Every so often, I run a meme here entitled Q&A. Put simply, it's just an opportunity to kill some time for everyone by asking me five random (or sometimes, not so random) questions, and getting me to ask whoever's asked me them some questions of my own.

As I say, a time killer. Not much more important than that, although some of the questions have been fascinating. Hopefully, the answers have been similarly interesting to people reading.

Recently, I was introduced to something called formspring.me which is the same thing, but works on one question at a time. You can link it to your facebook or twitter feed and thus bore lots more people at the same time. (I tend to link to Twitter but not to facebook - as I've previously said how much I dislike the same statuses (statii?) appearing in multiple places...)

Interestingly, there's an option to ask questions anonymously, even if you're signed up to it, so there's no danger (as alasdair pointed out in his own LJ version of this a few days back) of tailoring the response to the questioner. And most questions have been anonymously asked...

Anyway, since there are more than a few of you here that don't follow my twitter feed, here's some of the questions and answers that have resulted from my use of formspring:

Call me curious. Why do you write?
Either because I have a story I want to tell, or to meet a challenge, (self-imposed or external), or something occurs to me that I have to get down - for it to make sense to me.

Who will play you in the film about your life?
No one would be daft enough to take on such a career-ending role.

What's the strangest question you've been asked so far?
This one.

Why are you called Budgie?
Story's here. http://j.mp/jQfMW

Why are you such a grouch?
It's obligatory. Comes with my membership of the Curmudgeonly Club.

Furthest you've ever been from where you were born?
Singapore. Flew there, stayed six hours, flew back. Long story. Not as long as the flight, though.

Why?
Why not?

Biggest regret of 2009?
Not living up to my own ambitions and expectations.

Where did the idea for Fast Fiction come from?
I hadn't written anything for a while, and I was chatting with a well-known writer friend, saying I needed something to get me "hungry" about writing again... I came up with the idea for the fast fiction challenge and he said it would certainly get me writing... but I'd hate myself after about twenty... but I'd still write them. Well, I didn't quite HATE myself but after about 100 I wondered whether I'd burn out. Hence why I've only done one challenge a year and written an average of about 80 a year.

Why do you pretend you don't know when someone's interested in you when you obviously do?
Erm, we've obviously never met.

Do you think of yourself as "Budgie" or "Lee"?
Oh, good question... Depends on the circumstances; with comics people, or people who I've met via online contacts, almost always as "Budgie". At work, with family, it's "Lee". On my own? "Budgie", almost always. I never really liked "Lee" as a name.

What's the point of anonmyous questions?
To protect the identity of people who can't spell.

If you could change one thing about yourself whether it be physical or not, what would it be?
Physically? Full body transplant.
Mentally? An injection of "grow up" serum.

What is your favourite word?
Poltroon.

Which writers do you find inspiring and / or influential?
I can't think of any writers I've found inspiring as in emotionally inspiring, but inspiring me to write? Peter David, David Morrell, Irving Wallace. Influential? Oh, a bit from everyone, though something longform I wrote was described by a friend as being heavily influenced by Douglas Adams' style.

Please pass on an important piece of advice about life.
Learn from your mistakes; regret 'em, but don't brood on them.

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge?
I tend to assume that someone who's intelligent in one area will be equally intelligent in others. And I become unfairly (and obviously) disappointed when it proves not to be the case.

Who would you most like to meet?
There are any number of people with whom I've corresponded online that I'd like to meet, including some that have become friends. Celebrities? Stephen Fry, Peter David, Bill Bryson, Jon Stewart, Jeremy Paxman, in the main so I can tell them how much I enjoyed their work.

Feel free to add to the list here.

Jack Bauer saves the day... with AOL 3.0

From apiphile:

Today has been declared lurker amnesty day! Have you read me but never commented? Do you surf by occasionally? Here for the the random ramblings?

Say hello! You are under no obligation to ever comment or delurk again, but here's a chance to do so in a post just for that.

After being 'live' for almost 48 hours, not one comment, so obviously no lurkers noticed it or could be bothered... Noted for future.

The House of Commons is quite striking at night, isn't it?








And the other side of the bridge ain't too bad either...

As previously said here, nothing to do with me bunkering down, and everything to do with being incredibly busy at work.

But just so I know I haven't missed anything... how's you? What have you been up to?

I appear to be one of the few people who hadn't seen this, and I should have... because it's excellent. Just in case you haven't seen it, here it is:

Occasionally, something occurs to you that you think, "no.... it can't be... but it is!"

