and extravagant dress. Which bodes well for his hats!

This black velvet hat is more upright than the hats we saw for Henry VIII and Edward IV. There is a distinct band and a jeweled decoration. The plume, as we might hope from a cavalier, is large and colourful. The long black curls that Charles sports is probably a wig; after 1663 his hair turned grey and he began to wear wigs.

Here is Charles wearing robes of state and a crown. The crown is wide to my eyes; it looks like the crown on the back of a 5p or 20p piece, but stretched sideways.

Here we see Charles going about his business, being presented with a pineapple. This broad brimmed black hat appears undecorated. For shame!

Although helmets were still worn in battle, advances in gunpowder weapons had changed the emphasis away from armour and towards speed and mobility. As a young man Charles fought in the English Civil War and would have worn a breastplate and thick leather boots. Whether he would have worn a helmet or a plumed hat at a rakish angle[3] I have not been able to find out.

[1] Having killed the king, the English parliament then banned the acclimation of a new king. However they were unable to agree a new constitution so to prevent the tyranny of a perpetual parliament, Oliver Cromwell launched a military coup. After Cromwell's death[2], still unable to agree on a constitution, the monarchy was reinstated.
[2] But before his execution.
[3] As all cavaliers on screen or in pictures do.

Royal Hats: Henry VIII

2011-04-26T13:20:00.008+01:00

Henry VIII ruled only 30 years after Edward IV[1], but let's see if his hats look different.

Henry was a very fashionable man[3]. Here he is wearing a what I assume to be a black velvet hat, with several embroidered decorations and a white feather plume. He wears hats similar to this in many of his portraits, suggesting that this was a style he liked.

This early, possibly earliest, portrait shows a different hat, one more like the one we saw Edward IV wearing yesterday. Henry also has much longer hair, again more in the 15th century style.

This helmet was part of a set of parade armour given to Henry VIII by the Emperor Maximilian I. Clearly not to be actually used, this would have been armour as fashion. In his youth Henry was a keen jouster and had several sets of armour. Helmets for use became full head closed helm designs during Henry's regin, as opposed to the sallet we saw yesterday.

More royal hats, probably from the 17th century, tomorrow.

[1] Edward IV was briefly succeeded by his son Edward V, but the discovery of his illegitimacy led him to be deposed and shut away in the tower of London. His uncle, Edward IV's brother, Richard III became king. Richard was famously defeated and killed at the battle of Bosworth Field[2]. Henry Tudor became king as Henry VII and in time his son Henry VIII succeeded him. I hope we're all up to date now.
[2] This decided, but did not end, the Wars of the Roses. Yorkist claimants of various seriousness made appearances for the next 15 years. Fears of a Yorkist revival in the event of a disputed succession was one of Henry VIII's motives in his attempts to produce a male heir.
[3] Although as heir to the throne and later an absolute monarch[4], he was as much a fashion setter as fashion follower.
[4] Whether Henry VIII was absolutely an absolute monarch or whether the customs and traditional rights bound him to a degree that made his monarchy non-absolute, I leave to the political historians. His monarchy was pretty close to absolute by modern standards though.

Royal Hats: Edward IV

2011-04-25T14:24:00.009+01:00

Edward IV was king during the Wars of the Roses. As the son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, he inherited his father's claim and after the battle of Townton he was crowned King of England [1]. Edward loved hunting, feasting, drinking and womanising[2], was very tall and in later life became more inactive and fat, which may have lead to his death.

But today we're only slightly interested in that. What we want to know about is his hats.

As we can see he has a fairly simple black velvet cap with an elaborate decoration - probably embroidered, but it could be jewelry. Although not perfectly clear, the decoration seems to be based on a coat of arms or seal.

On this Edward IV groat from his second reign we can see him wearing a crown. The depiction is not clear enough to say a lot about it, but it seems to be a circlet with fleur-de-lis sticking up from it. Also his hair is quite a bit wilder!

Edward was a noted general and warrior. The Wars of the Roses are traditionally considered Late Medieval[3]. Armour reached it's high point during this period, as it developed to protect wearers from crossbows, longbows and early firearms. The high quality of the armour allowed the wearer to fight without a shield, and, indeed, penetrating armour from this time with single handed weapons is extremely difficult. Edward would have worn a Sallet (depicted above) the helmet of choice for all professional soldiers of 15th century Western Europe.

More royal hats every day until the royal wedding.

[1] Lancastrians preferred to continue to uphold Henry VI claim leading to Edward IV having to flee the country in 1470, only to return and reclaim the throne in 1471.
[2] Which lead directly to the illegitimacy of his sons. Viewers (and readers) of Game of Thrones may be interested to know that Edward IV was a major inspiration for the character King Robert Baratheon.
[3] Some historians date the end of the medieval era in England to the death of Richard III.

Impersonal Assistant and Jonathan Creep

2011-04-14T19:38:00.002+01:00

Impersonal Assistant

To: TheBoss@Wilxco.co.uk
From: ImpersonalAssistant@Wilxco.co.uk
Date: Thursday 14 April, 2010, 08:58
Subject: Arrangements

1. Items for your attention are in the IN tray
2. Items in the OUT tray have been taken to be dealt with
3. A selection of hot drinks is available in the kitchenette

Please advise if anything is needed to conform to your requirements

Jonathan Creep

This was a mishearing of Jonathan Creek. At the time I made the note it seemed interesting but now, meh.

This concludes blogging on what happened in the pub on Saturday.

Friendship Yeast

2011-04-13T13:13:00.003+01:00

Here's how it was explained to me: You're given a sourdough starter by a friend. After 10 days of feeding it with flour, sugar and water it should have quadrupled. You divide it into 4, give 3 sections to friends and use the last one to bake with. In this case the recipe suggested is for a German Apple Cake, which is why the yeast is called Herman. Sounds like a funguy!

Yeast reproduces asexually by budding. This means that each yeast starter is a clone, and each cake will be a clone. Cloned German cakes, spreading through the population, numbers increasing at an exponential rate[1] - what could go wrong?

A swift google suggests that the canonical form of this living chain letter is Amish Friendship Bread. In fact, the article notes that there is a 2011 novel of such a bread spreading through a town and ~~taking away their free will to become a giant asexual amorphous blob~~ effecting the lives of everyone it passes through. This sounds like it could make an interesting Robert Altman style movie, or maybe just some kind of rubbish feelgood Hollywood tripe. Either's good, although I'd rather watch the former.

[1] This would be literally exponential, not metaphorically.

Bunty

2011-04-12T19:51:00.002+01:00

I have been informed that my notetaking was inaccurate and I should have written "A Bunty of Bunting".

Bunty was a girls comic book. As a child I never read it as it was for Girls (ugh!) and so was probably about hair and makeup and kissing and stuff. Sadly it closed in 2001 so I may never know (unless someone would like me to review some, in which case I'll take a butcher's round the charity shops for an old album, or possible see what's on ebay).

A Bounty of Bunting

2011-04-11T15:44:00.004+01:00

My notes from Saturday Night read as follows:

A Bounty of Bunting

Friendship Yeast

Impersonal Assisstant

Jonathan Creep

It's almost a whole week of blogging material, at least once I learn to spell assistant.

One flag of bunting is known as a bunt. Originally bunting was the name of the type of material. This was the material used for ribbons and flags, including Royal Navy signal flags. Bunting is a popular decoration, and especially in vogue for the upcoming royal wedding.

Sausages

2011-04-08T19:46:00.002+01:00

Just had some Chandler and Dunn Pork and Hop sausages. Obviously I hope that I won't be turned into sausages, but if I am, I request that

1. You use my own guts for the casing; and
2. That there are hops in the mixture.

That is all.

I Cook Food: Celery Soup

2011-04-07T19:38:00.003+01:00

This is almost too simple and easy to count as a blog post. However it turns out that people usually want simple and easy recipes, even if I really want to show off my manly cooking skills by putting difficult and complex recipes up. So without further to do:

Celery Soup

2 small onions, peeled and roughly cut up
Half a big bunch of celery, trimmed, washed and cut into 2-3 cm chunks
1 clove of garlic sliced
Half a vegetable stock cube
A generous glug of olive oil
About a litre of water, preferably hot
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large pan. Fry the garlic and onion over a moderate heat until it starts to soften, then add the celery and continue to stir and fry until that softens too. Crumble in the stock cube, then add the water. Bring it back to the boil, add some pepper (also salt if you want, but I find stock cubes usually have enough) then turn down to simmer for half an hour or so. Then bring out the hand blender and whizz it until everything is broken down. It should look creamy. Correct the seasoning and serve; it should easily make 4 bowls.

That's Propaganda Folks!

2011-04-06T19:46:00.003+01:00

WWII Daffy Duck cartoon, where he's an American commando.

I note that this is like just about every other Daffy Duck cartoon except that the guys he's running around and playing gags on are Nazis. And the ending makes more sense than usual.

Bat Dance

2011-04-05T17:26:00.003+01:00

I was researching supervillains, as one does, when I came across the batusi, the dance move made famous by Adam West's Batman.

The batusi is the thing where he makes the Vs with his fingers. I need to research this further, but it's definitely in Pulp Fiction, and apparently was a brief craze when the show first went out. Especially in the kind of clubs where vigilantes in tights and masks respond to women trying to pick them up with the line: "You interest me. Strangely. I accept your invitation."

I like the fact that everyone just gets on with dancing even though Batman is there. I guess if Gothamites are used to the city being taken over by crazily dressed maniacs every week, they aren't going to bat an eyelid at Batman propping up the bar. Time enough to get excited if when a fight breaks out.

Mad Dogs And Englishmen

2011-04-04T11:31:00.003+01:00

Still procrastinating on my review of a history of the First Afghan War. In the meantime here is an excerpt. The story so far: some "fakirs" (as described by the British) have murdered a sentry and his gear was found in their house. Due to the delicate situation in Kabul, the British fail to take any action on this. And now the conclusion:

Fate overtook the holy man a few months later when he went a-begging to Jalalabad and had the ill luck to present his alms bowl to Private Collins of the 13th light Infantry, "an Irishman of extraordinary gallantry but a great ruffian"[1]. Collins, who thought there was something familiar about the beggar, twitched aside his cloak and there, on his shoulders, were the badges of the sentry murdered those many months before. Without hesitation the Irishman seized the man by the scruff of the neck, held him face down in a pool and "quietly drowned him like a dog".

Page 151, Signal Catastrophe, Patrick Macrory

Drowning holy men is questionable but drowning a dog is outrageous!

Bulldogs were an additional peril to the occupying troops. Not long before, Mackenzie had called to Captain Troup's bulldog "Nettle, Nettle!" Next instant Nettle was clinging like a leech to his right arm, having gone mad. He managed to hold it at arm's length and throttle it with his left hand. "I never saw anything so hideous as that dog's head, his jaws reeking with blood and foam, his mouth wide open, his tongue swollen and hanging out, and his eyes flashing a sort of lurid fire." Mackenzie escaped rabies by applying caustic, which left a circular scar nearly two inches in diameter.

