End of the Month Report: March 2012

Submissions:3
Rejections: 3
Acceptances: 0
Published: 1 (Whale of a Time in Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations)
Stories out in the wild: 11
New stories completed: 1 (Just subbed it)
Mood: Distracted by too many Real World matters at the moment.

Getting To Know Them

Yay! I did everything I set out to do on this most writerly of writerly days, with the help of many cups of coffee (as a tea drinker, I get extra bangs for my caffeine bucks when I do hit the hard stuff). Up at the crack of dawn, battling a body that did not want to do a sixth day of extreme commuting, I headed off for Jack Dann's spec-fic workshop, rereading workshop stories on the train all the way to *groan* Melbourne.

I drank coffee. We eased into the workshop. I drank coffee. We got used to each other and grew more comfortable critiquing. I drank coffee. We had a few laughs. I drank coffee. We decided on a more rigorous schedule for next time. I finished off with a cup of tea.

Then it was back to the train, out with my notebook and me, seriously buzzed, industriously tapping away at the keyboard all the way home. After opening up the house, patting the cats, putting on a load of washing, and transferring files to my writing computer, the lingering effects of all that coffee got me through 3 hours of spitting and polishing the story I REALLY wanted to get done for a midnight deadline if only for the satisfaction of achieving the goal I'd set myself.

And yay! I've just sent it! Again with the yay! And here, have some more caffeine inspired !!!s.

Now I can collapse. Maybe. Coffee might keep me upright for a few more hours. Anyway, Sunday, here I come.

All Weeks Should End Like This

All over the big, worldwide Internet, science fiction names are responding to Christopher Priest's post about this year's line up for the Arthur A. Clarke Award, who should and shouldn't be on the list, and who should or shouldn't win.

It's stratospheric stuff beyond my ken.

Here in my humble corner of cyberspace, I'm just deliriously happy that over at the Goodreads page for Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations a reader, a complete stranger, mentioned that my story Whale of a Time was one of her favourites in the anthology.

Gearing Up Again

There's workshop critiquing to finish up. There's a short story to wind up so it can make the deadline this weekend. There's another all-dayer at the Arvo Job tomorrow. There's the actual workshop all day on Saturday.

Me thinks my train trips back and forth forth for the next two days will involve much pondering and scribbling.

Midnight Run

Ah, there's nothing like running around at 12.30 in the morning in the pitch dark with a high beam torch chasing a rogue dog out of the backyard so one my cats could come in. I was wondering what had become of Polly when she wasn't waiting out the front with Cooper as usual, but it wasn't until I looked out the kitchen window and saw a wagging tail disappear into the gloom, then heard a lot of crashing and crunching vegetation and excited panting. Out I went with my trusty torch and discovered first upturned garden furniture and then spotted a shaggy shape with glowing eyes up on the chook shed looking down at me like some demonic beast from a Stephen King novel.

Yes, it was up on the chook shed. The shed is on a slope, as most things are in this old goldmining town, so it's not so high to jump up onto from behind. The dog then leapt from the shed roof over the side fence into the neighbour's yard (but it's not their dog). A few minutes later, the beastie was back, and I had to chase it out again. It seemed awfully savvy about getting in and out, so I don't think this was its first visit.

Possibly I've discovered the culprit responsible for defeathering the chook a couple of weeks ago.

If You're Not Happy and You Show It

Apparently, if you're a sourpuss academic at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, my old stomping grounds, you'll get in trouble with your bosses, as the university has recently introduced a "behavioural capability framework" that requires staff to promote positivity and show passion for the job, all of which will be measured by "external benchmarks of performance excellence", a loaded phrase open to multiple levels of interpretive abuse if ever I heard one. All staff members have to sign off on this code by April 13, three months before they're due to begin negotiating a new collective agreement with the university. And if you don't sign the framework? Hmmm. I can't say for sure, but there's a word that starts with a letter that is also a buzzing insect and ends with what the postman delivers that might be of relevance in this situation.

So how did this come to pass? When did the world become place where some control freaky behavioural bureaucrat could come up with such a ridiculously restrictive idea, get it past a committee of people supposedly possessed of the ability to think critically, and have a university actually demand that their professional thinkers and questioners act like smiley salespeople pushing a mobile phone plan? What happened to the idea of universities fostering brilliance and individuality and eccentricity? And are kids these days really to be denied memories of a certain surly lecturer, someone they can bond over and bitch about for decades until one day the penny drops and they're old enough to realise what the old grump was trying to teach them?

