John Heron Project

See, I’m not one to bully, but I’ve seen
The sign that he’s in situ, tempting me;
One twist, a flick, a pull and click he’s trapped.
He hears the tumblers go. His eyebrows knit;
Too dignifed to panic, tries the door
Just once, makes no commotion, makes a call
To raise the departmental office, asks
The secretaries: Quickly! Get the spare!
And while he’s waiting sends an open mail
To: STAFF, describing his predicament,
While I will walk away and jangle keys
For doors I haven’t seen and maybe leave
Them with the departmental office and say:
I saw them lying dropped by culprits I
Have not seen — maybe they’re the ones you’ve looked
For? Innocent of sin, I wander off…
This is a disappointing fantasy.
A momentary cruelty, short on fun.
I pause, and pass, and sweep a finger through
Them, hear them jingle, quickly leave the scene.

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Suddenly you face
The possibility of me
Getting a place
Next to yours, of me
Coming to dinner
Without learning manners
Without losing the cap
Still using these vowels
Not caring how much
Jane Austen and Tolkien
And the oeuvre of Mike Leigh
And Romantic poetry
Mean to you
With my lack
Of gratitude
That you descended
To my state
That you befriended
Me, for your efforts to
Educate me
Improve me
Fix me
Elevate me
With my disinterest in
The time you invest in
Making me want to be you;

You shudder.
In a flash of inspiration you see
The necessity
Of embracing all that is
Right
Accept a commission
On the basis of a
Fearsome reputation
For a column in the Daily Mail
Bearing the advice:
The project has failed
Give it up, think again
Poor people just aren’t adequately nice.
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If the man I have ordered to follow you is armed,
Anaxagoras,
If I commanded him to put a bullet through your brain
Should you derelict your duty,
Do not be insulted, do not take offence. Know
That it is a mark
Of the gravity of your charge,
That you will have in your hands lives,
That you will be expected to deal deaths.

You must protect my interests,
Anaxagoras,
Work towards the failure
Of these colleagues who came to this place along with me
Who also left behind delegated factotums like yourself
(Be polite to these men; respect them as your equals;
Effect their elimination if at all you can).

You  must watch the stars,
Anaxagoras,
Maintain the accuracy of the charts I have left you,
Draw our nation’s horoscope
In the blood you will shed with your hands
While my hands are absent.
I am drawing the horoscope of the planet;
I follow the path of the comet,
And I shall be there to see where it shall rest
Or vanish, forever.

Already I have seen,
Anaxagoras,
A senator from that great imperial power stand before the cameras
Issuing stern denials that the phenomenon shall amount to anything.
I have seen a crew of pirates drop anchor,
Lay down their AKs, remove their bandanas,
Wipe sweat from shining foreheads, hands on oiled bloody singlets.
I saw a Coalition sergeant stop and sit on a pockmarked wall
Beside a boy he might have shot as an insurgent;
Both noted the object, wondered what force launched that attack.
I spoke with a nomadic herdsman of the region,
A filthy illiterate who through the translator
Babbled about contact with beings from another world.

The others,
Anaxagoras,
Expect the child to be resident
In the presidential palace
And while I see no harm in consulting the Coalition’s petty, puppet dictator
(What can he do? Really, what can he do?)
I wonder, privately, if the child will not be poor
Since there are so many more of them to be picked.
I dreamed last night of a hovel-dwelling teenager
In filthy blue donated sweats, her
Round dark accusing eyes watching me, taking it in as
I knelt in my charcoal grey suit, in my silk tie
That alone cost more than the seamed leathery husband will ever earn,
Knelt before the child whose face in my dream I could not see,
And to whom I offered what I will offer soon:
A Krugerrand,
A box of incense,
A jar of aromatic ointment used for embalming the dead.

— Daddy?
— Mm?
— Why is it raining?
— Well, the flowers and the grass need to drink and stuff.
— Daddy, why is it raining?
— Well. Um. It was sunny yesterday, so I suppose it’s the rain’s turn.
— But Daddy, why is it raining?
— Um, well, the wind blew and the sky turned grey and the rain came.
— Daddy! Why is it raining?
— [sighs] Conditions of atmospheric pressure in the air high above us necessitated the precipitation of clouds of water vapour into droplets of water which then fell to the earth below.
— Oh. Daddy?
— Mm?
— Why is it raining?
— The clouds needed a wee.
— OK.
[short passage of time]
— Wood?
— Darling?
— Are you aware that our son has just caused a panic in the park playground?
— Uh, no?
— Did you tell our son that the clouds were urinating on him?
— Uh, no. Why?

