Panos Dionysopoulos's Blog, page 3

‘Twas the night before Christmas…

…oh wait, it’s after midnight so technically it IS Christmas. Well, happy holiday everyone. Whatever you celebrate, I genuinely always thought of this as a time to try and tolerate family, loud children, wine cooler and bad jokes in Christmas crackers. I do miss the presents aspect of it though. As an adult I’m finding myself buying a lot of presents and receiving a few t-shirts. Having said that, I do receive the gift of an incredible amount of food so I’m actually pretty happy with that.

It wasn’t as great when I was vegan though. A Greek Christmas is not a salad-friendly Christmas. I mean, there is some potato salad here and there but most of it has bacon. The rest of the food consists of lamb and chicken. Or chicken stuffed with lamb. (Just kidding, Greeks are confused by the idea of Turducken.)

I remember when I first announced that I didn’t eat meat the conversation vanished to be replaced with confused incredulity. The next week I visited my mum and grandmother and my grandmother announced she had made vegetarian dolmades (rice wrapped in vine leaves). I took a bite out of one and discovered mince meat. “What?”, she said with a look of innocence, “that’s not meat. Just mince.”

You tell a Greek relative that you’ve given up meat and you might as well say “I’ve gone on a hunger strike.” All of a sudden you have half the extended members of your family telling you your cheeks look ‘sunken’ and asking how you can ever be full. My mum offered me sardines the first 5 times I visited her after my announcement. The worst part for them was that they couldn’t argue against any moral high ground on my part because I wasn’t operating from one. I made it very clear that I a) felt healthier when I didn’t eat meat and b) looked better when I didn’t eat meat. I went so far as to call myself a “vain-a-tarian”. It was great for me. For the first time in my life I could wear stretchy designer t-shirts (please don’t imagine Ed Hardy type monstrosities. My stuff was more artsy-emo orientated. Also threadless) and skinny jeans. I do realise it’s still possible as a ‘chunky’ person to wear skinny jeans but it’s never advisable. If only because of the ever-present butt crack syndrome.

I downgraded after a couple of years to vegetarian. A couple of years after that, due to regular dinners with family members of my girlfriend (now wife), I downgraded again to eating seafood and fish; what I dubbed a ‘pescetarian’ for convenience sake. Though it wasn’t actually that convenient as I constantly had to explain what it meant. A couple of years after that I downgraded yet again to “I will eat lamb at Christmas” as it just seemed the festive thing to do. Not for the lamb, obviously.

So where does this leave me? Chubbier than when I was a vegan, that’s for sure! I’ve been considering going back to it but aside from everything else, it’s actually quite expensive. Yes, this is even if I go to the Central Market and buy all my produce fresh. Unless I somehow carve out twelve hours a week to prepare all my food (and a few more hours beforehand to work out what I’d even want to eat for the week) then I’m left with a heap of stuff that I don’t end up eating. Aside from the crackers anyway.

At least I was never on the Paleo diet; a diet that seems engineered to kill people. Yes, let’s put maximum strain on the heart and fill ourselves with fat, as nature and cavemen intended. The world of actual scientific fact has returned a verdict on this only recently and proclaimed that it’s about as healthy as drinking nail varnish. Of course, to the paleo community this is only natural as the scientific community are in cahoots with the ‘everything but meat’ industry.

Changing the subject swiftly, I joined a gym around the corner from my house to motivate me to go more often. As I haven’t been to a gym for a full year and a half before I joined this one, it gives me a 400% success rate after going there four times. Possibly only 100% as that’s the highest you can go. Apart from certain grammatical exceptions. Am I the exception? All I know is I’m 200% more tired than I was a couple of hours ago so I should probably try and rest before the mayhem tomorrow. At least I have the beat-boxing car to look forward to when my nephew unwraps it; until the batteries run out anyway.

Why am I forcing my brain to do this/

Well, it’s 5am and instead of flying to my bed to pass out, I’m forcing myself to write yet another blog entry. I really hope that this is actually sharpening my writing skills rather than just underlining for me how stagnant my writing is staying. I mean, if I’m not improving then I’m basically just torturing myself right after a bout of insomnia, right? Would I be that cruel to myself?

