The Ugly Truth About Wimmin

I came across this article in The Times about the 'secret lives' of women. The lives they live in their heads that they never let their partners into. Everyone needs a personal psychological space, and I respect that. In fact, I wholly endorse it. I wanted to read the article, though, because talking to a reporter gives people an anonymity they would not have otherwise, and that gives them a chance to be honest in a way they simply couldn't be otherwise. I wanted to learn about these secret female spaces, so I could better respect them.

But boy... did I learn.

It turns out all those ugly stereotypes are true and women really are disingenuous, manipulative, emotionally vapid harpies with obsessions about sex, shoes, lying and... well, anything but their 'soul mates'.

Don't believe me? Here are some choice quotes... (Oh, and the article was written by a woman, so this is all straight from the horse's mouth)

If they’re looking to regain self-esteem, the first place they look is sex with someone new.

“It was brief and very intense. It filled a gap in my life, and what it highlighted for both of us [he was also married] was how terrified we were of losing what we had with our spouses. I am so glad that my husband never found out, because the damage would have been immense. But then I wonder sometimes whether he suspected and turned a blind eye, that he knew everything would be all right between us as long as I didn’t confess, that it was something transient.”

Some women would rather have affairs than tell their partners that they want more in bed, believes psychoanalytic psychotherapist Jenny Riddell.

Ruth, 43, deliberately initiated a one-night stand when she was abroad for work. “I had been married for ten years to my first boyfriend, and I think I just wanted to prove that I could. It made me feel wonderful, because I had never had that experience before.”

"And how terrific when the crush dissolves, as it inevitably does, to feel the innocence of one who has done nothing more than commit adultery in her heart."

Or take Susanna, 34, who works in human resources. She has been married for years, but is enjoying a series of erotic e-mails and texts with a man she would never consider actually having an affair with. “I have to turn my phone off at night; I can’t sleep because it is so exciting. I need this, because I know I met my husband too young. I love him and will be married to him for ever, but I need this kind of exciting distraction.”

Few men realise just how much their partners sigh inwardly at male stupidity – and then discuss it with their female friends.

Women tell blatant lies about any mishap that might reinforce female stereotypes – crashing the car, buying new clothes. “He has absolutely no idea how much I spend on my hair, and if he did, he would be horrified,” says Clara, 40, who works in publishing.

Many working women (myself included) keep a running-away account, often secret, a sensible precaution when experience shows that men cannot necessarily be relied upon to support us. I know how much money my husband doesn’t have, and he knows that I have money in a separate account. But he will never know how much, because we might need it for something far more important than his Arsenal season ticket one day.

“He gets cross when I buy organic apples. So I put £200 a month into this account so that I can buy all the little luxuries that I want – like strawberries out of season, or expensive make-up – without him noticing. I want that freedom to be able to spend money frivolously, but I also don’t want that to be a sticky aspect of our marriage.”

“Men are so simple. They think we are complicated and devious, but they don’t think to ask us what we want, and we don’t say,” says Clara.

I used to think all those love songs were about men and women,” a new mother told me for my book Life After Birth. “But it is only now that I understand how all those words are really meant for your child."

“If he were killed in a car crash, I’d be more worried about how it would upset the children. I could cope with my grief, but I am not sure I could cope with theirs.”

There is a big difference between hiding an ongoing affair, where you have fallen out of love with your partner but can’t bear to end the relationship, and the casual fling, which was unfortunate, but didn’t mean anything. Not every affair needs to be confessed, particularly if your prime motivation is to appease your own guilt.

And what about their sample?

Sarah, 35, Company manager;
Helen, early 50's, travels abroad regularly for work;
Evie, 45, married to her childhood sweetheart for 25 years, 2 children, finacial difficulties;
Ruth, 43, abroad for work;
Caroline, 45, an architect;
Susanna, 34, HR;
Pat, early fifties, local government;
Clara, 40, publishing;
Carmilla; earns a small fortune in the City of London;
Joanne, 40, lawyer;

Ah, I see the white, upper-middle class career-type is well represented. Which is good, because it's a known, proven-by-science fact that they can speak for every woman, everywhere. Such a representative sample also rules out the possibility that the similarities in their views and experiences might be down to similarities in their circumstances and lifestyles, rather than solely due to their sex.

I think the best bit has to be the quotes from actual, real women on pages 3 and 4.

Thank you, Murdoch press, for bringing the truth! I'm so glad that the truth, once again, panders to my insecurities and reinforces my sense of entitlement. I'm really grateful you're here to protect me from a world where I might have to think and challenge the assumptions I hold about people who aren't me!

There's always a bigger fish

I was sad to read about Kraft buying Cadbury. When I was young, my dad used to go down the Off-Licence and bring us back bars of chocolate. There was always something special about Cadbury's. It was like there was chocolate, and then there was Cadbury's chocolate and Cadbury's was real chocolate.

I've been through this too many times to genuinely mourn. My childhood was twenty years ago and the things which made it special are dying. That's just what happens.

What really made me think was a line in the BBC report:

Earlier, Cadbury workers had staged protests in London calling for government support to guarantee jobs.

There are two things wrong with that. The first I'll get to, but the second is that there's nothing unusual about that.

I have a friend who believes--passionately--in a version of free-market economics. He's never read a damned thing about the theory or history, but when he talks it's enough to convince almost anyone short of Karl Marx. His idea is of hundreds of businesses all competing for the same buck. The companies are small, dynamic and cut-throat. They form and disappear like bubbles in a glass of Pepsi. They respond to changing consumer and worker tastes like salmon swimming upstream.

It's a model which means you can't get too attached to your business because you may wake up one day and realise you need to change it beyond recognition. That means it's got to be cheap and easy to set up a business. It also means someone can go from being a CEO to a stock boy and back again in a week.

There's no fear keeping people in their jobs, so if you want to keep your employees you have to keep them happy. There's plenty of other places for customers to go, so you've got to keep them happy, too.

Who loses in this model? Prices will be higher, because bulk production suddenly becomes impossible. There'll be no more chain stores and each town with have it's own set of shops, so you'll have to learn each town's shopping ecosystem individually: There's none of that comfort which comes from being able to walk into a strange town and get a cup of your favourite coffee.