Page 162

Hmm. Maybe not outrageous, merely regrettable.

[1] I like this description a lot.

Tripoli

2011-04-01T19:52:00.003+01:00

Tripoli is in the news, but that's not what I'm writing about. Tri-poli is obviously of Greek (also Latin) origin - Tri meaning three and Poli being city. So the name of the city of Tripoli means "three cities".

It gets it's name from the province it is in, Tripolitania, formerly the Roman Province of Tripolitania. The three cities were founded as Phoenician colonies and were named Oea (on the site of modern Tripoli), Sabratha and Leptis Magna. They fell under the sway of Greek Cyrenaica, then later Carthage (another Phoenician colony) and were seized by Rome during the Third (and final) Punic War. At some point this area was split off from the Roman province of Africa, and named after the three cities that were it's main feature. The name stuck, and the city was renamed after the district.

I Cook Food: Candied Ginger

2011-03-31T14:35:00.004+01:00

No crystallized ginger in the shop to make ginger cake. Concious mind awakens back at home where I am adding fresh ginger to sugar syrup and asks "Do I actually know how to candy things or have I just watched guys on TV?". Scientific method suggests that whatever the situation before I do now know how to candy things as these are firey-sweet awesome.

Candied Ginger

80g of root ginger, peeled and cut into small chunks
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons water

Put the water and sugar into a small saucepan. heat over a low flame, stirring occasionally. When the sugar is mostly dissolved, add the ginger. Continue heating and occasionally stirring until there is about half as much liquid as you started with (probably 10-15 minutes). Allow to cool before eating, but if you're using them in a cake, you can just plonk them in.

SGR: I Didn't Realise When I Demolished The Shed I Was Opening Up A Doorway To Ancient Feudal Japan

2011-03-30T19:39:00.005+01:00

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 11: Robot Town Hall

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a page where Amy has failed to repair a robot and suggests going to see Tim you have reached the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post.

Review

Shelley mishears the Mayor when he mumbles around his pipe and twins the town with Robotania, a former Soviet Republic where all the communist robots ended up. They arrive and cause chaos. Hijinks ensue.

This was promised back in Down, and now it arrives. The robots predictably wreck things, then, when put in the bus station, find themselves in the soviet robot equivalent of a high class brothel. This is quite short as a chapter, which is just as well as otherwise the strip would inevitably be taken over by a cast of ex-soviet war machines. Although amusing, it almost takes a backseat to the domestic drama of Shelley and Amy moving out of Fallon's house due to ninja attacks and moving 20 minutes out of Tackleford, where things are less dangerous, except for the demon possessed tractor.

The moving certainly gives us some insight into Shelley as housemate - the list of houserules, and one of the moving boxes is labelled fun things a-f.

Also I think this is the first time that a swearword appears blacked out. The word "tupping", an archaic term for sexual intercourse, has been standing in until now. Tellingly, Amy says it on page, but Shelley actually came up with the word. Later Amy uses the word "rutting", again for robot sex.

Finally, with the robot drinks dispenser destroyed, Amy tries to repair it. Does she have a prayer? Find out in Bad Religion.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

I'm sorry Shelley. I didn't realise when I demolished the shed I was opening up a doorway to ancient feudal Japan.

I'm moving to Top Mareswich. The Greatest danger there is a runaway demon-possessed Tractor. The estate agent assures me this basically almost never happens.

Shelley's list of houserules:

1. No nuts after 10.30 at night (exc. pistachio)
2. No mildew
3. No singing/whistling out of tune
4. Respect for royal family + landed gentry AT ALL TIMES

You may see an educated pig taking tea with the vicar. That is nature being awesome.

I don't know if I can eat an egg when I can see the chicken it came out of.

You should be applying that shame to the many areas of your life that require it.

I suppose brain surgeons wouldn't mess around in brain goo if they didn't like it.

God knows what people who weren't born as fabulous eye candy do.

Women of Robotania smell of old diesel, also rarely serviced.

Reality is a pie of which I do not require another slice.

Later in the dream I solved all the problems by singing sweetly. The song concerned a cheeky corncob who loved chocolate.

"Shel, you should enter the lame Olympics." "My main event would be 'drawing a picture of a pathetic, wobbly looking duck'. Or maybe 'laughing at inappropriate times in a thin, high voice'."

Characters

Fallon, who has infested the house with ninjas
Shelley, tired of ninjas, makes a small but important error at work
Amy, also tired of ninjas, is not 100% useful as a housemate
The Mayor, initially unhappy with his town being destroyed by Ex-Soviet robots finds his happy place with prescription medicine
Hugo, making a cameo appearance, is shocked by Shelley's language
The Robot Drinks Dispenser, making a brief reappearance
Supporting cast of Communist Robot War Machines

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

2011-03-29T19:48:00.003+01:00

I've been reading a history of the First Afghan War, which I will review later. There has been some criticism of the amount of baggage the British took with them. Famously, during the invasion of 1839, the officers of one regiment had two camels just for their cigars.

However, after they occupied Kabul, but before regular commerce started up, there was a shortage of such things as wine, port, spirits and indeed cigars, to the extent that at one point they were selling for a rupee a piece. Moral of the story: Not Enough Cigars.

(The real problem was that camels, excellent beasts of burden throughout most of the British Raj at the time, were very poor in the cooler, wetter, higher and rockier conditions in Afghanistan. Mules, ponies or donkeys should have been carrying those cigars)

What I've Been Drinking

2011-03-28T11:51:00.003+01:00

This year, my mixed drinks have mostly been one of these two. One is non-alcoholic! For shame.

Virgin Mary

Put a couple of ice cubes in a large tumbler
Nearly fill with V8 or other tomato based vegetable juice
Splash in some Worcestershire sauce and 5-6 drops of Tabasco
Stir with a length of celery

If you add a measure of vodka this becomes a Bloody Mary. Two or more measures an it becomes a Bloody Hell! Mary.

Campari, Lemon and Lime

Pour a generous measure of chilled Campari into a tumbler. If you don't usually drink Campari be cautious as it is very bitter. Add a similar amount of chilled lime cordial. Top up with chilled lemonade.

My Mum brought this recipe back from New Zealand, with no information on it's name or origins.

The Sweet Smell of Democracy

2011-03-25T09:00:00.001Z

Here's the thing - I love voting. Politics is interesting, and I often find myself digging through all kinds of ~~lurid~~ wonkish details to try and find out the answers[1] but I can take it or leave it. I've barely followed the budget details this time, if only because all the important stuff was in the one the coalition presented after they won the election.

But voting, I always do that. At every opportunity. The best one is the ~~Presidential~~ General Election where for one day my vote counts the same as even the Prime Minister[2]. "In your face Major/Blair/Brown" I've had the chance to say, "Today I am as important as you. My vote counts as much as yours!"[3]

You know, MPs get to vote hundreds of times a year. Maybe that's why people lie down in the sordid bead of politics!

So I got my voting card for the council elections. Another, funnier, view on voting can be found here.

[1] If you have to dig through the details, usually the answer is "maybe".
[2] Not the Queen though, who doesn't get to vote. Does she for local elections? Do Peers get to vote for their council? I should maybe look this stuff up.
[3] Due to the first past the post system and since no parliamentary candidate I have voted for has ever been elected, while in the same elections Major, Blair and Brown presumably voted for themselves and all got elected to their seats, technically this is not true.

Other Beef Stews Are Available

2011-03-24T09:00:00.000Z

You know, this advert doesn't encourage me to buy the stuff in the packet, but to fiddle with this recipe of my own. And yes, you can cook it for 5 hours, but look at that beef! That is some excellent meat there, but you cook it for 5 hours, it's going to fall apart.

"But" you ask "is there a happy medium? Can I make excellent Boeuf Bourgignon without having to do all that work? I'm more of a sling things in a pot person, me." Why yes there is. Try this recipe from M & S using pre-prepared ingredients. Wait, cook slowly for three hours? Not five hours? How are we supposed to trust Marks and Spencer now? It's not like the old days.

You Know What I Mean

2011-03-23T09:00:00.000Z

On Antiques Roadshow last night a couple had some Beatles memorabilia. The lady had written to Paul very early in their career (the address was his family home and he blatantly plugs their "LP" - which from date and context is Please Please Me) and asked him what the lyric "She was just seventeen/ You know what I mean" meant.

Paul's reply in the letter was (from memory) this:

We meant she wasn't sixteen or eighteen, but somewhere in between... you know what I mean.

Well quite.

More information on this song, including an earlier version of the line can be found here.

SGR: Did You Know That Lollygagging Promotes Communism and Causes Sterility?

2011-03-22T09:00:00.001Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 10: Shopgirl

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a page where Fallon is fighting ninjas you have reached the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post.

Review

So Amy is cut off by her Dad and gets a Christmas job as a shopgirl. But it seems that when the managers go to the pub on Christmas Eve something happens that leaves the shop floor covered in blood...

It's a short story and a lighthearted one. The store starts as satire, but quickly goes full on weird. Shelley tries to be cautious and sensible but then goes off the deep end. With magnets! The girls bicker and are rude to each other, but in the end they make it up.

Another Scary word. Skellington, demond and dinosaurus are now part of the lexicon.

There's no actual bodies, and no numbers are given, so the bodycount is zero. I note the swift action of the fire brigade. perhaps they are more efficent than the police.

The next chapter is the long promised but often delayed Robot Town Hall. Excellent.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

I asked him if it was the ninja car of Jesus.

Would you like to buy this 1951 copy of Racist Christmas by Sid Sulley's Swinging Six? It was banned for being too uptempo!

Two miles away a man is feeding sawdust to his child.

Did you know that lollygagging promotes communism and causes sterility?

Bees make honey... but wasps don't make jam. And I mean it's not like they couldn't... They have access to fruit.

Were you bitten by a dinosaurus?

The dinosaurus is cunning. He hides in the swamp wearing a hat shaped like a baby bird.

Hugo, can I have the lonely Christmas combo meal with extra gin?

Mrs Ivan is still as spry and appealing as she was in 1959.

I don't act the fool Miss Amy. Threw a paper aeroplane in 1952, next day, the King was dead.

They may be fatuous bumpkins but they're fatuous bumpkins at Christmas.

It does not respond to magnets!

On the ruining Christmas scale we've reached 5, equivalent to punching a shepherd in the stomach.

Ruined Christmas Level Ten: Shot the little donkey and cooked it.

They are not strong magnets. They are only for Christmas fun. I am sorry that they are only designed for fun.

Christmas would have been a lot worse if I had found out you had been eaten because I wasn't there.

Every time I saw a partially gnawed skeleton I would weep.

Characters

Amy, spoiled brat earning money in a shop
Shelley, her friend and reluctant co-investigator of mysteries
Len, Amy's father, teaching her self reliance by cutting off her money supply.
One of Mrs Birch's cronies, now working in the record shop in Ryan's place
Ivan, Caretaker
Mrs Ivan, still as spry and appealing as she was in 1959
Old Man Wallis, Department store owner

Gold, Ivory and a Happy Ending

2011-03-21T09:00:00.001Z

The young man has been in Kabul several times in the last few years, but the Tillya Tepe gold has always been on tour. So on Friday we went to see the Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World exhibition at the British Museum.

