John Heron Project

West Side, Mofos! (includes rude words, not for work computers)

Via

If you care at all about anything, watch this. Just watch it. Find 45 minutes and watch.

I’ve got the DVD of this sitting on my Amazon wishlist, which, given the nature of DVD provenance, seems to go against the spirit of the thing.

Can’t be helped. Buy me a copy if you want to keep me honest.

A fiver says it’s McCain. Gut feeling, nothing more.

REM, Cardiff International Arena, 25th August 2008

In a month’s time, I, like Danielwith, will be old enough to be crucified. It seems to have come a bit early. So yesterday afternoon I got back from Greenbelt (and incidentally, when they sang “Here Comes the Sun” in their just-as-shonky-as-usual Big Final Communion Thing and it started to piss it down, I knew for a moment there was a God). Within about ten five minutes of having arrived home, my good friend and long-time gig buddy Mathmo Martin turned up and revealed that he and some other friends had clubbed together to buy me a ticket for REM’s Cardiff gig. And that doors were opening in maybe two and a half hours.

Crikey. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a couple hundred yards to May’s house. It’s only two turns away from the main road and the tube station, but Hillcrest Road is completely different in atmosphere: small, neat houses with paths and gates and front gardens. Parked cars that never seem to go anywhere.

May pauses before she opens her front door.

— Is everything OK? says Sarah.

May looks over her shoulder at the house across the road, wonders if, just for a second, she glimpsed those same aged fingers at the edge of a curtain.

— Fine. I’m fine.

She opens the door and finds the light switch on the third try.

— Get you a drink? says May. Tea? Coffee?

— Tea would be lovely.

— Kitchen’s this way.

Coats discarded, they make for the kitchen; Sarah leans against the worktop as May empties the kettle, refills it, plugs it in, turns it on, finds a couple of mugs, teabags, the pot. And then May stops and leans forward, both hands on the counter, stares at the warming kettle. She closes her eyes and sighs.

And now Sarah is standing behind May; her hand touches the small of May’s back. May jumps, breathes in once, hard, turns around. And now Sarah is reaching up, standing on tiptoe, palms agains May’s shoulders, kissing her.

May finds herself kissing back for a moment, and then she draws back and takes three uneven, ragged breaths in succession.

— I don’t — I’m not — I didn’t —

Sarah removes her hands from May’s shoulders.

— I’m sorry, she says.

She bites her lip, catching the little ball on her lip ring between her teeth, but she continues to look straight in May’s eye. The kettle boils, clicks off.

— No, says May, don’t be. It’s really nice, but —

— Would you like to do it again?

May goes a little cold inside.

— Um.

She looks to one side.

— Yes, she says.

They turn a corner around a vast block of polished basalt and the waste ground is gone; they’re at the end of the back lane next to Acton Town tube station. As May and Sarah walk onto the street, the Rmoahal steps to one side, and then vanishes the way he came, without a word.

— How far is it to yours? says May.

— Three miles. Bit more.

— You can crash at mine if you like. I’m just around the corner. Got the time?

— Half past four.

— Crash at mine. Yeah.

— They’re the survivors of Atlantis. Or the last inhabitants of Eden, the ones who stayed when Adam and Eve were ejected from a state of grace. Or something. It amounts to the same thing, really. The point is, that they never lost their state of grace. They never had much of a fall. They might have tripped a bit. But that’s about it.

— We live in an interesting sort of world.

Sarah squeezes May’s hand, and smiles.

Yeah, I write role-playing games. So you probably know that I’m not massively proud of that, but it’s sort of fun, and it’s a crust. Anyway, every year there’s a lot of conventions and things, but only one that matters, and that’s called GenCon. And at GenCon every year, they have these awards called the ENnies, which are a bit like the gaming Oscars, only obviously slightly cheaper. So anyway, one of the games what I wrote a big chunk of, which is called Changeling: The Lost, won the award for Best Writing.

So that sort of makes me an award-winner.

That’s all.

May finishes that second potato and gets Chloë’s attention again.

— Thank you for making us so welcome. But we have to get home.

— Where?

— Acton.

Chloë nods and whistles through those pointed teeth. A man looks up.

— They have to get to Acton.

— Wife. The man picks up his spear and stands. He cocks his raw-boned head and looks at May and Sarah.

— Time to go, says May. She gets up, offers Sarah a hand. They stand for a second, facing each other, still holding hands.

May turns around. Standing, she is eye to eye with the seated Chloë.

— Sisters, says May.

Chloë bares her teeth.