It all sounds a tad Orwellian to me. Let's measure that smile. Let's weigh that passion. Let's plot points on your personal positivity graph to keep a detailed check on how non-negative you've been.

Gah!

All Weeks Should Start Like This

After an all-dayer at the Arvo Job, I came home to two packages wedged between the fly screen and front door. Could they be, could they be...?

Yes! It was book bounty from the US! My copies of Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations had arrived. I quickly ripped open the packages, fondled the books, and discovered to my surprise that there were introductions to go with each story. I quickly located my own story, as you do. With lovely phrases like cheeky and smart and Gitte Christensen, whose crisp prose is as fun to read as it is thoughtful, and a description of the story as reading a bit like a sensationalist harlequin novel, well, come what may, I'll be grinning all week.

Appetite Suppressant

*HUGE SPOILER ALERT* DO NOT READ THIS if you don't want my opinion to contaminate your viewing of The Hunger Games movie, or to give away plot points from the book.

I wanted so much to love this film, and yes I know that movies aren't books, but alas, The Hunger Games movie was not as lip-smackingly good as I'd hoped it would be. I think the very thing that made the book so involving - the first person POV of a smart character who has been hardened by extreme poverty and personal tragedy, is savvy about the rules of The Hunger Games, and is on edge all the time trying to work out what supposed friends are up to and whether they're out to double-cross her - did not translate well onto the screen. Without Katniss' internal dialogues dissecting both her own behaviour and the questionable actions of those around her, the many layers of information manipulation that shape the alliance of convenience between Katniss and Peeta became a wishy-washy affair that made both of them look rather clueless.

That Katniss was reluctantly playing the part of a star-crossed lover as a strategy to woo the citizens of The Capitol wasn't all that clear to those in the movie audience who hadn't read the book. Our dystopian Artemis looked like a bit of a two-timing hussy. That Haymitch had (possibly) cooked up the scenario with Peeta prior to the interview on the eve of the games wasn't evident. And Peeta, though his character started out well enough, lost his air of genial dangerousness and ended up coming across as something of a vacillating woos rather than a (possibly) cluey player who is (possibly) ruthlessly exploiting his own boy-next-door affection for Katniss to (possibly) score points with the audience and to (possibly) soften her up for the ultimate betrayal. That awareness of being watched even in private and calculated theatrics was missing, which blunted the paranoid edginess of the book and made it more of an action-mushy movie rather than a psycho-political drama. Katniss' maternal instincts were covered well enough, and these are important because they make her break the usual rules of the games and challenge the cruelty of the spectacle, and she was a wonderfully physical character able to hold her own on the battlefield with the boys and other girls, but I missed Katniss Everdeen the social observer and political realist.

I was particularly sad that the beasts used in the finale were portrayed as digital creations rather than the far more grotesque genetic monsters of the book that incorporated the remains of the dead contestants. Freaky, snarling, meaty laboratory zombies assembled by science for entertainment make a huge statement about a society so sick in soul that it condones such desecration, and they evoke a far more visceral horror than anodyne bytes carelessly flicked into a simulation.

Constipated Astronauts and Mouse Stew

Yesterday, I finished Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach, possibly not the best choice of audio book for lunchtime listening what with all the minutiae on ingesting and egesting in the emptiness between planets. The parts about how many ways our cobbled together bodies could be spun apart by sheer forces or horribly compressed that I listened to last week are fascinating (I was a tad worried about my heart for a few days, not wanting to jar it too much) and sex is always a perky topic that we want all the gossip on yes please, yes please, yes please, but this week's serving of fecal dust in space capsules, the physics of urinating in zero gravity, and floaties that, well, literally float past working astronauts, might not be deemed palatable dinner topics in some circles.

Luckily, 12 years of working in hospitals (not now, but long ago) has forever inured me to such bodily talk (and smells and sounds) so I happily tucked into my lunch as I learned all about fecal popcorning, how to use a space toilet, and what adventurers heading for Mars might find on their menus. Read this book! It’s a funny, informative romp that tackles many racy, behind-the-scenes rumours and slays quite a few mission control myths. The amount of groundwork that goes into catering for the small, everyday stuff of living in space is inspiring, and the sometimes disgusting truth of what astronauts will endure just to get that ride into space is far more admirable than the usual PR choreography of squeaky clean NASA hero shots without all the poo and piss.