As we looked at the extraordinary detail on the ivory furniture supports, my brother muttered to me that the best of it - the jewel of the Begram hoard - had been stolen in the civil war. This was a great tragedy for the National Museum in Kabul, whose motto is "A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive".

We continue on and past the gold we arrive at the last room, room 6. And what do we find but some of the stolen ivories, which were recovered last year in London and are being conserved by the British Museum.

Who had them has not been made public. As was made clear at the exhibition, the objects here were hidden in Afghanistan during the wars and have only lately been recovered. They might have been taken in good faith to keep them safe.

One last interesting thing. Many of the artifacts we saw were sealed in storage rooms when the cities of ancient Afghanistan were being attacked by nomads. Later they were sealed in safes and buried by staff at the National Museum to keep them safe during the war. We shouldn't draw too close a parallel, but hiding these objects while the country is under attack is certainly a recurring motif.

SGR: You Are Going To Have To Speak Up Friend, I Do Not Understand Sonar So Good

2011-03-18T09:00:00.001Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 9: Ballad of the Man

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a full page of Amy's torso you have reached the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post.

Review

This is a sad story. But it's only sad because it's happy in the middle!

Ryan is failing with the ladies because he can't talk to them, doesn't wash and his landlady discourages Lady callers. When Amy and Shelley get him ready for his date they burn his clothes, which have been his costume since the strip started. Unlike the ladies, Allison hasn't got too adventurous with Ryan's clothes... until now! Dressing him like Columbo is inspired. He's also clean shaven until his 5 o'clock shadow reappears... at the moment when he starts to have fun talking to Natalie.

His date is awkward, as Poppy is a fanatical whittler, but not so much as to use the "coward's door". I salute him.

Despite his pessimism, he's very down when his date isn't good. Hey, this is Tackleford! No one went mad or died or disappeared into the 4th dimension! That's a win! And as it turns out, it is. he meets Friend bat and Natalie.

Natalie talks rubbish. But it's exactly the sort of rubbish to get Ryan out of his depression. The funniest word is "erotic". Brilliant.

Meanwhile Ryan's landlady and her cronies are evil. E.V.I.L. She calls Amy and Shelley whores and believes Natalie to be a succubus, or some other sort of demond to be driven out with a spoon. Then failing to exorcise her, they send an Orangutan to burn her out of her caravan.

A lot of people note Chapter 3, Meddling, when Shelley returns from the dead as a zombie as where Scary Go Round really comes into it's own. If so, this story is where it grows up. Again someone Ryan cares about is dead. This time it's worse than before. He's devastated. Him falling under his landlady's spell is humorous, but it's a dark humour, tinged with pathos.

The fancy dress party, where Shelley goes as Fallon, Fallon goes as Amy and Amy goes as Shelley shows up a problem with the art. Their wigs are too good and their faces too identical. Fallon is taller than the other two and Shelley has green eyes; Amy has tattoos; other than that, they actually look identical.

Shelley is referred to as "tiny lady" and other references to her smallness occur elsewhere in the comic. I believe she is later described as 5 foot 4 and is fairly slim, but she's not all that small. I don't know where I'm going with this, just noting it as something to keep an eye on.

Bodycount for this episode is 1, for a run total of 26.

So Ryan is down, and out for the moment. Natalie is dead and burned so unlikely to return from the dead. Obviously it's time to focus on another member of the cast as she becomes a Shopgirl.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

Is bare-knuckle boxing a way men show that secretly they love one another?

Escort your chattering whores from the porch Mr Beckwith! They are spoiling my enjoyment of my hearing trumpet.

Those were good clothes. They been with me a long time. Life's going to be hard now. People don't like a guy who just wears underpants. Guy like that rolls into town folks start talkin' trash.

This seems like a pretty decent sort of menu. Meat, fish, everythin'!

No Pressure on a hermit. Just drinking rain and gettin' on with growing a beard.

Oh my, what an erotic mailbox. it gives ze postman ze chills!

Please pass me a can of peas. Wait, no, do you not have one zat is more erotic?

An artist must know suffering, so i decide to summer here in England.

You are going to have to speak up friend, I do not understand sonar so good.

Characters

Ryan - looking for love
Hugo - tired of Ryan looking for love
Shelley and Amy - willing to help Ryan look for love, but not provide it themselves
Fallon - subject of a control experiment
Mrs Birch - Ryan's evil landlady. The rent is very reasonable.
Friend Bat - a bat
Natalie - not looking for love, but finds it
Mrs Birch's aged cronies - also evil, but mostly confused
Tim, Tessa, Rachel and Ralph - cameo appearance at the costume party

Saint Patrick

2011-03-17T09:00:00.002Z

Compared to St Valentine, we know quite a lot about St Patrick. Perhaps too much in fact. The Annals of Ulster suggest he was born in 340, began preaching in Northern Ireland in 428 and died in 440 (on 17 March), a lifespan that strains credibility. Historians tend towards the "Two Patricks" theory which suggests that two real missionaries were conflated into one legendary figure

Interestingly, there are two documents generally accepted as written by Patrick. One of them, his confession, describes his life, starting as a highborn Roman, being carried off as a slave by Irish raiders, his escape, joining St Germain in an expedition to Britain to stamp out heresy and finally as missionary to Ireland. Exciting stuff!

Strangely none of this mentions black[1] beer, leprechauns or banishing snakes from Ireland. As well as Ireland, Patrick patronises all kinds of snake related fears, engineers, the excluded and Nigeria.

[1] Or even green

Dream Diary 21

2011-03-16T09:00:00.000Z

I had a dream I was part of a boyband who moonlight as tax accountants. There were many microstate islands in the North Sea without sufficient population to maintain full time accountants, or boybands, so we could sail from one to another doing the tax forms and performing in the evening. We had a heavily armed mini-submarine to travel between them from our homebase in Cromarty Firth.

However, the dream opened with us watching television. I suspect the earlier part of the dream had been retconned into a TV program. In that part of the dream, a dark-haired not-quite-french female artist was getting more and more frustrated with the shallow and stupid conversation of her and her boyfriend's friends. She was thinking of leaving him and living on a North Sea microstate.

SGR: Long Playing Records Here Come Out On The Popular "Shouting Melon" Format.

2011-03-15T09:00:00.000Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 8: Where The Dumb Things Are

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a page where Ryan and Hugo are talking about how Ryan has lost his powers with the ladies you have reached the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post. If for some reason, rather than reading the comic you want to stay here, at the bottom of this post is the plot synopsis and character list I made to keep everything straight in my head.

Review

The conclusion to Dimensionality. So the 4th dimension is filled with cute creatures that look a little like things from our dimension, but a bit off. Things work a bit like here, but always a bit off to the side, or at an angle. There are records, but they're on shouting melons. There are buses, but they're floating whales. If you aggravate something in the forest it will fly after you (and you can escape by diving under water) but in this case it's winged eyeballs. The locals talk, but in almost understandable glyphs.

On balance I like the 4th dimension. We leave fairly quickly, before it has a chance to outstay it's welcome. Rockstar Amy in the 4th dimension has funkier hair, even skimpier tops and seems more confident and strong willed. Rachel becomes, if not more evil, certainly more cunning and ruthless. The major revelation is Shelley's past. She was a hotshot lawyer, but quit after her first case, due to a phobia of judges. Combine this with being dead, then a zombie for a while and her scattershot career becomes almost understandable. She's being a bit big sister here - looking for Amy in the previous episode, representing William in this one - standing up and being sensible while everything is going crazy.

The funny stuff is mostly Rachel and Tessa bickering and the 4th dimension being hilarious. On the other hand I found the exchange about sausages inexplicably amusing. The big Shelley's judge phobia joke I found too sad to be very funny.

So the next comic will be back in the 3rd dimension (this being a comic on a screen or page, those three dimensions are of course height, width and page number). It brings us back to Ryan who will sing The Ballad of the Man.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

I bet sentient, forward-thinking societies taste delicious.

That's you Rachel... the million pound ass.

Now I hate 100% of the things in this this universe!

Would you be angry if I had incited a swarm of flying eyes to chase me?

Have you never wanted to poke an eyeball? Just to see how it felt?

What would Peacenik President Jimmy Carter do? He'd use peanuts to find the answer.

Could these brightly coloured shapes be a picture of Amy, the dismal debutante we... desire to... discover?

These grubs got class.

Today is the day the music dies.

Our unflappability is virtually Angela Lansbury Level.

Future generations might reject their father's terrorising ways! Or eat your face.

Skellingtons are so versatile.

We've been here for five days and all we've eaten is waterproof sealant. We're not totally sure what constitutes a toilet on this planet. We are willing to compromise

Also you could fall into the toilet bowl and it does not look very clean.

If "Another dimension" is a fun way of saying "the afterlife", I don't think I can get you off the charges.

I went to law school, but I only ever took one case. it turned out I have a pathological fear of judges.

A powerful legal brain is no use if it's crying in the ladies' toilets.

No man can eat three whole girls.

Wanted: Angry mob for illegal righteous righting of wretched wrongs.

Two minutes into my beat poetry epic "Nexus" and every one of them was either crying or trying not to.

Long playing records here come out on the popular "Shouting Melon" format.

And a young thing like you should be out kicking her heels with a babycham and a nice fella.

Cops are drawn to our sexy sins.

The sweet pheremonal zephyr of girls gone bad.

Characters

Rachel - lost in the 4th dimension
Tessa - also missing in the 4th dimension
William - charged with three counts of murder and cannibalism
Amy - successful recording star in the 4th dimension
Len - Amy's father, seeking extra-legal justice
Shelley - William's lawyer with a fatal flaw
Full supporting cast of adorable but weird 4th dimensional creatures including
Krakkagar - shiny black beetle and Rachel's childhood nemesis

Plot

We open on Tessa and Rachel bickering in another universe and regretting ending up here. Rachel starts fishing for food, but Tessa is worried that in this universe fish might be sentient forward thinking society. She catches a fish with a bowler hat and an umbrella, that "speaks", in that it's speech bubble contains the picture of a bicycle.

Rachel then enrages a swarm of flying eyeballs, and they escape by diving into the water. They try to come up with a plan to find Amy, oblivious of the posters depicting Amy in a (different) cartoon style. They spot some, things, all with horns, standing around a diabolically deformed bus stop. On the bus stop they finally recognise Amy on a poster. They busk badly to get bus fare.

The bus turns out to be a floating whale. They arrive in town, pleased with themselves over how calmly they are taking this. Then Rachel spots Krakkagar her childhood nemesis, and his many children and panics.

After 4 days in the city they are tired, dirty and hungry, and the food they have stolen may have been from a DIY store. Rachel and Tessa finally find Amy. Amy is not keen to return home, and Rachel and Tessa are willing to compromise.

Back in the 3rd Dimension, Shelley visits Will in jail, where he is forced to wear a Hannibal Lector style mask. He has been accused of killing and eating Amy, Rachel and Tessa. Will tells her he sent them to another dimension, which Shelley misinterprets as the afterlife. Shelley has taken the case to confront her pathological fear of judges. Outside the prison, Len is distributing leaflets to stir up a mob for some vigilante justice.