The slavedriver’s rhythm made you go numb
You’re crying for sleep, but there’s miles to come
They tore out your eyes, made you sightless and dumb, so
Row.
Row.

Count one. Count two. Count three. Count more.
Your hands red and tattered, chained to the oar,
Your overtime won’t get you paid anymore, so
Row.
Row.

They’ll whip you to death, man — keep those eyes front,
Put in some back, you’re fucked if you don’t.
You’re fucked if you do, to be perfectly blunt, but you
Row.
Row.

Client wants twenty-four seven support.
Sales promised the sun and the sun’s what they bought.
Your future depends on a tester’s report, so
Row.
Row.

You’re putting in eighty-five hours this week,
Sharing your sweat, you all bloody reek,
You’re nothing special, man, you’re not unique, so
Row.
Row.

Understanding is never the fate of a slave;
Be stoic, endure it, be brutal to stave
Off the toil that pursues you from now to the grave, and
Row.
Row.

Count five. Count six. Count seven. Count more.
Every stroke is the same as before
And the people who love you are left on the shore as you
Row.
Row.
Row.
Row.
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Originally uploaded by inuitmonster.

My friend Trish got a spot on Anthony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth Project at Trafalgar Square.

She invited people to send stuff, letters to read, and she read things by several people I know (the first thing she read was by my perenially heterodox colleague and friend Ian Moore, for example, who took the picture). Tricia also read my own “Ninja Postman,” beautifully, which you can find on the video of her performance beginning at about 19.30.

But please look at the whole thing if you have time, and maybe some of the other people. It’s a brilliant idea, and I wish I had the chance to see it in person.

Inglourious Basterds (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2009, as if you didn’t know)

So the new Tarantino film, which I saw Sunday last. I have to be honest, I came out of it (with all my mates raving about how great it was) wondering whether I had just seen a great film or a really terrible one. One thing I was sure of was that it was by no means middling.

I could explain the plot, but frankly, plot isn’t the film’s strong point. It is all about the subtext, basically. The whole thing is about film. Specifically, about film kills Nazis. How film is an instrument of heroism and suicidal fury. Film, says Inglourious Basterds, is a weapon. This review, by the way, will give away lots of the film’s surprises. Not all of them, but quite a few. Read the rest of this entry »

Wood reads at the Crunch, 20th August 2009 (33MB mp3, 35.58)

So the reading last Thursday went spectacularly well, as we sort of knew it would, it being a home crowd and all (being a big fish in the puddle is really under-rated and actually brilliant, as long as you never forget it’s a puddle). Someone wrote a poem inspired by me, which was one of the most affirming things that has happened to me for a long time.

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I’m reading at the Crunch tomorrow night. I’ll be mostly bringing fiction, particularly readings from Memory Sticks, but also some shorter pieces.  I’ll also bring some stuff from my colleagues at Jet Pack.

Writers of shitty religious-themed conspiracy fiction may also be involved.

Doors open at 8, and the open mic that precedes the feature (read something of your own!) kicks off at 9.

Think of the Polar Bear.
Oh, won’t someone think of the plight of the Polar Bear?
He’s minding his own business out there
On the tundra, unassuming, innocent,
Viciously carnivorous, scooping fish out of ice holes,
Tearing luckless marine mammals to bloody fatted shreds,
Nuzzling his snout happily in the gore
(A scene that should make the most hard-hearted among you go, “Aw”).
He doesn’t deserve this, when lands the helicopter
And ptyew he gets his arse pumped full of tranquiliser;
Tripping his fuzzy white nuts off,
Too addled to swipe a paw the size of an excavator blade
And take off the head
Of the chinless wonder
In the parka by Prada
Giving him a hug for the news team’s cameras.
He tries to snap, he fails,
A woman’s voice out of shot says, “Aw, how cute.”
He doesn’t understand. He’s a Polar Bear — he doesn’t know English.
Still, small mercies.

