'Moustache' is a verb, now.

While my toe was in poor shape, I kept wearing shorts as they were easier to get on. I realised, as my toe recovered, that it was late November. Hence I thought it would be cool if I was still wearing shorts in December.

This seemed like something of a poor choice this morning, as I was scraping ice off my car.

So, hivemind, what say you?

Poll #1492880 Who wears short shorts?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 12

Should I keep wearing shorts this month?

Orlowski watch- apparently climate change denialism is the in thing.

In other news, anyone interested in having a butcher's at either of the two last nanowrimo novellas? I'm keen to get feedback.

Also, anyone who can make it out to Bedduth on Friday night and has £5 going spare could do a lot worse than seeing our improv gig up at the Arts Centre.

I'm also having a great deal of fun writing a Dizzy game using the engine a linked to earlier. It takes me back to the good old days of lives, colour clash and no means of saving progress. Although only one of the above is in the new incarnations.

Who da man?

Toe still hurts. I'm getting increasingly grumpy.

On the other hand, nanowrimo has been a blast. I'm using the past tense because I'm a paltry 1300 words from completion, the denouement arriving right on time, and it's going to be a snap to bring it on home.

I have loved writing it this year. In that way.

We've been rewatching Martian Successor Nadesico recently- a series which always surprises me with how good it is. If you're a fan of anime and you haven't seen it, you should remedy that. It's the exact opposite of a 'stealth parody', in that it's superficially a send up of giant robot/spaceship anime but underneath it beats a heart that is much more dramatic and visceral than its source material. The action scenes often fall back on false tension, as is the tradition of its source material, but there are personal moments of real triumph and despair. The superb characterisation is all the more remarkable when you consider that it has such a large ensemble cast. It also functions as a pretty direct parody of TTGL, which is quite a feat given that MSN came first.

We also watched The Kingdom, after an off-hand recommendation from scrabblemouse. It was jolly good, and it was somewhat refreshing to see a Hollywood film where at the end the gung-ho American go-getters are so thoroughly humbled, and visibly ashamed of their attitudes at the start of the film.

We're also watching Paranoia Agent, which is fucked up.

The same director was also at work on the film Paprika, which we saw last week. It is smashing. To call it alternatively nightmarish and dreamlike would be to waste an opportunity to use the word phantasmagorian. Plus, the geek gets the girl.

Who would win, Doctor McCoy or Doctor Cox?

( Answer within. )

Finally cracked the 70-point barrier.

( Read more... )

In other news, I managed to smash my toes a little last night at improv. They throbbed during most of the night, which was far from ideal when I had intended to have a 5.45am start to get to the office for a teleconference. In the end, there was no way I could drive on them so I ended up participating from home.

I was worried during the night that I would need to take them to casualty this morning, but after I had been up and about for a while the pain receded. I think it's just some grand bruising on the middle toe. I can drive, just about, if I'm not going too far.

Hark! For I vouchsafe that I will never
Cease my earnest troth for you my love,
I shall take an oath to swear that I will
Meet all of thy hopeful expectations.
Ne'er shall I recant these pledges, crafted
Lovingly today, to turn my back on
You and leave you in some lonely, fest'ring
Desolation would not be a path that
I shall follow.

( Read more... )

I got the latest Muse album for my birthday. I found it a slight disappointment; it being less crunchy than the last albums of theirs I got, but it's still good. The single greatest problem, however, is that it seems to be an album of songs that sound a bit like other songs.

So you can judge for yourself, here's a track listing from The Resistance by Muse.

1) Call Me
2) Clocks
3) Jesus Christ Superstar
4) Innuendo
5) Made in Heaven
6) Who Wants to Live Forever
7) Treasure Hunt Theme
8) This Love
9) - 11) Hebridean Overture

Find them on youtube or something and see what you think they sound like.

So, I crossed the half way mark this evening, slightly ahead of schedule. I suspect I may need to go back and revise earlier sections to pad out the count in the later stages, but that's no hardship because there are plenty of places where I raced over what could have been important introductory scenes to get to the good stuff.

One interest effect this year is that the improvising I'm doing as I write seems to be of markedly better quality than before.

As a case in point, the other day the main character went to sleep. My first thought was that this would be a good moment to have a dream scene that filled in some of the blanks about her and where she grew up. My second thought was that I could insert some needed tension by having the dream repeat a mildly dangerous episode from her childhood. As I wrote it, I realised that it would be the perfect opportunity to elaborate on her relationship with her sister, by having it be her sister that comes to help her. The next step was turning it into a nightmare where her sister doesn't help her, seemingly reinforcing the fact her sister's dead.

Of course, that aspect is actually foreshadowing a certain later event. But the reader will only realise it was foreshadowing, if he realises it at all, when the Big Reveal is made at the very end of the book.

Will it get noticed by the average reader without having to read the book multiple times? I don't know. I don't care. It's just such fun to be pulling all those strings like that. It's a drug, and I'm not sure I can give it up.