The big losers are the shareholders and the CEO's. Those guys who don't do any real work and get all the rewards. Those guys who decide to pay their workers the bare legal minimum and fire them for independent thinking. Everybody, everybody, will have to work for a living.

That's the way my friend talks about it, anyway.

The trouble we have with the system at the moment is that the power is in the hands of those shareholders and CEO's. Those people who never have to look their workers in the face and never have to watch the consequences of their actions, much less live through them.

Western history is a bloody, gruesome place. A lot of that blood and gore was splattered in attempts to give people some power in their lives. Free the serfs. Free the slaves. Establish a parliament accountable to its people. Give every man and woman--regardless of income--a vote. Now look what we've done with our hard-worn inheritance... The shareholders decide to sell, and thousands of peoples' lives are destroyed. Jobs are scraps flicked off the CEO's tables to keep their precious machines oiled. They'll flick them somewhere else, if they prefer. And there's nothing anyone can do to stop them.

I just think it's sad.

Can I be cool and be myself, please?

This post over at Apex Books’ blog got me thinking.  And by thinking, I mean ranting.

There seems to be a lot of these sorts of feelings going around… The idea that, now we have big budge computer-generated special effects, the sci-fi/fantasy/spec-fic genre can finally be a popular, freed from the shackles of dodgy plot, dodgy sets and even dodgier ‘aliens’.

I mean, I’m not going to argue that SF/F/SF doesn’t have a reputation for those things.  Ask someone to draw a sci-fi fan, and you’ll get a picture of an over-weight, white guy in his thirties still living with his mother and a picture of the NCC-1701 on his wall.

What I don’t like is what people seem to be saying.  There seems to be an attitude of trying to reach out to the normal people and saying, ‘hey, you know all those shitty films with their shitty ‘aliens’? Yeah, they were shitty, weren’t they? Ha ha!  But look, we’re cool now!  Come play with us!’

I have a special place in my heart for bad sci-fi and less-than-great special effects.  It’s what I grew up with.  Those skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts?  Pure awesome.  But I’m not going to try and sell anyone on the idea they’re going to get new people into the genres.

But it wasn’t all that bad.  You remember Alien?  How about Blade Runner?  2001.  Predator.  Videodrome.  A Clockwork Orange.  Westworld.

There were fistfuls of excellent movies (hey, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure!) made before The Matrix.  These aren’t just movies which deserve to be remembered, they are our heritage.  They are our childhood.  They are why we love the genre.  Hell, they are what made us fall in love with it in a lot of cases.  Why the sudden rush to disown it?  Why is everyone changing their clothes, getting their hair cut and disowning their old friends to get in with the cool kids?  Why is everyone remembering The Queen of Outer Space and forgetting the original Terminator?

What we should be saying is, ‘hey, you liked Avatar?  Yeah, pretty cool film, isn’t it?  You know, we’ve been doing shit like that for years.  Hell, would you share Pandora if you didn’t have to?  Well, we didn’t want to either.  But as you’re here, let me show you a few things…’

Open brain and tip the words out

ABC News has an article from the Adult Entertainment Expo, with a report on the world's most advanced AI 'Sexbot'.  According to the maker's site, she "can carry on a discussion and expresses her love to you and be your loving friend. She can talk to you, listen to you and feel your touch."  All important things in a lover.

When I read about it, my thoughts went a bit like this:

“The most advanced AI and we make a sexbot with it?  Sheesh, my species sucks at being intelligent.”

“But then... the only times we really excel and push ourselves is for sex and war.  At least it isn't killing people.”

“Huh, huh-huh... Sexbot... huh-huh...”

And that's when I tweeted about it.  Yeah... I'm guilty of bringing down the tone on Twitter.  Sorry about that.

It raises an awful lot of interesting questions, the sexbot.  If men and women don't feel the need to have sex with each other, will they feel the need to interact at all? 

If a man wants sex, is it so bad to give it to him?  If we remove this primal drive we're always fighting with to get our end away, will men start to see woman as people first instead of sex objects?  Will that mean an end to the culture of exploiting women's sexuality to make a buck? 

If sex becomes like a Burger King burger--your way, when you want it--will sex between human beings become better?  Freed from the burden of basic satisfaction, will people start to treat sex like the art form it should be?  I mean, I've said for a while that if you remove the necessity of something, you'll rediscover the art.  Just look at what gourmet chiefs have produced now we don't have to worry about where our next meal is coming from.

Or will this just perpetuate and entrench the 'my way, my terms, fuck you' culture that's consuming us as a society at the moment?

Would I buy one, if I could afford it?  How long before they can make ones for those that like men?  Would my partner and myself end up with our own sexbots that we used whenever we felt a bit horny, and spend our evenings intellectual discourse with each other?  Or would we just never talk to each other again?  And, if we did never talk to each other again, then that kind of means the only reason we're in a relationship is for the sex... that can't be a good thing, can it?

You know, maybe I should buy half-a-dozen and open up a brothel.  It would mean there's less demand for human prostitutes, which has got to be a good thing, right?  Mind you, imagine being a species that evolved from sex toys.  Going to church to sing hymns to the Great Pimp in the Sky...

In my own image

I just wanted to share two, very different, maps with you.

The first is from the BBC and does a good job of explaining why I've been finding it so hard to get out of bed recently:



It's from this page on the BBC, but was also on the front of the Indepedent and the Telegraph this morning. I really, really hate the fact that, the moment weather deviates from the norm in this country (too hot, too cold, too windy etc) the entire infastructure falls apart. It makes me want to move to France. It's not that pictures like this make me any more forgiving, but it's something of a shock to see our green and pleasant land covered in Tip-Ex.

The other picture was this, very different, one:


All about family values, eh? You know, keeping things in the family...

In other news, the BBC reports that we should be getting a whole load of new wind farms here in the UK. Wonderful news. Of course, people will protest. 'It spoils the view', they'll say. Now, that's talking from a position of privilege. Words don't describe how stupid, arrogant and selfish those people are. They should be made to live in a world of their own creating. What really gets me is that wind farms are far, far less intrusive on the landscape then over-ground electricity pylons. Do these people campaign to have them taken down? Do these people rename their towns, 'a-quiet-and-beautiful-little-Welsh-village-where-those-bastard-English-are-endangering-some-wildlife-I've-found-I-can-hang-my-NIMBYism-on'? No. That would mean them giving up their electricity. Can't even contemplate that. Can't fathom the idea of giving up their entitled privilege for their principles. Far, far better that other people--people they don't know--suffer so they can maintain their cosy, selfish little worlds.

