A Magus

December 21st, 2008 by Wood

I imagine him:
Blade-creased,
Face a well-kept well-used axe,
Attendants tongueless, carved-backed,
Walking signs of wealth and viciousness.
(They brush his clothes.)
(They bring him wine.)
One lethal eyebrow raises:
Someone out of sight screams.
Someone stops screaming.

I imagine him:
Squinting, open-mouthed
Through steaming viscera,
Fingernails jammed with gore and shit.
Here is a chart in charcoal, urine and blood;
Here is an ill-tempered entourage:
Casks of burnt cedar, groaning camels,
Ointment, clinking sacks, armed men,
Come to bow before
Innocence and squalor.

MSG™: Motivational Music For All You Assets

December 17th, 2008 by Wood

Identikit one-name FHM pinup singer? Check*.
Doing the sexy office drone thing? Check.
Getting a sexy cyborg upgrade in a lift? Check.
Branded to all buggery (”Energiser™ Playboy™ Bunny,” anybody)? Check.
Crappy “Street” rapper to appeal to the urban demographic? Check.
Veneer of shiny efficiency, no soul allowed? Check.
Vast carbon footprint (check out the exhaust on the suggestive motorbike)? Check.
Unintentional glass ceiling misogyny? Yeah, I think so.

“If you work hard for your money, you’s a go girl.” Quite.


________________________________
*This is Ciara, like it matters.

MSG™ reviewed by proper professionals and everything

December 11th, 2008 by Wood

Greg Costikyan is one of the original designers of Paranoia, which is a massively entertaining RPG that a lot of people like, and he has been in this game designing game for more than twenty years. Anyway, he reviewed MSG™ a couple of days ago. on playthisthing.com, which is a site that looks at all sorts of games. It was a very positive review. Which is nice.

In a traditional RPG, players are expected to cooperate with each other with the GM as a neutral arbiter; Paranoia turns that on its head by encouraging players to betray and backstab each other. MSG does something similar, but subtly different; it pits the “gamemaster” at the players’ throats, balancing things by having each of the players act as GM in turn. That’s an interesting and novel approach, as are several other elements of the game — the fact that it comes to a definitive ending in a single session, and that there are winners and losers. In short, it defies many of the characteristics we normally ascribe to a tabletop RPG — in the context of a very cynical, and very cool, cyberpunky future where even the minimal constraints on corporate action that currently apply are removed, and any residual ethical norms for businessmen are considered the domain of chumps.

Excellent, in a word.

MSG™ Promotional Edition: a success, then

December 10th, 2008 by Wood

When I retired the MSG™ Free Promotional Edition, I found that 2,120 people had downloaded it. I’d call that a success. But that’s it. It’s gone now.

The Beta Playtest version is still out there for £3.99 print, £1.99 PDF. I finished the Executive Edition last night, and it’s now in proofreading, hopefully. More on that later.

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

MSG™: Recruitment

December 10th, 2008 by Wood

MSG_2009_executive_editionp43

Kiera again. If companies decided that they were going to get the marketing consultants in on your brain, they’d call it “heADspace™”.

Buy my game!

MSG™: Human Resources

December 9th, 2008 by Wood

MSG_2009_executive_editionp31

Zara took a whole load of pictures of Kiera and Bauhaus John on Thursday night. It was a pretty hilarious evening.

MSG™: EAT CHEESYFLAKES

December 8th, 2008 by Wood

MSG_2009_executive_editionp34-35

Nothing more needs to be said. Cheesy, flaky MSG-laden goodness.

MSG™: Be Your Own Desktop

December 3rd, 2008 by Wood

Be your own Desktop

BEKI80 asks: who needs a desk when your brain is connected to the Company network?

Zara’s doing a photo shoot with some more models tomorrow.

Even more graphics from MSG™

December 2nd, 2008 by Wood

MSG_2009_executive_edition_p19

This is from the imminent Executive Edition. You can still buy the Beta Playtest, though.

Buy MSG™ at lulu.com

The successful applicant smiled

December 2nd, 2008 by Wood

The successful applicant smiled
Brightly, said, “Of course not, no,
Silly,” could not hide her excitement,
Still tightly clutched the mobile while
I tried to confide these doubts I had:
“Don’t let it overtake you, please
Don’t allow them to make you
A slave.”
She hugged me, ruffled my hair.
She arrived there prompt, Monday, nine.
Oriented, one day turned into a month,
I come to her office to see her for lunch today.
At reception, hand on pencil hip,
Her smiling shining lips say
“How may I help you?”
“Are you free?”
I see the light they put by the socket
At her temple flick on,
Her eyes flick out;
“I have pressing work commitments.
Next time, make an appointment.”
Smiling she turns on a spike, clatters
To the lift, resculpted, fully trained,
Supplied with the best equipment.