Rather than answer that very obvious question (the answer is yes, for those who don’t know me well) I’m going to move onto a topic I’m quite invested in: video games. I’ve loved video games since I was about seven years old when my dad bought me an Acorn Electron from the neighbour next door with a jar of opals he dug up in Cooper Pedy. I loved that thing. It came with about eight games, all on cassette. I think the main one I played was a game called ‘Ghouls’ where the ghost chasing you would taunt you when you died by basically looking really happy about it. I also used to borrow books on programming the Electron from the library and spend hours typing out the programs in them. Yep, I was a bit of a nerd but I remember those days fondly.

After that, I upgraded to a PC. Not just any PC though, this was one with a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive and 512mb of RAM. On top of that, it had a monochrome monitor. After the world of colour I got from my Acorn Electron, I was a little disappointed. Though once I discovered how much faster disks were than cassette (to load the “Acorn Olympics” game on the Electron, for example, took about thirty minutes) I was hooked on playing everything I could. First I started buying magazines that came with disks, then ordering disks from the back of the magazine. The internet didn’t exist yet, at least not as we know it, so I had to actually go out and find every game I played.

Finally, my gaming life changed when the man who supplied my parents’ chicken shop (yep, I’m Greek and my parents owned a chicken shop. Feel free to report me to the stereotype police) gave me a copy of the Sierra adventure game ‘Police Quest’. This game allowed me to be a police officer and play through an actual storyline. It completely blew my mind. After this, adventure games were my favourite genre. I found and played everything I could at the time, using various tricks to get my monochrome graphics looking as good as possible (which still wasn’t that good.) I also played through the old Infocom text adventures which required me to actually read the words on my screen. This was actually perfect for my monochrome monitor and I never needed to tweak the graphics. Not much, anyway. I also got to play through Douglas Adams’ own game version of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ which is incredibly funny, incredibly frustrating and currently exists as an online version here: http://www.douglasadams.com/creations...

Eventually my PC got upgraded to… another PC. This one had a colour monitor! And two floppy drives instead of just one. I remember getting it from Cash Converters. I was so excited I celebrated by getting Space Quest 3, which was the best game I had ever played. It’s still right up there for me, and one of my most prized digital possessions is the reply to the email I sent to one of the writers of the game. It was actually as funny as the game was. It wasn’t for a few years later that I discovered that sometimes your heroes don’t turn out to be exactly as awesome in real life as they are in your favourite media portrayal of them, but Scott Murphy was that guy for me.

From here of course I went through a string of upgrades and games and a brief stint testing games in a gaming centre which… was pretty awesome, actually. Even though it doesn’t pay well (or at all, outside of the occasional free game) and I was living off of iced coffee, $2 meatball subs and lollies. Half Life 2 was the amazing game of the hour, followed by Deus Ex and, when everyone came over to play, Rogue Spear, where we worked together to kill terrorists and yell at my cousin for running ahead of us and getting the hostages killed.

These days, when I actually have any time (which isn’t often), I play games  on my PS4 because maintaining a PC just is too time-consuming, space-taking and expensive. Right now I’m playing a game called “Far Cry 4″ where I can get attacked by a tiger at any time. Though usually it’s either a bear or some sort of badger that kills me. I also get to ride some sort of one person helicopter, or gyrocopter, or something. Whatever it is, it’s fun and makes a buzzing noise. I can chop chunks off trees with it as well.

Where am I leading with all this? Well, the first games to really capture my imagination were story based. They were rich, funny and detailed fiction and on occasion the story-telling was excellent. At some point I plan to try my hand at scripting something in the game universe and I’m hoping I can make people laugh and have fun like I’ve done over the years.

Alright, I think this counts for my writing. I can finally go to sleep. Do you have fond memories of storytelling in games or even any other unconventional media? Let me know in the comments!

Phone blogging!

I didn’t think it would come to this but I’m writing this entry on my phone. I’m in bed already and my laptop is all the way in the other room so I’m going to put up with predictive text for this entry.

My band played a gig tonight. Well,  the band I play drums in played a gig. I think I hit the drums hard enough that most people didn’t notice the little mistakes I was making. I try to beat those drums like I hate them more than anything in the world. I mean,  it works for Dave Grohl.