Getting paid to work

Ever since I was about six years old, I've wanted to be 'a writer'.  On my eighteenth birthday, I brought myself a bottle of Champaign which I planned to open and drink when I got my first book deal.

What it means to be 'a writer' is a question that's kept me tossing and turning in my sleep for the past twenty years or so.  Is it when I get my first book published?  When I earn the majority of my income from writing?  When other people start calling me a writer?

By the time I was nineteen, I'd written two novels.  They were high fantasy and probably not great, but it took dedication and inspiration.  Those are the two things that have keep me plugging away at this whole 'writer' thing and kept me convinced this was the path I'm at home on.

I started writing short stories because that's where people like Asimov and Bradbury started (at least, that was my understanding at the time).  In the last few years, I've realised that science-fiction and fantasy short stories are not just an art to themselves but a whole world to themselves. 

Always with an eye on that bottle of Champaign (when I can call myself 'a writer'), I've been following this whole, 'pay rates fail' thing which has been blowing around the blogs at the moment.  How much should writers been paid, and when a writer can call themselves a professional?

The Steampunk Soiree was, financially, a bit of a disaster.  Everybody who attended had a great time and would love to come again, but everybody who attended isn't going to come close to paying for all the bands.  Less professional, and more farce.  A very fun farce, but a farce non-the-less.  We're yet to do the sums, but if we can pay people's expenses it's going to be a miracle of some description (hey, we have our hopes up--it's Christmas, after all!)  Effectively, the artists had to pay to work.

Issue #6 of Steampunk Magazine was, financially, a bit of a disaster too.  It was a lot longer than normal and there wasn't enough money in the kitty to cover expenses.  It was supposed to be my first ever payment for something I'd written, but I waived it and have already happily foregone any payment for anything I write for Issue #7.  And, of course, SPM is released under Creative Commons non-profit accreditation licence, so someone can take Of Mice and Journeymen, reprint it and re-write it as much as they like.

So, let's say a reasonable pro pay rate for a short story is 5 cents a word.  £1 is $1.1211 at the moment, so 1p is 1.1211c.  So, for every word I'd get 4.4599p.  I need about £900 a month to survive.  That means I'd have to sell 20,180 words (or there abouts).  Assuming an average story of mine is 7,000 words, that's three pro-sales a month.   That's also assuming there's no cap on pay and magazines don't mind paying me $350 for a story.  (Of course, this doesn't take into account charges for changing currency which is something that's yet to come up in the Great Pay Debate.)

There's three immediate problems I can see with this:
1) If I quit my day job, I could probably rely on writing one 'as good as I can write' story a month.  A good month could produce three, if it was a really good month;
2) Selling three pro-rate stories a month would mean an awful lot of socialising and networking for me, and people scare me;
3)  After 36 stories in the first year, people are going to get pretty damned sick of me.

There's non-fiction--which is apparently even harder than short story writing to make money out of--and workshops--which runs into 2)--which could top up my earnings.  Maybe there's other avenues I'm not aware of at the moment.  For the moment, though, I've not really got any qualms about ruling out making a living from my writing.

As a result of the pay debate, I've decided to start sending my work to pro- and semi-pro markets.  Maybe I'm not good enough yet, but I'll keep striving to get better.  Am I doing it for the money?  Well, a couple hundred quid would be more than welcome but the short answer is, 'no'.  I'm doing it because the slush pile at those magazines is huge and you've got to really shine to be picked out.  And, probably more importantly, because the people whose work I love reading sometimes read those magazines. 

When one of my stories appears in Interzone along side Jason Sanford, maybe then I'll crack open that bottle.  Or maybe I'll wait until John Reppion says, 'hey Foxie, loved the story--it gave me an amazing idea!'.  Of course, my snarky side wants to wait until one of my stories triggers its own xyz-fail shit storm.

The money=good thing is something deeply embedded in my psyche by a middle-class upbringing (I gave my Dad a copy of 'Mind Games' to read, because I thought he might like to see what his son was doing with his life, and his first question was, 'how much money did this make you then?').  Hanging around with Steampunks is really making me challenge and question that, and more and more I'm convinced that's wrong.  Is playing to a crowd of 40 at a loss better than playing to a crowd of 200 with a nice paycheck?  You can't make a habit out of it, but if those 40 people are inspired and those 200 are just drunk then, well, it probably is.

If I wanted to make money, I'd have followed my brother's lead and become an accountant.  If I want to make money from writing, I'll follow James Patterson and top my bank balance up writing whargarble for the Murdoch press.  I'm not saying these things are easy, but that's where the money is.

If I get myself in the pro markets, maybe in twenty years time someone will offer me a T.V. show.  Maybe by the time we've gone through the sixth Soiree, we'll be able to make a profit, I'll enjoy socialising and people will be saying, 'talk to Foxie, he'll make it happen for you'.  Perhaps people will be thinking, 'I need an opinion on this, what's Foxie thinking?'.  Five years down the line, yeah I'll probably still be in the day job.  Ten years, maybe.  Twenty years?  Thirty years?  I don't know.  Money is nice, but transitory.  Reputation is permanent, and it takes decades to build up one of those.  I've been at this twenty-five years already and maybe I won't be opening that bottle for another twenty-five.  I'm okay with that.  I'm a writer.  As sure as some people are homosexual or Olympic athletes, that's who I am.  That's who I'm going to be until the day I die, so I'm okay going slow and steady because I've got the time.  Hell, that's really all I've got to do with my life.

Writers should be paid a fair wage for their work, but that's never going to happen when there's so many of us.  Unless your name comes out the cosmic lottery machine, you're never going to make a living from just writing fiction.  (Oh, people win every week but you'd be daft to count on paying your mortgage with a lottery ticket.)  The underlying problem which no amount of e-ink can change is that there is not the audience to support SF/F writers.  Even with the success of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek:  Reboot, the general public don't particularly want to read thought-provoking, innovative SF/F short stories.  They want Opera and Will Smith.  They want to give their money to franchises they can trust, actors they know and authors who entertain without challenging.  It takes a degree of imagination and intelligence to gain something from the SF/F short story world as it is at the moment, and the general public are increasingly wanting to just dumbly consume. 