Think of the Moose.
Oh, won’t someone think of the plight of the Noble Moose?
The tourist steps up to the happy-go-lucky
Goofball of the animal kingdom
And puts a baseball cap on the moose’s head,
And an arm around his neck.
Caught on video:
The surprise on the tourist’s face
When the moose breaks his arm with a single well-timed
Swipe of those vast branchy antlers,
Bears him to the ground,
Walks deliberately back and forth,
Pressing hard with his two-ton frame
Until the man is one with nature,
And by “nature” I mean “mud,”
Squishy, runny, viscous.
When the rangers arrive with the rifles,
Keeping their distance, looking at him like he’s a monster,
He looks up, still chewing leaves,
As if to say, “What?”

Think of the Hippopotamus,
Gambolling merrily in the hollow,
Having a fine old wallow
Never dropping a grudge until he’s run you down and
Reduced you to chunky salsa in
Trash-compactor jaws;

Think of the Badger,
Wise, absent-minded, paternal Badger,
Who’ll take your hand off
If you get too close;

Think of the Monkeys,
Cute little rascals,
Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, saying nothing
Because they’re too busy stealing your stuff and defecating on it,
Masturbating outside your bedroom window,
Trying to bite you and give you rabies.

Think of the Comedy Animals.
Won’t someone think of the plight of the Comedy Animals?
Won’t you spare a single thought for the Comedy Animals?
Do you think they wanted to be Comedy Animals?
Do you think they want to be your cuddly toys?
Do you think that’s respect?
Do you call that admiration?
Do you want us to settle for being your comic relief when we only ever longed to be your heroes?

If someone were to film Memory Sticks (and have I mentioned, you can buy it? I haven’t? OK. Well. You can buy it), this is the sort of thing that should be over the closing credits. I think the video is not good, endowed with the seductive emptiness of glossy style magazines like i-D (in fact, why not go do something else and listen to the song playing in the background? I recommend that). I do not know why I like the song. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing I normally like.

Maybe it’s because Marina (there apparently aren’t any Diamonds, really) has a voice that appeals to me. I don’t know.

You know I made a cryptic comment in the preceding post about the press?

This press:

Ingham’s prose is tight and plain, presenting even the most emotional scenes in a raw, unadorned manner that only emphasizes their true impact. The somewhat experimental style of ALIS/Sarah’s conversations effectively conveys the weirdness of her constant internal and external dialogue. It’s a heavy story, bright yet bleak, about artificiality, corporate slavery and human memory. It’s also about nostalgia for who we were and regret over what we’ve had to become to make our way through the world.

It’s quite a big deal. And I’m quite pleased. Buy Memory Sticks here. Give me money.

My three readers may have wondered what the logo to the right was all about. One or two of them might have clicked on it. What it is, is my self-publishing enterprise, complete with ISBNs and everything.

The first book I’m putting out under the Room 207 Press bannerhead is Memory Sticks, which is a completed, edited version of a serial that ran here and is to be completed at Jet Pack. My hand got kind of forced here because of, well, the press. Anyway. You can read the story in an earlier form at Jet Pack and buy it here in print or download.

I haven’t posted so much recently, for all sorts of reasons.

While I think of something else to write, here’s some music I like. Look. I gave up trying to tell people about my music some time ago, mostly, because people are like, “what kind of music do you like?” and I tell them and they say “what?” and I say, like this, and the people say “what?”

So. A rundown. Some of these things are more obviously rockist than others, but I make no apologies.

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Further to the great piece by Chuck I linked yesterday, my other Jet Pack compadre Will has been concerned by recent moves in the publishing industry towards a model where writers provide content for free to editors who charge people for it, simply for the privilege of being published and the admiration of the public.

Will, quite reasonably, thinks this is not cricket.

In Neo-Feudal Content Creation a week or two ago, he wrote:

The notion is that the free economy created when everyone is publishing solely for free, writing just for the privilege of being read, investigating simply for the mad props of being in the know, will be the end of scarcity and that this will be great for the people with the microphones and speakers, who charge people to stand within earshot, and great for the open-mic talent, who write and speak and sing and report in exchange for a turn on stage. What’s unclear here — what’s still scarce in this model — is what these artists are eating and where these journalists are sleeping. How are their bills paid? Can they eat fan mail and send their Google Analytics data to their landlords as rent?

Which is a fair point.

Yesterday, he added more to the mix.

[The idea is to] do it because you love to do it. Be excited, and use that excitement. It’s a wonderful and useful message — a psychic pry bar. Good stuff.