If Memory Serves

I seem to recall having signed up for a spec-fic writing workshop, which means there are stories that need critiquing, which means I'd better read them, which means I'd better get a move on.

And there's an anthology I want to submit to which has a looming deadline, which means I'd better finish my Short but Great Work, which means I'd better get writing, which means I'd better get a move on.

Also, there's that Arvo Job I need to get to soon, which means I'd better squeeze in a few push ups now to straighten out my poor multiply desk-bound body before I run, possibly through rain (no gas tonight?) for the train, which means I'd better get a move on.

Hmm, whatever happened to my plan to make March the Month of Working on my YA Novel?

Local Intel

There's a movie review in our big regional paper. The headline reads: Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy.

Sometimes spellcheck just doesn't cut it. And editors nap on the job.

Simple Sunday

I slept in, I scribbled some, I submitted stories, I sashayed into town to sip chai and chat with an artist friend about many issues including ye olde subject concerning the vicissitudes of balancing day jobs with the need for time to do creative stuff, then sauntered home in the glorious sunshine to hang out with the cats (and chook), do more scriberly work and wishful subbing.

I also scanned my emails regularly - there are a few pending decisions that I'm starting to get seriously keyed up about, which is NOT good. Too hopeful + excited + rejection = sad writer.

It doesn't sound impressive, but it was a lovely day. Simple is often best.

***Less lovely were the 2 dead rats (uneaten) I found in the backyard this afternoon - Cooper has been a busy boy of late. Last week, he left a dead rat right outside the kitchen door. I'm used to mouse tails and the occasional mouse head turning up these days because there's an over abundance of rodents in the country areas at the moment. Not in my house, but obviously the homes surrounding me are regretting their catlessness. Or not. Whenever I'm out in the backyard, I see Cooper jumping backwards and forwards over the neighbours' fences, bringing back his catches. Really, I should charge my neighbours for his rodent removal services. In the good old days, when honest folk truly appreciated a master mouser, I could possibly have sold Cooper for an exorbitant price and retired to a life of luxury.

Playing Those Mind Games

So I finally got to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. There were no car chases causing chaos in the streets. There were no shoot-outs wasting truck loads of ammunition. There were no protracted scenes of lovingly framed violence-porn. There were no shouty exchanges where characters ranted about the unfairness of it all. There were no crude jokes, gross gags or buddy banter. There were no references to money as an overriding motivation. There were *gasp* no love-conquers-all storylines.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a subdued film, mostly about watching and waiting, baiting and pre-empting, not drawing attention to oneself and using brain power to bring down the bad guys. Not your typical cinema fare these days, and yet the audience was the most rapt and blissfully unchatty one I’ve experienced in many years, everyone mirroring the tense quietness of the movie, their collective attention enthralled by the minimal movements and guarded glances of Smiley and his well-behaved cohorts at the Circus.

I enjoyed the film's recreation of the Cold War atmosphere of 1973, of a paranoid world still run by the weary men and women who'd been forged in dark fires of WW II, a breed both ruthless and yet touchingly ideological. The products, the clothes, the graffitti hinting at the times to come were all wonderfully wrought. However, my mechanically minded brother spotted a technical anachronism that hasn’t yet made the internet lists - I just checked, but believe me, even knowing what the goof-ups are, I still wouldn’t have noticed any them. Plus, there is such a thing as being too anal about a movie doing outdoor scenes forty years after the fact. Anyway, I thought long and hard about revealing this tidbit, but in honour of the film’s theme of withholding information and messin’ with heads...

Working While I Wait

So I whiled away the morning reading New Scientist and writing a recalcitrant new story while I waited for the knock at the door that I've come to know so well , that most welcome sound which announces that the gas guys have arrived and I once more have a fully functioning household.

So yay, 'tis done now. Time for the whistling part of the day. Let the washing and sweeping and the bread baking begin.

Ungassed Again

It rained down hard yesterday, so naturally I'm without gas once more. *sigh* I should just get a direct number for those guys with the pump trucks...

Onwards towards the weekend.

Resonating

There's a new Aussie anthology out - Mythic Resonance - which includes a few names that resonate with me.