Such as... realising that the four beats from The Sound of Drums from Doctor Who, when repeated a couple of times in your head, are the first four beats to the theme tune to Roobarb and Custard.

Edit to add: Yes, I know that the actual series was entitled Roobarb, but everyone I know who remembers it, knows it as "...and Custard".

Every so often, I'll admit to be envious of someone else's writing, either because I wish I'd written something that they've written, or even wished I'd come up with the concept. It's even more horrible when it's something that I know that I'd never be able to write as well.

So imagine how I feel when I - someone who has to struggle to make even a doodle look like something recognisable - see the following, by Jamie McKelvie esq, the artist behind such wonders as Phonogram, Suburban Glamour, and of course, chapter Five's art of You'll Never Believe A Man Can Fly:



Gorgeous, ain't it?

Interesting pieces by Jamais Cascio (who I've mentioned here previously once or twice) on the iPad, and his concerns about it, focussing, as he says, less on the product and more on the infrastructure.

His thoughts here, and his piece "iWorry" for Fast Company is here. Both are definitely worth reading...

It's not often I use this thing to plug something, so when I do, you know that it matters, right?

Well, matters to me anyway, and - presumably - to the authors, but this sentence is about me, ok?

The rest of this post? Now that's about the authors, and Know Your Words, available on Lulu.com for £11.67, (or equivalent in local currency).

The book's described as:

an anthology of poetry written within the last five years by newcomer poets Al Kennedy, Amy Kreines, and Delilah Des Anges.

I don't think I've met Amy, but I know the other authors well enough to buy them drinks, and for them to buy me drinks. And I enjoy their writing. What else do you need to know in order to buy it, other than a personal recommendation: if you want poetry to make you think, poetry to enjoy reading to yourself, and poetry to enjoy reading out loud, then you want this book.

It's no big secret that I think The Losers by Andy Diggle and Jock was one of the finest comics of the past decade. It ran from August 2003 through till March 2006, with Andy writing every issues and Jock drawing almost every issue.

It's superb. Seriously.

And there's a Joel Silver movie on the way in the next few months.

Here's a teaser trailer:



As Andy says on his blog on the subject, if this is your first taste of THE LOSERS, you can download the entire first issue for free (8Mb PDF).

Apple announces a new product to less than thrilling responses from the internet.

The product? The iPod.

Yes, you read that right - the iPod, not the iPad

On Slashdot, the new iPod, announced in October 2001, is described as "lame" by the original thread poster, but my favourite comment has to be:

Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...

Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port ...

Raise your hand if you have both ...

Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device ...

There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.

Heh. Read more here.

Sorry I've not been posting anything of consequence lately, or even been around much on LJ, or on anything really; for once, this isn't me 'bunkering down'... just incredibly busy at work.

Abormal service should be resumed in due course.

On the ground, outside an Indian restaurant, London W1:

The pizza place, next door to the Indian restaurant above:

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Near my office. London, W1

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Does what it says on the tin:

Several (for which I mean lots) of my friends had a 'bad' 2009; it's been a while since I can remember such a large percentage of my friends who've been so looking forward to one year ending.

That's not to say that everyone I know had a lousy 2009 - some friends had a fantastic year, an incredibly good one, and I'm genuinely thrilled for them; I hope that 2010 is an even better one.

But most people I know couldn't wait for 2009 to be over. Again, that's not to say that they were looking forward to 2010. Too many people have made that mistake in in previous years, saying something like "well, the next year can't be worse that this one."

I did that in 1997... and well, we all know how that turned out.

Thing is, when friends or even strangers have a rough time, most people conflate sympathy with empathy. They're not the same. And they shouldn't be.

After the aforementioned events of early 1998, some people said to us that they didn't know what to say. That was ok, though; the family didn't know what to say to each other. The sympathy I could handle; what got me were the people who seemed to think that they were empathising. Sorry, unless you'd lost a member of your immediate family, then you couldn't. You simply couldn't.

I'll go even further. You lost a parent? Then sorry, you don't have a clue what I was going through, having lost a sibling. Much as I don't have a clue - thankfully - what it's like to lose a parent.

One particular woman said to my mother - they weren't particularly close, it has to be admitted - "I know what you're going through..."; but she did know, having lost one of her sons about four years earlier.