— Sisters.

Chloë’s husband takes a few steps out of the ring of firelight, stops, looks back over his shoulder at the two women.

— We need to follow him, says May. Don’t talk to him, though. It’s not the way.

After having finished her potato, May reaches up and touches Chloë’s arm.

— Thank you. We’re sisters now. May takes off her watch and offers it to Chloë, who grunts, and holds it up in the firelight, and regards it appreciatively.

Chloë looks expectantly at Sarah.

— Gift, says May under her breath.

Sarah reaches up and undoes the buckle fastening the spiked collar around her neck. She reaches across May — May can feel Sarah’s breath on her cheek, briefly — and offers it. Chloë takes it, turns it over in her fingers and straps it onto a wrist already laden with bangles and beads.

One of the men whistles, and the women and the giant turn. More potatoes.

— You hungry? says May, not looking at Sarah.

— Starving. I could go another one.

— Good. Best not to turn this one down.

They sit for a while, blowing the hot potatoes, trying not to burn the insides of their mouths. The Rmoahal women make matter-of-fact, explicit conversation about their silent menfolk, commenting frankly on their bodies, their sexual performance, their successes and failures in the business of living. Their laughs are hisses through bared, filed teeth.

May and Sarah keep silent, having nothing to add, and no leave to add it.

And the men poke the fire and prepare baked potatoes.

May steps forward and touches her fingertips to the centre of her chest, and then offers the palm of her hand to the Rmoahal woman. The Rmoahal touches her own chest, reaches down and touches May’s fingertips. The Rmoahal woman looks at May’s friend, who looks across at May.

— Go on, then, says May.

— Oh. Oh, right.

The dark-haired girl does the same thing. The giant turns without any further motion, and sits in the circle, leaving a space for May and her companion.

May motions the other woman into the circle with a nod of the head, and they take their places.

Some of the men are roasting foil-wrapped baked potatoes over the fire. When a potato is done, one of the men gingerly unwraps it, cuts it with his knife, and sprinkles those fake bacon bits over it, from a little plastic pot he takes out of a leather pouch.

He hands two to May’s host, who hands them in turn to May and her friend.

May says something to the woman.

— What did you just say? says the dark-haired girl.

— Thank you. Look, hold still a second, will you?

May balances her hot potato on her knee, and with her other hand, touches the copper ring around her neck before brushing her fingertips, ever so gently, across the other woman’s lips, catching a fingernail for a split-second on the ring. The dark-haired girl blinks, shivers.

— You should, ah, say thank you, whispers May.

— Thank you, says the dark-haired girl to the Rmoahal. Really.

The woman nods, but continues to look at May and her friend. The dark-haired girl looks at May.

— What? she whispers.

May puts her hand to her mouth.

— Shit, she says. She turns to the Rmoahal.

— Sorry. Really. Sorry. May. My name is May. And, ah, my mother was Elizabeth. And her mother was Lavinia.

She nudges the dark-haired girl gently.

— Your turn.

— Oh, right. I’m Sarah. My mother is Madeleine. Her mother was Rose.

The Rmoahal woman puts her hand to her face, as if to brush away a lock of hair that isn’t there.

— Chloë. Daughter of Heré. Daughter of Arsaké.

And that is all. The woman nods again, and the woman turns back to her baked potato. The girl leans towards May, puts a hand on her knee.

— How come she’s—?

— She isn’t. You’re speaking Rmoahal.

— Oh.

May takes the other woman’s hand again and they stand up straight and take several steps towards the fire. The women stop talking and stand; the men look up with mild interest.
May calls something out.

— What was that? whispers the dark-haired woman.

May, still looking intently towards the campfire, puts her finger to her lip.

One of the women steps to the edge of the circle of firelight. She gives no sign that she is surprised, or even curious. Her stance is, in some strange way, formal.

— Don’t talk to the men, whispers May.

A light becomes visible a few hundred yards away, flickering, and sometimes obscured by moving shapes in the dark.

— I think it’s a campfire, says May.

— Oh, says the dark-haired woman. Is this safe?

— I think this is good. I think we’re going to be all right.

Twenty yards or so from the perimeter of the firelight, they stop and hide behind two upturned, skeletal fridge-freezers. May squeezes the woman’s hand and lets go, looks more closely at the camp around a rusty white corner.

