Fresh Blood

Hello. My name is Kid C. I'm quite new around here but I've already developed a typing speed of 60 wpm. My Mummy and Daddy are very happy I've arrived and my intentions appear to be to sleep all day and p-a-r-t-y all night. 

I'm a Mac and I'm 16 Hours Old. In your face, Gates.

More Mischief

I like music. It can be a great force for good. Except "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon. Yesterday, I started thinking about the paradox in the chorus, my brain got stuck in an infinite loop and I lost the whole morning. Apparently, the original ending of 'Terminator Salvation" featured John Conner playing the song until Skynet crashed.

But music can also be rubbish. I don't know if you've witnessed the car crash that is 'Billy Brit'. It's the BNP's attempt to appeal to 'Ver Kids'. Their plan was to take a simple, shop bought puppet and have it sing nursery rhyme level songs about white power. 

Yes. Really. 

Anyway, the key words in that paragraph are "shop" and "bought". So, Tim at Bloggerheads went to a shop and bought the same puppet. And this is what he did:

Text Book. The particular highlight for me is the slight Aussie twang on the words "Daaaaark Skinned".

#theBNParetwats - The Gift That Keeps on Giving

You remember the whole BNP hashtag fun'n'games? Well, it seems that the BNP election flyers have a correspondence address on them.

Originally, I'd planned on gathering a whole lot of flyers, manufacturing a papier mache mosque and sending it to the address. Unfortunately, the Better Half - possibly knowing me too well - got hold of our flyer and binned it before I could begin work. That and I have a very short attention span.

You'll know that I'm a lover, not a fighter, and I was wondering why someone would turn to the BNP. Perhap they thought - incorrectly - that they'd run out of options. Maybe they needed to be educated. So, logically, I thought I'd provide them with some options and some education.

So, I've made this and posted it to them:

It's a traditional Japanese origami game called Pakupaku, I believe, but you'll probably remember it from school where you'd write the names of people you fancied in it.

I've gone for bright shiny colours to gain their interest. I've written in suggestions to try and expand their horizons. Ideas for things to do, nuggets of trivia, films to watch and music to listen to (What little white supremicist music I've heard must mean that Nick Griffin's CD collection is shit)

1. St. George was probably Turkish
2. Watch a Spike Lee film. Ease in gently with "Inside Man".
3. Buy a kd lang album. You can't catch gay!
4. Try a curry. They're really nice!
5. Go for a drink with a gay man. They know lots of hot chicks!
6. Listen to some Public Enemy. They've got a good beat!
7. Churchill originally suggested a United States of Europe.
8. Have some cake. I find I always hate less after some cake

Now, I wouldn't dare suggest that you should waste their time by doing something similar and posting it to The National Office, Admail 4148, London, EC1A 1UY.

That would be silly and childish.

A New Project

You've done the writing you planned to do, the Better Half has taken the kids out for a while and there's nothing on the television. What's a boy to do?

It's obvious. You make the world's biggest Kit Kat.

If I wasn't in a steady relationship, I'd suspect that I'd really need to get laid. 

Hippo Breeding Programme

I'm trying to start a Hungry Hippos Breeding Programme.

Next, I'm going to breed a herd of Buckaroos, create a cavalry of Action Men and annexe the local playground.

The Day I Inconvenienced Tony Jordan

I have the worst sense of direction on the planet. I have an 'A' Level in Geography. True, I can hold court on the finer points of glacial moraines and oxbow lakes (pay attention in class when taught about these, kids, because you're going to need that knowledge later in life!), but this has not helped my navigational skills one iota.

Which goes some way to explain why I turned up 15 minutes late to the Red Planet Workshop with Tony Jordan. I apologised and mumbled a joke about how I was using Zen Navigation to get there (just follow a car that looks like it knows where it's going). He was very gracious and he laughed. And it reminded him of a time when.... 

Tony Jordan has a story for every occasion. I'm a big fan of people like that. And he swears like a docker. I'm a big fan of people like that as well.

And there was cake.

He told me - told us - that we could write. That's why we were there. Aces.

Jason Arnopp's covered pretty well what we can talk about here

So, Tony is interested in what we want to write next. "Imagine you've got three months to live and you can only write one more thing. Something that you want to be remembered for. That's what I want to see."

What did I take away from the morning? Tony (See? I called him Tony!) didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Write what you want, not what you think people want to read. Don't get bogged down in technicalities. Be nice to people on the way up. But, Christ, it's the way he tells it! 

I've been struggling with the writing recently. With a full-time job, pregnant partner and psychotic children, I'm constantly tired. I'd hit a wall. I've been working on a new draft of a script for a producer for weeks now and I'd only managed to make it to page 18.