So if you're arguing that writers should be able to make a living from their work, you've lost before you've begun.  There's not enough interest to generate enough money to make that position viable.  It's not the fault of the magazines or the writers or the advertisers.  What we produce simply isn't what the masses--the paying public--wants. 

We publish to talk to each other, to inspire each other.  A story in a pro magazine means that an editor with a towering slush pile has decided this piece has something to say.  That's why I'll read and think about everything in Interzone, regardless of how much I personally enjoy the story.  I don't think I'm the only one who thinks like that, either.  5c a word is the honey which brings in the bees, and the editors need to fulfil their end of the bargain by picking the diamonds out the slush.  That's their reputation and track record.  The currency itself becomes a value, a number in part of a larger equation and independent of what goods and services it can be exchanged for.

But that's just me.  If the majority of writers in the SF/F world agreed, John Scalzi and everyone else wouldn't have batted at eyelid at Black Matrix, instead just deciding that the number the equation came out with was too low and passing on to other things.

From the wilds of Scotland, back to reality

My journey home, let me tell you about it...

On the Thursday night before, my companions stayed up late and made a determined effort to finish the alcohol while I got an early night.  Fair play to them--if I wasn’t the designated driver, I would have stayed up with them even though I don’t drink.  Drain the cup to the dregs and pay the piper in the morning!

I did what last minute packing and tidying I could while they paid their dues, and got them out of bed as late as was reasonable.  Between me, the one human being and them, the three kind of human zombies, we got most of the odds and ends packed and ready to be loaded into Stevie, our car.  I went out to bring him to the door, to make the loading as painless as possible.

This is where the story starts.

Stevie wouldn’t start.  No matter how many times I tried, no matter how many prayers I sent, all I got was a clicking from.... some part of the engine.  Panicked phone calls to parents later, we decided it was probably a flat battery.  We tried a bump start.  We tried many push starts.  Have you ever pushed a car along an old, gravel country road with grass growing down the middle and rabbit holes in the way?  If you haven’t, two things:  First, it’s hard and leaves you with painful shoulders; second, you can’t get enough speed for a push start.

We called the caretaker of the cottage and told him we’d be late leaving.  He said that was fine, and he’d bring jump leads.  He was good to his word and we were very grateful.  Our bonnets’ opened, he secured the leads to his battery and, after a moment of deliberation, to Stevie’s.  Sparks few and smoke poured off the terminals.  “Try your engine!” he urged.  “Quick!”  I leapt into the driver’s seat and, my eyes on the smoke pluming out of my battery, turned the key.  “Nothing!” I yelled.  He pulled the leads off, and frowned at me.  After a few moments’ frowning, he reconnected the leads, this time to the opposite terminals.  “Give that a try,” he said.  I did, and there was the glorious sound of the starter motor firing, and the pistons moving.

Despite being behind schedule, we decided to take the more scenic route and drive around Loch Lomond.  There were still dregs to be had.  Allegra was directing me and told me to turn right at the next T-junction.  I pulled up, indicated, braked, clutch, put the handbrake on and said, “Oh.”  “Huh?” Allegra asked, and then looked up.  “Oh,” she said.  The Rest and Be Thankful Pass, through which we were looking forwards to driving, was closed.  I pulled into a lay-by and asked the lone high-vis-jacketed man on guard if there was a way around, and what had happened.  F15 Tornado crashed into the hillside of the pass.  We took the diversion, contemplating the irony and the extra hour of driving.

There a couple of hours of beautiful scenery, fiddly driving and rain before the story picks up again on the M8 just outside Glasgow--which is a shithole.  If you live in Glasgow, I apologise--no one should have to live like that.  There was a hefty tailback, and we were crawling along, my left calf getting increasingly painful (you drivers will know why).  Then Stevie stalled.  And wouldn’t turn over.  I turned the key and got... nothing.  Allegra and I swapped seats as I pushed Stevie onto the hard shoulder.  I wandered a little way off, and found out what those orange SOS phones on the side of the road do.  They put you through to a disinterested sounding man with a London accent who gives you three options:  Number one, join the AA; number two, join the RAC; number three, have the police come out and call a local garage who will then give you a stonking bill.  We deliberated, and eventually went for number two.  Now, my friends, that’s good marketing.  “Ah!  I see you’ve got a gaping hole in your femoral artery!  Well, you can join BUPA, join PPP, or the police can drop you off at a GP surgery.  Or you could just keep on bleeding.  Talk it over, you know, I’m in no hurry...”

A hundred-and-twenty quid and half-an-hour later, the RAC van turned up, jumped the battery (again) and lead us off the motorway and outside a carpet warehouse.  He did things with leads and cables and meters, and then told me to try the engine.  I did, and Stevie breathed again.  The RAC man told me it was a problem with the alternator, he had fixed it, and as soon as he had deposited his paperwork with us like a cat using a litter tray, we were free to go again.

About an hour later, we stopped to get petrol.  It was all going well until I urged Stevie to walk on.  You can guess what happened.  We pushed him away from the pumps and put in another call to the RAC.  Allegra had been the cheerfully optimistic wind in our sails all day.  At every pothole, she had a smile and a happy whimsy which made everything seem, you know, okay.  While I was on the phone to the RAC (it took a while... I waited five minutes to get through, had half a conversation, and then my credit ran out...) something happened to her.  The one hour’s sleep she managed to steal from the night before, the burning pain in her arms and shoulders from the red wine, the money we’d had to spend on a car we’re planning to replace in the next couple of months, the rain...  It all condensed into a ball of, ‘fuck you, world! Fuck You!’.  We pushed Stevie up the forecourt, and down, up, and down...  I think the universe decided to reward us for our--Allegra’s--sheer bloody mindedness.  Two-and-a-half hours of motorway later, the RAC man called to say he was on the way.  We told him he wasn’t needed.

After nine hours, we left Scotland.  The entire journey back to North West Wales was supposed to take nine hours, tops.  As ngaio said, sometimes it just takes nine hours to get out of Scotland.

