K.P. Webster's Blog, page 14

Feedback Friday :: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch

editors pitched :: 1

replies received :: 1

commissions :: pending

major distractions :: 1

hopes raised :: 1

money made :: none

money spent :: I promise I’ll start this soon. It’s a tough habit to cultivate. The whole idea of wandering around scribbling sums in a book makes me feel like a bit of a twat. But I need to get on top of it. I will, I will.

tobacco consumed :: none

bottles of wine consumed :: 4

physical exercise :: none

metaphysical exercise :: none

week 2/52 overall rating :: 5.5/10

My plan this week was to come to Nottingham, see my family and buy a van. But then, on my first night in Nottingham, my plans fell apart as my sister (the oldest one, who thinks she knows best about everything and occasionally gets lucky) persuaded me not to rush into buying a van.

The plan was to buy a van and drive to France at the end of the month, spend a week or two in France, then drive to Italy, seeing friends and busking along the way. I’ve been talking about busking for years but a) I was nowhere near good enough, and b) I was really really scared. However, I’ve improved a lot over the past year, and also I wanted to force myself to do it, take myself outside my comfort zone and grow as a human being. All that malarkey.

However, one week of intense cold in Peckham reminded how unpleasant the winter can be and I began to think: why? Why set off across Europe in a cold van and a sleeping bag in the middle of winter? Then bad newspapers started talking about the weather in terms of terrorism and my mind was made up.

Why torture myself? Plus, a little more work has turned up in London. And if I save up for another couple of months, I can get an even better van. One with a cooker in it.

So the winter trip is off. And I’m looking forward to the spring. And I’m trying really hard to focus.

I didn’t pitch much this week as I’ve been busy travelling back and forth and seeing family. This has been my major distraction, and I’m allowed it, so it’s fine.

I’ve also been reading the book about journalism I mentioned last week and, without meaning to disparage it, it isn’t very helpful. Although it does contain a very funny mistake about The Cook Report. It’s in an interview with a chap called Richard Cookson, part of a response to a question about which journalists he admires…

(Actually, for a book about journalism, it has an awful lot of mistakes in it.)

What else? This week’s hope was raised on the back of the review I wrote for The Hateful Eight. More of that in a few weeks maybe. Keep hope alive.

The other notable thing that happened this week was that David Bowie died. That same afternoon I had this phone conversation with my mum…

Me: Hello. It’s me.

Mother: Hello. How are you?

Me: I’m fine. Better than David Bowie.

Mother: Why? What’s happened to David Bowie?

Me: He died.

Mother: Did he? So did Ed Stewart.

Me: No disrespect to Ed Stewart, but he’s not really in the same league.

Mother: Is he not? Well, I don’t know. He was good on Crackerjack.

I laughed. When of course I should have yelled ‘Crackerjack!’

I thought David Bowie was a wonderful human being, warm and cool in equal measure, and a writer of some of the world’s greatest songs, but I didn’t love him the way an awful lot of other people loved him. And it was very moving to see that love pouring out all over the place (except for when it seemed horribly bogus, but then who am I to judge?). Normal man James Ward wrote a particularly touching thing here that you should read if you haven’t yet. In it, he says some rather profound things about grief. This, for example:

There is no conclusion to this because there is no conclusion to grief. It stays with you but it gets better. In fact, you learn to love the grief because the grief is love.

The grief is love. That’s what it is.

So here’s to David Bowie, Alan Rickman and Ed Stewart (Crackerjack!). Here’s to John Lennon, Kurt Cobain and Peaches Geldof. Here’s to Elvis, Diana and Lemmy. And here’s to all of us, and all the endless love that holds each and every one of us together, whether we like it, whether we appreciate it, or not.

Have a great weekend and hey – wrap up well.

x

Filed under: FEEDBACK, REAL LIFE Tagged: David Bowie, death, James Ward, Peter Cook, The Cook Report

The Freakiest Show :: Bowie Tributes That Stick in the Throat

I only ever had two David Bowie albums, and one of those was a collection of greatest hits (Hunky Dory was the other), so I can’t claim to have been a real fan of his music. Like a great many people, however, I always thought he seemed like pretty much the epitome of cool. Sometimes commercial but never mainstream, and always unapologetically individual. Funny too.

Also, despite being predominantly apolitical, he always seemed – with his bisexuality and his drugs and his refusal to accept a knighthood – wholly anti-establishment. That’s why it felt so horribly wrong to see David Cameron blathering on about him today on the news.

