Switch -Small Change

I find a lot of stories come from the distillation of several small items or thoughts coming together and mixing in just the right way

Small Change by Tom Waits is one of my favorite of his early songs. He really paints pictures of the underbelly of american city life and that put me in the mood of someone who would do anything to anyone for money

Add in Paris we went into a small bar for a coffee and a quick sit down and there were people their that looked like they spent all day just sat in the same seat watching the horse racing on these tiny TVs and I got thinking who would stay in the same crappy bar all day? there had to be something else going on.

Combine that with the documentary on Sumo I saw a few weeks before and you have this piece.

Its not ace but I've been clearing through some of the writing I've got on this computer and I found this and another piece Id swear I never written. I'm not going to publish that because its basically switch told from a different perspective but some of the details are totally different and I have to keep the continuity pure at least!

success!

Well, partial success anyways. Came third in our group of five, won two lost two and that could easily of been 2nd if my partner hadn't had the most unreliable serve ever.

Actually thats far too bitchy, I'm really sorry, He played really well and I was impressed with a lot of his long shots and the way he kept his head up even when we were up against it. Not everyone was so lucky with their draw for partners.

In other news:

Notfussed.com is back, sort of. Notfussed was a group of people I used to do some writing with and for for a couple of years. Its demise in 2003 directly related to me actually starting this blog. I had no vent for my random spleen so I had to start somewhere. Hopefully it'll be back up fully soon. Just working on a couple of pieces for it now.

The Enemy have been accurately compared to the Jam but with a spark and vitality that is definitely this century. excellent stuff.

Coffee is one of my primary treats, in fact I wrote a whole diatribe on it in a piece of fiction that will probably never see the light of day. In fact here it is;
"3: How do I get some coffee?

Coffee, for me, is the universal language of the morning. It does not matter if you rise in your exquisite flat in Pall Mall or in a rough Yurt in deepest Asia, the grinding of the roasted beans and the brewing in hot, not boiling, water is a mantra that steadies the nerves and comforts the soul. The mere running through of the ritual is enough to start you on the road to cope with what ever fate may strew in your path that day and then the magical properties of the draft will imbue you with the courage to at least begin the day in the correct frame of mind. "

I do feel the need to point out its written in the style of an 18th century writer who's just been dispatched to pre-seige paris while the Prussian hordes are massing. The main reason I haven't done anything further with it is I can't decide to make it fully historically accurate or turn it into a 'birth of steampunk' type work.

The history angle will probably win out as its a fascinating, and relatively unexplored period in history without steam powered robots and Zeppelins being thrown into the mix.

Got another weekend of rugby goodness today and that'll probably be it until the Wales tour of South Africa in summer. Its been quite a season even without the grand slam. Its cemented my support of Welsh rugby in general, I think its a fantastic game and much more eventful than a premiership match. IMOHO

Neighbours, Weddings and why Anne Coulter is not a nice person.

The wedding mentioned last post was lovely, really informal, no speeches, few tear (of joy) lots of beer and a pig on a spit. Woot!

We have new neighbours next door, this happens quite regularly as it's a rental property that is just about up the code. If its the rental code from the 1690s. The heating just doesn't work the toilet backs up reguarly and theres an interesting fungus growing the bedroom wall that only answers to 'Kevin'.

As you can imagine the turnover is quite high and with Friday night being seriously cold the neighbours, who appear to be perfectly nice, had to go and stay somewhere else. However they left their dog in the house. So the pooch wakes up at 6:30 wonders where everyone is and where his breakfast is coming from. So he starts barking, and barking and barking and barking. Unfourtunatly this sets off the kennels in the house three doors down, so suddenly, lest i remind you at 6:30 IN THE MORNING, we have the canine equalivent of the St Martins in the Field choir blasting out all around us.

Em, bless her, can sleep through nearly anything. I however had to get up and I think it stuck me in a grump for the rest of the day. thats the only way I can explain pushing some of the weaker pedestrians into traffic as I stomped around the high street.






Anne Coulter, who I have mentioned before as a ferociously intelligent dangerous right wing bigot who's had her homepage hacked. The reason why this is funny is most right wing names are, to be fair, limited in their intellegence. Shaun Hannity, Bill o'Reilly these are not people who debate or explore topics. They are the finger pointers, the agitators, the empty vessels making the most noise.