We stopped... at some point so I could have a break from driving.  The motor ran while we swapped seats.  I napped in the back for an hour-and-some before taking the wheel again.  Tez was deposited without further incident, some time around midnight.  His mother gave us tea and his father jumped Stevie back into life, and we were on our way again.  Fifteen hours or so after we’d set off, we pulled into Bangor.  We parked Stevie at a local garage (because there was no way we could get him there if we stopped again), and slept on ngaio’s sofa bed for the night.

I explained the problem to a young lad at the garage, he put a couple of wires on the battery and said, “yep, you were right, dead as Jacko.  A new one is... fifty quid.”  He looked up at me, awaiting my decision.  I was caught:  Did I pay for a new battery, or did I lie on my living room floor as the blood drained out my artery?  Having taken all my tools out the boot to make way for holiday packing, I asked him to install it for me and spent a quarter-of-an-hour looking for my wallet.  I had to drag ngaio back to the garage to pay in my steed if it had been sacrificed the previous day at some point.

If I was writing this on Saturday afternoon, as I was planning to, this would be the end of the story.  I’m not writing this on Saturday afternoon because our ISP had cut us off for not paying the bill, and after Stevie’s bills we couldn’t afford to make it up to them.  Can’t afford to.

The story picks up on Monday morning, on the way to work.  There we are, on the A5, chatting about what Stevie had taught us during the trip on Friday.  There’s a clunk.  I put my foot down to accelerate, and get nothing.  So I change down, and try again.  Nothing.  As I’m pondering this, Allegra’s eyes have gone wide.  “Dylan, there’s smoke coming out the bonnet--pull over!”  She was right.  White smoke was coming out the bonnet like bad eighties special effects, and was being blown into the cabin through the air vents.  Something was dripping through the passenger’s footwell onto Allegra’s feet.  I pulled over, tried to put the hazard lights on and failed.  Opening the bonnet, I found that the battery had welded itself to it.  We called the RAC as traffic pulled around us.  The A5 is a single carriage way, tightly weaving through the Welsh landscape, and we were blocking it.  It wasn’t long before we had a police car flashing blues and twos either side of us, directing traffic.  The RAC man turned up, and gave us a tow back to the garage.

When we got there, I popped the bonnet and he took the battery out.  Acid dribbled out of it in a steady stream.  “Your battery’s fucked... your electrics probably fucked, too.”  The manager from the garage came out, and agreed with him.  “There’s no restraining bolt holding the battery down,” the manager said.  “It just bounced up and hit the bonnet.  You’re lucky it didn’t explode.  The lad who fitted it isn’t in today, but I’m going to have A Word with him...”

I’ve had a car for the last ten years.  Public transport is something of a foreign world to me.  When I was a kid, I took the bus all the time.  A lot has changed in the last ten years, including where I live.  ngaio is a regular busser, and Allegra is a smart cookie, so they arranged transport to and from work while I was hiding in the internets. 

The garage are replacing the battery and fixing the wiring for me at no charge.  It’s amazing.  They’re wonderful.  It’ll be ready to pick up Wednesday night, but we’ve already got weekly bus tickets so we’re going to bus it to work and back all week.  Between the alternator being fixed (which had been on the fritz for a while), the battery being replaced (which randomly discharged overnight in Scotland and was probably on the fritz) and the wiring being replaced (which had been on the fritz for a while), I’m ending up with a better car then when I started.

Almost.  The brakes are grinding, which I’m told is a bad thing.

So, in conclusion... does anyone know a good--and by good I mean fuel efficient and reliable--and by reliable I mean German--erm--3 door, 1.4 ltr car I can get second hand for between £1,500 and £2,000?

A Brief Interlude Sponsored by A Coalition of My Principles

There’s a tactic called ‘confusion marketing’. The idea is that you bombard the consumer with so much information and so much choice, that they get confused and either decide to stick with what they’ve already got or make a choice which leaves them worse off than before.

Democracy is kind of like that. There are so many layers of government, so many elected representatives and unelected officials, so many parties, so many policies, so many fliers, so much bullshit. It’s no wonder most people don’t care enough to take an interest, and those that do have specific and narrow agendas.

British Parliamentary democracy goes all the way back to William the Conquer trying to consolidate his new kingdom after 1066. It wasn’t until 1969 that every adult over 18 got the right to vote. Just over 900 years. All that fighting, all that blood, all those wars, all that pain. We've grown up assuming the right to vote as one of our most basic rights, and so all that blood and tears seems like something of a foreign country to us.

I think we should listen to our ancestors and those 900 years of fighting. I think 900 years outweighs our few decades of saturation and disillusion with the modern political process and the people involved in it. No matter how ineffectual it is, 30 generations clearly thought it was better than the alternative. The ideal is bigger and far more important than the individual spinning it to their own ends on the TV.

And you’re right: Your vote isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference. One voice among the millions (or, these days, hundreds of thousands), all voting in a ‘first past the post’ system... each individual voice gets lost. Two points, though:

1. It’s unfortunately true that, if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. One of those narrow agenda parties will win because only those who have narrow agendas will vote. Then we’ll be building a fence around the UK shoreline and executing dissidents and wondering where it all went wrong.
2. Secondly, in order to vote knowledgably you have to know your own views. You have to know where society is at the moment, and where you want it to go. When you know those things, how you live is going to change. Not much. You might just shop in different places and buy different brands. Or start growing your own vegetables. Or realise that money isn’t as important as you think it is, quit your job and live in a tent in a field. And, the changes you make in your life will make small changes in the world around you. By interacting with the macrocosm of greater society, you change the microcosm of your personal world.

So, go out and vote on 4th June. Or whenever else you have the chance. And if there’s no one you want to vote for, do something about it. Form your own party, drop out from society, start a revolution, buy a boat and live out in international waters. Not bothering to do anything is the worst of all options, because apathy leads to consent and to ignorance.

The European Parliament is made up of so many different parties from so many different countries, they’ve organised themselves into voting blocs. The blocs work together to push through or defeat legislation. Find a bloc who’s principles you agree with, and find a party in that bloc who’s policies you agree with.

The BBC has a guide to the voting blocs;
this blog has a fantastic entry on where the UK parties fit into them;
and you can find out the results of the last European election from the BBC here.

C’mon. A couple hours of your time verses 900 years?