OK, maybe the Prime Minister is a David Bowie fan. I’ve not seen his record collection and cannot therefore say for sure. But he isn’t. He definitely isn’t. Or maybe he’s a Bowie fan in the same way he’s a fan of Aston Villa and The Smiths. In the same way Gordon Brown was a fan of The Arctic Monkeys.

It just doesn’t ring true. It’s like Dapper Laughs paying tribute to Germaine Greer, and it feels like the worst kind of bandwagonism. As does this tribute from one of the former members of Ugly Rumours:

Apart from the question of sincerity, another thing one can’t help feeling is, who cares if these repugnant, duplicitous, self-serving establishment murderers liked him anyway? How dare they even speak the name of someone whose ridiculous, predominantly laceless boots they were not fit to lace?

Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and people who I deem cool, decent or in any way likeable do not have a monopoly on grief, fake or otherwise. Also, if I’m accusing people of jumping on bandwagons, then it would be perfectly fair to accuse me of exactly the same thing, just by putting this together. Feel free. But do spare an eye-roll for these fuckers while you’re about it…

Finally, hats off to the perennially unpleasant Stephen Pollard, who managed to clamber aboard the bandwagon whilst at the same time taking a dump on it…

 

Filed under: MUSIC, POLITICS Tagged: BNP, David Bowie, David Cameron, death, Stephen Pollard, Tony Blair

The Hateful Eight :: A Hatful of Fun, But No Tears

Contains very mild spoilers.

I love Quentin Tarantino. I love his style and his language and perhaps most of all, his chutzpah. But his films never make me cry, because they never really make me care, and that’s why for me they’re never really truly great. They’re like a wild one-night stand with the model of your choice in a really chichi hotel and a selection of cracking designer drugs, when all you really want to do is to fall in love.

Still, lovelessness notwithstanding, that’s quite a night, and you’d have to be a whingeing joyless ingrate to turn it down.

The Hateful Eight, Tarantino’s second western after Django Unchained, is great fun, but it’s not – in my most humble – a truly great film. It’s beautiful, visceral, brilliantly acted and constructed, funny and smart and superficially shocking, but ultimately it’s somewhat unsatisfying.

The set-up is simple: in snowbound Wyoming not long after the Civil War, a bounty hunter and his prisoner are holed up in a tavern (or what passes for a tavern) with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells with guns. From the moment they arrive at the onset of a three-day blizzard, you strongly suspect that everyone is going to end up dead. It’s like The Hateful Eight picks up where Reservoir Dogs left off, with a Mexican stand-off, and its only a matter of time before these eloquent but bloodthirsty idiots do themselves in.

There are some fantastic performances – all of them in fact. Tim Roth is particularly amusing as Oswaldo Mobray, a ludicrously upper-class English hangman who may or may not be all he appears. (Very mild spoiler alert: he isn’t.) Kurt Russell as the gnarled bounty hunter channels John Wayne and spends most of the film handcuffed to Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is brilliant as the condemned Daisy Domergue, by turns repulsive and peculiarly sweet.

When the violence begins, it’s classic Tarantino. Wildly overblown gore, blood that spurts like silly string and body parts that come apart like suicide meringues. At one point the amount of blood and head-guts on Daisy Domergue’s face is truly horrific – a light nosebleed away from Sissy Spacek in Carrie – but because none of the characters are drawn with any real depth, it’s comical rather than heart-rending. You flinch, for sure, but you never really feel anyone’s pain. Essentially, that’s because The Hateful Eight is a cartoon. A gory, lurid cartoon about good and evil, or in this case, evil and evil.

There are of course accusations of racism and misogyny, as there almost always are with Tarantino films. Ignore them. Unless of course you’re easily offended, in which case, heed them. But The Hateful Eight is called The Hateful Eight for a reason. The characters really are hateful. They are vicious and misanthropic. They are – predominantly – racist and misogynistic. Consequently, there’s no shortage of niggers and bitches in this film, particularly niggers. And if that offends you – despite the fact that the characters and the context can certainly be said to require it – you should probably stay away. Go watch Charlie Brown instead.

At three hours, The Hateful Eight will also be far too long for a lot of people, but if you enjoy Tarantino’s dialogue, it won’t drag.

Ultimately, even if it’s not much more than a hip bloodthirsty cartoon, The Hateful Eight is still enormous fun and so much more original and entertaining than just about everything else out there.

My only hope is that before he quits, Tarantino makes a film where he stops trying to impress everyone with how cool and clever he is. Maybe then he’ll make the whole world cry. In a good way.

