Failing Better
Jason Arnopp recently had a showing of his new short film Look At Me. (trailer)
Great fun was had by all. A precursor, no doubt, of greater things to come.
His next task? A feature with a working title of ASK. Director Dan Turner offers a prize to those hardy souls who can guess what it stands for.
And if you don’t look forward to it then Jason and I will hunt you down with our giant floating hands and destroy you while you sleep.
Let’s not make any bones about it.
This is a bona fide threat.
Finally got round to watching Being Human last night.
Well that was rather fucking fine.
You can watch Being Human online here for the next couple of days. After that, you may have to resort to the usual channels.
Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (“She’s a cheerleader! She slays vampires!”), the setup itself gives no clue as to the goodness within.
You hear: “A Vampire, a Werewolf, and a Ghost share a house,” and you think: “Sitcom.”
This is not a sitcom. This is an accomplished drama, and the story engines are revving mightily.
The clue is in the title: These are people who desperately want (like so many of us) to be normal. And (like so many of us) aren’t.
Solid reviews from The London Paper and The Times.
Now, I don’t know how BBC3 commissioning works. It may be that they have already blown their new drama budget for the year on Phoo Action.
But if you saw Being Human and liked it, there is a petition to get a series commission here.
It would not kill you to visit.
You may already have seen the first (and, now, last) part of Max’s travel blog for the Guardian.
Basically, a 19-year-old boy doing a gap year is about to travel to India and Thailand. He’s going to write a blog about it.
Good for him. Thousands of kids his age do just that.
Here’s where it all goes pear-shaped:
Somehow, someway, the Guardian commissions him to put his blog on their website. And a comment-storm arises criticising Max, the media in general, and the Guardian specifically for writing and publishing this.
The writing is, to put it kindly, not the best travel writing ever. But pretty much none of the thousands of other “Here I am in Thailand, wow,” blogs are either.
So, why exactly was Max picked from the crowd to a featured spot on a national newspaper?
It doesn’t take much research on the Internet to find that Max’s dad is, funnily enough, a travel writer. And it’s not a big leap to suspect that nepotism may have played a part.
Whether it did or didn’t is actually irrelevant. The problem here is that no-one at the Guardian thought it might be a problem.
The Guardian’s travel editor, Andy Pietrasik, responded (but, notably, didn’t apologise), saying basically “Yes, he’s not a very good writer, but I thought it was interesting that a 19-year-old was writing for Skins. And I didn’t edit his writing.”
Max’s writing is trite. That’s not an offense in and of itself. My writing here is often trite. I keep a blog, don’t I? Who the fuck wants to read my bizarre witterings?
The fact is that it doesn’t matter in my case, because readership of this blog is self-selecting.
Now, if a respected newspaper such as the Guardian had promoted me as an exciting new talent, who happened to live in London, and I happened to come from a nice middle-class family, and my father happened to be a respected travel journalist, and my first piece happened to be badly written, dull, and about a small well-off subset of London society, and no-one at the Guardian thought that people might wonder why the hell I’d been commissioned then that’s a different story entirely.
So. Max’s blog becomes a minor Internet sensation, and he’s wisely decided to not write any more. Good.
But then we have this story from the Observer, in which we find that Max’s dad was surprised by the outpouring of vitriol. But I believe that his quote from which the title of this article is taken proves that he, too, really hasn’t thought this through.
It’s not a crime to write badly, to be white, to be male, to be middle-class, to live in London, or to have contacts at the Royal Court, Channel 4, and the Guardian.
This is not about Max. It’s not his fault, and I wish him well on his trip.
This is about the editors at the Guardian who damn well should have known better.
Dear Christ in Heaven. Torchwood Babies.
Blatantly linkwhored from Stephen Gallagher.
It’s just like passing on the cycle of abuse.
Sadly, it seems that a cease-and-desist order from Blizzard has resulted in a name-change. However, if hot elf action is your thing, you’ll be pleased to know that someone has listened to your telepathic entreaties.
Link is SFW. Though fairly obviously, if you wish to search them out, the actual videos are not.
Can you believe this sketch was rejected?
I’m not sure the out works, but that’s fixable. And the rest of it’s delicious.
One of the things that gives me immense pleasure in the world is solving a problem.
It’s why I do cryptic crosswords.
It’s why I started out as a programmer.
It’s why I became an internet strategist, then a website editor.
It’s why I write.
In writing, it’s finding the right line, the right character, the right plot twist, the right set piece.
As every hacker, writer, strategist, and crossword-setter knows, there are many acceptable solutions to a problem. But only a few are elegant.
Which brings us to Pun-Pun.
You may, if you’re reading this blog, be aware of my fondness for role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. A selection of rules which allow you to create characters, who can then go and fight monsters.
As with any set of rules, you can find places where they allow you to do things that the creators might not intend. In hacking and MMORPGs, these are known as exploits, or (sometimes) just sploits. Where you take advantage of someone not seeing all the consequences of the rules they’ve made.
And, just like in hacking or MMORPGs, people have found exploits in D&D. Sometimes to get an unstoppable character, but more often just for the sheer hellacious fun of it all. It’s problem solving at a very pure level. Given this set of rules, what’s the most powerful character you can build?
Well, here he is: Pun-Pun the Divine Kobold, created by Khan the Destroyer.
For those of you who don’t want to work through the reasoning: A Kobold is one of the crappiest monsters in D&D. They exist purely to have the shit kicked out of them by first-level adventurers. But, thanks to some hard thinking, Pun-Pun can become a God.
By fifth level.
It’s the elegance that makes it great. (Of course, if you’re not going to read it you’ll just have to trust me on this one.)
Think of it: A simple Kobold! With the power of a God! Surely humanity is Doomed!
But no! On the horizon: a Saviour!
LordOfProcrastination has found a way for a simple Elf to raise themselves to Divinity.
By fourth level.
And the way they achieve this divine power is by hiring a few assistants, casting a few spells, and then throwing themselves off a cliff.
Elegance. I love it.
I’m certain that you, like me, rue the fact that Character Options, creators and purveyors of fine action figures, currently do not have in their inventory a figure of Doctor Who’s erstwhile companion Harry Sullivan with his foot stuck in a giant clam.
Fortunately, there now exists a way for you to remedy this oversight.
Walking into work just now, I opened one of those ten feet high doors made of solid wood.
(Not randomly. I have to in order to get to my desk.)
At which point it fell off its hinges. Fortunately I was able to step to one side before being squashed like a bug.
After checking that I was unharmed, two of us tried to lift the door to one side of the room.
We couldn’t.
I suspect my employer is trying to save money on both maintenance and staff costs in one fell swoop.
So, Loli and I dropped off a friend at the airport yesterday, and it turns out that they have a new question at the check-in desk.
“Have you left any electrical device with someone else to be repaired since the last time you used it?”
Fair enough. That laptop could be full of all sorts of bombs, germs, or other nastiness, ready to be triggered the next time it’s used.
The best bit, though, was that we found out what the security protocol is if someone answers yes.
The poor bugger behind the counter has to switch it on.