At some point during the gig an eccentric old man turned up. Now,  when I say eccentric I mean really eccentric. He was wearing striped pants and a different coloured suit jacket and a gold chain and a dapper hat. Also, when I say old I mean in his 70s at least. He suddenly sailed into the most pit and started dancing like he’d stumbled upon a Sinatra retrospective. Watching him shimmy across the floor during a particularly heavy part of my friend’s show was the highlight of my night.

I just realised I actually get to sleep in tomorrow with nothing I have to do! This is a first outside of the holiday we took. Today I went to four jobs though they were pretty easy. Yep, I’m drifting into tedious details,  I think it’s time to wrap this up. Till tomorrow!

Sleep and other myths

After spending the last three hours trying to fix a stubborn laptop and failing miserably, I finally decided to give up until tomorrow so I can actually sleep before a “Go to sleep, idiot” headache descends upon me. Then I remembered that I absolutely had to write something before I could let that happen. So here I am, desperately trying to outrun the headache I can feel galloping down the hill that is my cerebral cortex.

Tonight I finished listening to the podcast “Serial” with Margie (my ever-suffering partner). What an incredibly interesting show; though the host seems a little nasty towards the accused. I do think that she needed to present a certain side of things for the sake of story telling and excitement for the listening public though. I also know now that if I ever end up in jail, try to become the cook. And make awesome omelettes for my breakfast club. Oh wait, they call themselves “the breakfast club”? I guess prison is just an extended version of detention, really. I’m sure if he’s ever released he’ll fist pump the sky and “Don’t You Forget About Me” will pump over the PA system in his honour. Considering this podcast has made history I doubt anyone will forget him.

We returned from our holiday this afternoon to discover our cat in shock that we weren’t dead. He leaped onto my lap, cried indignantly, then pushed his head up onto my face repeatedly like some sort of retribution for scaring him. I think he’s still terrified we’ll abandon him after the whole episode where we accidentally locked him out and he got lost for a few weeks. Even though that was almost five years ago now.

But hey, if it wasn’t for his disappearing act and his ridiculous amount of affection for me/sookiness I never would have written my book about it. It actually feels pretty good to have three completed manuscripts. I just wish I had some sort of sponsorship so I didn’t have to work close to full time while I’m revising them. Maybe I should dance wherever I go and if someone stops me and says “Hey, cool dancing” I’ll inform them I accept paypal and credit cards if they want to leave a tip, and produce my swiper.

I’m not sure about going to NY next year anymore. It’d be an amazing networking thing but I half feel like I need to work even more on my books. Once I’ve finished the revision for the Minkah novel maybe I’ll be ready, but not before. I might start focussing on some of my short stories for revision and fleshing out too. Especially my ‘three sisters’ story. I think next year everything will come up Panos.

Another piece of exciting news: David Lynch coming to Australia! I’ve already gotten my tickets for his talk, and it sold out within about 7 minutes. So happy…

Write every day. Apparently.

You may have been wondering after my last entry, “What the heck happened to Panos? He used to be funny and actually edit his posts!”

Well, I’ve decided I have to force myself to write every day to keep improving my craft. While ideally I should be sitting down and working on novels and short stories and Pulitzer-winning articles (that’s a thing, right?) realistically on some days I just can’t summon the creativity. Those are the days I’ll be turning to this blog.

Well, those days and also the days around them. You see, I’m quite rusty with writing at the moment. My brain is creaking every time I fire up the ol’ synapses. This blog is my opportunity to oil the gears, tie the shoelaces and pat the rump of the stallion that is my thinking process. It also gives me the opportunity to mangle similes so they’re unrecognisable aside from their dental records.

I mentioned a “Mr Bubbles” when I wrote last night. It was actually meant to be “Dr Bubbles”. He doesn’t have an actual Phd as of yet but he hopes to get his Doctorate of Life Satisfaction at some point in the future. If I don’t do a ‘rocks fall, everyone dies’ situation on the story anyway.

My eyes are stinging from spraying myself in the face with sunscreen. You’d think I’d assume that spraying myself in the face with anything would be a bad idea but at the time I was worried about my eyelids getting sunburnt. Also, I felt drastic measures were needed to cover the surface area of my nose. The time I spent at the beach was fantastic though, even when I looked down and noticed the shore was trying to slowly bury me as the ocean lapped at my feet.