 

Filed under: FILM, REVIEW Tagged: Carrie, Charlie Brown, Django Unchained, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs, Sissy Spacek, The Hateful Eight, Tim Roth

Complicity :: Five Minutes That Could Change Your Life

The short video you’re hopefully about to watch has just changed my life. I’m putting it here because if just one more person sees it that otherwise might not have, then that’s a good thing.

Also, although it’s extremely harrowing, it’s very entertainingly made. Massive props to Erin Janus.

I love milk. I drink a lot of it. But when I finish what’s in the fridge, that’s it. No more. I can’t be complicit in this cruelty.

Can you?

…

Shit.

Thinking about this some more, I think I have to become vegetarian. I just can’t knowingly, willingly support the evil of the animal-eating industries. And every single instance of resistance helps. This I know.

2016 eh?

What a year.

 

Filed under: ACTIVISM, EDUCATION, POLITICS, RESISTANCE Tagged: capitalism, cruelty, vegetarianism

Feedback Friday :: Ice Cold in Peckham

editors pitched :: 2

replies received :: 0

commissions :: 0

interviews arranged :: 2

interviews conducted :: 1

major distractions :: 3

money made :: none

money spent :: really? Is that the direction we’re going in? OK, OK. I’ll start next week.

tobacco consumed :: none

nicotine withdrawal rages endured :: two days’ worth

hopes raised :: one

physical exercise :: one hour of amateurish tennis

metaphysical exercise :: none

week 1/52 overall rating :: 7/10

A major part of being a proper writer is knowing which markets to pitch with what stories, and as far as this is concerned, I haven’t got much of a clue. I’m hoping I can learn though. I have a book in front of me called How to Work as a Freelance Journalist. (Thanks, Aly!) That’s got to help, right? That’s next on the reading list, when I finally get done with Getting Things Done.

Early this week I came across an alphabetised version of The Wizard of Oz called, kind of obviously, Of Oz the Wizard. It’s a remarkable, frankly insane piece of work and I immediately thought – as it interested me greatly – that I should write about it. Like what a proper writer would do. So I contacted the guy who made it and we had a little exchange of emails in which he happily answered my questions. Then, before I wrote it up, I pitched the idea to one website magazine dealing with popular culture, waited a couple of hours, heard nothing back, pitched it to another, heard nothing back, thought to hell with it, and wrote it for myself. (I am at the moment the only commissioning editor who replies to my emails.)

Potentially, I thought, cinema magazines might be interested, but the film went online a few days ago, so it’s kind of time-sensitive. At the moment, it’s news. So I thought, online is best. Now, a proper writer, like I say, would have more of an idea of markets and maybe a few existing relationships with editors that he or she could exploit. I don’t have that yet, so I’m kind of a bit lost.

But that’s what this year is all about. I’ll figure it out.

Distractions this week have been quite powerful. First and most distracting, sometime on New Year’s Eve, before waking up in 2016, the boiler went kaput. I won’t go into detail because it’s extraordinarily tedious, but basically, I’ve been a whole week without heat or hot water. Not the end of the world, I know, but what was bad and in the end massively time-consuming was the amount of bullshit hoops I had to jump through in order to get it fixed. Lots and lots of telephone calls, missed appointments, downright lies and exasperating arguments with an arse-voiced regional manager called Ross. (Boiler Emergency Tip: avoid a company called Rightio. With an inspiring name like that, who’d have thought they were money-grubbing incompetents?)

Actually, whilst a week without heating isn’t really such a bad thing, in the grand scheme of things, it was astonishingly cold. I was forced to spend much of it shivering in a Slanket and fingerless gloves, so it wasn’t ideal for proper writing. But there’s no need to point out that there are people in worse situations. I am aware of that.

Distraction number two came in the form of the ten-part Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer. If you haven’t watched it yet, do so at once. It’s harrowing, infuriating and addictive – essentially ten hours of mental torture. It will have you shouting at the television, cursing the US legal system and simultaneously doubting your faith in humanity.

That’s entertainment.

Distraction number three came in the form of a human being. Not that boiler men and convicted murderers are not human beings, but this one was distracting in a purely positive way. For not only was she a human being, but also a human woman, possibly my favourite kind of human being. Unfortunately, this human woman lives on the other side of the country. Fortunately, the internet exists, and we have spent a lot of time this week getting to know one another virtually. I have high hopes that the pleasure thus far afforded by this human woman will continue. If it does, I will have to use all of my powers of concentration and dedication to fulfil this year’s mission, which is to say, becoming a proper writer, by which, let’s face it, I mean a paid writer.