The Mth Dimension

Yesterday was a surprisingly enjoyable day. Allegra, ngaio and myself went to Chester to a mini steam meet. A group of like minded people spending the majority of the day just ‘hanging out’. We had tea in a very hot tea room, sat on the grass by a ruined church, and then had a couple of drinks down the pub. We talked about music and clothing and other things I can’t remember directly. I can only assume that this is what ‘a life’ is. We made semi-organised plans for another meet at the end of July to which I’m looking forwards immensely. I’m sure it’s a combination of the right people and being at a point in my psychological development where I can recognise and appreciate that which made the meeting so enjoyable. I have a feeling I met some good friends yesterday.

The only trouble is the distance. The hour’s drive isn’t prohibitive, but it is a bit of a pain. It might not be a problem for much more than the next few months; work is becoming more and more unreasonable, and if things don’t improve I am seriously considering decamping to the Chester area.

There is a man, called Dylan (to pick a name at random). Dylan can do 100 units of work per normal working week. A change in working conditions means he can now only do 65 units of work per normal working week, and the other 35 need to be done outside of the normal week. Each unit takes 0.2 hours to complete, so Dylan is working 7 additional hours. Dylan’s workload is increased to 120 units, and the number of units he can do during his normal week decreases to 35 units. The extra 85 units are now being done outside the normal week, totalling an extra 17 hours of work. Dylan is then forbidden from doing work outside his normal working week.

In a special dimension where managers exist, the extra 85 units of work are done without problems. This is the Mth Dimension, where time, maths and people work to a different set of laws which are inscrutable to us, trapped in the normal four dimensions. Current theories suggest the Mth Dimension is located several miles up someone’s arsehole.

29, and Old Enough to Know Better

The new companion for Doctor Who has been announced (which is probably old news by now). Ms Gillan, I’m sure, is a fine actress. She’s also 21, which bugs me. The new Doctor is 26. That bugs me, too.

It's not because they’re both younger than me. I mean, it is, but that’s selfish. What bugs me more is what this is saying to people who watch the show. Doctor Who is aspirational. We aspire to be the Doctor and we aspire to be his companion. Now, at seven o’clock on Saturday nights, we’re telling children that they should aspire to be young and attractive. We’re telling them that you can be anything you like, just so long as you’ve got fantastic social skills, a pretty face and aren't old enough to know what a mortgage is yet. If you don't have a circle of friends or you're old enough to support yourself, then stop dreaming and get back to serving the pretty people, damn you!

And this is before I start on the writing side of things. Why is it so terrifying to give the Doctor a strong, male companion? A companion who has some meat and is going to give the Doctor as good as he gets? You know, someone who’s going to do that without being ‘feisty’, or ‘rebellious’ or outright childish. Oh, and someone who doesn’t spend the entire series fawning over the Doctor would be nice.

I should know better. It’s only a kids’ show, I know. But... science fiction was supposed to be a safe place. It was a place we could all go away from the young and popular and attractive people who were made us feel fat and unattractive and unpopular. They were supposed to be going to nightclubs and meeting over the park and other things us people with stunted social skills were told made ‘a life’ (remember being told to, ‘get a life’?). Now they’re in our television shows and playing our computer games. And heavens forefend that we say something which offends them! It is the path to playing it safe, the slow trek to mediocrity.

Of course I’m going to be watching the new series. Why on Earth wouldn’t I be?

Spitting into the Sea

Problem/Solution marketing is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Convince people that there is a problem, and then sell them the solution. The seller then comes out as a hero, a saviour. Religions do it (sell the idea of sin, and then the idea of salvation); Hitler did it (Jews are the problem, he is the solution); Burger King do it (not being able to have a burger your way is the problem... you just, you know, eat something else...)

This MP expenses is a perfect example. Whip up a storm of anger and resentment among the general public, act shocked and repentant, reform the system*. Sell us the problem, and then come along and solve it. We’re all grateful and have a bit of confidence restored in our leaders. Hey, they’re human and, under it all, descent after all, right?

It’s a smoke-screen, a distraction, and everyone’s falling for it like trout at a fish farm. Can’t fix the economy. Won’t stop abusing human rights in the name of security. Dead soldiers still coming home from the foreign countries with no chance to claim victory--can’t or won’t change that.

Am I pissed off about tens of thousands of pounds of tax payers’ money being used to buy televisions and fund property deals? Sure. I’m more pissed off about the millions and billions being used to sustain our nuclear arsenal; I’m more upset by the millions being used to fund wars; I feel more betrayed by the unwillingness to help the oppressed in Africa and the continuing drive to shift our manufacturing base to oppressive factories in China. Global warming, ID cards, billions in national debt that we and our children are going to be paying off our whole lives, CCTV culture and RFID tags, unsustainable population growth, eduction being used to train children for the workforce...

I’m so angry. If I wasn’t so sure of my reasons for voting, I’d skip the European elections in June. And so I join the other insignificant crustaceans in shouting my futile fury in my tiny voice into the vastness of the ocean; another minnow spitting into the sea. Balls to it. Balls to it all.

I’m going down the pub.

Only I don’t drink and it’s half-six in the morning.

I’m going to have a cookie.

Mmmm... cookie.

*Having MP expenses authorised and audited by an external body sounds like a good idea, right? You know, the people who are asking for the money can’t give it out. Thing is, you move it to the private sector, we lose the right to see what’s happening under the Freedom of Information Act. Convenient, eh?

Don't sell me the illusion of participation

Driving into work today, I was caught up in a tailback on the A55 because they had closed a lane on either side of the duel carriageway.  In the ten years I’ve lived in North Wales, I’ve never been able to drive along the length of the A55 without coming across closed lanes.  They never seem to do anything, either.  Most of the time, there’s not even anybody working.  They just put the cones out, close the lanes off and cause major headaches for anyone trying to get from A to B.

They were cutting the grass on the hard shoulder today.  I saw two guys with hand strimmers, and a road sweeper. 

If you hadn’t guessed it already, this is going to be a rant.  Barely logical, entirely subjective and--probably--lacking in common sense and reason.