I’d better get to some ‘real’ writing. Maybe I’ll even continue my “New and Improved” draft of the Minkah novel. This time with extra love interests! And a selfish protagonist. I miss my cat, he’s at home while we’re on holiday. I like to think he’s extremely upset about the whole situation and is refusing affection from our house-sitters. You go, Minkah. Spurn the people-who-aren’t-Panos.

holiday!

I’ve finally taken a break to relax with my wife. We’ve gone to a place called Wirrina Cove that’s near Normanville and an amazing beach. We spent a few hours today sitting near the beach just relaxing and I managed to get in a two hour nap when we got back to our room here.

This isn’t an exciting or interesting blog entry I realise, but I’m pretty happy.

I’ve also taken advantage of the rest time to play some old (very old) computer games I’ve been meaning to play for decades. One of them is called “Alter Ego” and involves you making decisions about your personality and reactions to certain situations from infancy all the way through to old age and death. It’s amazing how much detail it gets into. I tried to be honest, but also kind of a deviant. It’s making me an interesting mix as the game goes on.

I’ve been having some crazy dreams while we’ve been here as well. I’ve welcomed them because I haven’t had dreams I remembered for months now. The main one involved giant metal cubes of testing rooms and a guy called “Mr Bubbles” who joined a band. He was so happy when he was asked he looked like he’d won the lottery. I might have to throw him in a story. With a unicycle.

Just finished “Alter Ego”. I died playing softball. At the time, I was ‘going steady’ with a woman, was still studying and worked ‘building my career’. I think I was happy though.

So I’ve joined the slightly slow younger brother of the blog world

Yes I’ve started up a tumblr account, mostly to follow a couple of people but also to debut my new pen-name, Panos Bacchus. Go and see my occaisional inane posts I’ll put up on there. I’ll save this one for actual writing and reviews. Also for tumbleweeds gently blowing through town.

Panos Bacchus Tumblr

The last story, after editing! (Yep, there was an educational point to it)

 “I was sweating so much just then.” said Maggie.

 “You’re always sweating” Janet replied, keeping her eyes forward.

 “Do you think anyone noticed?”

 “I don’t think anyone cared.”

 They walked through the door of the church and Janet changed direction to go around the side to a little alcove. Maggie followed her. Janet reached into a red vinyl handbag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.

 “Mum would kill you if she knew you were smoking” Maggie said, pulling at the fabric under her armpits.

 “I’ll kill you if you tell her”, the older girl said and replaced the lighter in her handbag as she took a long drag of her cigarette.

 “So, do you think any of the boys saw me sweating?”

 “What?” Janet flicked ash onto the ground, “yeah, maybe. So?”

 The younger girl’s face turned red, “Oh…” she looked down at the ground.

 The older girl took another long drag, closed her eyes, and exhaled a long stream of smoke. She stared at the younger girl.

 “Margaret.” she said.

 “Yes?” The younger girl said. Beads of sweat were on her forehead.

 “You don’t have to worry about boys.”

 “I don’t? Why?”

 “Because boys will never notice you. Don’t you ever look at yourself in the mirror? Your face is too doughy for a boy to like you, Maggie. You’re stern already and you’re only ten. Boys can tell you’re no fun without having to even talk to you.”

 Maggie’s face went redder.

 The older girl laughed, then bent to Maggie’s level and poked her hard in the chest. “You’d better hope these grow if you want any hope of getting a man at all.”

 Maggie started crying, then turned and ran. Her sister yelled after her, ”That’s if you don’t want to die alone!”.

Maggie ran till she was in the church bathroom and locked herself in a stall. Once she’d composed herself, she let herself out of the stall and looked in the mirror. “Ugly”, she said out loud to her reflection, “you’re so ugly”.

Third Person Distant Exercise

The girl was sitting in the middle of a church. The smell of church incense was in the air and the priest facing the congregation said, “…and there endeth the lesson”. The girl shifted in her clothes and looked over at another girl nearby, an older girl. The older girl looked back and raised her eyebrows, then rolled her eyes. The other members of the congregation were standing and filing out of their pews and the two girls followed their lead. The older girl began walking briskly to the exit and the younger girl hurried to catch up with her.