Idiots in other words.

But Anne Coulter is not an idiot, she is incredibly intelligent and this she fascinates the other side. "With a brain like hers she should be with us!" Which is why an open letter explaining your entire career was a joke has a strangely plausible ring to it. Sadly it is a fake, she's still the same brittle, attractive, damaged woman she ever was. More's the pity. She des strike me as someone who's hollow inside.

In the interests of balance her real website is here but, honestly, if you're used to thinking for yourself and your political views sit anywhere to the left of, say, Goebbels I'd give it a miss.

Enjoyed the last game of the world cup. I did think the fairy tale for England would come true but a stronger south african side held out in a tense nervy game. And actually with all the hyperbole surounding the Springboks I can only imagine the reams of shit that would have been spewing from the commentators mouths if England had won it. Anyway, England have nothing to be ashamed of, they showed that experience can be more effective than youth. It does however help if you have youth in the shape of Tait and Flood to come on as fresh legs. Those boys really impressed.

The Welsh were simply abysmal. But could talk for weeks about that, and will do but not on this forum.

Oh and if you've never seen rathergood.com this is a good introduction. Its just flash animation and musical stupidity but a great way to pass the time. Main site here.

Peace out homeboys.

Crappy tuesdays.

I never could get the hang of tuesdays. I've got nothing really to do in work as tomorrow is my last day for two weeks so the day is dragging-dragging-dddddddddrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaagggggggiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnggggggggg.

Just trying to find little issues I can deal with quickly rather than getting involved in problems that are going to be a few days in the solving.

MEt with the registrar yesterday and she was very encouraging. Nothing was a hassle and it was all clear and straightforward. Which to be fair is exactly what you need to hear at this stage in the proceedings.



Oh and 'Overnight' is brilliant but I can't help feeling that if I'd had the same shocking introduction to the world of celebrity I might have turned into the same kind of ass-munch.

I'd have formed a better band though.

Writing

I am rarely happy with what I write and its even rarer that I get a good feeling when I finish a piece. I've just completed a five part short story called Switch that I'll unleash on you slowly. And I am more than happy with it, in fact I am very very happy with it. Now I just have to fulfil a promise to an actor friend and turn it into a radio play.

 

Actually looking at it in its current state it would die on its arse on Radio as its mostly monologues, good monologues but monologues nonetheless.

 

Have to rejigg the whole thing. But that's part of the appeal. Watch this space.

 

UPDATE: A friend has just emailed asked if he can use one of the lines from part five as his Email signature. I can think of no higher honour.

 

 

Things

Woke up at six and couldn't get back to sleep. Many many people over the course of the last few weeks have asked me if I was nervous yet. Well for the first time I woke up this morning and I was. I just kept on thinking about all the things that could go wrong over the next eleven days. There so many variables and so many people involved that almost anything could happen. Pigs falling from the sky wouldn't surprise me now.

 

The basics of it, the fundamentals, are in place and have been for months now. I have the rings and the booked the person to turn them into a legally binding contract. Everything else is really just window dressing, as vital as they may seem to the process if we had only the two of us and two tramps we dragged in as witnesses we would still get married and that's the part that doesn't scare me at all.

 

Committing myself for life to the one person that means everything to me is a real no-brainer. With her I am more than the sum of my parts. With her I can actually achieve the potential of who I could be. 

 

 

*Bleugh*

 

Sorry, got a bit soppy there. But its the toing and froing of people and events and the ephemera that surrounds the wedding that worries me. Not the actual event itself.

 

 

 

bad head.

You know it's a bad headache when you have to keep checking your ears to make sure your brain isn't trickling out of them.

I blamed it on the hangover from Claires wedding on Saturday but I think its the bird flu finally come to finish me off. Darn avians!

I work with Claire and She and her husband kev have accompained us on many a rugby trip. And yes that is a pint of bitter in her hand!

With their wedding done and they both looked great, its Em and my turn next which isn't quite as scary as I thought it would be. Still a bit terrifying though.

Off to scout out some paracetamol, or aspirin, or a bat to club myself into unconciousness, which ever come first really.

The worlds third best spectator sport

I am of course referring to American Politics which is the third most compelling sport in the world.

Numbers one and two are Rugby and Sumo which of course are just different flavours of big bastards running at each other with murder in their eyes. And no padding.