More graphics from MSG™

November 27th, 2008 by Wood

A vital associate announcement, courtesy of BEKI80.

MSG_2009_executive_editionp45

This is going to be in the typo-free, expanded, corrected and Nu-Improved Executive Edition of MSG™, which, when I have inserted some promised illos from my friend Zara, is coming soon.

Because the new version is coming so soon, I’ve extended the limit on downloads of the free version until December 9th.

Stop worrying and enjoy your life

November 23rd, 2008 by Wood

The atheist bus and the rainbow bus
Arrive by chance at the same time
In this same town square.
“We’ve got a live one here,”
Says the man selling copies
Of The God Delusion
As penal substitution
Gets explained to him a third time
By a smiling beard with a Bible.
Relations between the rival
PSVs grow cold; the Rainbow
Crew sing their praise songs louder.
An atheist lady says, “This is
Really getting old.” She crosses
The line, says, “The singing is annoying,
It’s really annoying, and we know
Why you are doing it.”
And a Christian smiles sweetly,
Says, “But do you know Jesus?”
She punches the man out,
Thwack, someone pulls her back.
The shouting brings her mates.
The Christians counterattack;
NIVs and Dawkins hardbacks
Make equally effective weapons;
Screamed invective in a torrent, the exchange
Of vicious but not obscene names
Draws a crowd. They watch the two
Buses go up in flames.
The police end the fray, make arrests,
Gather up the dead.
And later all that can be said
By either side in the dock:
“They started it.”

MSG™ plugged at io9

November 21st, 2008 by Wood

io9.com is on the Gawker network. It get stupid numbers of hits. It is a website that promotes and discusses all things science-fictional and almost science-fictional. And all things geek, really.

Anyways, io9 plugged MSG™ today. So. Pleased.

Buy MSG™ at lulu.com

FREE Promotional edition (available until 25th November 2008)

It requires flashing lights

November 20th, 2008 by Wood

Ladytron/Asobi Seksu, Carling Academy, Bristol, 19th November 2008.

Inuit Ian recently took great pleasure in telling me that he had seen Ladytron play live, and I hadn’t.

Well, now I have. Read the rest of this entry »

Things that inspire Schadenfreude, no. 207

November 20th, 2008 by Wood

(Only slightly outdated version of) BNP’s entire membership database leaked on internet, allegedly by one of their own.

On the one hand, it’s really not kosher to give out people’s phone numbers and the names and ages of their kids on the web. Whoever did this should — rightly — go to prison for it.

On the other… Read the rest of this entry »

MSG™ - now available

November 18th, 2008 by Wood

Here we go, then. This is what I have been working on recently. MSG™ is a game of negotiation and conscience for three to six adults, what I wrote, designed and illustrated myself, with help from my ubiquitous partner in crime Becky Lowe and my genius colleague Benjamin Baugh. It’s the genetically modified bastard child of Naomi Klein, Chris Morris and Dilbert.

It’s an 88-page illustrated paperback book, and it’s £5.99 in print, and £1.99 for the pdf.

But for one week only, it’s available on PDF format for free.

Buy MSG™ at lulu.com

FREE Promotional edition (available until 25th November 2008)

MSG™ record sheets

MSG™ front cover

back cover

Baby P

November 17th, 2008 by Wood

Do not name him, please;
Leave him gazing from the print,
All trust.
Do not allow him to pitterpatter
In my imagination.
Let the people who care grieve,
Let the people who did not be punished,
Let me find my children and
Hold them,
So very tightly.

Deities and Demigods

November 2nd, 2008 by Wood

You might catch your breath at the idea,
Grasp the boat’s side, knuckles
Not as hard nor as pale as this
Wall of sea-borne scales
Glimmering in cold crystalline mist.
Your stomach might harden
At the premonition of hell
In the smell of sulphur and charred meat,
In the sight of bobbing, half-finished meals:
Lost men, brave men, men like you.
The dawn might darken
In the opening of this single slitted eye,
Wider than your height
And you might rise to your feet,
Barely trusting the creaking unsteady wood,
Raise your ancestral spear,
Fear that the moon-bright blade
Will not be good
Enough
To end the serpent that girdles the earth:
But since you know its hit point total,
Instead you just kill it and steal its stuff.