The point I'm cackhandedly trying to make here? Unless you've actually been through it, you don't know what it's like. Oh, sure you can pretend you do. After all, that's what most writers do. There's a line about "I'm a writer - I lie for a living." Dunno who said it originally, but it's true enough.

And there are things that you're never going to truly empathise with someone else about. Sympathise, yes, but empathise, no.

If you've tried to commit suicide, you're never going to truly understand what it is never to have tried. And if you've never tried, you're never going to truly understand what it is to have attempted it.

If you've always known (or been told) that you're attractive, you're never going to understand what it is to have always known (or be told) that you're not attractive, and to believe it. And if you've always known the reverse, you'll never understand what it's like to know (or be told) that you're attractive, and to believe it.

There are limitations. And while sometimes I think that's a good thing, more often I think that it stinks.

Most 'funny' websites go through phases when they're incredibly funny, phases when they're not really that funny at all. And most of the time, of course, they're... ok. Not the funniest site in the world, nor particularly unfunny. Just... ok.

But criggo has been solidly in the first category above the past few days, with images such as:

A paradox


Unfortunate choice of words


Management opportunities!


Nice Camera


I don’t think that’s what they meant.


What’s on TV tonight?

Driving home this evening, I caught the last ten minutes of the BBC Radio 4 programme Americana, during which Kevin Connolly discussed the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and - marvellously - played a selection of questions recorded by a Chicago teacher of his third grade class (8 year olds), the questions they would have liked to ask of Dr King.

While some of the questions were those that any adult might have asked ("Did you think the I Have A Dream speech would have such an effect?", or "What part of the speech do you think got people listening most?"), the questions that actually touched me were the questions that - to me - only a child would ask, in part because only a child wouldn't be overawed.

Questions about such as:
- how old were you when you made your first speech, and what was it about?
- how much did you practice the I Have A Dream speech?
- what did you do straight away after you made the speech?

and, most gloriously of all:

- were you very nervous before making the speech?

There's an interesting piece by Sunder Katwala today on Next Left, which bills itself as A Fabian Society blog.

Entitled "A day of shame for the Daily Mail", it reminds people that today is the 76th Anniversary of an editorial by the notorious supporter of British (and worldwide) fascism, Lord Rothermere. In the editorial, Rothermere set out the case that the British Union of Fascists were:

"a well organised party of the right ready to take over responsibility for national affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of method as Hitler and Mussolini have displayed."

The piece went on to argue that only fascism could stop Communism, and that the BUF were "Britain's only safeguard against such insanity".

That's not particularly interesting, if only because it's old history and further excerpts from the editorial (see the above link) only serve to confirm what an anti-Semitic and fascist loving person Rothermere was.

What I did find interesting, however, were the following lines by Katwala:

In my view it is a good thing that no national newspaper would today consciously advocate the cause of the BNP in such an explicit way.

One would certainly hope that the historic mistake will have long been the subject of some self-reflection at the Mail. (Just as I have written about the difficulties for the Fabian tradition of the Webbs and Shaw's desertion of democracy in the 1930s).

I have also argued before that one should now judge the newspaper by its contemporary output, not its historic affiliations, even when Mail voices like Peter Oborne do not extend that approach to others, as in his attack on Caroline Kennedy (in the Mail!) over her grandfather's support for Hitler.

It's true to say that most of the attacks on The Daily Mail, especially from the left, refer to the Mail's explicit support for fascism in the 1930s, and certainly the newspaper today isn't exactly a hotbed of socialist views.

But how long should pass before the 'form', or history, of a newspaper or any organisation should be relegated to history? Should the owners or operators of an organisation now be forced to hold and express views that repudiate earlier views, even if those views are decades old, and there's no one left in the organisation who was responsible for those views?

Some time ago, while Prime Minister, Tony Blair stated that he felt profound regret for Britain's role in the slave trade. That wasn't enough for some, who felt that not only a formal apology was required, but substantial monetary compensation. Some years earlier, he had effectively apologised for the actions of the British government some hundred and fifty years earlier during the Irish potato famine.

150 years.

Is that too long?

Obviously not, because in 2001, the city council of Leicester unanimously repudiated the anti-Semitism of its 770 year old charter of 1231, which stated:

'No Jew or Jewess in my time, or in the time of any of my heirs to the end of the world, shall inhabit or remain, or obtain a residence, in Leicester.'

.

While I'll sometimes look at the quotes on imDb.com, I rarely look on Wikiquote when it comes to tv series or movies..