Tessa suggests grabbing Amy and returning home, but Rachel seems happy to have her hair and clothes done my Mrs Mushroom-Shaped, and become part of Amy's entourage. Amy explains what happened - a deviant maniac creature kidnapped her. However the 4th Dimension police were waiting and grabbed him. Faced with them, Amy drew inspiration from her "Where the Wild things Are" and reduced most of them to tears with her poetry. Amy's first album "Just Amy" is about to come out on the popular Shouting Melon format.

Shocked by Rachel's betrayal, Tessa decides to get so drunk she'll be sick. She gets around the language problem by illustrating this.

The Mayor warns Shelley to be careful - after all Will could turn out to be a mass murderer. He suggests she should be out with a nice young fella, but Shelley thinks a bad young fella might suit her better.

Amy and Rachel spend some time at a party. Rachel is revealed to be heiress to the Dukakis-Monteforte biscuit dynasty. She works in the pub due to burning down some outhouses at her family home. Then Rachel distracts Amy by claiming a piece of fruit looks like Moses, and belts her on the head. She makes her excuses, claiming Amy is drunk. The creatures are incomprehensible, although one seems to suggest an ambulance. They ride a cow-taxi into the forest. Rachel is confident Tessa will have spotted her ruse and be ready in the forest to get them home, but instead she is drunk and flirting with Krakkagar.

Arriving at the forest, Rachel trys to pay with a handful of grubs. The taxi driver (probably) calls the police who set off in pursuit. Meanwhile Tessa decides to go home on her own, and shouts at a picture of Rachel, presumably a police notice. They meet in the forest. Rachel bribes Tessa with a can of warm lager shandy to come up with a plan to get them up to the hole to their own dimension. Tessa designs and builds a catapult. They can hear sirens and Amy is moaning. Rachel admires her can-do attitude and wicked clothes, but states that she is going home in the catapult and having sausages for tea.

They shoot the catapult and return to the 3rd dimension. They come up with a cover story of Amy joining a cult. They rescued her and escaped by making a hot air balloon out of robes and powered it by Amy holding a freestyle poetry jam underneath. In the meantime the pub has been shored up. Amy celebrates with her friends, and William is out of jail.

I Cook Food: Beef Stew

2011-03-14T09:00:00.000Z

I have maybe three basic beef stews that I make variants of. I use the word maybe as they cross-pollinate each other. This is a Beef Stew With Wine as opposed to Beef With Onions or Spicy Beef Stew.

Beef Stew With Wine

750g stewing beef, cubed
2 onions, sliced or roughly chopped
12 small mushrooms
2 carrots, peeled and cut into circles
half a stalk of celery, chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and cur into bits
4 tablespoons flour
olive oil
4 dessert spoons soy sauce
half a bottle of decent but not too nice red wine[1]

Serves 6-8

Turn on the oven to low, perhaps 120C. In a large casserole dish, pour two or three tablespoons of oil and heat. Add in the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally. While these are cooking, season the flour, then coat the beef in the flour. Keep any leftover flour in case you want to thicken the stew later.

When the vegetables are starting to brown, add the mushrooms and cook until everything is starting to brown. Transfer the vegetables to a dish to keep warm, add a little more oil to the casserole then put the beef in. I usually do two batches. Brown off the meat, then add everything back into the casserole, add the wine and bring to the boil for a couple of minutes. Stir and put in the oven.

It cooks for usually at least two hours, After an hour have a look, stir, add the soy sauce and, if it's thickening too much so it might burn add a little water. Keep doing this until the meat is tender.

As with many meat-cooked-in-wine dishes, this will actually get better if you cook it, leave it overnight and reheat. This makes it good for guests who have uncertain arrival times.

A Moment of Science

Alcohol has a lower vapour point than water, so when you bring something with alcoholic content in to the boil, the alcohol evaporates from it. I note this for those who are nervous of cooking with booze - if you've let it boil for a few minutes, it's not alcoholic any more and can be safely served to drivers, small children, lightweights and teetotallers without getting them drunk.

[1] The rule is, if you won't drink it, don't cook with it. Since I am perfectly happy to swill most of the fermented grape juice I've come across, this is pretty easy. Nevertheless, the subtleties of finer vintages disappear in cooking, so cooking with expensive wine is wasteful.

SGR: Officer... sniff ... Is It Wrong To Report A Crime?

2011-03-11T09:00:00.000Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 7: Dimensionality

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a blue page with Tessa, the words Cha Cha Cha and the small and faint title Where the Dumb Things Are you have reached the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post. If for some reason, rather than reading the comic you want to stay here, at the bottom of this post is the plot synopsis and character list I made to keep everything straight in my head.

Review

My, how unpleasant Rachel and Tessa have become. Their self-centredness comes to the fore in this story - they don't care if Len is guilty or innocent or what happened to Amy. Their motivations are money, curiosity and bitchiness. Their interest in men in solely in what they can get from them and their interest in women is limited to being rude to Shelley.

Of course, this makes them all the more effective. While Shelley pursues mundane methods - missing posters for Amy - it's Rachel who confronts the mystery of Amy's disappearance in genre terms: Look for clues, add in your intuition, research your hypothesis, then jump in, head first.

This is a classic genre hook - ordinary people try to solve their mundane problem and running into an extraordinary mystery. Frankly the first part with the bickering girls worried about money is a slow start, but once they get into needling Shelley, coercing William and talking smack about the Fourth dimension it takes off. Although our protagonists aren't especially likable, they're still fun and they're doing good, even for the wrong reasons.

The sidelining of the regular cast is done very smoothly - Tim ill with the pox at the start, Amy missing is where it kicks off, they're not going to work with Shelley because the just don't like her, and they've forgotten about Ryan because he's just some crazy talking drunk.

The police are good here - funny, more interested in their personal problems, ignoring the troubling aspects of the case. I was arguably wrong when I said there are only two Hitler jokes in Scary Go Round. One appears here. One is in Meddling. And one is in a guest comic between this story and the previous one. The stuff about the 4th Dimension is funny, although I'm coming to the conclusion that science in the Scary Go Round world isn't done in quite the same way as in our world.

I run into trouble with my bodycount here. Having not literally counted bodies before, does the open murder investigation into Amy count? We don't count Rachel and Tessa dead, and I'm ignoring how things turn out, so I'm scoring 0 for this one.

We've finished with Amy missing, Len and William in police custody and Rachel and Tessa in the fourth dimension. We'd have to be stupid to miss the next chapter. Like really stupid. Like the dumbest things to ever come from Where The Dumb Things Are. Only Dumber.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

Now I have to spend the summer in indentured booze servitude

We can spend our summer days earning, while laughing at their misfortune.

Unfortunate yogurt pot lid/petri dish licking confusion incident.

I want a "Sopranos" lunchbox, black as night with Uncle Junior's face on it.

No G-Man's takin' my cream cheese.

My crustacean-like metabolism is an asset in a nuclear winter!

A mild case of rabies contracted in El Salvador and suddenly painting's too hard.

The man must be feeble-minded like a garden bird.

Move "being surrogate mothers" down to #2 on the summer jobs list.

Could it be a gateway to the dimension of sexy boys?

I've got so little money in my account that other peoples' overdrafts are being drawn into it via osmosis.

"College professor murders daughter - probably". Is that non-committal enough?

Once we get the cheque we'll frame him for something else.

I ate pie that night until I went into a coma.

Story checks out. We found this dish and napkin.

I still like him for it. Guy looks like he can hold his pie.

It could signify the passage of some kind of giant, cuboid worm.

Can I remind you that no one ever made their escape under the cover of stupidity.

Yeah I just used my nose to detect pheromones. Could be he and the scrappy little brunette hooked up a couple'a times.

I have always filed talk of dimensions under "Scuttlebutt" or "Hooey".

If my friends are less boring in other dimensions, I 100% support this theory!

So 4D glasses are red and yellow instead of red and green?

Officer... sniff... is it wrong to report a crime?

Ooh! The Fourth Dimension is WOMBLIKE.

Fact: Murderers are 75% worse at lies than ordinary people. That's why they kill.

Rachel, was it your idea or mine to go through a hole in space-time in order to make sure we get paid for painting someone's house?

Characters

Rachel - student, barmaid, lunchbox inventor
Tessa - her friend
William - librarian, friend of Rachel and Tessa, in police custody. This is not a coincidence.
Amy - Missing in action
Tim - Sick with the pox
Len - Professor in Police Custody
Shelley - friend of Amy. Enemy of Rachel.
2 Policemen, one of whom is named Randall
A mysterious monster- woooooooo

Plot

Opens with Rachel and Tessa having lunch then going to lectures. Rachel has come up with a lunchbox with cooler and internet on the lid. She thinks this invention will stop them having to work over the summer. They try to get Tim interested but he has the pox. Then disaster strikes as a truck has obliterated the pub they work at.

While trying to figure out how to earn money to eat over the summer, they overhear Professor Len telling Hugo that his decorator has stopped painting due to a mild case of Rabies. They offer to do the painting for him for £850, bamboozling him with talk of mob-controlled unions.

They discover a strange black square on the wall behind a wardrobe. Tessa wanders if it could be a gateway to the dimension of sexy boys. Rachel thinks it more likely to be a giant tribute to Hitler's moustache, and if it is a gateway it's to a dimension of big cumbersome monsters who ate the sexy boys.

As they finish painting, Amy announces to Len, her father, that she is dropping out of Art School to concentrate on her poetry. As Len is in a rage, Tessa decides to drop in the next day for the cheque.

That night, at 13 o'clock, Len gets up to eat pie. Meanwhile a monster enters the house and kidnaps Amy.

On their way to get the check, Tessa and Rachel meet Shelley and tease her about Angela Lansbury. Arriving at the house they are surprised to find Len being arrested. To get their cheque, they decide to prove him innocent, and if he turns out to be guilty frame him for something else when they have the money.

Len protests his innocence, but the police like him for it. Rachel and Tessa recruit William from the library to help. They break into Len's house that night, and leave cards that show that Len and Amy love each other to throw off the profiler. They also look for clues. The police turn up but let them go after they claim they're holding a vigil.

William finds Shelley putting up missing posters for Amy. it becomes clear that Rachel and Tessa's antipathy for her is mutual. Rachel claims she's toughening Shelley up with her lies and swears.

Back at the police station, the police are more interested in whether any of the kids have hooked up rather than why they broke in. Meanwhile Rachel Tessa and William do some research on alternate dimensions. William has called in favours to get the only copy of Hans Klinker's Visiting Dimensions in the British Library System. It turns out it's so rare because it has 4D glasses in the back. They head off back to Len's house, but Rachel insults Shelley on the way.

With the 4D specs the black square is a chute leading... somewhere. However Shelley has reported them to the police who arrive to arrest them. They arrest William but Rachel and Tessa have vanished into the 4th dimension.