I'm not in it, but TOC buddy from The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, and Evolution Jen White has a tale in it, as has Sue Bursztynski, she who long ago rescued The Six Solvers and the Mystery of the Sad Boy from the ASIM slush pile. Then there's Donna Maree Hanson, who actually championed the very story that I submitted to this anthology when I previously subbed it to an anthology she was co-editing back in 2008. Alas, that anthology was cancelled because they did not receive enough quality stories and the story in question has been homeless since (everyone keeps commenting that it reads like the first chapter of a novel when I've never thought of it as anything but a short story. I'm still trying to figure out how to fix the ending, if indeed it needs fixing.)

Anyway, enough about me and my living vicariously through my tenuous links with this book.

Ea, master of Apsu, the great water beneath the earth; Gelert, the faithful hound; Medusa and Herakles; sirens, valkyries, fairies; Leonardo Da Vinci and Snow White — these are just some of the legendary characters that resonate within this thought-provoking garland of short stories from Australia.


Contents
Foreword — Sue Hammond and Stephen Thompson
The Salted Heart — N A Sulway
The Everywhere And The Always — Alan Baxter
Annabel and the Witch — Paul Freeman
Through these eyes I see — Donna Maree Hanson
A Tale of Publication — Les Zigomanis
La Belle Dame — Satima Flavell
Glorious Destiny — Steven Gepp
Meeting my Renaissance Man — Vicky Daddo
Wetlands — Jen White
Man’s Best Friend — Tom Williams
In Paradise, Trapped — Kelly Dillon
Holly and Iron — Nigel Read
Brothers — Sue Bursztynski

You can purchase it here.

Are We Digging a Big Hole for Ourselves?

It used to be that when council workers gathered for a spot of al fresco maintenance you would see one bloke down in the hole doing the digging whilst his colleagues supportively congregated, leaned on their shovels and offered encouragement to the digger whilst nattering about the missus, the state of the nation, and footy.

These days, if the scene I witnessed yesterday morning was typical, there’s still just the one bloke down in the hole doing the digging, but he’s all on his own now because his mates, who are sprawled along the roadside in various lounging positions with their personal devices, are busy chatting with a faraway person (possibly the missus), texting (possibly about the state of the nation), or watching footage on tiny screens (possibly footy).

I’m still not sure about mobile phones. I sometimes suspect they’re part of another Borg time travel plot, moulding our minds and habits for voluntary assimilation in a not too far future.

In Cahoots with the Madding Crowd

Some people make a point of avoiding megabestsellers, taking the automatic position that they must be badly written to have such broad appeal. Personally, I don’t see why you can’t enjoy the communal tales shared around a campfire and then go lock yourself away in a library with a delightfully obscure tome that only you and three other people on the planet like. One does not preclude the other. Anyway, whenever a spec-fic series becomes a massive hit, I like to check it out to see what the fuss is all about. Sometimes it takes me a few years to catch up, but when I finally do, it’s never a waste of time. I’m either transported along with the crowds, or I end up viewing it as an assignment, noting what the author is doing and trying to figure out why it appeals to others but not to me.

Harry Potter was, unexpectedly for me at the time, an example of the first. Three books had already been published by the time I got around to it, and I thought it would be a charming children’s tale that I’d dip in and out of and observe from a mature distance. I cracked opened Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t read the words. The room was too dark. Hours had passed without me moving. I got up, turned on the light, sat down and finished it in that second sitting. Okay, it’s an amazingly small book compared with the bricks that followed later, but it was quite and authorial feat for JK to hook an old person like me along with the kids. It was a good thing I didn’t have HP and the Chamber of Secrets then, because I would have dived right into it and probably taken the next day off from whatever job I had back then.

The tween targeted Twilight series was, unexpectedly, an example of the second. Hearing that it used Jane Austen as a touchstone, and having enjoyed Anne Rice’s Lestat books, I thought that a rampaging-with-hormones teenager version of exploring all the sexual subtexts surrounding vampires would make for riveting reading. Wrong. I slowly forced my way through it, irritated by the heroine, offended by the hero, and put off by all the gag-worthy “relationship advice”, feeling like a generational trespasser, but conceding that I might have liked it better many decades ago when I was going through my own adolescent romantic period. However, any residual clemency towards the series was withdrawn about a third of the way into New Moon. The whole werewolf baby-bride scenario, to put it in exceedingly polite terms, stopped me cold. I was too furious to go on. Funny thing is, the most imminently mockable thing – the sparkling vampires – was the one concept I found vaguely interesting. Depicting life-siphoning vamps as mineral creatures that seem to turn slowly into stone as the millennia pass is evocative. But “sparkly” is not a work that engenders respect, and though I haven’t seen the movies, I suspect that glittering guys work even worse as a visual.