But how can I trust that message if I think the reason it’s being given to me is to keep me happy and singing and toiling in my plot of land so the guy above me can get paid out of the ad revenues for posting my work to his blog?

Why should my work be the free content of an intermediate landlord’s freemium marketing strategy? It makes me nervous that I’m being motivated to produce a lot of free content so that the tier above me can get paid for it.

I have this awful (and unrealistic, I know) image of old boys, seated in club chairs in a smoke-filled sepia-toned parlor, scheming about how to get people to give their work away for free. “Tell them the fun and satisfaction is it’s own reward!” says one.

While the sepia-toned caricature is just a conceit, I don’t think that’s altogether inaccurate. Writers are not a respected part of the publishing process (just ask my friend the sub-editor about her treatment at the hands of the newspaper that just made her redundant) and are seen as an exploitable resource, and part of that is the perception that it’s a hobbyist’s thing, a thing that people do for fun, rather than a job, a craft, a graft.

Add to that the sub-moronic Randian bullshit that seems to pervade business these days, that assumes that people at the top are the only ones that do the work, and you get a model where the craftsman has no value. The content provider makes money for you and does not get a payout. Sitting here at the cusp of absolute failure, that makes me terribly depressed.

People — my colleagues — like Will and Chuck and Becky are really great writers. They deserve to be paid for their work.

Ninja postman,
Ninja postman, moving more silently than a cat, black-and-white or otherwise.

Early in the morning
Just as day is dawning
(The ninja has no truck with this “no guaranteed deliveries before eleven” business)
He steals the postbags from under the nose of the befuddled postmaster, who wonders what the point of it all is, seeing as how everyone knows Trevor, and he could just say, “Morning,” and “So what have you got for me today, Derek?” or words to that effect, but no, ever since he took the correspondence course, it’s all I AM A SILENT MESSENGER OF DEATH and the Royal Mail.

Everybody knows
That the man in the bright red van
And the black ninja mask under the old-school Royal Mail cap
Is not to be trifled with.
He does not wave or greet the public:
He does not exist, he is a ghost in flesh who leaves no trace of his passing.

Maybe he arrives:
You can never be sure
No knock for him, no ring,
Just letters through your door
Thrown from the bushes like ninja throwing stars with lethal accuracy
(Mostly.)

You may not be in to receive the parcel, but you will find it on your dining room table when you come home; you will wake in the small hours to find a signing form before you and a ninja blade at your throat;
You sign;
He says, “Thank you,”
You sit, confused in your bed, with a parcel in your lap.

You will not complain, for the ways of the ninja
And the Royal Mail
Are difficult to fathom;
They follow their own laws.
They charge you if your postage is underpaid.

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My friend and colleague Chuck has a way with words. Look, this is his way with words:

I’m here to bring the news. Seriously. It’s a newspaper wrapped around a fish, and in the fish is a bunch of stinging insects, and you open the newspaper up, and you’re like, “Oh, goddamn, this fish stinks,” and then the fish’s mouth opens, and all these stinging insects fly or crawl out, and next thing you know they’re on your hand, and they’re stinging the shit out of you, and then you you don’t even smell the fish anymore, because you’re like, “No! Holy shit! SNAARGH! Why were there angry insects inside the fish! Who did this to me?”

And then you realize. I did it. I did it to you.

What is this about?

Well, it’s about the job of writing and how us writers don’t get no respect. And that’s partly because of the chancers and the wannabes.

But writer gets some kind of namby-pamby wishy-washy artist-flavored miasma floating around it, like it’s a social identifier similar to “hippie” or “cat-lover.” Listen, I’m not saying the only qualifier for “writer” is, “I get paid to do it.” Except, it is. See what I just did there? Hah! Suckers. Seriously, you at least have to have aspirations to do this professionally, aspirations that you back up with exploration of the craft. Then, feel free to call yourself an “amateur writer,” or an “out-of-work writer,” or an “aspiring writer.” Fine. Okay. Yay for you. But don’t insult me and all the other writers who have scraped their knuckles raw climbing to our (admittedly meager) heights. Stop watering down our heady brew! Writers work really hard to be writers. Stop pretending you worked as hard.

Read the rest of his rant: A Fish Full of Stinging Insects Bites You In the Ass Arse. You owe it to me and him (but do bear in mind Chuck, along with having a good eye — he took the pic of the spider — also has a way with swear words.).

He’s completely right. I’ve completely been there.