Homonymphobia

2011-03-10T08:53:00.003Z

discreet adj Careful to avoid social embarrassment or distress, esp. by keeping confidences secret; tactful. [C14 from Old French discret, from Medieval Latin discrētus, from Latin ḏiscernere to DISCERN] - dis'creetly adv - dis'creetness n

Usage Avoid confusion with discrete

AND

discrete adj 1 Separate or distinct in form or concept 2 Consisting of separate or distinct parts 3 Statistics 3a (of a variable) having consecutive values that are not infinitesimally close, so that its analysis requires summation rather than integration 3b (of a distribution) relating to a discrete variable. Compare with continuous (sense 4) [C14 from Latin discrētus separated, set apart; see DISCREET] - dis'cretely adv - discreetness n

Usage Avoid confusion with discreet

What the hell? I've been getting this wrong for at least 15 and maybe 20 years. Why did no one tell me?

It's not that bad. Mostly I (correctly) use the word discretion which bizarrely refers to discreet rather than discrete.

Homonyms causing confusion. Who'd have thought it?

Carstairs and Topper: The Case of the Purloined Pornography Part 2

2011-03-09T09:00:00.001Z

Part One can be found here. And now the conclusion...

The door opened as Carstairs and Lady Glenshire approached the Belgrave Square address. "Milady, sir," said the tall, liveried man inside.

"And this is?" said Carstairs, indicating the servant with Topper.

"Jackson, the footman," said Lady Glenshire.

"The footman. I see."

"Can I take your hat, sir?" said Jackson.

"No... hmm? Actually could you get someone to give him a brush? Just to get the worst of the dust off. Please be careful with the nap, eh?"

Carstairs watched as Jackson carried Topper away towards the kitchen. "Lady Glenshire, let us not delay. Can you show me where the papers disappeared from?"

They entered a small library, one that had obviously seen a lot of use. A short, middle-aged man working at a desk, jumped up at their entrance.

"Carstairs, this is Humperdinck, my husband's private secretary."

"Secretary, eh?" said Carstairs.

"Indeed Mr Carstairs. Is there anything I can assist with?"

"I think we can manage, Humperdinck," said Lady Glenshire, "Would you mind giving us some privacy?"

Looking along the shelves, Carstairs spotted a set of folios. "I presume the sketches came from here, perhaps under 'B' for Bonaparte, where everything has been taken out and replaced recently."

"Quite" said Lady Glenshire.

"I see someone has checked under 'N' for Napoleon."

"I doubt any Englishman would index documents to do with the Corsican Tyrant in that way, but it was better to be sure that Humperdinck had not made that error."

A young man entered, with Topper. "Here you are sir - good as new!"

"Thank you Mitchel," said Lady Glenshire. In answer to Carstair's raised eyebrow she expanded "The bootboy".

"Are there any other servants who might have access to the library?" asked Carstairs.

"Only I, my husband and Humperdinck have keys. The butler did, but we dismissed him last month. Due to Lord Glenshire's position in the government, his belongings were searched before being returned to him, so he can't have stolen them."

"If it were last month, I would expect that he would have sold them already if his motive was profit. Such a sale in London would almost certainly have come to the attention of the gossips in the Rascal's Club. So they must be abroad, as he hasn't tried to blackmail you."

"Oh!" said Lady Glenshire, raising one elegantly gloved hand to her mouth. "He had written in oblique terms about a better reference... I must find the letter." She left the room at a great rate of knots.

When she returned, Carstairs was standing next to the "K" folios. Lady Glenshire seemed a little flustered, but her search had brought colour to her cheeks and a steely glint to her eye. "I am afraid that, following my husband's instructions, the letter has been used for hygienic purposes. I suppose we shall have to track him down to his seedy lair in the foul depths of London's underbelly."

"No need Lady Glenshire." said Carstairs.

"Ah?" she said, with perhaps the faintest hint of disappointment.

Carstairs picked up Topper to reveal a loose collection of papers. "I would hypothesise that your butler, anticipating his dismissal, hid the sketches in this folio, intending to claim he had stolen them. If you attempted to go to the police, there would be no evidence. The perfect crime. You had best examine them to ensure they are all there."

"How on earth did you find them?"

"Topper gave me the clue. One of the folios, under J, had been recently repaired. Checking it, I realised that this was the work of your husband, Lord Glenshire. However they were of two different styles."

"But how did you know that these were the Bonaparte sketches?"

"Bonaparte was trained as a draughtsman and his drawings are accurate renderings of the female form. Your husband is clearly an amateur and exaggerates certain features of his model."

"Mmm."

"Of course, Lord Glenshire signed his, while Bonaparte used his monogrammatic N."

"I see. Well thank you Mr Carstairs. It seems we owe you our thanks."

"You owe me nothing; it was my pleasure Lady Glenshire. Topper and I will put the word out so that your former butler will find England very uncomfortable."

"Please Mr Carstairs. After all this I must at the very least insist that you call be by my given name."

"Well if you insist, then I shall Lady Jane."

The End.

If you're not interested in where I think I found the bits that inspired this story then this is the end. If you want to go a little deeper into my brain read on.

Lady Jane's entry into the steamroom, and the varying formality of the name bit at the end are taken from this scene from the entertaining but incoherent 1998 film The Avengers.

"The butler did it" - The Butler is always a suspect. I'm pretty sure that at an early age I was reading some Agatha Christie and was told that the butler always did it. This is not true. So does the butler always do it or do Carstairs and Topper just blame him? Are they brilliant or full of class prejudice? Or both?

In the past, and sometimes even now, I would answer the door to people who were expected, even invited and put on a show of surprise as well as an upper class accent. "Carstairs! And Lady Jane! But what are you doing in Helsinki?" It amuses me to add this in-joke to the story of a suave gentleman about town and his partner, a rather spiffing top hat who together fight crime.

I pass over the question of Topper.

Finally, this story would clearly never have existed without Edgar Allen Poe, C. Auguste Dupin and The Purloined Letter.

SGR: Short Man Idly Fingering Bowler Hat etc.

2011-03-08T09:00:00.002Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 6: Romania

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a page declaring a new Tessa and Rachel adventure with a picture of the giant black beetle Krakkagar you have reached the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post. If for some reason, rather than reading the comic you want to stay here, at the bottom of this post is the plot synopsis and character list I made to keep everything straight in my head.

Review

It's the sexy super spy, fan favourite Fallon Young ladies and gentlemen. Fallon has been transplanted from John Allison's previous webcomic Bobbins. Following her we find out Romania has the same elements of strangeness as the Tackleford of Scary Go Round.

That Fallon lives in a crazy spy world is not unexpected (see her origin story). I'm not sure she actually completes her mission (did we ever find out what happened to the previous agent?) but this is in the fine tradition of Bond - send him out to keep an eye on something unusual and he comes back a few weeks later with a suntan and a new girlfriend and leaves behind a ruined base that was probably being used for something bad.

The bad guy has a face for a skull and a base full of monkeys who decide Tim is Primate Prime. But that's not what the story is about. Fallon is in charge, but Tim takes no orders from no man, or woman. They wrangle over details and compete over Scrabble. Meanwhile they dance to a romantical song, Tim takes risks to rescue her and they have clear affection for each other. At the end Fallon decides it's not going to work, but lets him down gently with the old "If I weren't an international super spy it could be different line". How many times have we heard that one gents?

It's the back-and-forths rather than the one liners or sight gags that stand out here. Ryan exaggerates the pathos of his life but it's clear that he's pretty low (although he may yet go lower). His lack of common sense after Shelley's warnings is a bit too much; he's gone beyond adorable child-man to dangerous idiot.

It's clear that Tackleford is not the only place that strange things happen. I note that Fallon counts 1 British agent and 7 other people gone missing, so I'm adding 8 to the bodycount, which is now 25 for the run so far.

Finally Guest Comics! They range from Meh, to Exactly Right, to If Only to Wowie Zowie.

After the Guest Comics Allison promises us a new Rachel and Tessa adventure. Compared to the rest of the cast those two have seemed a little cartoony, a little flat. Perhaps in this story they will show some additional Dimensionality.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

... So from what I can work out, the moon is an optical illusion caused by the sun reflecting off a bald guy's head. But I can't prove it too good.

Ryan that be fascinating but who is that lady, she moves like a panther or other big cat.

What if, just as she was leaving the pub, I jumped over 5 parked cars on my scooter and didn't die?

If The Man holds a party, I don't go and I sure as hell don't help him put up the balloons.

Tim, we need someone who understands science but doesn't understand fear.

It's more a scalpels-and-death kind of mess.

Airports are sad because Tim, who you secretly have mad crushes on, flies out of them probably to die or make kisses with sexy Fallon.

Just keep an eye out for the classics. Man in Fez and Dark Glasses. Short man idly fingering bowler hat etc.

Have you ever tried to jump in front of a bullet? They move pretty fast, you know, like a bullet does.

Bucharest will form your beautiful, picturesque grave, imbecile English!

No! Spiderous Treachery!

Maybe his mother just loved a monkey.

Coach trips are traditionally associated with nice souvenirs, not ugly death.

This is the sort of news that requires a special dance.

Everything is half eaten. You're quite a bad wife, I think.

Let's form a plan by going to a local bistro, drinking red wine and dancing. Basically this is how 75% of military juntas are deposed.

When moon rises over peasant farmstead
Gypsy Girl dances with shy Stable-Lad
She waggles her hips and whispers in his ear
He offers silver in exchange for touching her bottom

Qakki. Mexican canoe piloted by Polar Bear. 43 points.

Fallon, not only is Qakki not a word, it is an insult to the proud traditions of scrabble.

Polar bears are holy in Mexico. They're allowed to drive cars. And vote.

Sausages... Nothin' but flying rats.

Look, right, I have to organise my petrol collection and my matches collection, so I might as well do both at the same time.

Are fire and petrol friends? I mean like scientifically speakin'.

There's something about you, Fallon, encourages a man to behave like logic's most hated enemy.

They'll either form a primitive agrarian society or eat each other.

Life takes his lunch money every day. And makes him eat it. For lunch.

Characters

Tim Jones, Scientist and Alpha Primate
Fallon Young, Super Spy
Amy, revealed to be in love with Tim
Shelley, housesitting for Tim
Ryan, also housesitting but with notably less common sense
Hugo, now buddies with Ryan
Thug, with gorilla arms
Dr Petrescu, Skull-faced and Monkey Mad
Dr Petrescu Jr, Evil Geneticist
Rachel and Tessa, who microwave lasagna like only barmaids can

Plot

Fallon meets Tim in the pub. Despite his dislike of "The Man" she recruits him for her government-backed superspy mission to bring back suspected war-criminal Dr Daniel Petrescu.

Amy, who may or may not have a mad crush on Tim, is unhappy about him going off on an extremely dangerous mission with the sexy, sexy Fallon. Fallon explains she's in charge, so Tim talks a lot of nonsense about being a free thinker who can't be reigned(sic) in. It's almost as though he's flirting with her. Fallon warns Tim of the chance of being assassinated at the airport and, indeed, a man there is being attacked by ninjas.