She sees about ten men and women. They are giants, the smallest of them nearly twice the size of May. Each has smooth, blue-black skin, a wide mouth, black eyes with no whites. They are naked but for strings of dyed seashells, and pale leather straps for knives and quivers of arrows. Solemn, clean-shaven men sit silently, holding bargepole-spears or sharpening knives; teaspoons, screws and SIM cards braided into long black hair catches the firelight. The women are statuesque, alien, their heads shaved bald and painted or tattooed with intricate knotwork patterns. Vicious-looking gold spikes pierce the skin of their breasts and faces, and upper arms. Unlike the men, they talk and laugh as they tend the fire. One turns in the direction of May and her companion, revealing teeth filed to sharp points.

May turns and smiles, finds herself an inch away from the face of the dark-haired woman, who was looking out over her shoulder. The woman’s lips part slightly. May pauses a moment, looks into the girl’s eyes. She turns her head.

— Sorry, she says.

May wriggles away, runs her hand through her hair, catches her breath.

— It’s OK. It’s all going to be OK, she says.

— What? says the girl.

— They’re Rmoahals. Over there. Rmoahals. It’s all going to be fine.

— Sorry? says the dark-haired woman.

— Tell you later. We’re going to say hi.

A hundred yards down the road, every building becomes a featureless cube of black stone, separated from the street and its neighbours by short stretches of rubble-strewn wasteland.
May points across a stretch of flat, soiled ground.

— We’ll be fine if we head this way.

— You sure? says the girl.

— No, says May. Better be quick, though. I don’t want to stay here.

The fluttering in May’s gut returns; it dawns on her that her new friend has made no comment on what she has done. She follows May quietly, and looks at her in that strange way when she thinks May is not looking at her.

To do magic in a place like this has its risks.

They pick their way across stones and hunks of broken concrete, blackened kitchenware, rotting magazines, broken powertools, and abandoned, filthy toys. The dark-haired woman’s thick-soled boots aren’t designed for walking in a place like this, and May frequently has to stretch out a hand to steady her companion.

After a while, they are holding hands and not letting go.

I wrote this story as a birthday gift for my friend Becky.

It’s in mini-book form. If this is new to you, this is how you make it: 1. Print it out, and fold the paper in half, and in half again in the same direction, so you have something that’s still the same width as the paper, but one quarter of the length; 2. Then open it out, and fold it in half lengthways, so you have the paper neatly divided into eight; 3. Open it out again. Now cut along the black line, and fold it in half lengthways again so the text is on the outside (duh); 4. Concertina the middle folds outwards, so the thing is cross-shaped; 5. Fold it into a booklet; 6. Now stick it in your pocket and read it when you have the time.

Easy.

I am planning to do some more of these.

— Do you know where we are? says the girl, as they pick their way across stony, scrubby ground.

— Kind of, says May. Don’t worry. She avoids eye contact.

— What are you scared of? What’s wrong?

— Nothing.

May stands there for a moment, wondering how she’s going to get out of this place alive.

— Oh, sod it, she says at length.

May takes off the little ring of copper and brass that hangs around her neck, and letting the thong dangle, she holds it up between between thumb and forefinger. She blows through it, and it begins to glow. It’s still glowing when she lets it drop, catching it by the thong and letting it swing. She stretches out her arm and holds it out one way, and then another, until the ring gives out a sound not unlike the ringing of a half-full wineglass with a wet finger running around the rim.

May finds herself, as she steps out of the cab, staring into the empty eyes of the Herms: limbless, priapic, bolted to their posts, like the ones she read about once that they had in Ancient Greece, only the ones in Greece were made of stone. She gets that cold feeling in the pit of her gut that she always gets and thinks about Mica — and then thinks that she must not.

— That way, she says, pointing towards the waste ground.

…I still get internet abuse for saying how much I hated Star Wars, about a year ago?

And you know how a couple of days ago, I suggested that Edward Norton’s attempts to pretend he hadn’t sold out, because he was, you know, in a shitty Hollywood action movie (bit of tautology there) were idiotic?

Getting abuse for that, now. Just a few of them so far, but… you know. Great stuff, on the level of “ZOMG you’re full of shit, man! The movie really rocked! UR teh suXXors!” and so on. Yay.

Sometimes I really hate fanboys. In That Line Of Work I Don’t Really Boast About, I come into contact with a fair few of them. I think part of the reason that fanboys so often annoy me so much is less because of their uncritical devotion to stuff and more because of the kind of stuff they’re uncritically devoted to.

Because it’s almost always wholly stupid. Comic books about costumed superheroes. SHWAMs. SHWAMs based on comic books about costumed superheroes. Harry Potter. Tolkien - and don’t get me started on Tolkien. Star Trek. Star Wars, of course. The D* V**** C***. Doctor Who. Heroes. Lost. Battlestar Galactica.

