Next year…

Next year I intend to…

Try to pass for human.  I don’t know.  What I hate about work is the idea that you have to be fake to get anywhere.  Fake and aggressive.  And that’s not me.  I feel like I should be running an arts centre or something.  Something where people are all pulling together for something good.  If I could come into a large amount of money suddenly, that would be cool.  I’m not afraid of responsibility so I’d be happy to set up this project whatever it is.

Or… move to America.  If I’d been born in America I’d be working in comics or TV by now.

Oh, and work still doesn’t stretch me.  It’s all stuff I can do.  I want to do stuff I’ve never done.

I’ll try to be less whiny.

I want to be published again this year.  It’s been a coupla years now.

I intend to see Sherlock Holmes next year.  And Iron Man 2.  Though I think Iron Man 2 will probably be rubbish.

How’s that for resolutions?

Yarrr…

Splice the mainbrace and raise the mizzenmast, me hearty.  Tis a fine how-de-do, and no mistake.  Tack a course by the constant star and on to morning, yarrr!

This sea of ice is no obstacle to a stout-hearted sailor, with a firm grasp and keen eyes.  Taste the salty tang of the brine, say ee, and smell the ozone.  The wind on your cheeks, blowing your fulsome locks!  Tis the life, that it is.  Knock the weevils out of your biscuits and suck on a lime.  Rum and the lash!  Them’s the fun!  A long time without women, you’ll go, and the company of men can prove a distraction.

But out here, ye’re free.  No roof to hide the stars, no one to tell yer what to do.  Over the horizon are riches, to be taken.  The sea is a cruel mistress, and a rough lover.  You won’t live forever here, but damn, ye’ll have a time of it.

So sharpen yer cutlass, and keep your powder dry, and we’ll head out into the storm.

Hard work, eh?

I was clearing three inch thick sheets of ice from the road.  Three times people passed by and said “That’s hard work.”

Really?  Cracking through ice with a shovel and then lifting up great chunks of it and moving it off the road is hard work?

Blair’s Britain.

I do enjoy it though.  My muscles ache in a good way.  And I smell like a man.  Which man, I’ll leave you to guess.  Not Quentin Crisp.

Sadly I can hear job style work beckoning.  A return to people stealing my ideas and then cutting me out of the implementation.  A return to being fobbed off by people, who are too busy to help until someone else more important asks them for something half an hour later.  A return to all the lying and the backstabbing and browbeating and bullying and the cliques and gloryhounding.  Sigh.  I guess I’m going to be busy if I’m going to manage all that.

I’d rather be writing a revival of Super Soldiers for Marvel.  I picked up a couple of issues for 25p each at a comic mart recently, and they were mad.  There was a guy from Harlem called Dragonfly, the greatest martial artist in the world, who had gone into a zen state in the 70s so that he would be around to fight a better class of opponent.  And a mutant boxer called the Guvnor with All Cops Are Bastards tattooed on his knuckles.  The title was originally a rip-off of Universal Soldier (the film with Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren), but a new writer came in who was clearly inspired by Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis, and it looked rather fun.  I think it was ahead of its time.  But there was only one other issue after the ones I got, before the big comics implosion of the early 90s when the market collapsed a bit.

One day I’ll do a list of underestimated comics.

But, you see, the literary agent thing is back on again.  So there’s a chance there people, a chance that I may end up writing a Super Soldiers revival for Marvel.  I may become a writer.  Heck, I might draw it too.

Also visit http://www.hotelfred.com/ for the excellent Roger Langridge’s Mugwhump.  Rog also drew the excellent Fred the Clown and does a mean version of the Muppets that I wish I could force everyone to buy.

I’m also working on a sister site to the blog, where the stories can live.

The good and the bad

The bad about The End of Time:
John Simm being over the top. John Simm being Agent Smith. (My favourite was always Agent Brown.) The bit with the disappearing TARDIS is a callback to The Two Doctors. Joshua Naismith was no character at all. The DoctorDonna - it sounds like something a three year old would say. The stuff about Queen Elizabeth - hopefully not meant to be taken literally. Most of the scenes were filler that meant that the actual good stuff, the relationship between the Master and the Doctor, what’s going on in the Master’s head, building up the Immortality Gate stuff, was choppy.
The good: the bit in the cafe. The Time Lords.

All so…

It was a lovely white Christmas where I am.

I’d put up pictures of the winter wonderland but no camera with me.

Like Christmas is meant to be. Except trapped!

And then the Time Lords came back…

And we were all very glad.  They’re dressing like the Master did in the TV movie.

I liked the End of Time.  I know at least one person who will not be happy with the Master’s bio-blasts (although it’s actually something that was in one of the various mid-nineties drafts of Doctor Who revivals) but I like the idea that the Time Lords are able to reconfigure their physiology to do stuff, especially when they use all that energy in regeneration.

Oh yeah, you do all realise that Wilf’s last name is Mott because Bernard Cribbins was in the 60s film Dr Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth 2155AD as Tom?

I felt the setup of the Doctor and the Master’s confrontations was a bit lazy.  And Simm’s take on the Master is a little too hammy.  And the idea of everyone turning into the Master is more like watching Being John Malkovich than a terrifying fate for humanity, but I’m expecting a big reboot at the end that will explain why Moffatt’s Who doesn’t conform with Davies’ version.

And damn it, the Doctor isn’t supposed to be like me.

Merry Christmas

At the risk of causing affront to those who see Christmas as something other than a celebration of goodwill to all men, I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and get what you want.

The End of Time not being terrible is what I’m hoping for.

The unfair thing of life

So my friend Kate Orman, one of the bestselling Doctor Who authors, and I made contact again after a while. She asked what I was up to, and I told her about the blog and the fact that I keep indulging my dark moods on it as catharsis, and then on her own blog she did pretty much the same thing. And you know, there were things there that I recognise from my own problems. Which isn’t fair because Kate is so talented that it hurts.
So that’s what I wanted to say. ‘Cos I’m low again. I think moving back to York was a mistake. I thought it would make hanging out with folks easier. But I’d made the assumption that folks wanted to hang out with me. Ha!

A year, a whole year…

I’ve just had my renewal invoice. I’ve been doing this a year. Who knew? And yet here we are, and I’m not doing a very good job of it at the mo.

I’ve also been rewatching Firefly and find myself less irritated by the cutesy bits in the writing. You know, the way that war veteran Mal talks in the same way as the teenage girls in Buffy.

Perhaps a re-defined mission statement is in order.

I have a post called “Church of the Daleks” (all the Daleks stories in the old Doctor Who tened to be the Something of the Daleks - I always wanted to write a story called Nation of the Daleks, which is almost funny if you know who made up the Daleks in the first place) that has been sat in the drafts on the site for ages. The idea was a world where the Daleks are the religion, people base their lives on Dalek teachings, such as “Obey!” and “My vision has become impaired!” and “You are an enemy of the Daleks!”. But it never quite came together. I really wanted to write Matt Smith in the role. One day, maybe. Or maybe Sylvester McCoy.