See, thing is, the economic downturn and various family stuff means that I may have to stop freelancing and go work in an office somewhere (even the thought of which kills me — I am doing my dream job, and I have no other aspirations), and when Mrs Wood told someone recently that this might happen, this other’s response was “He’ll be getting a proper job then,” to which her (instant and correct, and I love her for it) response was “He’s got a proper job.”

I have a proper job. I am not a hobbyist. I am a professional. I worked out last week that my work has been in books that have sold a total of something like 100,000 units in the last five years. I have had my name in at least one nationally recognised magazine. I edit a magazine with a long history and a fine reputation.

I have a proper job. It’s your problem if you can’t accept that.

There’s this cliché about Welsh women
About how they’re really filthy when they talk about sex
And they have all these tattoos
And I can’t vouch for the first
But since the summer started
The layers have been shed
And at the gates of the Welsh school
The ink is there;
Butterflies on shoulders,
Dragonflies on ankles,
And here’s a fearsome black-haired nan
With a vast tangle of roses and hearts and birds
And the names of her grandchildren
Etched on her calf from ankle to knee,
And I feel sort of naked actually,
With only these half-dozen dots on my hand
Witness to a failed attempt at this
Home-made tribal framework, aged seventeen
That got all gungy and fell off.

All this ink,
All arrayed across the track
Fading in the sun
In honour of two dozen three- and four-year-olds
Wobbling plastic eggs on massive spoons
And clambering through tunnels
And running as fast as their little legs will carry them.
Here you are,
You I came to see
And Mrs J picks you up and drops you in the sack
And she tells you to jump.
And you will not jump.
You will not.
She holds your hand and tries to coax you
And you will not jump
And I am so proud.

Now I realise that the reason you’re not jumping is because
You hurt your foot a couple of days ago
And it hurts to jump
But I am your dad
And it’s my job to project upon you my own failures and desires.
I’m your dad.
I jumped when they told me,
But I never jumped high enough or far enough.
I wish I had not jumped.
I wish I hadn’t screwed up this tattoo.

Listen, when you’re old enough to appreciate it,
I’ll issue a finite number
Three maybe, or five,
Vouchers for sickies.
I’ll write you a note,
No strings, back you up,
Get out of Sports Day free,
If you like.

Obviously, we won’t tell your mother.