At their hotel they are ambushed by a bald man with gorilla arms. Tim sees him off by putting a spider down his trousers. As he flees, he drops a brochure for "Coach tours in beautiful picturesque Romania". Tim notes that the agent and seven other people have disappeared at points on and around the "old Romania" coach trip.

They go undercover on the coach trip. Fallon is unamused by Tim's enthusiastic pretence that they are newlyweds. Arriving at the castle where the agent vanished, they go to a nearby bistro for red wine and dancing.

Later they play Scrabble. Due to a dispute over the word "Qakki" Tim leaves to look for a dictionary. While looking, Fallon is kidnapped, depriving Tim of his lapdance forfeit. At this point Ryan and Sheeley call to find out if this "secret mission" has lead to Tim and Fallon gettinf it on.

Fallon is in a cell, being held by Dr Petrescu who has a skull for a face and talks about improving the human race in unusual metaphors. Tim, using advice from a drunk Ryan, gets a Romanian dog to sniff Fallon's shirt in the hope that it will track her. Rining off, back in Tackleford, it seems Shelley, Ryan and Hugo are housesitting. Unfortunately Ryan is drunk and organising his petrol collection and his matches collection at the same time.

Meanwhile Dr Petrescu lets Fallon out. His base is full of monkeys. It seems that at the age of six, a monkey clawed off his face at Tirgu Mures zoo. His experiments consist of dressing monkeys in human clothes and wigs. Petrescue is distracted by a call on the monkeyphone, so Fallon hides by putting on a wig and joining a monkey tea party.

At this moment the dog leads Tim to the underground base, where he enters and unties Fallon. The monkeys seem to like Tim and build an effigy of him out of cardboard boxes. He sets them on Dr Petrescu.

As they leave Romania, Tim wonders about the logical flaws; if there's someone doing genetic experiments, but Dr Petrescu just dressed up monkeys, could there be more than one Dr Petrescu? Perhaps the geneticist was the son of the monkey dresser? We flash back to the base and discover Dr Pertrescu telling Dr Petrescu Jr and the thug with gorilla arms to avenge him.

Tim returns home to discover that Ryan has destroyed his truck. Ryan mostly gets out of being beaten soundly for it due to his patheticness. Tim asks Fallon out for pie, but she has to go undercover at the women's beach volleyball tournament in Brazil. She says they can't have a thing, because she's always risking her life on the other side of the world. They have a goodbye kiss. Tim takes in stoicly by going to the pub for lunch and bantering with Rachel and Tessa.

Finally we get guest comics.

Carstairs and Topper: The Case of the Puloined Pornongrphy Part 1

2011-03-07T09:00:00.001Z

Carstair and Topper's previous adventure, The Mystery of the Missing Port can be found here.

Relaxing in the steam room of the Rascal's Club with a copy of The Times, Carstairs was surprised to hear a commotion outside. A lady in a dove grey outfit entered the room and strode towards Carstairs.

"You have the advantage of me Madam," he said. "Forgive me for not rising to greet you" He lowered the newspaper to avoid any undue embarrassment.

"Mr Carstairs. I require your assistance in a matter of the utmost discretion."

"Indeed you do... Lady Glenshire." At her surprise he continued, "A lady who needs the services of a discreet gentleman-detective urgently and who also possesses uncommon resource and force of personality enough to impose her will on the staff of the gentleman-only Rascal Club to the extent of entering the Steam Room. Combine that with your striking good lucks, fashionable dress and relative youth, there can only be one such person in London."

"Quite," said Lady Glenshire, looking slightly peeved.

"If you would care to retire to the Circumspect Room, I will join you when I have dressed appropriately for an investigation."

"I look forward to seeing more of you," said Lady Glenshire turning to leave so swiftly her truly enormous hat nearly took flight.

"Just so," murmured Carstairs.

----

As he entered through the curved doorway of the Circumspect Room Carstairs spotted Lady Glenshire sitting at a table with... Great Scott! His partner and trusty top hat, Topper! "That was devilishly quick work, even for Topper," he muttered to himself. Adjusting his cravat he joined them.

"Lady Glenshire. May I offer you some tea?"

"Please."

"Johnson?"

"Your tea sir," murmured Johnson, appearing at that moment with a tea tray.

"Mr Carstairs. As I said, this matter must remain discreet. However some documents belonging to my husband have been stolen."

"In general, as I'm sure Topper will have attempted to convince you, the police..."

"My husband will not have the police involved. The documents would be both embarrassing and cause an international incident. You see these are sketches by Napoleon Bonaparte of his lover Countess Marie Walewska[1]. Intimate sketches."

"I see. The French would certainly want them returned, and the nature of the pictures would be inappropriate for a peer of the realm. Where did the robbery take place?"

"At our townhouse. Shall we go?"

"I think so." Carstairs finished his tea, and, sweeping up Topper with his right arm, offered Lady Glenshire his left. "Johnson! Call my carriage."

"Yes Milady", murmured Johnson, vanishing into the mews.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[1] Countess Marie Walwewska was Napoleon's mistress from 1806 to 1809 and bore him an illegitimate son. As part of his training as an artillery officer Napoleon became a competent draughtsmen. In reality, these sketches have never been in private hands and are kept in the Archives nationales.

I Read Books: Ghost Wars

2011-03-04T09:00:00.001Z

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10 2001 by Steve Coll

My brother runs tours to South Asia, and he ordered this book. While waiting for him to pick it up I read it. It is an extremely well researched and generally excellent[1] history of what happened in Afghanistan during the period it refers to. It's coverage of the American, Saudi and Pakistani National Security communities, Bin Laden, and the other notable figures and most importantly how they interacted is unparalleled. Coll interviewed many of the players himself for the book, and from the notes has read every document available as well as having foreign interviews translated. If you want to know what happened, this is the book for you.

At the end of the day there are no great new revelations, in part because it was published in 2004[2]. It's nevertheless fascinating, seeing how after the revolution in Iran shockwaves spread across the Islamic world. Later that year many events loosely connected to it occurred including attacks on the American Embassy in Islamabad and the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and inspiring and radicalising many students, including Osama bin Laden. In many ways the coup by the Marxist-Leninist government in Afghanistan was a mirror-image of the Iranian revolution.

There are many, many interesting anecdotes[3]. Which is just as well, as this wealth of detail gets overwhelming. It's not that it's not interesting, but Coll goes out of his way to present just the facts - not making judgements beyond what people said and did, not speculating beyond the evidence - and to write in a clear style. Sometimes I found myself bogged down by this. It's not a popular history. It is a fine introduction to the region and the issues, but it's not written to entice you to read on. To a certain extent we know how it ends[4] which is enough to keep me going, but I did stop a couple of times part way through and take a break (by reading some Rowling and Brookmyre, obviously). So what do I think to sum up?

Read This: If you want to know what happened in Afghanistan, and what Bin Laden and the CIA were up to between 1979 and 2001
Don't Read This: If you have no interest in the region or you just want a brief overview rather than every single detail.

[1] And the Pulitzer board agreed, giving him the prize for general non-fiction in 2005
[2] The edition here is updated with documents from the 9/11 Commission, which Coll says mostly served to improve the precision of the chronology
[3] My favourite being Shortly after William Casey became Director of Central Intelligence. The previous CIA head had kept the place teetotal. Casey sticks his head out his office door, shouts "Two Vodka martinis" and shuts the door, leaving the executive suite puzzled - where do they get two vodka martinis from, and whose job is it to get them?
[4] Actually you don't, because it stops on 10 September 2001.

Not The Virgin Mary

2011-03-03T11:25:00.003Z

Daily Telegraph: Image of Virgin Mary spotted in Newquay cliff

It's very impressionist.

You know it's the lamp that makes me doubt*. I've spent hours of my life staring at pictures of the Virgin Mary and I've never seen her with a lamp. So what does the lamp symbolise? I find this which sounds plausible:

The lamp is most often used to represent the Word of God. It may also be used as a symbol of wisdom taken from the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in Matthew 25. The lamp was associated in the Old Testament with worship, where it symbolized God's presence (see Candlestick). A lamp can also represent life itself, or the Holy Spirit's indwelling.

I don't know - do you need that and her being pregnant? Seems overkill, and the non-iconographic won't get it anyway. Onwards: What saints have a lamp or lantern as their emblem? I get Saint Lucy and Saint Gudula. Hey remember Saint Lucy from the festival of lights?

Saint Gudula it seems was very religious woman in 7th century Flanders. She would go to church before dawn. A demon would put out her lantern but God would always re-light it for her.

So we're all good then? Not the Virgin Mary, but Saint Gudula or maybe Saint Lucy. Also she's not pregnant, that's a cushion up her robe for praying on.

(Why is it always the Virgin Mary? Every female figure! Also, from the way she's holding it the object looks more like a jug, but I've spent more time on this than it deserves already.)

* Also my scientific training and my middle name.

SGR: You Shame Science With Your Lies

2011-03-01T09:00:00.001Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 5: Down

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a page where Ryan is explaining how the moon is an optical illusion caused by the sun reflecting off a bald guys head you have reached the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post. If for some reason, rather than reading the comic you want to stay here, at the bottom of this post is the plot synopsis and character list I made to keep everything straight in my head.

Review

The last page of the previous story advertises "Robot Town Hall". Although this episode includes a robot and the town hall and puts the one in the other, the chapter called Robot Town Hall doesn't appear until Chapter 11 (which would have been 10 months in old money when it was new). Allison obviously changed his mind.

Perhaps because of this, the chapter is short and undramatic. Ryan and Amy go to lunch at a new place, Shelley gets a new job at the town hall, Tim builds a robot vending machine and sends it to the town hall. It's an off-speed set up chapter. Perhaps because of this, there's some good gag pages. Tim's optimism about the robot not going wrong under any conditions is good, leading to the title of this post. The list of his inventions (The Cake Hammer, The Acne Sander, Sex Dust) is good, better still his book Electromagnetism: One Bad Mother, and best of all his planned next job as hot-air ballooning vigilante. Hugo's sandwich shop is almost suspiciously cool.

Interestingly all the cast we see, we see at work in this episode; Tim inventing, Amy working for Tim, Shelley at the town hall, Ryan at the record shop and introducing Hugo at the Sandwich shop and the mayor at the town hall. Amy looks strangely off in this episode - always puzzled or vacant. The bodycount is zero, as might be hoped between wacky adventures.

All in all, it's not really a chapter, but a long interlude between the previous episode and the next, when Scary Go Round takes it's first trip abroad, to Romania.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

But I tell you, the fifth time you pop a wheelie in a double decker bus, it doesn't even feel like you're doing it.

This is the custom car of all ladies. My knees be weak like wet paper.

Does your meal deal really comprise a sandwich and malt liquor?

I just thought waving a gun around in the interview might focus some minds, is all. You don't gots to shoot it.

I had a go on Microsoft Office. It weren't as good as Gran Turismo.

He mathematically devised how sexy a lady's bottom can be! He uses the equation daily!

I'd just move on to the "Hot-air ballooning vigilante" stage of my career earlier than planned.