“I was sweating so much just then.” said the younger girl.

“You’re always sweating” the older girl replied, keeping her eyes forward.

“Do you think anyone noticed?”

“I don’t think anyone cared.”

They walked through the door of the church and the older girl changed direction to go around the side of the church, then followed a small path that lead to a little alcove. The younger girl followed her. The older girl reached into a small bright red vinyl handbag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She opened the lid and shook a cigarette loose, which she placed between her lips then rummaged in her bag again till she produced a lighter.

“Mum would kill you if she knew you were smoking” the younger girl said, pulling at the fabric at her armpits.

“I’ll kill you if you tell her” the older girl said and replaced the lighter in her handbag as she took a long drag of her cigarette.

“So, do you think any of the boys saw me sweating?”

“What?” The older girl flicked ash onto the ground, “yeah, maybe. So?”

The younger girls face turned red, “Oh no…” she looked down at the ground.

The older girl took another long drag, closed her eyes, and exhaled a long stream of smoke. She stared at the younger girl for a second, then flicked her cigarette on the ground and ground the toe of her sensible shoe into it.

“Margaret.” she said.

“Yes?” The younger girl said. Beads of sweat were beginning to appear on her forehead.

“You don’t have to worry about boys.”

“I don’t? Why?”

“Because boys will never notice you. Don’t you ever look at yourself in the mirror? Your face is too doughy for a boy to like you, Maggie. You look like a stern schoolteacher already and you’re only ten. Boys can tell you’re no fun without having to even talk to you.”

The younger girls face went redder, “Don’t be so mean.”

The older girl laughed, then bent to the younger girl’s level and poked her hard in the chest. “You’d better hope these grow, Maggie, if you want any hope of getting a man at all.”

The younger girl started crying, then turned and ran. The older girl yelled after her ”That’s if you don’t want to die alone!”

The younger girl looked back in time to see her smile.

The girl was sitting in the middle of a church. The smell...

The girl was sitting in the middle of a church. The smell of church incense was in the air and the priest facing the congregation said, “…and there endeth the lesson”. The girl shifted in her clothes and looked over at another girl nearby, an older girl. The older girl looked back and raised her eyebrows, then rolled her eyes. The other members of the congregation were standing and filing out of their pews and the two girls followed their lead. The older girl began walking briskly to the exit and the younger girl hurried to catch up with her.

“I was sweating so much just then.” said the younger girl.

“You’re always sweating” the older girl replied, keeping her eyes forward.

“Do you think anyone noticed?”

“I don’t think anyone cared.”

They walked through the door of the church and the older girl changed direction to go around the side of the church, then followed a small path that lead to a little alcove. The younger girl followed her. The older girl reached into a small bright red vinyl handbag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She opened the lid and shook a cigarette loose, which she placed between her lips then rummaged in her bag again till she produced a lighter.

“Mum would kill you if she knew you were smoking” the younger girl said, pulling at the fabric at her armpits.

“I’ll kill you if you tell her” the older girl said and replaced the lighter in her handbag as she took a long drag of her cigarette.

“So, do you think any of the boys saw me sweating?”

“What?” The older girl flicked ash onto the ground, “yeah, maybe. So?”

The younger girls face turned red, “Oh no…” she looked down at the ground.

The older girl took another long drag, closed her eyes, and exhaled a long stream of smoke. She stared at the younger girl for a second, then flicked her cigarette on the ground and ground the toe of her sensible shoe into it.

“Margaret.” she said.

“Yes?” The younger girl said. Beads of sweat were beginning to appear on her forehead.

“You don’t have to worry about boys.”

“I don’t? Why?”

“Because boys will never notice you. Don’t you ever look at yourself in the mirror? Your face is too doughy for a boy to like you, Maggie. You look like a stern schoolteacher already and you’re only ten. Boys can tell you’re no fun without having to even talk to you.”

The younger girls face went redder, “Don’t be so mean.”

The older girl laughed, then bent to the younger girl’s level and poked her hard in the chest. “You’d better hope these grow, Maggie, if you want any hope of getting a man at all.”

The younger girl started crying, then turned and ran. The older girl yelled after her ”That’s if you don’t want to die alone!”

The younger girl looked back in time to see her smile.