One performance…

Tennant’s Hamlet. Very like his Doctor. And his Casanova. Speech patterns and all.

Which is fine, Tennant is watchable, but remember when actors would create a character from the ground up? You know, like Depp kind of does. Or Ronnie Barker. Or, God help me, David Jason (remember the differences between Granville and Del Boy and Frost and Dangermouse?).

And he keeps impersonating me. He’s sat upside down in a chair reading right now. That’s what I did as a kid.

Bellowy Patrick Stewart, that’s always good.

There’s nothing good or bad, than thinking makes it so.

The best things in the world, part two

Friends.

Today I saw my friend Tom for the first time in twelve years.  And it reminded me of the things I’ve been missing.  Because it was fun and it was easy.  We went to Akbars in York.  Very good food.  I had ice cream with a sparkler in it.  Sparklers make all food more exciting.  And my mate Lauren did this silly mime earlier today of what a dog with the head of a jack russell and the body of a bulldog would move like, and that was good too.  (And I’ve had a crap week full of crap people stuff, so this was all very cool.)

An astrophysicist writes a doctor who story at http://www.rigel.org.uk/blog/000279.shtml. It’s very science-y.

The best things in the world, part one

Baked beans.

Laurel and Hardy films.

100% by Paul Pope.

The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore.  (I was eleven when I read about a young woman going to war.  This, I reckon, is one of the big influences on Joss Whedon.  Has to be.)

Warren Ellis’ website.

Urasawa’s manga.  All of it.

Kage Baker short stories.

Dandelion and burdock.

Bing sings, but Walt…

At work today I found a notice above my intray.

To get started, it read, you have to quit talking and begin doing.  This attributed to Walt Disney.  Y’know the guy who wasn’t so keen on the Jewish race and made up that Mouse.  (I named a cairn terrier after that Mouse.  And his sisters were called Danger and Mighty.  I wasn’t allowed to name dogs after that.)

I don’t think that Walt had left the notice there.  Though his reach is long.

I don’t know who did, if it was a coded message, or an attempt to communicate, but it sat there silently accusing me for the rest of the day.  I am, all too often, assured that I am too quiet.  So it must be more to do with not doing things.  Which is nice.  What did I do?  What didn’t I do?  Am I supposed to interpret this as a call to do something?  Should I carry on?

Am going to try for First Reader on Strange Horizons e-zine.  Wish me luck!

There’s no good way to put this…

Neil Gaiman’s dead cat story made me feel sad in a good way.

I like aminals a lot.  Cats, dogs, birds, fish, goats, but not horses (horses are smelly crazy bastards on the whole,), I like aminals a lot.  I think this is because aminals don’t judge.  They don’t care if you’re wearing shoes that were bought at Boyes, or that you’re a bit overweight, or that you wear glasses, and they certainly don’t mind if you put your jumper on inside out.  Aminals aren’t callous, they’re innocent.  They give you love if they think you need it, and they look after you and all they really want is food and love and to have a laugh.  And isn’t that what everyone wants, deep down?

I could really do with a pet right now.

It reminds me really of when Spike died.  Spike was a sheepdog-spaniel cross.  He was tempremental and would run away to court lady dogs, to the extent of climbing out of his kennel like Spider-man.  He was crafty, ambushing rabbits when other dogs were chasing them, and he had a mean temper with other dogs, and he had no interest in tennis balls unless another dog wanted them, but he also just wanted to mess around.  And then he got a brain tumour.  And all he could do was walk around in circles and crash into things.  And the vet gave him medicine to relieve the pressure but in his last days, lively vital Spike was a faded quiet version of himself who wouldn’t come out of his run.  And I sat with him when he was so cold and he didn’t acknowledge I was there and I asked him not to die, even though I knew it was the best thing that could happen to him at that point.  And before the day was out, he died.  And it wasn’t fair.  Because although he was old, before that brain tumour he had been so alive.  He could run faster than dogs who were only a third of his age. But that’s life.  It’s full of unfairness.