So that’s that. The first week – barring the rest of today – is over. It’s been OK. There is a lot I haven’t done that I would like to have done and that I ought to have done, but I’ve worked quite hard, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know a human woman, which is always something to be celebrated.

Now, the heating having finally been fixed about 90 minutes ago, I am about to have my first bath and shave of 2016.

Happy New Year.

 

Filed under: FEEDBACK, REAL LIFE Tagged: Making a Murderer, Mark Leverton, Netflix, The Wizard of Oz

Deconstructing Dorothy :: How The Wizard of Oz Has Completely Lost the Plot

In June 2014, a guy called Tom Murphy cut the film Star Wars into single word chunks and then arranged each word into alphabetical order. The resulting work is entertaining, hypnotic, and as Murphy freely admits, almost impossible to watch in one sitting, no matter how big a Jedi groupie you happen to be.

As well as captivatingly insane and pleasingly futile, Arst Arsw seemed at the time like a completely original idea. This, however, was not the case, as another madman by the name of Matt Bucy had done exactly the same thing with The Wizard of Oz – or, if you will, Of Oz the Wizard – a full decade earlier. Also, with no disrespect to Mr Murphy, Bucy did a much more thorough job, not only extracting the dialogue, but also the silences around the words. He even painstakingly rehashed the opening credits.

Although Of Oz the Wizard was completed in April 2004, Bucy – who works primarily as a filmmaker and cinematographer – only got round to putting it online a few days ago, where it’s quickly notched up over a quarter of a million Vimeo hits and has amassed an army of awed if slightly baffled fans, who have left comments declaring the film ‘strangely informative’, ‘queerly transformative’ and ‘pleasantly mesmerizing’.

Awed and slightly baffled myself, I got in contact with the filmmaker, who was more than happy to share the story of this unique and singularly wacky piece of work.

…

It all began in 2001, he explains, when a friend of his claimed, as many have, that there are simply no longer any original ideas. Matt refused to accept this, so his friend demanded that he cough one up.

‘The idea to alphabetise an entire film is what came to mind,’ says Matt, and after having hit upon his original idea, he promptly did nothing about it. Then a couple of years passed, and at the prompting of this same friend, Matt decided to make it happen.

When it came to the question of which film to chop up and reassemble, he says, ‘The Wizard of Oz seemed like the only choice because, to have any meaning, I thought reworking something in its entirely would require people know the original well. It turns out The Wizard of Oz is one of the most viewed and known films in the world.’ Having said that, he adds that ‘at screenings, kids who have never seen the original are transfixed by the re-edit. I’ve had parents ask me for copies!’

For some reason, I’m surprised at the idea that it’s actually been screened. It’s the kind of thing you can imagine inducing mass hysteria in a large audience, like the first performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

‘It’s been screened in many places,’ he confirms. ‘First locally in Vermont, then I let it wander further. It screened at the Jersey City Museum of Art for a month in 2004 or 2005, at a festival in Pennsylvania around the same time. I’ve screened it at Dartmouth College a few times and given talks about it there. It played at Mix in NYC a couple years ago. I’ve given away DVDs of it since I made it and I’m pretty sure others have screened it, too. I’m probably forgetting some screenings. I’ve been very casual about it.’

I probe him a little more about the evolution of the idea. Why did it appeal so much?

‘I love art and films that apply arbitrary criteria to known or iconic things. The criteria reveal things not otherwise apparent and can produce something genuinely new. The trick is to find criteria that produce interesting results. Most of the time, results aren’t that interesting.’

Ernest Vincent Wright’s 1939 lipogrammatic novel Gadsby springs to mind – a 50,000-word story that completely omits the letter e. A stunning technical achievement, no doubt, but by all accounts not that gripping a story; not that great a Gadbsy.

‘But, in this case, I think largely because the source is amazing and the criteria very simple’ – each word alphabetised and every instance chronological – ‘fascinating things happened. I was delighted beyond belief when I first watched it. I have produced other films like this, but none that have produced as much interest.’

He’s right. There are many moments of delightful artistry in Of Oz the Wizard, where the cornucopia of weird rhythms and repetitions, made all the more interesting by the presence of the music, become truly transcendent. For example, there are a full six minutes of oh – which is a good place to start if you just want to dip in – offering as it does a perfect, exclamatory microcosm of the entire film.

As does you.

And and isn’t bad either.