The media seems to focus more on the candidates quirks than their actual policies because to be brutally honest the physical characteristics and differences between the candidates is the only thing that's interesting about them.

People complain that politicians are lying scumbags who'd pimp out their own grandmother to get that extra vote.

"Why can't they ever tell the truth?!" people moan.

Well interestingly enough the reason they can't ever speak the truth is that we won't let them.

Any person that has got to be a candidate for either of the major parties is a career politician. They have made their fortune or used Daddies, to get where they are today and they've done that by being obsequious and veiling everything they say in the cloak of denyability.

When we as the public hold people to such close account and such close scrutiny they simply can't afford to be seen to be wrong. No Pol can ever say 'Yep. Okay. I goofed up, there were no weapons in Iraq. Sorry about that. My bad.' because the public outcry would be enormous. 'What else have they got wrong?' the press would scream and it would be goodbye bye Mr Politician.

Instead they make statements that can't possibly be argued with and can't be quantified.

They could say, "We need to clamp down on some dissenting voices so we're going to start monitoring all your communications that go outside of our borders."

But instead we force them to say "I want to increase the security of our country."

How can you argue against security? "I disagree with my honourable friend, I think this country is just too secure. I want more danger for all our citizens. I will plough your tax dollars into increasing the variety and spread of the threats ranged against us."


So now with the race for the democratic candidacy under way we're back to listening to a bunch of people all trying to convince us as the voters they they are the right man/woman/crustacean for the job.

In these 'debates' every word is spun sanitized and polished up to a gleaming shine before its launched forth so the only part that holds the interest once our bulls%%t filter falls into place is their actual appearance.

And thank God, it used to be a choice between boring white guy number one and boring white guy number two. Now its a choice between racy ex-First lady with balls of iron and boring white guy disguised as interesting black guy number 2.



But we want a boring guy, don't we? We want someone who won't fly off the handle when the Russian bear wakes up and starts growling. We want someone who can go to those endless meetings on sanitation and discuss policy changes and all that dull dull dull crap SO WE DON"T HAVE TO.

Happy birth-daze.

Had a great birthday spent in the bosom of my family and friends whilst simultaneously in the bosom of the pub. How could things get better you ask? Well some poor fools bought me all the kit I need to start brewing my own beer! Its bubbling away now, like a giant vat of fun waiting to be matured and drunk in the next 3 to 4 weeks. I've always wanted to be the mad scientist type, rubbing my hands manically in front of vats of coloured liquids with electricity sparking off in the background.

I may even cackle.

Anyways it was a wonderful way to celebrate being thirty, and today in work I got given cake! woot! I should birthday more often.

About a third of my way through Harry Potter, not from any great love of the series but because it is a cultural event. How many books can claim that? There's always a must see movie or a must listen album, but a must read book? The measure of it is if people who rarely read are compelled to do so. It's very different for we bibliophiles that devour any material that hoves into our field of vision. So Potter as a phenomenon should be appreciated and studied but I don't think there will be anything quite like it again, in spite of the multitude of pretenders to the throne, there won't be certainly in our lifetimes anything approaching the Potter mania that is currently manifest.

Having a weird brain day were its hard to focus on one thought for longer than ten seconds, I'll blame the hangover from yesterday.

Thirty.

So. Thirty then.

When I was seventeen, back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, I thought that thirty was some distant strange far off land that one day some stranger in my skin might encounter. I never imaged it would actually be me staring down the barrel of middle age and daring myself to pull the trigger. You think you're going to live forever when you're that age and even if you do die you'll be all teenage drugs, opinions and snake-like hips until that day. It doesn't work like that.

HOWEVER that being said I want to be here, now at this age. A lot of people want to go back to being twenty one, I wouldn't swap my place for his for all the sweatshops in China. At twenty one I was a nervous stupid youth who wanted all the power with non of the responsibility when it all goes wrong. I've only just recently really learnt what that means, what it really means. I'm happy now, here in the situation I'm in. Okay job, nice house living with the person I adore more than anything on the earth and about to marry her. Why on earth would I swap that for early twenties acne, terrible terrible haircuts, crappy jobs where you're treated worse than scum, living with my parents and wasting my time by getting wasted?

I spent yesterday going through a mountain of old photos for the wedding and it was exactly the right thing to do. It showed me where I'd been, who I'd been with and what I had been doing for the last 10950 days of my life. And it showed me I've had a right laugh. And that where I'm going is just as important of where I've been.