In York, no one can hear you… Except me… And I don’t want to…

My neighbour, whose name I have ascertained is JoJo, but not Mojo Jojo like the monkey in Powerpuff Girls, has a  male friend.  And their relationship has reached a physical plateau.  I know this because they like to wake me up at least twice a week with loud exclamations like they’re having difficulty threading a needle and it’s really starting to annoy them.  I do not need to hear this stuff and do not want to hear this stuff.  I realise that all you normal people do that thing, and enjoy doing that thing, but I’ve not done that thing, and frankly I don’t need to hear other people doing that thing.  Or indeed see it, which is why it’s irritating that these spambots keep trying to shove it in my face too in ever more perverted manner.  I believe this is a proverbial case of adding insult to injury.  Here’s what you can’t have, and in a manner that will turn your stomach.  Asimov audiobook torrents yes, torrents about the love between a man and a husky no.  It’s that simple.

These things are beyond me.  I don’t know how to chat a girl up (or a man either), and I have great difficulty being friends with girls, because I’m afraid that they think I’m like other men and are likely to try to chat them up so can’t just casually ask if they want to do things.  Because the women I meet seem to think that all men are after one thing.  They see subtext in everything.  And I’m not incapable of subtext, but most of the time I just say what I mean.  Le sigh.

Still, I had fish and chips for breakfast and found a copy of Legends from the End of Time by Michael Moorcock, which has been out of print for ages, and which I was rather desperate to read.  It’s very decadent fiction of a kind I’m fond, where science blurs into magic.  Because to do hard science fiction, you have to have characters who are scientists.  And characters who are scientists are observers, and experimenters, less than they are adventurers, or living things in a natural way, so you can’t happily delineate the changes on society that way.  Swashbuckling is better.  Once I’ve finished Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds by Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Wellman (his son), I’ll move on to this little treat.

I came very close to buying a DVD of the 1982 Hulk cartoon, which I remember loving  because he fights Quasimodo and his giant bat Salvatore, and Doctor Octopus, who is my all time favourite supervillain.

Loneliness is hard on the wallet.

I want to do a story with Book Pirates in it, after reading about the book pirates of Peru.  Thinking that one through.  Don’t want it to be too like Repent Harlequin, said the TickTock Man, the short story by Harlan Ellison that inspired Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta.  Or Brazil, the film by Terry Gilliam.

Spam and things

I had to clear out the 285 spam comments that have come through to this site.  Less dirty stuff, and the words they use I don’t want to understand, more torrents and plenty of drugs touted.  Some of it was almost relevant but I put that down to chance.

Getting a nettop to continue the building of the story site.  A fine plan, I think, as the carbon footprint should be smaller.  As is the machine.

Considering whether to go and see the Road and/or Book of Eli.  The Road is right up my street, and I’ve read the book first (I don’t think it’s going to be quite like the book), so that’s a definite.  Eli has Mila Kunis in it and Denzel, and Gary Oldman, but it looks a bit like a film Jean Claude van Damme would star in.  (Not that I don’t mind a film with JCVD in it, I rather like the Belgian, but I wouldn’t pay to watch one at the cinema.)

Just read a story by Walter Jon Williams which reminded me of the sort of stories I should be writing.  Too much Whedon and Battlestar has led me down an introspective cul-de-sac, though I like that my prose style is getting a bit wilder again.  Especially in the last story.  Expect change.

Crikey

I saw a dolly in a shop window of a baby orang-utan dressed up like a human baby.  Whilst we all know that playing with dollies is one of those evil patriarchal things men came up with to make sure that women know their place, I don’t know where to look on this one.  Would kids prefer babies from other species nowadays?  I’ve always been intrigued by pictures of dinosaurs and aliens and superheroes who look like monsters, because they’re not human and not standard and so there’s something artistic about them.  They’re like structures to be admired.  But even so, would I want a monkey baby?

Oh oh oh oh oh and Neil Gaiman apparently knows more about what’s going to happen with Marvelman.  I really hope he’s going to get to finish his trilogy of Ages.  Not least because I gave away my copy of the golden age to a friend.  (Who repays that these days by accusing me of being a stalker.  Thanks pal.  Thanks a lot. /kidding)

Oh oh oh and I should have been a paleontologist.  Or I should have studied Chaos.  This is what I learned this week.

The quietness continues

Just when you think things are settling, someone burgles your flat and takes the SIM card from your mobile internet thing. I’m awaiting a replacement SIM card.