Electromagnetism is a benign force. I am 85% sure it would make the robot's brain extra nice.

You shame science with your lies.

You wouldn't put an ape in a box like that.

It's a robot! They're our metal friends from Japan! I read it in a book!!!

"I've got a milkshake with an umbrella in it! It cannot be diluted by rain!

God loves weasels, but do they really need an aqueduct?

Characters

Shelley, newly employed in the Town Hall Press Office
Tim, Inventor of the Jonesco Robot Drink Vending Machine
Amy, Assisting Tim
Ryan, Revealed to be ignorant about what goes on in offices
Hugo, Sandwich maker with attitude
Mr Mayor, the mayor

Plot

Ryan and Amy go to lunch at the new place "Hugo's". It is extremely cool. Leaving with their sandwiches they meet Shelley who has got a job at the town hall press office. Ryan has no idea how offices actually work, or maybe he does. As Amy leaves he claims Tim is extremely dirty and drops things for Amy to bend over and pick up. Amy leaves with her fingers in her ears singing "La La La".

Tim is inventing a robot vending machine, but is discouraged, feeling that his inventions names are better than his ideas. He plans to give the robot vending machine to the Town Hall for publicity. Amy is worried that the robot will go wrong which would be bad publicity.

It arrives at the Town Hall. Shelley is enthusiastic, but the Mayor is unimpressed.

SGR: She Ate The 90% Of The Brain None Of Us Ever Uses.

2011-02-22T09:02:00.007Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 4: Inevitable

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a big red page with the title "Robot Town Hall" and a picture of a robot with a heart you have reached the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post. If for some reason, rather than reading the comic you want to stay here, at the bottom of this post is the plot synopsis and character list I made to keep everything straight in my head.

Review

Shelley has a problem. Tim has an invention. They meet by accident with hilarious consequences in a story that will change their lives for ever!

The ending is just slightly too cute for me, but Shelley's slow descent into zombieness feels both quite real and is hilarious. Right up to the end she's resisting ("Unless your teeth were to accidentally fall forward into his head...") and justifying herself. Throughout Shelley has a wobbly speech bubble, presumably representing a deep, breathy, returned-from-the-dead voice (in my mind).

Meanwhile Tim's invention could actually be built (I suspect the golf cart would fall over, but maybe not) and then works about as well as would be expected. It's realistic!

Interestingly, Copper Edge has a lodging home for the recently dead. More evidence that the Scary Go Round world is full of strangeness; it's not just these characters or Tackleford that attract the weirdness.

I find this one hilarious, but then I like zombies, inventions and making fun of golf. Slightly sad that the zombie plotline gets dealt with so quickly, but I guess a cute zombie redhead solving supernatural mysteries would have been a step too far. The pictures of excuses - Bear (probably) NO, Jimmy Carter NO, Crow YES - are a favourite of mine. Her ridiculous dancing crow excuse however is slightly blunted by the fact that she's a zombie living in a home for the recently dead. In the Scary Go Round world, why couldn't she be teaching a crow to dance?

Rachel and Tessa have been relegated to a one page coda at the end, and don't seem happy about it, which makes them even more unsympathetic. The bodycount is either 0 or -1, if we didn't count the last chapter as -1, for a strip total to date of 17.

So Shelley back to life, Amy working for Tim, everything back to normal. After the excitement of this chapter, maybe the characters should have lunch or coffee or a drink with an umbrella. Time to calm things Down.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

But I have to find out where I fit into the world, now that I have no chance of making it with boys any more due to my low body temperature and my weird, staring eyes.

Now I like the reassuring smell of dry rot as much as the next person but I have my pride.

I have to find a job so I can afford the important things in life, like sexy boots and chocolate.

Once you're dead, your paperwork stops paperworking.

Interviews with recruitment agencies aren't meant to end with improvised no-style karate getaways.

Dear Sir, as inventor of the highly successful "Witness Protection Programme", I am now looking for new, discreet challenges...

I can't wear this to work! My unruly charges are clearly visible to passers by.

Hello, Passer-by, meet my chests.

I'm training a crow to dance, and we've like, got no chance at the regional championships if I don't finish making his tiny tap shoes.

It's funny, kicking everyhting in the room to pieces didn't help like I thought it would.

Hey, apparently there is and EU ruling against feeble girly-girls being made to carry loads of metal.

It is probably a court summons for cruelty to ladies.

Copper Edge is nice. They rob you, then shoot you so you don't feel sad.

I don't know anything about golf, except that you hit a ball with a sort of stick.

Failing that Hypno specs!

Keane End Links. Cocking a snook since 1914.

What is the arch enemy of every golfer? Lightning!

You are either the greatest liar alive or a magic man.

The 25 foot mast squirts lightning into the cart's battery, leaving you free to hit your balls with impunity.

Eating Brains is wrong! Super wrong! Unless your teeth were to accidentally fall forward into his head...

I'm not chasing her. I want to keep my skull sexy.

Testing is for weaklings!

She was our little ray of sunshine. Then she died and came back as a sweet little abomination...

I'm not a doctor, but I'd say that being hit by lightning reactivated every dead cell in her zombie body.

By some incredible million to one chance she ate the 90% of the brain that none of us ever uses.

Apparently she just had "one of those bad comas, the sort where they bury you".

Characters

Shelley Winters, the acceptable face of the undead
Tim Jones, Inventor of the Mother Superior
Amy Chilton, Tim's assistant
Ryan Beckwith, here cameoing polishing Tim's truck
Hamilton Percy, golfer and shady businessman
Dave Eye, shady businessman and golfer, with a less caring secretary than Percy
Rachel and Tessa, barmaids whose comment give us the "meh" local response to Shelley's return from the dead

Plot

Shelley, having become a zombie in the previous chapter decides to leave and try and make a new ~~life~~ existence for herself. Unfortunately, being dead makes it problematic to get a job. She answers a sinister ad to become a discreet assistant to Hamilton Percy at Percy Import/Export. Quite what they import/export isn't clear.

Shelley is staying at the Copper Edge Heights Lodging House for the Recently Dead. She doesn't mix with the other residents, giving ridiculous excuses.

Meanwhile, Amy is working as Tim's assistant (and Ryan as Tim's truck polisher). They get a letter returning Tim's money. There's no address but it's postmarked Copper Edge.

Shelley is getting more and more on edge, wrecking her room and scoffing cauliflowers, which she mistakenly calls brains. Percy and she are meeting someone called Dave Eye to play golf. In a coincidence, Amy and Tim are also going to the golf club to make a presentation. Tim has invented a golf cart with built in lightning conductor, "The Mother Superior". Despite Amy's nerves and opposition to golf, which is Whitey's game, the club chairman tries it out. At that moment on the golf course Shelley gives in to temptation and, claiming that she's getting a Scorpion out of Percy's hair, bites his head. She then turns up by the golf cart, at the moment when a storm starts.

Shelley attacks Tim, but is forced off by Amy. Shelley escapes in the Golf Cart and is inevitably struck by lightning. This destroys the cart and brings Shelley back to life. Properly this time. Additionally, Percy survives as Shelley only eats the 90% of the brain noone uses.

At the end we catch up with Tessa and Rachel who are unpleased by Shelley's resurrection. It seems her cuteness annoys them.

Advice

2011-02-16T22:24:00.005Z

Recently a friend wrote on my Facebook wall to let me know that his wife was a swirling vortex of entropy. I gave this advice which I now realise is generally applicable:

If the two of you are in a closed thermodynamic system LEAVE NOW*.

If the entire universe appears to be a closed thermodynamic system with no means of exiting, basic scientific research should be your FIRST PRIORITY.

* I'm a bit rusty on this, but I suspect a properly closed thermodynamic system would not have internet access.

New Words: Sympathivore

2011-02-16T17:09:00.002Z

My friend has been ill and claims to feed off sympathy. Therefore he is a Sympathivore*. As a google search shows up nothing for this I declare it a new word. Yay! Let's celebrate! Cup of tea Bruce.

* Pretty sure not Sympativore

Album Cover: Tomorrow Never Knows

2011-02-16T13:30:00.003Z

Track fourteen, the final song on Revolver.

Beatles version here.

The playlist for the entire album is linked to here and should play below. This has been Night of the Hats, bringing you cover versions of every track on The Beatles' Revolver.

SGR: Do you think zombies can shoot ink, like a squid?

2011-02-15T09:00:00.006Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. My introduction is here.)

Chapter 3: Meddling

Click on the chapter title above to read this chapter; when you get to a big red page with the word "Inevitable" and a photo of a pale skinned redhead you have started the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post. If for some reason, rather than reading the comic you want to stay here, at the bottom of this post is the plot synopsis and character list I made to keep everything straight in my head.

Review

In this Chapter Scary Go Round changes tack and becomes more what it will be for the rest of the run. Rather than have a mystery investigated by Rachel and Tessa, we see the situation from Ryan, Tim and Shelley's point of view. They are thrust into the middle of the problem (in Ryan's case because he makes a melancholy drunken mistake) and have to resolve it. I note that the first two chapters were, at least loosely, Science Fiction Horror, while this story is Supernatural Horror. The bodycount is zero, or possibly minus one (Thus making the total so far for the comic either seventeen or eighteen).

Rachel and Tessa are relegated to supporting characters. Rachel in particular becomes unsympathetic here.

Shelley as a zombie is both cute and vulnerable. Ryan is confused, as might be expected, and fairly ineffective. Tim is much more practical; confronted with a friend raised as an undead creature he washes her, gives her a change of clothes and then takes her to the pub quiz. Notably they don't seek help elsewhere. This is unsurprising after seeing the competence of the police in the previous chapters. The Tackleford Gazette is on the case however, with it's photofit of Ryan under the headline: Grave Robbed, Hairy inebriate sought.

The secondary problem, that of the devil trying to claim Ryan's soup, sorry, soul, is dealt with remarkably easily. A swift punch to the gut stops him? Really? Still, having learnt his lesson, he's sure to leave Tackleford alone from now on.

This chapter raises as many questions as it answers. Shelley isn't dead, nor is she a soulless demond, but she is undead. Ryan has tried to make things right, but has made them more wrong. Tim has been forced out of the shell he retreated into after Shelley's death. There are character points to be resolved!

Many excellent jokes, including one about Hitler. Allison does not make as many jokes about Hitler as I'd like; in fact I think there are only two in all of Scary Go Round. It is very definitely in 2002 though, as Ryan is smoking in the Pub, which is now banned.

Also new to this chapter but common to later ones is a coda at the end, in which we catch up with other characters to bring us up to date for future storylines. In this case, Amy and Len get together for Christmas. Combined with Shelley's resurrection this will make conflict in the next chapter Inevitable.

Best Lines/ Alternative Titles

Life's like a horse wearing a suit and smoking a cigar: hard to explain.

"Way things are between a man and a woman they can't ever really be just friends." "P'raps if the girl is bog eyed." "Sure, Sure."

"Do you know about the black arts son?" "What, like, hip-hop? Sure, I'm down with that." "No, Necromancy."

"Hey your coat is a reversible warlock smock! Nice!"