In that list, I deliberately included some things that I quite like myself. I love Doctor Who, in all its glorious stupidity. Heroes is daft as hell, but fun to watch. I take guilty pleasure in the old Tomb of Dracula and Howard the Duck comics. I own a volume of 1970s Spider-Man comics (the one where Gwen Stacy cops it, since you asked). But none of these things matter in the grand scheme of things. None of these things have any real depth to them. It’s OK to like them.

But it’s not about liking this stuff. It’s about basing your identity on this stuff. It’s about having such an awful, weird sense of - oh, I don’t know - entitlement that you don’t see anything wrong in centring your whole identity around your devotion to stuff that’s lightweight mass-market bollocks, things that by design are equally as nourishing and addictive as Pringles crisps. These people think they have some sort of right to pablum, some right to abandon their lives to it, to give back every penny of the money they earned at their McJobs to the Man for trinkets and toys and DVD box sets.

Except they’re not uncritically devoted to it. But the criticism is all the wrong sort of criticism. They’ll say something sucked because that yellow robot in Transformers was the wrong sort of car, and yet fail to see that the whole enterprise was a vapid exercise in marketing wrapped around a film where blowing things up solves conflicts. Bankrupt in every way except the financial one.

It’s this weird, almost autistic obsession with minutiae and continuity rather than meaning. In fact, you almost get the distinct impression from some corners of the fanboy “community” that having the stuff and whining about it - which also comes from that same sense of entitlement. They buy everything and whinge and whine about the piddling little details, rather than taking pleasure in what they have.

And that’s the heart of it. It’s so devoid of fun. It’s all so joyless.

The dark-haired girl leans across May and taps on the glass partition.

May, sitting with her back to the driver, turns around sees in the corner of her eye the driver half-crumble, half-dissolve into a cloud of dust or mist that dissipates to nothing. The cab slowly comes to a halt.

— Well, says May’s companion. At least we don’t have to pay.

May glances at the woman, and then she turns around and kneels on her seat, opens the communication hatch and checks the meter: it has stopped. She digs in her purse and pulls out two ten-pound notes. She drops them through the window onto the front seat.

The light that shows the doors are locked turns off.

— Better start walking, then, says May.

My friend Becky got nominated for a One World award for Ethical Jounalism. She didn’t win, but did come out of it feeling better about being a journalist. Which sort of puts into words some of the reasons why I’m so proud to have her as a friend.

Pretentious, adj: Cleverer than I am comfortable with, and hence threatening.

Bleeding heart (often bleeding heart liberal), adj: More compassionate than me, and hence threatening.

Edward Norton is, as Hollywood actors go, pretty good at what he does. Well, I liked Fight Club. However, were I to meet him now, I would grab him by the shoulders and shake him bodily, and tell him to get a grip on himself.

Next would come the beating up by the bodyguards, and the suing, and the assault charges (on both sides). So I must be content with a) never meeting Edward Norton and b) never having the chance to grab him and tell him to buck up his ideas.

OK. So the point is this: Edward Norton, star of The Incredible Hulk, is refusing to publicise his film, because the extra bits he added to the film that added character depth and stuff like that were not in the final cut of the film. Because his artistic vision is compromised or something.

The message to Edward Norton, then, that Edward Norton will never read: YOU ARE IN A SHITTY HOLLYWOOD ACTION MOVIE, BASED AROUND A KIDS’ COMIC THAT CONCERNS A MAN WHO TURNS INTO A BIG GREEN MONSTER WHEN HE GETS A BIT ANGRY.

Where the hell are you going to get a “vision” for that? There is no vision there. It’s a product, a slice of mass-market toss that might entertain you a bit. And encourage you to buy action figures, breakfast cereal and kids’ clothing. And four-disc DVD special edition box sets with making of featurettes and unironic directors’ commentaries.

I think that what irked me about Norton was that he, complicit in production of this stuff, was falling into the fanboy error of taking what’s basically a stupid piece of fluff seriously as a valid expression of the film-maker’s art.

The Fanboy Error is this: not just liking the stuff, because there’s nothing wrong with deriving simple enjoyment from stupid things, but taking it seriously enough to define oneself around the liking of it. To fill your house with the spin-off crap. To take personal offence at people who don’t like this stuff. To consider, for example - as I read on a forum a while back - that changing something as inconsequential as the type of car one of the Transformers turns into is tantamount to a “rape” of your childhood.