However, I came across a cracker when looking at the quotes for the Tenth Doctor.

Someone listed the 'confrontation' between Sarah Jane Smith and Rose Tyler in School Reunion... and linked each line to the episode to which it refers. Hover over the links to see what I mean...

Sarah: I saw things you wouldn't believe!
Rose: Try me.
Sarah: Mummies.
Rose: I've met ghosts.
Sarah: Robots. Lots of robots.
Rose: Slitheen. In Downing Street.
Sarah: Daleks!
Rose: [smugly] Met the Emperor.
Sarah: Anti-matter monsters!
Rose: Gas-mask zombies!
Sarah: Real living dinosaurs!
Rose: Real living werewolf!
Sarah: [emphasising each word] The Loch Ness Monster!
Rose: [stunned] Seriously?

From the forthcoming Phonogram #7



Due second week in February.

Phonogram is a comic book that simply never fails to deliver. If you're not reading it, you're missing out.

If you don't know already, Livejournal has introduced some basic statistics information for your Livejournal (available on http://www.livejournal.com/statistics).

Taking a look at the "number of comments received posted to your journal, excluding your own comments":

June 2009 (only from 20th onwards when the stats started): 124
July 2009: 152
August 2009: 95
September 2009: 89
October 2009: 51
November 2009 (only posted two weeks in it): 44
December 2009: 55
January 2010 up till yesterday:13

As a comparison (working it out manually, again ignoring my own replies):
December 2006: 197
December 2007: 115
December 2008: 124

There's been a definite drop in comments, and I think there are lots of reasons: for a start, I don't put as much commentable-content on here as I used to, but even when I do put something up that it would be fair to expect comments in response to... they don't tend to come. (Oh, and before anyone replies suggesting I used to get comments on the fast fictions, no, I didn't. Maybe two comments for every half a dozen stories, but no more...)

Next off, less people are commenting on personal blogs than before; I think that's obvious from just a quick look around. Everyone I know is getting less responses to personal blogs, whereas 'professional blogs' are still getting comments. By professional blogs, I mean both paid blogging and niche blogs which concentrate on a specific field.

And then there's facebook and twitter. It's certainly arguable that I have more contact with people via those tools than I do via the blog, and it's a fact that more people follow them individually than follow the blog.

So why blog?

Damned if I know. I've maintained this blog for coming up on seven and a half years, posting mostly every day for the past six and a half.

But everything has its season...

I've watched State of Play over the past week or so, the original BBC TV series, rather than the movie.

Of course, it won loads of awards when it was originally shown, and was nominated for several more, and it would be ludicrously hypocritical for me to ask "Why did no one tell me how bloody good it was?" when all I've heard for the past few years is how good it is.

But for some reason I never got around to watching it until I saw it in a discount bin for seven quid. And then of course my DVD player wasn't working (for some reason, switching the player to Region 0 solved that issue), so I never got to watch it until last week.

Holy hell.

Yeah, for once*, all the recommendations are spot on. It is that good.



* Yeah, I say 'for once'. I can't tell you how many things people have recommended to me - and specifically to me ("You'll love it, Budgie") - that... erm, I haven't enjoyed. The list includes The Sopranos, Lost, The Wire (Yes, The Wire)...

Twelve years. A decade plus two. Or to be more precise, Twelve years and four hours or so since my brother died.

( Stuff you've probably read before. )

What it says on the tin...

There's something very wrong about this.



No, I tell a lie. There's everything very wrong about this.

This is from a blog at the Jewish Chronicle, the blog in question being that of Miriam Shaviv:

Where antisemitic comment is not free
By Miriam Shaviv
January 5, 2010

Damian Thompson, Blogs Editor of the Daily Telegraph, has come up with a revolutionary plan to combat antisemitic trolls on his site, which - as far as I can tell - is perfectly serious:

One answer would be to approve all posts before they appear – but why should the rest of you have to put up with a delay just because a couple of nutters are so obsessed with Jews that they can’t join a supermarket checkout queue without scanning it for Zionist secret agents?

So here’s my plan.

For every anti-Semitic comment that appears on this blog, I will make a small donation to a Jewish charity.

Hope he's paid well...

But seriously, nice to see that at least one of our dailies actually cares enough to have a plan.

Well, it's... different.

Bear with me a moment, eh?