The celebrated author Dan Brown smiled, smugly, until a revelation struck him.
“A revelation has just struck me!” he thought.
He decided that he would not mention it,
Either in internal monologue nor in narration
Until such time as he couldn’t hold it off any longer
Or found the plot was flagging.
“And that’s what I do,” he thought,
“Because I am a celebrated writer — no, author — of religious-themed
Conspiracy thrillers.”
A figure stepped dramatically from the shadows.
“Please,” the figure that had just stepped dramatically from the shadows whispered,
Frustratedly, “Stop. Just stop. With the internal monologue and the adverbs and
“Everything. Stop it.”
Dan Brown immediately recognised his antagonist as minor hack author Wood Ingham,
Writer of a few books he was actually not all that proud of,
An Englishman and therefore likely to be revealed
As the villain of this piece.
Wood for his part, regarded the celebrated American author,
Whose religious-themed conspiracy thrillers had sold
Millions of copies
(And two of which had been made into hit movies starring Oscar-winning
Hollywood actor Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou who everyone loved in Amelie
Although she was only in the first one
And Ewan McGregor out of Star Wars was actually in the other one)
With a face contorted by contempt and hate
As was his perfidious English manner.
“Perfidious Albion,” mused Brown,
Smirking as he realised that he was about fifty per cent sure what
“Perfidious” meant
And knew that Albion was a good synonym for England or something.
English hack Wood for his part considered what had led him to this juncture…
“Hang on. Hang on,” said the tall, fair-haired bespectacled Englishman,
Doing something sort of English with his spectacles because
That’s how
You build character.
“You just changed point of view! You pull this all the time, man.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Brown, not knowing
What the English hack meant.
“I mean, come on, you haven’t even mentioned in your internal monologue
“That you’re tied to a chair, man.
“I mean, what is that?
“I mean, is that really how you think you build tension, by
“Withholding information and then going, hah, here’s the shock that the
“Characters experienced twenty pages ago?”
Dan Brown struggled silently, wondering how he was going to escape
The bonds that held his wrists tightly to the back of the chair,
And which were indeed the subject of his sudden revelation at the top of this page.
Brown bristled, nobly. “Release me, hack!” he cried.
“Shan’t,” said Wood, smugly. “This is my fictional revenge fantasy and
“I’ll let you go when I decide.”
“You just broke the fourth wall! And you tell me I’m not a great writer,” retorted Brown.
“Damned right I do,” said Wood in his
Unmistakeable English accent, undaunted by the great author’s inexorable logic.
“Like, just for the one example, what’s with the European stereotypes?
“Like the French copper is badly shaven and smokes a lot and
“The French lady is chic because that’s the only French word you know.”
Brown realised with a thunderbolt that this wasn’t fair.
He did know other French words.
“That isn’t fair,” shouted Brown, understanding that shouting is better for
Drama. “That isn’t the only French word I know!”
“What other words do you know, then?” inquired Wood, leeringly.
“Baguette,” uttered the best-selling author triumphantly.
“Besides,” added Dan Brown, “You only hate the Da Vinci Code because I blow the
“Doors off your Christian preconceptions!”
“Oh please. Your wife did your research on Post-It notes.
“Badly.
“Anyway. Umberto Eco can write a perfectly decent religious-themed thriller.
“No,” added Wood,
“I hate your work because it’s shit.
“I hate your work because
“You can’t write a believable character.
“Because you can’t write believable dialogue.
“Because you think a Smart Car is faster than a Parisian police saloon.
“Because you think that a self-mutilating albino can be
“An invincible ninja monk.
“Because you think the Greatest Cryptologist in the World
“Can’t recognise mirror writing
“And needs to be told who Leonardo Da Vinci is
“Because your protagonist is professor of an academic discipline
“That doesn’t fucking exist
“But the thing that offends me most is that every time
“I pass the big high street bookshop
“I see big displays promoting your new book
“And it pains me
“Like physically
“It pains me
“Because you are selling millions and millions
“Of your shitty, shitty novels,
“Because of the bookshop real estate you own
“That means that others can’t.
“Fuck you, Dan Brown.
“Fuck. You.
“Because I am a better writer than you!”
Said Wood, furiously.
Dan Brown thought for a moment, and smiled. He replied,
“And how many novels have you sold, exactly?”
Wood seethed, silently.
Read the rest of this entry »

By David John Ingham, age 3, transcribed by Dad.

The Crocodile, he found a friend
And then he found another friend
And then he found his mummy and daddy
And then he ran away
And then he went to bed.
The Whale he found his Dinosaur friend
And then he went to bed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dispatches from the Money-Mouth Interface: Today, we (that’s my colleagues Will Hindmarch and Chuck Wendig and I) launch Jet Pack, a gallery and maybe a storefront for our fiction ambitions. Look out for chapbooks and other stuff in the near future. Right now, though, we’re just doing the fiction.

More news as events warrant, as they say.

I’m burning down a forest
It’s important to start small
And it’s good to have a project, to be honest
So it’s down to the woods with a duck call
Frying the quacking little fuckers with a
Lighter and a CFC Aerosol
IT MUST ALWAYS BE A CFC AEROSOL
I am now only going to eat steak
I’m going to bag up all my
Cardboard plastic tin cans kitchen waste in
Non-biodegradable landfill bags
I’m going to take all my clothes to the landfill, now
BY CAR
I’m going to wear so much leather I’ll be
Sporting two thirds of a cow
Chuck out all those energy saver light bulbs
And put old ones in, permanently switched on
Leaving the fridge door open
And the heating running full
And all the windows open
The upstairs ones obviously — I’m not an idiot

I will now proceed by a series of the shortest
Haul flights I can buy
To Brazil
Where I will hire a gas-drinking
Oil spilling
American SUV
IT MUST ALWAYS BE AN AMERICAN SUV
Drive it out there into the middle
Of the Amazonian rain forest
And no I don’t care that the bloody thing isn’t designed to handle off-road
Because it USES MORE PETROL THAT WAY
Pull up so the inside front tyre
Rides over the male from the last remaining pair of a rare species
Of tree
Frogs whose glands contain
The only potential vaccine for AIDS
Listen to the ripe amphibian splatch
Create a patch
Of green blue red smear with this one still-twitching
Leg sticking
Out the side
MUST TRY HARDER

Out comes the makeshift flamethrower, FWOOSH
Bright-feathered birds with now blazing tails squeal
Trail heat death through the inviolate green
Set off bush after bush
Big eared Amazonian mice make squeaks
You never heard a mouse make
Ocelots
Run for all they got
Iridescent beetles go black
And snap and crack
And pop like Rice Krispies
Only with more legs
A snake thrashes, turns inside out
Smells like chicken
Mmm, chicken in a polystyrene container from one of the fast-food greats
The smoke thickens
And here comes Sting
The final indignity
Here to hug a few pissed off tribal folk
Talk on TV
Write an indignant song.