Reading the first book of the Hunger Games series was a cross between the two above. I got sucked in and lost track of time, and finished it in three readings, but even as I was enjoying it, a part of me was cheering from the sidelines at the issues that the author was deftly raising along the way, as the best SF always does. In this book politics matters, food is not something that magically appears in supermarkets, water is acknowledged as a fundamental of life, and the economics of state-sanctioned cruelty are explained. I was initially wary about the book’s first person POV, but quickly realised it was absolutely necessary to hear the thoughts of a main character who has grown up with “reality TV” of the most gruesome sort and has therefore thoroughly internalized the strategies of the Hunger Games and how to woo to the audience. She knows that popularity can mean the difference between life and death. I can see the character still has far to go, and can’t wait to get hold of the second book in the series.

Good thing I haven’t got it or I’d have spent all of today (which, by the way, is part of a long weekend here in Australia, hence this long post) reading as well.

Pulp Friction

They definitely should have kept the of Mars in the title. It sets the tone. Apparently all kinds of surveys revealed this would turn off a certain demographic (women), so rather than commit to the pulp origins of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series right from the get-go, the movie PTBs decided to try and lure folk in under if not false pretences, then some deliberately ambiguous marketing.

I can understand why they didn’t go for the even better title of Princess of Mars (apart from the fact that surveys showed that blokes are turned off by the “Princess” in that title), what with the Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris film of 2009 by the same name, but I wish they’d had more faith in their pulpy product. In for a penny, in for a pound. Anyway, the generic title and uncertain expectations might explain why we were the only ones laughing at the session we attended today.

Relax, people, pulp is supposed to be over the top. Pulp is supposed to have a cast of thousands. It’s supposed to be fun, and full of action and intrigues and, if it's SF, aliens and monsters and stuff. And honestly, it’s really not that hard to follow the plot. It’s sci-fi of ye olde B-grade matinee sort that just happens to have cost a lot of money, most of which went into the amazing special effects. Just dive in and revel in the gorgeousness of it all.

As an addendum, there's a good interview here with Michael Chabon, he of the works of mainstream literature who also enjoys and writes SF, and who happened to co-write the screenplay for John Carter (of Mars).

A Tale of Two Tails

Pictorial evidence. Here are the before and after pics of our recent poultry crime/drama.

Before: so feathery.

After: so bedraggled.

Surfacing for a Quick Book Review

Yep, it's good.

The tributes have been trucked in, scrubbed, trimmed, styled, trained and turned loose.

Boo to the Capitol.

Go, Katniss Everdeen, you go girl!

Fowl Play

*sigh* I should be at the movies watching John Carter right now, but unfortunately the head cold that has been moving from desk to desk at the Arvo Job this week finally cornered me yesterday. Since I don’t appreciate other people sneezing and nose-blowing at the movies, I can hardly do so myself. Fortunately, it’s a quickie bug (I can already feel it winding down), so I should be right for Martian intrigues tomorrow.

It looks like something cornered the chook yesterday as well. She was fine when I fed her in the morning, but today she looks raggedy, and has only a single, pathetic plume for a tail. Under her hangout, I found enough feathers to build another chicken (better than she was before? Better, stronger, faster?) I have a possible culprit, or rather two culprits, but no direct evidence – the two young magpies that have been dropping by for chook breakfast leftovers for many months. They’ve grown into rather cocky adolescents. After I fed the chook this morning, there was an almighty ruckus, and I discovered the twin black-and-white terrors chasing the chook from her food. But could two magpies so thoroughly defeather a grown chicken? Anyway, I opened the kitchen door and let slip the cats of war, and my mighty moggies promptly chased off the magpies so the poor, put-upon chook could have some much needed peace and quiet.

Now I’m off for a bit of peace and quiet myself, with a box of tissues, a pot of tea, smoochy cats and a book. I’ve got just the thing for a blah-sickie day – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I’ve been saving this for just such an occasion, a day when I have the perfect excuse to read for hours and hours and utterly lose myself in the book rather than read it bit by bit.

I hope it’s as good as they say.

Dialogue Between a Writer and a Declining Editor

Scene: I receive, via email, lovely, confidence-boosting words about my brand new automaton story from the Editor-in-Chief of a pro magazine and react as follows in the privacy of my home office.

EiC: I really like your writing.

Me: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

EiC: Alas, I just purchased something very similar.