After the workshop, I jumped in the car, put my foot down (I was an expert in the minor roads of Bedfordshire by now) and made it home in record time. I burst through the door, immediately fired up the laptop and wrote 7 pages in 3 hours. OK, I immediately fired up the laptop and went onto Twitter. But then I did the writing. 

The passion's back. I love what I do. I love what I'm trying to do. And, just for that, I thank Tony Jordan. If I play my cards right, I'll hopefully have a lot more to thank him for.

Did I mention there was cake?

My Stalker

I've had to leave the house. I'm sat in a coffee shop, sketching this post out in my Moleskine notebook while I sip a latte. I sometimes think that if I met the 18 year old version of me, he'd punch me in the head. 

What has driven me from my home? Why do I no longer feel safe under my own roof? 

My stalker. 

He sits there for hours at a time. I can feel his gaze, hot on the back of my neck. I turn around and I see him through the window. Staring. Right. At. Me. 

Scientists bang on about how intelligent squirrels are with all their problem-solving skills, but nobody seems to have noticed that they have evolved to the point where they can take part in Staring Contests. And win.

Though that might be more of a reflection on me than the squirrel. 

"You're just imagining things," the Better Half tells me. But she always says that when I'm intimidated by woodland creatures. Fluffy bastards. 

The Tao of the Chocolate Hob Nob

I felt it was time to do another All Time Top 5. Partly because one or two people enjoy them, but mostly because it fills up a week of blog entries.

I toyed with a few ideas. One was All Time Top 5 biscuits. Then I thought "No, there's only one biscuit worthy of entry. All others are merely crumbs in the biscuit barrel of life."

It's the Chocolate Hob Nob. It's a biscuit so good I actually base house purchases on the Tao of the Chocolate Hob Nob.

When looking around a property, I ask myself one simple question. "If I buy this house, would I be able to buy chocolate Hob Nobs at three in the morning with the minimum fuss?"

If the answer is no, then the estate agent is going to be disappointed. Which is an added bonus.

And before anyone goes on about Jaffa Cakes, it's a cake. Not a biscuit. The clue's in the name.

New Top 5 tomorrow.

Bloody Hell! An Actual Post About Writing!!!

I'm thinking about trying to write a novel. 

As you may know, I've concentrated on screenwriting but writing this blog has caused me to fall in love with prose all over again. I think I could write something quite funny. I have a few ideas that could be developed. 

Are there any websites that you could recommend? I've got a couple of 'How To Write A Novel' books but I don't think they even tell me the very basic-y basics like how many words you need to write to call it a bloody novel.

Any help will be gratefully received!

Zombie Apocalypse

I think I'd be quite handy come the zombie apocalypse. I have kids. I know a lot of party games and card tricks. I'd be good in a siege situation. Or really annoying. And I would have no qualms separating a zombie's head from it's body. Particularly if it's my neighbours who insist on playing loud music at two in the morning. 

I bring this up as I've been considering news coverage recently for a project. Every time I turned on the television during the swine flu panic, I felt like I was in a George A. Romero wet dream. 

"This is how the pre-credit sequence for zombie movies always start," I thought as a news anchor rattled off a list of countries while terrifying graphics showed a red tide sweeping across the planet. Never has Hollywood's influence on news media been more apparent. 

With all the hyperbole and confusion, I was reminded of the bluster about the Y2K problem. According to the media, at midnight on 1st January 2000, aeroplanes would fall out of the sky and hospitals would explode in a shower of orphaned puppies. 

Zero hour came and went and the worst thing that happened that night was that I was thrown out of a nightclub that I'd paid a lot of money to get into. 

Nobody really knows whether the work that went into fixing the problem actually solved it, or if everything would've been okay if we'd all just sat back and waited. 

So, no zombies. Yet. But come the winter, I'll be sharpening the shovel and boarding up the windows. 

There was a point to this entry when I began writing it.

Oh! Yes! Remembered!

News coverage has been replaced by the M.P.s expenses scandal. Now, I understand that all these claims have been with the realms of the rules, if not within the realms of human decency.

But I'm concerned by the two cases of M.P.s claiming expenses for mortgages that had been paid off. They have referred to these as "unforgivable errors" and paid the money back. 

I'm pretty sure that if I were claiming housing benefit, paid my mortgage off and "forgot" to tell Social Services, I'd be hauled up in front of the courts. I believe it's called fraud. 

What it comes down to is that either these Honourable Members knew what they were knowingly defrauding the electorate, or they're simply fuckwits who can't add up and shouldn't be allowed near a position that doesn't require asking the question "Do you want fries with that?" 

But please don't all this force you into apathy. It's at times like these that your vote counts more than ever. The local and European elections take place on 4th June.