HAH
That’ll show you Al Gore
With your big old light show and your big old generator and your round the world
Plane tickets
That’ll teach you Guardian family section with your
Great Ideas For Advancing the Cause of the Smug Left
Every Saturday, week in week out,
All “Should I be guilty because of the detergent I use to wash my car windows?”
All floral curtains and Vauxhall bloody Zafiras
That’ll teach you Green Balloon Club
Ethnically diverse and yet nonthreatening middle class kids
And quirky childwoman with your patronising voice
And your incessant need to tell my kids about
How great bird feeders are and recycling
On the telly FIVE FUCKING TIMES A WEEK.

Yeah, that’ll teach you.

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So I got the poetry bug. And I am not alone in this. Obviously, there’s Graham, but my friend, sometime Photoshop victim and collaborator Becky, who used to post here, also has a way with verse (and a whole lot more experience than me). She’s shared several on her blog, but I especially like the one she posted last night:

Clown with a painted smile
Jumps from the wings, a bucket in his hand,
Aims it at the crowd, plays it for laughs,
Custard-pie, a trip, banana-skins,
It never fails to please them, whilst, inside,
He quietly despises those who watch,
And in his caravan, beneath the bed,
He keeps a shotgun loaded, just in case.

Go read the rest here.

I don’t want to look at you, Miss January,
With your eyelashes and your half-open mouth
And your knowing eyes
And your smooth hard derriere
And your strategically positioned arm;
I don’t want to look at you, Miss January.

I realise, yes, I didn’t have this problem with Miss December.
I smiled, kept a copy of her page
For my files, you understand.

I never saw Miss December naked in my aunt’s house
Lying on a mat printed with teddies and happy ducks,
Crying and red and surrounded with
Wetwipes and disposables and
The wrong sort of powder, the wrong sort of skin cream.

Miss December was never a baby.
So if it’s a bit weird for me, I hope you understand,
And let me know the next time you’re in a calendar.
In the meantime, I’ll be meeting Miss February early.
I hope you understand.

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Ed at Robot Viking just posted an interview with me on being a game writer, and about tragedy and art and why nice-looking chairs are no good if you can’t park your arse on them. He asks about my White Wolf stuff, and MSG™, which he’s been especially nice to (I have Ed to thank for the free version getting 1200+ downloads).

As cryptozoological entities go, the Sasquatch — or “Bigfoot” if you really must — is actually a pretty straightforward sort of a fella.

I know this. Because the Sasquatch inhabits the spare room in my house.

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The Manchester Zedders went on an expedition to find a number of places, including a street with my name. Sort of.

So Saturday night the original plan was that I would be on a boat, but bouts of sickness and an occurrence of gale force winds on the Bristol channel meant we all came home early.

Which meant that I got to host my traditional Eurovision party after all.

You lucky people.

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I have a weakness for a good horror film.

Now. Most horror films are quite bad. And even the good ones have a hard time escaping the genre box and establishing themselves as actual films that you can seriously stand alongside, you know, films that aren’t other horror films. Out of the list I have compiled below, only two of them, I think, actually work as “proper” cinema.

But the fact is, that doesn’t matter all that much to me; as opposed to fantasy and science fiction films, which I have a really hard time watching these days unless they have at least a little of that trans-genre relevance. The point is that I can still watch horror films on their own terms. Maybe it’s the near-physical thrill that a really scary, really disturbing horror film produces. Maybe it’s just a professional thing.

Here are eight of my favourite horror films, anyway, in no particular order. Warning! Lots of (nasty) images!

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Let the Right One In / Låt den rätte komma in (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

So it is more or less a contractual obligation for me to see vampire films these days, and although I managed to escape having to watch Twilight last Autumn, I saw Let the Right One In on Monday.

I expected to enjoy it, but I was unprepared for how unsettling, how touching it would be.

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