There are days when I feel insufficiently geek. Don’t get me wrong – I do plenty of things that are geeky as hell – I play, on average, 1.5 face-to-face RPG sessions a week, have a semi-regular influx of graphic novels appearing in my mailbox, and the staff at my local Fantasy, SF, and Crime […]
So I had a Monday free from work this week and, in the absence of anything pressing on the writing front, I elected to spend the day flaked out in front of the Teev in a blatant attempt to recover from the worst of the GenreCon hangover. My televised tipple of choice – the first […]
RESPECT YOUR GODDAMN AUDIENCE. Okay, here’s your warning. I’m going to rant my fucking pants off in this one, ’cause I’m mightly passionate and this post has been sparked by something that really pissed me off. If you’d prefer to skip the rage, feel free. Go read something else. I won’t be offended. Just remember those […]
Years ago, when I first started my never-to-be-finished PhD, I had one simple belief: everything is artifice. I suppose it’s a natural enough conclusion to come to when you’re twenty-two years old and reading Lyotard’s theories on the post-modern condition during the bulk of your waking hours, and it certainly seemed to explain an awful lot […]
Spokesbear: You awake? Peter: No. Spokesbear: You sure. Peter: Very. Spokesbear: And you’re paying utterly no attention to what I’m saying, right? Peter: None. Fuck off. Spokesbear: No need to be hostile. I just wanted to make sure you were docile before I told you this. Peter: *sleeps* Spokesbear: James Cameron’s said he’s going to […]
Let me put this out there from the beginning: I’m a totally fucking cranky cinema goer. I find it very hard to discuss films, even films I like, without veering into the territory of ranting. It’s not that I dislike film – quite the contrary – but the result is this kind of terminal disappointment as I […]
It’s generally a bad sign when the cleanest room in my flat is the study, but it appears I’ve reached that point. I predict a day of epic tidying and cleaning in my future, but right now I’ll settle for getting the washing up done and putting away the clean laundry. That’s next hour’s problem, […]
So one of the things that happened at Swancon was this: I found myself double-booked on Friday night and sided with the Gentleman’s Etymological Society event rather than the Emotion, Attachment, and Video Games panel. This wasn’t really intentional – originally they’d been scheduled to go one after the other – but such things happens in cons […]
Today, because I’m in such a cheerful mood, I’m mainlining Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads album. Somewhere in my CD collection I’ve got a copy of his b-sides and rarities triple-disc thingy, which includes a four-part, extended thirty-minute long version of O’Malley’s Bar. That’s going on next, ’cause sometimes, misogyny be damned, you just need a […]
So, by my standards, it was an awesome but crazy-busy weekend. Often, when my weekends are quiet and sedate, I feel like I’m letting the side down and I find myself thinking, “man, I wish I had a crazy-busy weekend, you know?” Then the crazy-busy-weekend comes along and I go along with the flow and […]
To give you fair warning, this is a cranky post. It’s possible I’ll swear. Often. Loudly. You have been warned. # One of the more interesting threads running through the comments on yesterday’s post, both here and over on Facebook, was this attitude that sitcoms are inherently limited and/or required to suck by virtue of […]
I frequently find myself watching The Big Bang theory, finding it funny, then hating myself for it. I mentioned this on the twitters and facebook yesterday, which immediately had a group of people saying, in essence, why, dude, it’s actually funny? And, yes, it is. There are times when it’s absolutely smart and entertaining, and […]