There's a little thing from my day job that I've been thinking about the past few days entitled ‘substance over form’; in other words: what’s actually going on as opposed to the strict legal ‘form’.

The easiest way to explain it is to imagine you're a company and you've taken on a hire purchase agreement. You've bought a car, say. And you pay the monthly payments quite happily and you own the car, and... whoa. No you don't. You don't actually own the car - according to the agreement you've signed - until the final payment is made. But it would be crazy not to show the car as an asset of the business, so despite the inconvenient fact that you don't own the car according to the terms of the agreement, you still show the commercial reality, that the company does in fact own it.

Well, the same thing applies, in my mind, to the debate about when the decade ends.

Yes, of course there was no year zero. The first year was - had to be - year 1. (And if anyone argues, ask them about the first DAY, or do they believe that the second day was Day One?)

So if the first year was year 1, then the tenth year was year ten. And the hundredth year, the year 100... and the decade we're currently in won't end until about another 360-odd days have finished.

You know what?

So what?

Substance over Form, my friends. Substance over Form.

Andrew Wheeler, that sage, nailed it for me when he asked whether you're happy for the "90s" to exclude the year 1990 and yet to include the year 2000. It doesn't make sense.

Of course the 90s ran from 1990 to 1999; of course the noughties (or whatever you're calling them) ran from 2000 to 2009; and of course the new decade started from 2010.

It just makes... sense.

With apologies to the writers of Scrubs for stealing their lines, here is a list of things that Perry cares I care as little about as Celebrity Big Brother:

Lemme see, uhh... Low-carb diets. Michael Moore. The Republican National Convention. Kabbalah and all Kabbalah-related products. Hi-def TV, the Bush daughters, wireless hot spots, 'The O.C.', the U.N., recycling, getting Punk'd, Danny Gans, the Latin Grammys, the real Grammys. Jeff, that Wiggle who sleeps too darn much! The Yankees payroll, all the red states, all the blue states, every hybrid car, every talk show host! Everything on the planet, everything in the solar system, everything everything everything everything everything everything - eve - everything that exists - past, present and future, in all discovered and undiscovered dimensions... Oh! And Hugh Jackman.

Neil did an unbilled appearance at Amanda Palmer's gig on New Year's Eve, during which he said the following, which I commend to you all:

May the upcoming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness.

I hope you read some fine books, kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art. Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can.

May your coming year be a wonderful thing, in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.

I hope you make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return.

And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and wisdom in the world, I hope that you will - when you need to be - be wise, and that you will always be kind.

And I hope that somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

And since there's nothing like the original, here he is:

Haven't done this one for a couple of years, and it's a good briefing for anyone new to the blog.

( Questions and Answers: )

I was right, you know.

A year ago, I wrote:

I know, I know - it only seems twelve months ago that we were changing the year from 2007 and now they're doing it again?

And what’s more, you just know that in a few hundred days they'll be wanting us to change that year thing again. I call conspiracy!

And now, less than four hundred days later...?

So, anyway, to anyone reading this, I wish you and yours all the best for next year; may it be everything you hope for, may you get everything you wish for, and may you only know joy during 2010...

See you on the far side...

My LJ from 2009, as a word cloud:



No real surprises there, I suspect...

Only amateurs need the questions, so here are the answers to my 2009 meme.

1. Yes.
2. No.
3. Yes.
4. Yes.
5. No.
6. No.
7. No.
8. No.
9. No.
10. Oh yes.

"Everything that has a beginning has an end. I see darkness coming. I see death."

Strangely enough, not spoken to the Tenth Doctor, but to Neo in The Matrix Revolutions.

Just found that interesting.

Hopefully, the second part of The End of Time won't be as disappointing as the aforementioned movie.

Just curious - how many people reading this have e-book readers?

Am considering - only considering - releasing The Fast Fiction Challenge as an e-book; almost certain it's not worth it, but a few friends have been raving about their e-book readers...

I always do this as we head towards the end of the year, and as always there have been more than a few new people reading this since the last time in December 2008.

This whole thing started in 2004 when there was a meme going around about pictures when you were younger. I did it... and then have continued to update it every year or so for more recent pics...

(As always, if you've seen these posts before, then yes, you've seen most of these photos before, although I've removed a couple of shots where two were taken very close together.)

( So, here they are, bringing the photos up to date, as of the end of 2009. )

From Monty Python:



And from the Animaniacs:

( OK, I'll stick my thoughts under a cut to avoid spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen it. )