To consider it worth fighting about¹.

No. It’s not worth fighting for, or about. It’s a disposable medium that fans and the mostly American media corporations that exploit them have made permanent, a kind of artistic landfill which, like the real ones, we’re never really getting rid of.

The girl points — they are passing the building where the Westaways live and the courtyard full of the Herms.

May shudders as she always does when she passes by here, as she did five minutes ago, when they passed by here last time.

— Aw, no, says May. Not again.

So in the cab, they talk about the Rachels, and about how exactly the dark-haired woman knows Coxy (they met at work, apparently, although May cannot parse the chronology or circumstance of that meeting in any meaningful way). The conversation dries up. The stranger looks across at May with her hands folded in her lap, her lips pressed together in a small smile. The streetlights glint off the ring in her nose, the ring in her lip, on and off. May tries not to maintain eye contact.

The dark-haired woman looks out of the window.

— Haven’t we passed here? she says.

(Authorial Note: Has been far too long since this was updated.)

Standing next to the coat check, waiting for Coxy’s friend to get her coat, May orders a cab, and now they’re out and waiting. A few people are leaving the club, the trickle before the flood, not enough for them to have to stand too close together, and yet May’s companion is standing close enough for the skin on May’s arm to tingle slightly with the proximity.

May tries to distract herself, falls into the old ritual of scanning windows, roofs, the corners of alleyways, looking for the tips of palsied fingers, for the reflection of rheumy eyes.

— There’s no one watching, she says out loud.

The dark-haired woman raises an eyebrow.

— Should there be? she says.

— No, says May.

The dark-haired woman turns, carelessly, brushes her fingers across the back of May’s hand, which is the sort of gesture that could be an accident, if May wants it to be.

Sometimes, you find out a fascinating fact about the natural world and your favourite species group that enriches your life. And sometimes, you learn something you really, really find you that wish you didn’t know (link Not Safe While Eating Breakfast).

Maybe, come October, I might get another chance. You never know.

It’s the 24th May 2008. Marija Serifovic, who resembles nothing more than kd lang, only Serbian and sort of compressed, so she fills the same volume, but is about two foot shorter, belts out the first verses of her song, “Molitva” (“Destiny”), to minimal accompaniment. And then the band kicks in. A woman appears, dressed in a bride’s dress. Any lesbian subtext there becomes blatant, when the woman blows her a kiss. Marija whips off the bridal gown to reveal a weird costume, split vertically down the middle: the right side is a suit and tie like the one Marija is wearing, and the right is a white ballgown.

A dozen or more dancing women appear back stage, all wearing that same weird costume. They dance about a bit. As the song reaches the crescendo, the women whip off that costume to reveal yet another costume, but now they’re doing that jerky-armed wide-eyed creepy robot thing.

The song ends, and Marija introduces the show. They’re still playing at being creepy robots behind her.

Asking what the hell that was about is kind of redundant, because this, dear reader, is my review of the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not a superstitious person, but:

At school, I had locker 207.

In my first year at university, I moved into Neuadd Sibly, a tower block on the campus of the University of Wales Swansea, and was assigned room 207. Sibly Hall has another name now. I forget what it is.

In my third year at university, having survived a disastrous year in a shared house, I moved back into halls, specifically Beck House, an off-campus hall. I was sent to the Garden Annexe, room 207. The Garden Annexe was bulldozed about ten years ago.

When I worked for Mr. Breast, the phone extension on my desk was 207. I am reliably informed that Mr. Breast is still there. Only the other day, I ran into a former colleague who still works at Mr. Breast’s company, in fact, and who tells me that they’re going just fine.

My dad was into numerology. He would have told me that 2 was the number of balance and union. That 0 was the figure of all. That 7 was the number of thought. Then he would have found that the numerical base of 207 (2+0+7) was 9, which is the number of completion. Meaning that 207 is a multiple of nine (it is - it’s 9×23, and 23 is a prime number, which probably means something else).

And I would doubtless have said, Dad, what does that mean? And he would have told me I wouldn’t understand, in that somewhat sympathetic way he had of telling me that I didn’t get things, and would never succeed in things.

As I get older, I find myself looking for significance in things that I never did when I was in my twenties. But what significance is there to be had from something like this? What difference does it make? In the end, it’s just numbers.

FYI: Moved to a new server today. Some disruption was inevitable: I lost e-mail for a few hours and I think we lost a comment left in the time between copying the site over and deleting the old site (if you fancy leaving it again, go ahead). But on the whole, all done and dusted.