If you've not done so, you can register here

Once you've done that, you can go here to the Vote Match website. It's kind of like a dating site for you and political parties. But without the embarrassing profile pictures. Though I believe the Lib Dems like "walking in the rain and writing poetry".

In a rare flash of melodrama, can I just say that - to this day - people around the world are literally dying for the right to democratic free elections. "Not being bothered" to take 10 minutes of your day to tick a couple of boxes doesn't wash with me. 

Quickie Procrastination

Do you - like me - miss the halcyon days of political scandal? When I were a lad it was all sexual deviance, with MPs snorting cocaine off the thighs of hookers and wall-t0-wall auto-erotic asphyxiation. Our taxes probably paid for the rubber hosing, too.

Now they're squabbling over how much they paid for some bathroom taps. It's just not the same. 

I was going to write a long post about Something Important, but I've realised that I've spent far too much time compiling an iPod playlist and have to go and catch a train to watch the mighty Hold Steady and Counting Crows.

So, here's something I've posted before, but I regard it as the greatest thing on the internet that doesn't involve cats. Though the lyrics do involve cat-sitting:

So What Have I Learnt?

Thanks to HeavyLight for providing the picture.

That's us just above "porn" and "Star Trek". The two constants from my adolescence.

Only joking. I never watched "Star Trek".

It's dropped off the Trending Topics on Twitter now, but that's cool. America woke up and then people got jolly annoyed with Twitter for reasons I don't completely understand.

Was it the interweb's first virtual flashmob? I hope so. That's funny.

Some people questioned the frivolity of the exercise. Okay, so we didn't change the world, but that wasn't the plan. In fact, there wasn't a plan. That was the beauty.

As Michael Stipe - a man who can turn a phrase much better than I can - once sang "No solution. Spleen-venting. But I feel better having screamed. Don't you?"

Mind you, he also sang "I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract", so maybe he doesn't have all the answers.

I'm fully aware that we were pretty much preaching to the converted. But maybe - just maybe - if one person read the links in the timeline and resolved to vote on 4th June where previously they had decided to stay at home, isn't it worth it?

Perhaps we should organise a Twitter campaign to persuade people to register to vote?

So, a big thank you again to all those who picked up the ball and ran with it. You all rock.

Don't worry. Normal service will be resumed and I'll be back to telling bad jokes about pot noodle, cartoon characters and swearing gratuitously.

EDIT: Oh, and the SpamBots getting involved somehow made it even better.

Why The Internet Is Great

Hello. Me again. 

Something weird happened today. "Good weird", though, rather than "My Ex-Girlfriend Jenny Weird".

I was at work, sipping my 48th coffee of the day and staring out of the window. I was mulling things over; Newcastle's victory, how to persuade the Better Half to name our expected child Johnny Joey Dee Dee Tommy Ramone Turner and the news on the telly last night.

There had been a segment about Nick Griffin and the BNP. I found myself getting angry about their lowest common denominator easy-answer politics. No. Anger's the wrong word. 

Exasperation.

"The BNP are twats," I thought. I wanted to tell someone that. So I tweeted this:

"Is it possible to get #theBNParetwats as a trending topic? No overarching reason other than I think the BNP are twats"

That's it. Not the most erudite political statement ever made, I know, but I've only got 140 characters to work with. 

Anyway, apparently, it was possible to get it as a trending topic. People liked the sentiment. They re-tweeted it. It snowballed. I sat there looking at my computer screen as it went around the country, then left these cyber-shores. People were posting links to sites of interest to educate those who were unaware of them. THAT was the bit I adored. 

There was a lot of Twitter-Love going on.

Then something really weird happened. 

It was the number one trending topic. It beat Star Trek. Honest. I was in the car and my phone had fainted from all the emotion, so I haven't got a screen shot. But I'm assured it was. 

As I've said on this site before, I truly believe in Evelyn Beatrice Hall's statement of "I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death your right to say it". But, bloody hell, some people make it hard work.

For further reading, I'd recommend Unite Against Fascism

And, remember kids, 4th June is the date in the UK for the European Elections. Get out there and use your vote. The BNP are hoping to secure at least one seat in this Parliament. Together we can -as one - say "No".

And if the rivals of the producers of Terminator: Salvation need me to start a #TheTerminatorIsaWanker hashtag, I'm available. 

Signs of the Coming Apocalypse Part 2.

Is it me, or does the Peter Andre doll look more lifelike than the real thing?

Generally, I try to avoid sleb culture. Personally, I like my famous people to - y'know - have some talent. But I'm old fashioned like that.

But, at times like these, I always have an urge to say something. Peter Andre and Katie Price's management company have request that the "couple's privacy be respected at this time". Notwithstanding the fact that their marriage requires a bloody management company, is it not a tad hyprocritical? It's a line that is trotted out time and time again.