I have:

Jumped off a Swiss mountain and parachuted to the valley below.
Worked abroad for six months for an American TV station,
Helped make a feature film that's available to buy on DVD.
Succeeded in gaining a degree in a hardcore science subject despite working full-time hours in a bar and having a brain leakier than your average colander.
Enjoyed a wrap party that lasted 48 hours starting in a Cardiff bar on a Friday night and ending Sunday afternoon on a beach with a bottle of mandarin vodka.
Watched Wales win their first grand slam in over twenty years.
Made someone laugh so hard they were nearly sick.
Shared icy beers in warm climes with cool people.
Made love in the surf with the ocean boiling around us.
Driven coast to coast in America in less than five days.
Been told a piece of my writing was superb by someone whose opinion on literature I respect.
Had my heart broken many times and broke someone else heart once. Only ever once.
Sang along with songs with friends at the top of my lungs in dingy clubs.
Fell in love with the most perfect woman who, against all laws of probability loves me back.
Felt the thrum and pulse of a city coming alive again.
Stood on a mountain top on my own and felt the touch of God.


So on the basis of that list when some slack jawed moron asks me "How does it feel to be thirty?" and I reply "F**king great." do you think that's justified?

Notes from....

I hate myself for saying this but I really like this one.

Its got the elements of what I was looking for with a brief nod to Hunter S Thompson and his description of Nixon "A man so twisted he needed help to screw his pants on in the morning."

Little did I know when I wrote this the joys of the current administration which is starting to make the arch-Demon himself look like an underachiever.

Anyways I had to make Madison leave to give Jack something to focus on as I was at that moment unhappily single and I didn't see why my fictious characters should be happy when I wasn't.

I'm a bit of a bastard like that!

morning!

 

Bad mood today. No reason just a bad mood where you eat too much at lunch to try and cheer yourself up and spend the first part of the afternoon looking for another job.

 

Just a general feeling of despondency and malaise.

Daze off

So I had two more study leave days which If I don't take them now I don't get. Work has calmed down so there was scope for the team to do without me for Thursday and Friday. So with about three hours actual coursework to do I managed to get it all done yesterday AND have time to go shopping. My question is who are all these people in town in the middle of the week? okay about half are holiday makers, you can tell them by their 'Oh my God is this it?' expression. It must be awful to have looked foward to their two weeks vacation and end up in Rhyl. We live here, we're used to its unique scent of desperation and faded, defiled dreams.

Anyways the entire centre was crowded which I can normally deal with but on my days off I like to be left the hell alone. Even stopping for a bit to eat got me even more agrophobic as I had to queue in the line of the shellsuited dead. Note to North Wales townies " You and the russian Maffia are the only peple that are still wearing shell suits. What does that tell you?"

The stag do is coming along nicely although a couple of people sadly can't make it due to other commitments. but so far there'll be seventeen of us painting Cardiff an attractive shade of vermillion.


Rambling a bit due to some exceptionally fine coffee.

Now the courseworks done I should be working on either our marriage vows or this radio thing. But instead I'm going to mess about on the computer for a couple of hours and then look at them this afternoon.

A question for all the ass-apes.

Why do you have to be cocks all the time? Is there some inner mechanism that run on a cycle beyond human understanding that compels you at irregular intervals to try and destroy any warmth or human feeling towards you? Are you forced against your will into saying the deepest and most hurtful things you can by an Id gone mad?
Or do you enjoy wrecking the lives and happiness of all you come across, tarnishing the souls of any unfortunates that cross your path?

I only ask because one of your butt faced brethren phoned me twice this afternoon. The first time he was as nice as pie and let me assure you, pie can indeed be nice. The second time I couldn't hear him properly as he had rammed the receiver right into his own anus and was farting out the question using his own gas and unique internal geography.

I don't know if it made him feel better taking all his aggression out on me but it did make me call him an Ass-ape in front of my colleagues and they all knew who I was talking about.

So congratulations cocks. Everyone knows who you are. That's how much the rest of the world likes you.

Microfiction....