Road works are a major pain in the arse up here.  There’s always some section of the road closed and it’s always for some pointless reason.  There’s a road--one single road--between my village (Bethesda) and the rest of Wales.  It’s the A5.  A while ago, they closed it.  The whole damned road.  Did it need resurfacing?  No, but they did it anyway.  Waste of time and my (my! I’m a taxpayer, damnit!) money.  I wrote to my MP and they told me they were doing it because it needed to be done, whatever I thought about it.

ID cards are being introduced in Manchester today.  Voluntary, of course, but it’s only a matter of time before you need to show your card to get cigarettes, alcohol, rent a flat, buy a mobile phone (terrorists use them, you know)...  The ID card scheme is just another layer of bureaucracy which to tie us up in red tape, another attrition of our personal liberties in the name of security, another tool the government--or whoever it is that’s in charge, because the policies and tactics really don’t seem to change with the governments--to keep us scared of wil o’ the wisps. 

30 years from now, after a generation of children have been brought up to believe ID cards keep us safe, they’ll be turning around to us and demanding to know what we have to hide.  After all, if we had nothing to hide, we wouldn’t object to carrying a card, would we?

Be scared of terrorists.  Be scared of strangers.  Of hoodies.  Of bird ‘flu.  Swine ‘flu.  Slightly bumpy roads.  Long grass.  But don’t worry--we’re here to protect you!

I’m not so naive to believe there’s some great conspiracy to keep us all scared and keep us all under control.  Get ten people in a room together and tell them to open the door, and you’ll see why large-scale, organised conspiracies are simply outside the nature of humanity.  The people in power are so busy running around after their own tails and jumping at their own shadows, they’re just trying to keep us running and jumping so we don’t notice.

Well, I don’t want to play.  I want to bumble through life in my own way.  I’m small and insignificant, and could be killed by terrorists or foreign superbugs or potholes at any time.  I could be killed by slipping in the bath or being struck by falling tree branches.  I could catch an entirely normal, bog-standard, indigenous bug and die.  There’s so many things out there trying to kill me, it’s a wonder I’ve managed 29 years.  It’s a wonder anyone’s managed for the past four-thousand years at all.

I can look both ways before crossing the road and I don’t eat from tins cans which have holes in them.  You don’t need to protect me from ethereal threats of harm and ghosts and shadows. 

From My Cold, Dead, Shaking Hand

I like to imagine my physical self as a sort of see-saw.  One side is labelled ‘health’, and the other ‘unhealth’.  On the health side, we have exercise, nutrition... all that boring stuff.  On the unhealth side, we have my vices.

Each of the things on the see-saw has a weight, and that combined with its distance from the fulcrum determines its affect on my physical self.

I used to have a lot of vices that sat a long way from the fulcrum.  These vices weren’t indulgences, but things which were a part of my lifestyle.  Whenever I sat down to write, I’d light a cigarette.  It got to the point when I was smoking in my breaks at work, when I was taking shopping in from the car, when I was laid up in bed and the room was spinning.  So, I quit.

When I was a student, I drank to excess.  After I graduated, I drank to be social.  For the last two years--apart of a very small sip when someone orders something interesting and some liquors around Christmas--I haven’t had any alcohol for almost two years.

And meat!  I don’t eat meat and haven’t for a year-and-a-half.  It’s harder than it sounds, because I can’t eat Wine Gums or Liquorice Allsorts or Pick-and-Mix any more.  I can’t have bacon sarnies or black pudding.

Those are three pretty big vices, and they sit a way from the fulcrum.  Now, I have a pretty sedentary lifestyle and exercise upsets me, but taking those three off the unhealth side surely more than balanced things out.  It left me with two vices (just two):  food; and coffee. 

Food loves me.  Food is always there for me, and never judges me.  Food makes me happy.

I take my coffee black.  I take it strong enough to stand a spoon up in.  Where as most people have their instant coffee ‘strong’ and ask for a full teaspoon, I’ll have two-and-a-half.  On an average day, I’ll have six of seven of these cups.  Whenever I write, I have a hot steaming cup of Jackson by my hand (as in Samuel L. Jackson:  Black; bitter; and quad-hard).

My heart’s been doing funny things, recently.  Walking across the room makes it beat so hard it feels like it’s about to burst out my chest.  Stairs are a problem.  Lying in bed sometimes feels like it’s going to be fatal...  Apparently, my heart can’t stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space any more.

I was hoping I had angina.  Or a valve was faulty.  Or that maybe I needed a whole new heart altogether.  The doctor did some tests, took my blood pressure, booked me some blood tests and an ECG.

But you can see where this is going.   After all the medical niceties were out the way, ‘Cut down on the coffee’, she says.

Haven’t I done enough?!

Surely, surely the booze, the fags and the flesh balances things out.  Surely coffee is a light weight, close to the fulcrum.  A vice, sure, but a small and almost harmless one.  Right near the centre, keeping the pizza and cookies company (we know how easily they get lonely).

~sigh~

Yes, it’s a chance to embrace change and discover Brave New Worlds.

I don’t like change or Brave New Worlds.  I like routine and places I know.

Somewhat prophetically, the last time I saw her my mother said that she’d learned the dangers of drinking strong, black coffee, ‘too late’.  She has a liturgy of health problems and I was scared to ask which one the coffee was responsible for. 

But yes, I’ll do the right thing.  I’ll embrace this growth experience and discard yet another vice.  I’ll give up the coffee. 

Right after this cup.

Castlevania: Opus of Awesome

Konami are releasing a new Castlevania game for the Xbox 360 and PS3. SO is a huge Symphony of the Night fan. I mean, really huge. She has a beautiful piece of Ayami Kojima Alucard flash art tattooed on her thigh. Okay, she doesn't, but it's the sort of thing she might do.

Having looked into the 360 and PS3, we've decided to invest in a 360. The PS3, frankly, is still over-priced and sucky. It's badly supported and the announcement of text chat kind of put the nail in its coffin for me. We're going to have to have an extension built for the 360, of course, due to its vast size and set up an alter with dribly candles to ward off the red ring of death. We're also going to have to start rescuing kittens and helping small orphans with huge, innocent eyes to off-set the evil we'll be accruing by owning it, but I'm assured that this is all worth it.