You can't spend your whole life shouting "Look at me! Look at me! My entire life is a commodity to be bought and sold!" at the media and then turn your back and shout "Don't look! Don't look!" when it suits you.

In a perfect world, I wouldn't be able to spot either of them out of a line up and people will have rewards thrust upon them for having a talent and bringing something to people's lives. But it's not a perfect world, so i'm going to moan about it.

Stating The Bleeding Obvious

The Better Half and I are friends with a couple. They're in a similar situation as us. A SITCOM family (Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage) with kids of a similar age to ours.

It turns out that he's been pretty much putting it around as much as possible behind her back for the last few years. Now, I've never really liked him, but I must admit that, since this revelation, I've had a kind of grudging respect for him. 

Any adulterous married man with a full time job and two children is displaying quite exceptional time-management skills. I don't have the time and energy to disappoint one woman, let alone several.

Which is my roundabout way of saying that, of all the many balls that I've been juggling lately, the one that I'm going to have to drop is the Screenwriters' Diary. It was a nice idea, but it just takes up too much time. And that time is becoming more precious now that there are less than two weeks to go until the birth of Kid C. I have decided to officially start shitting it. 

The writing is the important part, and I'm getting some done again. I'll hopefully return to the Screenwriters' Diary in due course and I'm still going to blog as usual. Sorry about that. 

 

A Star Is Born!

Remember that #twitstunt thing a few weeks ago? Yeah?

Want to see some footage from it? Yeah?

OK. Go here

It's really good!

Gasp at the panning shot showing far too many empty beer glasses!

Laugh at my really good John Woo gag!

Be amazed at how nasal I sound!

Find yourself bemused by my bizarre pronunciation  of the word "Strange"!!!

F*ckwits of the World Unite!

Oh joy of joys. The 'Have Your Say' forum on the BBC News website has gone down.

If you've never experienced it's terrifying beauty, basically, a small bunch of right-wing twunts howl with impotent rage against the world, mostly about the gays, muslims and peados taking their jobs.

The fact that they've been denied a voice for a few days has produced some fascinating comments and conspiracy theories. My personal favourite is:

"I wonder if this sudden fault with HYS has anything to do with the forthcoming election season?

It'd be a shame if HYS members who prove thorns in the side of certain political ideologies and organisations were to have thier accounts "lost" wouldn't it?

I wouldn't put anything past labour or the BEEB"

Errr... I'm sorry, but I think you might have ideas slightly above your station there. I think Labour have a few more problems on their plate than worrying about what a bunch of delusional nutjobs might be thinking.

Though I admit that quite a few HYS members are thorns in the side of logic.

I truly believe in Evelyn Beatrice Hall's statement of "I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death your right to say it". But, bloody hell, some people make it hard work.

You'd think they'd use this downtime to perfect their tin foil hats.

Oh God, I'm starting to sound like one of them. You can experience the full insanity here

Signs of the Coming Apocalypse

1. The Doner Kebab Pot Noodle

Don't get me wrong. I have no pride. I have eaten many, many kebabs. I have consumed many, many Pot Noodles. I've even tried a Tesco's Value Pot Noodle, which I think was made almost entirely of cardboard. 

But what does eating this flavour say about you? It says "I want all the deliciousness of a kebab, but in a more manageable form if it were to come back up and land on my bedroom carpet. You're my bessssht mate."

As a side note, the greatest kebab in the world is Mr. Rice's Mixed Grill Kebab sold at the Oasis Kebab House. It's every kind of kebab meat. Served in a giant Yorkshire Pudding. It's a perfect melding of two cultures. It's the Spock of fast food. Actually, I want one now.

100th Blog Post Celebrity Special!

Hi! I'm Gos. You might remember me from Big Brother 4. You don't? Really? Oh. That's ok. I don't remember me from Big Brother 4. 

Dave's really excited to reach the landmark of 100 blog posts. But not excited enough to actually write it himself. 

He's currently chillaxing, with a collection of young, greased Turkish boys catering to his every whim. So, he's consulted is black book of celebrity contacts and I'm the only one he considered worthy. Or the only one who was available. He wouldn't say.

He'd like me to say a big thank you on his behalf. Thank you for humouring him. The blog appears to have evolved over the past 3 months or so, from the original concept of documenting his attempts to break into screenwriting into just - well - a collection of ramblings in an attempt to make you lot giggle. He hopes that it's worked. 

An unexpected bonus has been the people he's met, the experiences he's been introduced to and the new friends he's made. The interweb is full of lovely, lovely people. And pictures of cats. It's mostly pictures of cats. 

And to all his Twitter-Friends, he'd just like to say "Earwig".