Me: Drats! If only I'd sent it off earlier instead of tinkering with it for so long! I might have pipped that other story at the post.

Me (after a moment): And what do you mean very similar? Surely I'm incredibly original?

Me (after another moment): I blame that movie Hugo. Automatons are probably the new vampires.

EiC: Please, do continue to send stories.

Me: Oh, all right, if you insist :)

N.B. This nice rejection was not one of the two pending pro mag possibilities that I'm still on tenterhooks over.

Working Class Cats

I didn't know about neko cafés (cat cafés) in Tokyo until, on the way home tonight, I read about the new curfew that will put a serious crimp in the very popular cat-patting-and-coffee-business. Apparently there are about 100 neko cafés in Japan, with about 70 in Tokyo, as well as a few in Taiwan and South Korea.

A revision to Japan’s animal-protection law will soon enforce the 8 p.m. curfew on the “public display of cats and dogs,” according to Reuters, beginning June 1. The law is coming to a head with cat cafés, where customers pay to play with the animals. Popular in Tokyo, the cafés cater to animal lovers who, because of housing regulations, aren’t allowed to have pets in their homes, where space is often at a premium.

Intrigued, I went Googling, and came across many advertisements for the cafés like this one, where 12 cats are waiting for your coming, with pricing and rules for handling the feline staff. I especially like this caveat: When the cats hurt you, we give a first aid. However we cannot refund or bear your medical expenses. The 12 super-cute, very wide-eyed and somewhat stoic looking cats that are guaranteed to relax stressed out customers are then profiled here.

It all makes me feel positively decadent to have my tiny tribe all to myself.

Dark Sales

DARK TALES OF LOST CIVILIZATIONS was just released for sale over the weekend! It includes my SF story Whale of a Time.
If you so choose, you can buy this fine tome directly at AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Tales-Lost-Civilizations-Guignard/dp/0983433593/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330829070&sr=8-1
Or pop over and put in an order for this magnificent volume at Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-tales-of-lost-civilizations-eric-j-guignard/1038890509?ean=9780983433590&itm=1&usri=dark+tales+of+lost+civilizations

R.I.P. Paul

Paul Richard Haines

8 June 1970 - 5 March 2012

A Gassy Glitch in the Matrix.

So, I went out for a few hours, came home, turned on the gas...

I now await some gas guys, who no doubt will call the other gas guys with their pump trucks and...

So, I went out for a few hours, came home , turned on the gas...

I now await some gas guys, who no doubt will call the other gas guys with their pump trucks and...

So, I went out for a few hours, came home, turned on the gas...

I now await some gas guys, who no doubt will call the other gas guys with their pump trucks and...

Graphic Silence

Tonight's film came with an earnest warning.

“Do you know”, said the girl who handed over the tickets, “That this movie is in black and white, and that it’s silent?”
“Yes,” I answered, “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“I knoooow, but I HAVE to warn you,” she moaned.

Apparently some people have complained. Apparently some people have stormed out of sessions and demanded their money back. Apparently some people are utterly clueless.

I’ve seen films that should have come with a warning, like “Do you know that this movie pretends to be brave but isn’t?”, or “Do you know that this movie is nothing but car chases with bits of meaningless dialogue in between?”, or “Do you know that this movie has a 4S saccharine rating, enough to rot your teeth?”, or “Do you know that this movie is structured to show off the limited acting range of the Big Star cast as the main character rather than to actually make sense or entertain you?”

However, with the mega-hyped The Artist, I was pretty sure I understood the fundamentals of what I was getting into.

Apparently some people live in a bubble.

Waiting for Gas

Wet weather shenanigans up this way are playing havoc with my weekend plans - Mother Nature is such an inconsiderate cow. Once again, I have no gas, which has scuppered my meticulously organised Saturday morning bread-baking-whilst-getting-other-domestic-duties-over-and-done-with scheme. Also, arrangements to meet people are in limbo because I don’t know when the gas guys will arrive and how long it will take for them to fix things.

Ah well, I guess I’ll just have to write.

You Can Call Me Alison

Oh dear. First the voice recognition system not recognising my first name yesterday, now this piece on bad news for people with hard-to-pronounce names. As someone who is frequently called Gertrude, Gretta, or (I'm not sure why) Kim by confused Antipodeans, it seems that a name change might be a career booster. To think I could have been richer with another name...

In Denmark, of course, the entire issue is moot.