Read the rest of this entry »

Notice

October 29th, 2008 by Wood

Matthew James Ingham was born this morning, 12.17am.

He was 8lbs 7oz in weight, which means Becky owes us a bag of jelly babies.

Parenthood

October 19th, 2008 by Wood

A lump of play dough
Is stuck to my wedding ring.
I can’t scrape it off.

Tell my kids the old, old story

October 12th, 2008 by Wood

Tell my kids the old, old story
With the torture. And the dying.
If it isn’t spectacularly gory
I tell you, you’re clearly not trying
Hard enough. Tell them the truth
About the agony. Don’t hide it
On account of their extreme youth;
It only counts if you’ve crucified it.
Pile on the gratuitous violence –
Innocence is over-rated.
If they sat there in shocked, wide-eyed silence
At the vicious facts you stated
And screamed in the dark, well, they should.
A bit of misery and fear will do them good.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Dyson Song

October 6th, 2008 by Wood

Grey and yellow and grey and blue
They come in orange and purple too
It’s amazing what they can do
These days

The muck goes round and round and round
And it makes this crazy whirring sound
And it settles inside that plastic surround
In layers

And you don’t need a bag
No, you don’t need a bag
No, you don’t need a bag
Anymore

No, you don’t need a bag
No, you don’t need a bag
No, you don’t need a bag
Anymore

Well, I thought that it looked kind of nice
So I went to the showroom once or twice
And I found one that had a massive price
Reduction

The salesman said, son, you’re the boss
So I bought it and took it back to my house
And found for myself how there’s no loss
Of suction

And you don’t need a bag
No, you don’t need a bag
No, you don’t need a bag
Anymore

No, you don’t need a bag
No, you don’t need a bag
No, you don’t need a bag
Anymore

Read the rest of this entry »

Jesus is my boyfriend

October 5th, 2008 by Wood

She closes her eyes, falls to her knees
Hands raised, eyes teared up, sings
Love, love, love, need, longing, love.
The boy standing next to her empty seat
Sings in a voice no less loud
And wonders if when they’re married
And he can finally get her to bed
She will be thinking of Him.

A life sentence

October 5th, 2008 by Wood

A life sentence
In twenty-one words,
Argument over.
The boy nodded with his fatal point:
So there.

A life sentence:
One flawed statement
Started me off,
Hollowed me, filled me from scratch:
So there.

A life sentence:
Made everyone’s prize,
Wheeled out in meetings,
An evangelist’s punchline:
So there.

A life sentence.
Shallow, stupid words.
They saved my life.
I’m still here. Argument over.
So there.

Read the rest of this entry »

They used to make them out of marble

October 3rd, 2008 by Wood

They used to make them out of marble
Which, granted, had its advantages,
They didn’t move, were built to last.

The problem with making them out of marble:
You have to contend with the real thing.
(Here’s Ruskin on his wedding night,

Recoiling from goods not made out of marble,
From a growth of hair, unexpected shapes,
Thighs that give, breasts that sag.)

Now you can make them out of flesh,
Convert the actual goods, problem solved
With knives and electric shocks
And paralysis in needles
And taut little bags of rubber,
Make the parts look good,
Make sure they don’t work.

Read the rest of this entry »

I would run my fingers

October 2nd, 2008 by Wood

I would run my fingers
Across those petal-soft stomach scars,
Close my eyes,
Think on the things your body knows,
The consequence of your sex,
The lives you have made.

I would brush my lips
Over the experience on your face,
Whisper between
The signs of past smiles, complete loves:
If they do not see you now,
I see you. I want you.

History leads history to longing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Where your treasure is

September 28th, 2008 by Wood

They sorted me out with an attractive deal
A manageable repayment period,
A decent APR
A gradual but not too steep
Increase in
Gentler words,
An extra kiss perhaps
As a premium.

Tee-Shirts That…

September 23rd, 2008 by Wood

…I would quite like to acquire but probably shouldn’t really wear, no. 207.

Brynmill Park, 07/09/08

September 21st, 2008 by Wood

A teenaged girl and boy
Share a skateboard
Traverse the path
At a languid pace
His arm placed gently
Around her waist.

But we have to start talking in code

September 14th, 2008 by Wood

But we have to start talking in code
Avoid touching, avert our glances.
Our friendships strain under the load
But we have to start talking in code:
Our families must never explode
Into infidelities, selfish romances.
But we have to start talking in code
Avoid touching, avert our glances.