Then there’s the whole of w, which is pretty amazing, containing as it does the hauntingly communal ‘we’, the wonderfully diverse ‘well’, the hilarious ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘which’, ‘who’ and ‘why’, and of course, both ‘wicked’ and ‘witch’, and ‘wonderful’ and ‘wizard’.

The project took Matt around a week to complete.

‘I realised early on that doing this project manually would be insane!’ he says, apparently not realising that whichever way he went about it, it’d still be pretty nuts.

‘In fact, I tested the predominant editors at the time to see if they could handle 11,000 edits, and they couldn’t. So, I was on my own. I’d been writing little computer programs to help edit video for other projects where I didn’t want to spend the time to construct things manually. So, I adapted some of them to help disassemble the original film. It took three days to separate all the words. I then sorted them all in a spreadsheet and took that result and used another bit of code I wrote to produce the new edit. The credits were done traditionally in Final Cut Pro. I re-shot the background clouds and composed the text overlays in Photoshop.’

So how did it take so long for it to find its way online?

‘Putting it on Vimeo last weekend was kind of an afterthought. I found a beat up DVD of it in my closet. I popped it in my laptop and it read okay, despite its condition. I ripped the DVD and that’s what got uploaded. I made a post to my Facebook friends and they took it from there. Kind of amazing!’

Amazing indeed. Wonderful in fact. And that may not be the end of it. Hopefully, there is yet more Matt Bucy wizardry to come.

‘I want to do a lightbox installation that uses the database generated by this project,’ he says.

‘As I see it, it’d be about six square feet with around 950 discreet lightboxes – the number of unique words in the film – each with a word from the film screened on a translucent sheet that lies over the lightboxes. The boxes would illuminate according to the timing and duration of each word and in a unique colour that represents the character speaking. It would be silent.’

I can’t wait. And I hope you will join me in saluting and celebrating the brilliantly insane work of Matt Bucy. Why? Because of the wonderful things he does. That’s why.

Cheers, Matt!

…

Do check out Tom Murphy’s Arst Arsw while you’re about it. As well as much, much shorter, it’s also actually a lot more original than The Force Awakens.

 

Filed under: FILM, INTERVIEW Tagged: Arst Arsw, art, Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby, Matt Bucy, Of Oz the Wizard, Star Wars, Stravinsky, The Force Awakens, The Wizard of Oz, Tom Murphy

For Your Information and Amusement :: Key & Peele

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have been big in the States for a few years now, and after four seasons, their sketch show – Key & Peele – has come to a halt. I only came across them a couple of weeks ago, however, and some of their stuff is amongst the funniest, darkest and silliest comedy I’ve ever seen. If you don’t know them, I recommend you watch the following sketches. If they don’t make you laugh, then … I don’t know, maybe try Lee Nelson or Watson & Oliver.

…

Filed under: FUNNY

Christmas 2015

I completely ignored Christmas this year. Because I could. And because I was trying to get things done.  I spent it alone, cat-sitting in Peckham, which is fine by me, or at least should be, but then halfway through Christmas Day, the internet and the telly made me feel as though I was doing something wrong, so I bought a bottle of Baileys and watched a lot of films. And I’m not wildly happy about that. Because it’s a distraction. And I have to stop pretending that watching mediocre films is really worthwhile research. And I really need to get on.

One thing I did do this year though, was post an advent picture to Facebook every day of December to Christmas Day. I’ve been doing this for three years now, having picked up the habit from internet oddball* James Ward.

There were more skeletons than usual this year.

Anyway, for posterity, they’re going here…

December 1st
December 2nd
December 3rd
December 4th
December 5th
December 6th
December 7th
December 8th
December 9th
December 10th
December 11th
December 12th
December 13th
December 14th
December 15th
December 16th
December 17th
December 18th
December 19th
December 20th
December 21st
December 22nd
December 23rd
December 24th (Christmas Eve)
December 25th (Christmas Day)

…

* Please let the record show that internet oddball James Ward has been in touch and has informed me that he is ‘a normal man’ and would prefer to be identified as such.

Filed under: PHOTOS, REAL LIFE Tagged: Christmas, Peckham

Getting Things Done, Or Not, As the Case May Be

So. I’m about a third of the way through Getting Things Done, which I first heard about maybe six or seven years ago but chose to ignore. Most things, therefore, have remained undone. I guess I wasn’t ready.

Thus far, I’m finding it a very exciting read. It’s not at all annoying, which is unusual for anything that might be described as self-help, and it’s based upon some very practical, eminently applicable principles. I think it may actually succeed in helping me change a great many deeply ingrained and very very bad habits. Inshallah.