This is the piece I was thinking about when I said I was thinking along similar lines as I was last year. Its more the feel its gives me than the actual writing, the ideas of a future which is fantastic and mundane at exactly the same time. Kind of like the present really,

I'm putting a few ideas together for a net radio play and this I think is a good introduction to the idea of it being set in the future. I've got to actually round off the story first. I know how its going to end but I need to actually put pen to paper *ahem* I mean fingertip to keyboard to actually get it done. Then I can get the script polished and start thinking about actually recording it. Radio's not a medium I've done anything in before so its interesting trying to make it exciting with no visual cues whatsoever.

Notes from...

I like this one.

 

There was a documentary on Annie Prolux on her novel 'That old Ace in the Hole';

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/That-Old-Hole-Annie-Proulx/dp/0007151527/ref=pd_bbs_sr_7/026-4164376-4951655?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182416964&sr=8-7

 

; where she visited all these weird little places in the Texas panhandle. Amongst them there were green and verdant towns that I would never expect to see in Texas.

 

I actually recommend 'That old ace in the hole' over her more well known books 'The Shipping news' or the gay cowboys eating pudding romp 'Brokeback Mountain'.

 

She really embeds herself in the stories she writes, living in a place for up to three years learning all about it before putting pen to paper. Her work really evokes places and people that you and I will never have the privilege of seeing but through her writing, feel we know.

 

 

Notes From...

I don't know what this obsession I had with cramming as many words into a sentence as I could. I think I was trying to over compensate in some way as if sentences aren't sentences without three separate propositions in them.

 

I needed to learn simple sentences are good.

 

Like that one.

 

Our own contempt for the familiar is a recurring theme in my life. It takes something special to drag us out of the norm and see a familiar thing in a fresh light.

 

 

 

The 'rainbows' quote is actually what someone said to me after I met a random girl in a random bar. I never saw her again but the phrase really stuck with me.

 

 

Notes From...

I like the ideas in this one if the execution of those ideas falls below ideal tolerance levels.

I love the quest idea, the idea of being on the road for the express purpose of being on the road.

Weird stuff always happens when you travel even if at the time it seems really mundane. Strapping oneself into an aluminium tube to be flung across the globe is darn odd when you think about it. And the fact they try to supplant your deep-seated fear of bursting into flames at 30000 feet with a small bag of salted nuts is just surreal.

Driving cross country is the most romantic way to travel when the roads aren't clogged. I love driving on the small byways that are devoid of traffic and letting other vehicle pass by by pulling over and waiting until the road is empty again before continuing on. I'm a bit weird that way.


And the curse of the 'final sentence of shite' still rings true. Trying to round a piece off with a snippet or sound bite just makes it sound awful. Its only in recent fiction I've been able to finish fiction off in a reasonable way that doesn't cause me to physically gag when I read it back a week or a month later.

Notes from....

It was odd to actually travel across America and actually see these places I written about two years before. Most of them were closed down but occasionaly you'd see a little store that maybe sold gas and it would just be a shack with nothing around it but desert for miles and miles. As you can imagine most of the stops are franchises now with the same level of plastic quality and dead eyed customer service you can get anywhere in the States but occasionally you would find a pearl.

I'm quite happy with the actual writing in this as well. I think the boy's a bit of a characture but as he has about two lines I think I can let that one go.

I had the idea of introducing all these weird characters together and having them traveling together like some kind of roaming circus/freakshow. When the list of essential characters passed fourteen it was time to scale it back. Although I have used some of those people in other things.

And one day the earth will tremble at the terrible tales of Jim Phrophet, Stoned Jones and Clearly Evil.

Notes from...

I've just started reading Don Quixote and having that fresh in my mind its a bit of a surprise to come back to this story I wrote a few years ago to find Cervantes and I were thinking along the same lines.

I do belive its more important to be out there doing something than waiting around for something to do. Its a lesson that its taken about ten years of independance to sink in but I'm taking full advantage of it now.

My greatest fear is to be stuck doing the same things in ten years just because its more comfortable than opening yourself up to new experiences and the possibility of being hurt.

Anyway if you're interested the Gutenburg Project has the original Don Quixote for your perusal. You don'ts have to read it in the original spanish but the option is there.

However sometimes with Notes from the Road and self made fiction in general, when you read it back months or years later you find yourself physically wincing at bad sentences. If I could remove that final paragraph gentle reader I would, but it has to be an accurate reflection of what I wrote and was seemingly happy with at the time.

However juvenile it may now appear.




Bollocks.