Ryan, the way I see things is this. You can run home and hide under your bedclothes, which any fool knows the devil cannot penetrate.

I've got to go to sleep, Shelley. Here's a straw. If you want brains in the night, just bung it in my ear and suck.

Tim will know what to do. Or if he doesn't, he'll shout at me until I feel that I've in some way paid for my sins.

I'm going to put her in the bath and pray nothing drops off then we are going to talk the talk of men, specifically angry men.

"Do you think zombies can shoot ink, like a squid?" "Sure, and you can play their teeth like a xylophone."

Shelley coming back as one of the undead might not be the ideal situation, but we'll make the best of it.

"Yes, based on a real person, possibly Hitler."

She's not going to be killed on the way to the Ladies' twice.

Christ, man! Sure, she's pale and no stranger to the casket, but the family of man needs harmony, be we white, black... or mottled grey!

Characters

Shelley Winters, undead abomination
Ryan Beckwith, friend of Shelley
Tim Jones, friend of Shelley
Ralph, lift operator from Chapter 1 and necromantical warlock
The Devil, who is evil
Rachel and Tessa, barmaids
Mrs Birch, Ryan's landlady, a lady of strict morality
Biff and Sanjiv, the West Yorkshire anti-zombie unit

Plot

Grieving over Shelley's death in Science Fair, Tim buries himself in his work, while Ryan goes to the pub. It's Hallowe'en and we see Rachel and Tessa in their role as unsympathetic barmaids. Ryan gets talking to Ralph, the lift operator from The gas, who turns out to be a warlock. Drunk and melancholy, Ryan joins in raising Shelley from the dead.

Understandably Ryan panics. Eventually he takes Shelley home, having to sneak her past his landlady Mrs Birch, who doesn't approve of young ladies (let alone dead ones). Eventually he takes her to Tim, who cleans her up and finds her some clothes that belonged to Goth Kate, his former, and best, lodger.

In an effort to get back to normal they take Shelley to the Guy Fawkes pub quiz. Shelley isn't great as the scribe. Unfortunately the West Yorkshire Anti-Zombie Unit, Biff and Sanjiv, is also in the pub, taking part in the quiz. Their chicken claw goes off, so they ambush Shelley in the ladies. Shelley, who has regained her speech, foils them by spitting out the salt they're trying to fill her mouth with. Tim interrupts and convinces them not to ~~kill~~ put her down. On their way out, rethinking their attitude to the undead, Biff is attacked by a zombie.

Tim Ryan and Shelley go out to look at the bonfire, when the Devil turns up, looking for Ryan's soul. Shelley, in a bad mood, punches him in the belly and he goes away never to be seen again.

Part two: Amy comes home from art school, with tats on her arms and pink in her hair. Len, her Dad, is not happy, but she makes it up to him by having painted five Phil Collins album covers as a Christmas present.

Album Cover: Got To Get You Into My Life

2011-02-14T19:27:00.003Z

Track thirteen, unlucky for some, from Revolver.

Many excellent covers for this track. The original can be found here.

One more track tomorrow and the whole damn playlist to allow you to experience the full virtual cover album that would be near impossible to do officially.

Saint Valentine

2011-02-14T14:48:00.002Z

Recycled from my series of Saint costumes for Hallowe'en, here's what is known about Saint Valentine:

He was a Christian in Rome in the 3rd Century AD, was martyred and his name was revered by the survivors.

This, of course, explains why he is the patron saint of beekeepers.

Album Cover: I Want To Tell You

2011-02-14T00:11:00.002Z

Track twelve from Revolver.

You know, it's been two weeks since I put this playlist together and I can't remember why I picked this one. I didn't actually remember it from the album; maybe I often got interrupted about the half hour mark. Anyway, here's a link to the original version, which is pretty cool too.

Album Cover: Doctor Robert

2011-02-11T16:50:00.003Z

Track Eleven from Revolver.

This was the most difficult to search for as Youtube wants to give me lots of Dr Robert X talking about Y and Doctor Robert A selling us B. Once you add The Beatles to the search string you then have to click past screens of videos of the Beatles playing this and everything else because, and who knew, The Beatles are pretty popular.

Album Cover: For No One

2011-02-09T17:06:00.002Z

Track Ten from Revolver.

A downbeat country music version. The more upbeat original can be heard here.

Album Cover: And Your Bird Can Sing

2011-02-08T19:09:00.002Z

Track Nine off Revolver.

You know you've got somewhere when Paul Weller is covering your songs. Although the Beatles had probably figured that out already.

SGR: Do You Think Angela Lansbury Ever Cusses?

2011-02-08T09:00:00.001Z

(I'm writing about the webcomic Scary Go Round. Introduction here.)

Chapter 2: Science Fair.

Click on the above to read this chapter; when Ryan invites Tim to the pub you have started the next chapter which is beyond the scope of this post. If for some reason, rather than reading the comic you want to stay here, at the bottom of this post is the plot synopsis and character list I made to keep everything straight in my head.

Review

In this second chapter Allison introduces Tim Jones and his friends from his previous comic, Bobbins. Again we have two threats; firstly a murderous murderer murdering people, and secondly Tim Jones being wrongly imprisoned for the crime.

The first chapter, The Gas, had a six panel page format. This chapter has a four panel page format. These smaller pages lead to a greater frequency of punchlines (and cliffhangers). This might have made the story seem lighter and sillier than the first chapter, but due to the visceral nature of the crimes - there's blood and a big knife in Fogerty's chest - and the fact one of the victims, Shelley, is someone nice, it all seems a lot more serious. People can get hurt, and there will be consequences. Not so much Scooby Doo as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Shelley's death makes me think a little of Gandalf's and Boromir's in The Fellowship of the Ring*. Gandalf and Boromir aren't walk-on parts, they're some of our heroes and they get killed. This isn't The Hobbit, this is serious business!

Nevertheless, much amusement in this chapter, from the nature of the inventions, to Tim's jailbreak, to Archie's death. Rachel and Tessa disagree on the the style of their crimesolving, with Tessa wanting to tangle with the killer. Nevertheless in the confrontation with Archie it's Rachel who wants to stab him with the pen. We see the flipside of the police being unfazed by a gaseous murderer - if you'll swallow that, why not blame someone who who is locked in jail? It's almost as though the police can't be bothered to investigate so someone else has to do it for them.

I'd say this is a step forward from the last one - just as funny but with a notion that this isn't just comedy, but there are also some consequences to all this weirdness.

Next time some of those consequences are explored and take a wacky left turn in Meddling (which I'll cover next Tuesday).

* This trope is used all over fantasy - one of our heroes is killed to show that THIS IS SERIOUS. This was brought to my attention by George R R Martin, whose A Song of Ice and Fire is coming to our screens soon. Hey, Sean Bean is playing Eddard Stark!

Alternate Titles to This Post/Best lines

What would President Jimmy Carter do?

I will tell you exactly who killed Seamus Fogerty and framed Tim - after I have been for a wee-wee because this is very exciting.

"Do you think Angela Lansbury ever cusses?" "Jesus yeah. She gets drunk and talks about how cute her ass is."

This is the world's most pathetic police force.

"Do you have enemies?" "I made a list. It's divided into "Sassed 'em", "Diddled their daughters" and "Misc"" "That's a lot of diddle." "And sass."

Hey is that the classic tweed cap, beige topcoat and sportsman's pipe?

Well... if we can't hurt his body... maybe we can injure... his feelings. Or jam this ballpoint pen into his brain.

Destructive power of rock and flimsy scientific principles don't fail me now.

Damn that's all the reminder I'll ever need not to run with scissors.

I have to break back into jail now in order to receive my official pardon. You never saw me - right.

Rachel, fashionably flappy trousers are a liability in a combat situation. Now, better than ever, I understand the all-action catsuit. Me-ow.

When taking an average of personality and ass, nationally she must have been in the top 1%.

Characters

Tim Jones, inventor
Shelley, ginger friend of Tim
Ryan, layabout friend of Tim
Rachel, student journalist and amateur investigator
Tessa, student journalist and amateur investigator
Angus Fogerty, inventor and rival to Tim
Archie Stanwyck, Angus' assistant
Fallon Young, superspy and friend of Tim
Professor Len, friend of Tim
Amy, Len's daughter and friend of Tim

Plot

Ryan and Shelley go to the Science Fair to help Tim with his exhibit. It's the glow in the dark duck, which will improve society, although not by much. Rachel and Tessa turn up to cover the science fair. Seamus Fogerty, Tim's archrival turns up, mocks the glow in the dark ducks and reveals his invention - Mr Baker, a combination breadmaker, coffeemaker and alarmclock. Tim is furious as this is his invention from the previous year, except using moulded plastic and with the minor scalding problem fixed.

As the science fair closes, Tim receives a note from Angus challenging him to have the issue out at midnight with fists and hurting. Arriving there, Tim discovers Angus dead. Covered in blood, the police turn up. Tim realises it's a frame up but is unable to convince the cops.

Tim's friends meet to try and get him off. Shelley claims to know who the culprit is, but before she can tell, she is killed on her way to the toilet. Although Rachel is nervous Tessa is keen to investigate. The police are happy to pin both murders on Tim, despite him being in jail when Shelley died. They interview Tim in jail and get a list of his enemies. They decide to start at Fogerty's offices, which are all posh and everything, while Tim works out of a shed. there they meet Fogerty's assistant and business partner Archie who is busy with million pound offers for Mr Baker.

Archie reveals that Tim and Fogerty were enemies of long standing, partly because Tim struck up a "friendship" with Drella, Fogerty's assistant. He then heads next door to get his list of Fogerty's enemies. Rachel and Tessa put together that Archie has been wronged by Tim in love, makes a lot of money from Fogerty's death and has just sealed the lab to realise that they have found out too much. In a panic, they call Tim at the prison.

Tim escapes by disguising himself. meanwhile Archie tries to kill Rachel and Tessa with some murdering inventions. They escape to the roof, with Tessa's trouser leg torn to shreds. Tim arrives to discover them trapped on the roof and reduced to hurting Archie's feelings and stabbing him with a ballpoint pen. Tim throws a rock, which hits Archie and causes him to fall on his own murdering tools and a bloody death, from which he will definitely not return. The police finally believe Tim didn't do it. Another crime solved by our intrepid girl reporters.

The chapter ends in the graveyard with Tim and Ryan missing Shelley.

Album Cover: Good Day Sunshine

2011-02-07T17:36:00.003Z

We reach side two, for those of us who remember the vinyl age of recording, and track eight of Revolver.

Two well respected musicians doing an upbeat very Seventies TV show vocal cover of this Beatles track.

Album Cover: She Said She Said

2011-02-06T19:49:00.004Z

Track Seven from Revolver

Search engines keep wanting to change my search to "He Said She Said" which is not Kevin Bacon's finest film. Unlike the film, The Beatles weren't trying to suggest two points of view with their title, but instead were adding emphasis by using repetition.

Album Cover: Yellow Submarine

2011-02-05T18:33:00.003Z

Track Six from Revolver.

This version simply because of the involvement of the Red Army Choir. Original here.