On Saturday afternoon, whilst taking a break from the book I became immersed in a seemingly impromptu reorganisation of everything on my computer, during which I came across something I had written in 2004. I was not long back from living in Italy and I’d just started my first blog. In order to defend myself against self-levelled accusations of vanity and arrogance, I wrote out a list of 21 reasons why I’d decided to start writing about my life online.

What struck me most on rereading it after many years was how little anything has changed. I’ve managed to cure my hypochondria and Stephen Pollard is thankfully no longer on my radar but the rest remains pretty much the same. And that’s not awfully encouraging. Numbers 7 and 19 especially. Time eh?

The main difference now, I guess, is that I’m getting things done. Inshallah.

So, this is what I wrote in 2004 – 21 Reasons for Keeping a Blog…

1. Because I’m vain and conceited and I want people to read my words and look into my mind and like what they see and fall in love with me.

2. Because I want someone to offer me money for something, and that is marginally more likely to happen if they actually know I exist.

3. Because time is running out.

4. Because I need some sympathy for my acute hypochondria.

5. Because in the absence of a girlfriend, a blog is someone to share things with – like when you go to a club, and you dance on your own, and you leave on your own, and you’re on your way home to cry and yearn for death when suddenly a fox runs out from behind a sloppy privet and stops a metre in front of you, its eyes gleaming in the sulphur lamplight, its moth-eaten tail covered in chip-fat from the bins it’s been raiding and you feel – just for a second – you feel at one with all living things and you feel privileged to be alive; or like when you wake up at 4am because there are cats under your window screeching like babies in nettleskin suits. Those moments. You know? You can tell your blog. And even though your blog might not actually give a fuck, it won’t stare at you for a moment, speechless, then just shake its head slowly and look away.

6. Because even girlfriends don’t like to be woken up at 4am with stories of foxes and babies. Not after the first six weeks anyway.

7. Because I just recently came back to this country after four years in Italy specifically in order to make a living from writing, and if I don’t do it by January 31st, 2006, I may have to end my life, or at least leave the country again. I don’t mind leaving the country again, but not because I’ve failed. And yes, I feel a blog might help.

8. Because I’m a deluded narcissist.

9. Because in a few short days’ time I have to go back to teaching the present perfect to nubile young Koreans in order to pay the rent and the idea of writing in this thing every day or so when I get home all sweaty and full of fantasy will make me feel less Mammon’s whore and more like someone with an agenda.

10. Because I’ve given up lots of different futures for some fucking reason or other, and writing was the only reason I could ever come up with, and most of what I write is seen by no-one… actually, this is the same as 7.

11. Because I want to hypnotise a gang of chavs and sack Romford.

12. Because it really is never too late to find true, everlasting, super-requited love and if you start a website and mention it often enough, it might just fall into your lap, like a forkful of hot beans on a wet Wednesday afternoon.

13. Because I want to captivate some literary agent with a rogue mention of ‘The Adventures of Trout McFee’ and eventually land a multi-million-dollar film franchise.

14. Because I need to put my ass on the line.

15. Because I might, once in a while, squeal up something worth hearing.

16. Because I’m sick to my stomach of the fact that certain things I’ve written that I’m proud of lie disintegrating in folders and drawers in various parts of the world when they could be on public view, bringing joy to tens of people and admiration, respect and who knows what else to me.

17. Because I don’t want to be murdered by real life.

18. Because if Stephen Pollard can do it, so can I.

19. Because if February 2006 arrives and I’m still not making a living from writing and from writing alone, then I shall be forced to flee and teach English somewhere near an azure sea and devote myself to staving off cancer with good living, no longer overwhelmed by hopelessness, vain ambition and unfulfilled desire. Just the joy of devoting myself to a single worthwhile pursuit and enjoying a pressure-free existence with lots of swimming and sun. And that’s the last thing I want.

20. Because I’m going blind, and I need to make use of my eyes while I still can.

21. Because I’m worth it.

 

Filed under: REAL LIFE Tagged: blogging, Getting Things Done

Why You Too Should Be In Awe of Amy Schumer

Because she’s funny and brilliant and brave and bold, I’m totally in awe of Amy Schumer. And because a lot of people I’ve mentioned her too recently don’t know who she is, I’ve found ten of my favourite sketches from her US TV show Inside Amy Schumer and I’ve put them right here. You can thank me in the comments, via email or via the social media channel of your choice.

Filed under: EVOLUTIONARIES, FUNNY Tagged: Amy Schumer