The Castlevania franchise is the sort of thing I grew up with. Platforms, bad guys, power-ups, bosses. I completed Curse of Darkness a while ago, and I'm pleased they've kept true to the original intent. Games that require a significant portion of your life are fine, but not for me. I found a Chuckie Egg game yesterday, and it's the best game I've played in years. Sure, nostalgia all you like but it's just me, the eggs and the birds. None of this fancy graphics or silly plot lines or anything like that to get in the way. Just pure gaming experience. Castlevania's like that, for me, but with better graphics. It's a game, not a life-style choice. It's good to know that someone still remembers us.

It does make you wonder a bit, though...

DRACULA: Prepare the Castle! Summon the evil minions!

EVIL PRIEST: Erm, my lord, the other evil priests and I... we've been thinking...

DRACULA: Thinking?

EVIL PRIEST: Yeah... I mean, we went through a lot of trouble to summon you. Finding a comely seventeen-year-old virgin to sacrifice isn't easy these days. John--that's John, there--he had to get married, have a child, and keep her locked in a cellar so we'd have a virgin to sacrifice--

DRACULA: And I appreciate your efforts. Really, I do. It's good to be back.

EVIL PRIEST: It's good to have you back. And that's just it--every time we summon you, we do the whole evil castle thing, and then a Belmont comes along and kills you.

DRACULA: It will be different this time.

EVIL PRIEST: We want it to be different, too. So... that's what me and the other priests were talking about. I mean, the whole 'evil castle' thing... we were thinking we might skip that.

DRACULA: Skip the evil castle?!

EVIL PRIEST: Yeah, it's just it... I mean, you know. We've done it, what? Thirteen times? Fourteen? It's never worked. So, we were thinking--

DRACULA: Prepare the castle! Summon the skeletons!

EVIL PRIEST: My lord---

DRACULA: Destabilise the ledges! Take these bags of money and hide them in the light fixtures!

EVIL PRIEST: (sigh) Yes, my lord.

DRACULA: Take this one item which can defeat me and hide it behind a cracked wall! Summon the succubus!

EVIL PRIEST: The succubus is busy, my lord. She has her own YouTube channel on growing and making her own natural remedies.

DRACULA: Summon her I say! We don't pay her a retainer for nothing!

Meanwhile, in a faux-medieval village somewhere...

COMELY MAIDEN #4: My love! Strange portents are abound!

BELMONT: Hush wife! I'm working on my speech for when I fight Dracula, just like my father and his father before him.

COMELY MAIDEN #4: I feel an abhorrence in the generic mystical forces...

BELMONT: You think I can quote Shelley? Or is that too much? I just want to get across this feeling of the grand cycle of the years, how everything turns to dust, even unimaginable evil.

COMELY MAIDEN #4: My dreams tell of dark forces moving against us, my love.

BELMONT: Day follows night... I am the sun, and you are the moon. The moon only reflects the light of the sun... hm, that's good. I think I'll use that...

COMELY MAIDEN #4: I'm going out into our garden to pick flowers, or sit on our garden swing, or something equally twee.

BELMONT: Mmm.

After a few moments, there's a scream from the garden.

EVIL PRIEST: Belmont! We have captured your wife!

BELMONT: What?!

EVIL PRIEST: We've taken your wife captive. She's in the evil castle.

BELMONT: How can this be?!

EVIL PRIEST: (sigh) Just... come and try to rescue her.

BELMONT: This can only be Dracula's doing! Wait, my speech! Dammit, I'll just have to ad-lib something...

The Last Thoughts of Ben Kenobi

OBI-WAN: Only a master of evil, Darth.

See, until the prequels I always assumed that Obi-Wan used ‘Darth’ as a name, not a title.  That’s the way the line is delivered.  In Obi-Wan’s mind, Anakin is dead and there is only Vader.  What made him utterly give up hope on his pupil and friend?  He left Anakin on Mustafa because he couldn’t bring himself to finish the job.  He couldn’t be the one to kill him, because he cared so much for Anakin.  What changed in his vigil on Tatooine?

Or is Obi-Wan just being a dick?  It seems to be something Jedi do when they get older.  I mean, witness Qui-Gon’s ‘I’ll take Anakin as my apprentice’ when Obi-Wan is standing right there.  Or Yoda’s, ‘I got my arse kicked so I’m going to a swamp to sulk for the next sixteen years... No, no, I’m not going to help the rebellion, or try and protect the remaining Jedi.  I’m not even going to take anything from the Jedi temple with me--too many bad memories.  I’m going to a swamp to think about what a failure I am.  I’m going to paint my hut black and listen to Morrissey.’

So Obi-Wan comes face-to-face with his failure and acts like a twelve-year-old.  ‘Only a master of evil, Darth’.  ‘You’re just a Darth.  I’m a Jedi Master. Ner-ner-ne-ner-ner.’

OBI-WAN: Strike me down now, and I’ll become more powerful then you can possibly imagine.

VADER:  More powerful then I can possibly imagine?

OBI-WAN:  Yes, far more powerful.

VADER:  I can imagine quite a lot of power.

OBI-WAN:  I’ll be more powerful than that.

VADER:  Will you be able to blow up planets?  This battle station can, so I don’t even have to imagine that.

OBI-WAN:  I don’t mean--

VADER:  Or how about that time I landed that Star Destroyer on Coruscant.  That was pretty pimp.  If I kill you, will you be able to do that?

OBI-WAN:  It’s not like--

VADER:  Are you going to be able to bring Padme back?  Palpatine said he could, but every time I ask him about it, he’s all like, ‘tomorrow, Lord Vader’, ‘we just need to destroy this planet, Lord Vader’.  To be honest, I’m beginning to wonder...

OBI-WAN:  Padme’s dead, Darth.  I was there when it happened.

VADER: Nuh-Uhhh.  She’s being kept alive on Coruscant.  With, like, tubes and robotics and shit.  Palpatine told me.  Only I can’t see her, because my suit has germs on it.  But he’s working on a decontamination thing for me.  He told me.

LUKE: Ben!

VADER:  Huh?  Who’s that?

OBI-WAN:  No one!  He’s no one!  Pay no attention to the boy behind the blast shield!

VADER:  He feels familiar...

OBI-WAN:  Um, yeah, well, that’s because... you see... you know that guy? We met in that bar that one time?  Yeah, well, that’s his son.  Luke Sky... Wanderer.  Luke Skywanderer.


I dunno.  Maybe they’re both as bad as each other.