Scutage

Doctors are getting younger these days

2009-03-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

So, I just found this blog by accident while looking for something Doctor Who related and realized it was mine. Obviously, it's been a while.

Time does speed up the older you get, and events fly at you out of nowhere. I was never this surprised by the world when I was younger. Childlike wonder is a misnomer. I think the world is more awe-striking when you're moving through it quickly, than when you're a kid and you're moving through time like soup. When you can do things to the world as well as the world doing things to you, or at least, just seems to be happening all around you while you're in a cosy little bubble.

An example of the shocks the world brings: suddenly, Doctor Who is younger than me. I like the look of him, though. Looks alien, in a very English way. And Morrissey's America song's been put out of date (does he have something to say to America, now that the President is one of the "nevers"?)

Oh, and I've woken up in a world in which women aren't funny, according to Germaine Greer. My instinct is to respond with a list of funny women (because all the theoretical argument is dull and pointless in the way of all generalisations), but actually, I don't think I need to make one - or rather, I can't. Where do you start and stop? So many funny women.

So I'll just leave it at two words: Just William. Though I should probably add "by Richmal Crompton". And maybe "who is a girl by the way." She's even funnier than PG Wodehouse. I posted her definition of political parties (according to William Brown) as a comment on the Germaine Greer thingie. Well, I say her definition, but it was my memory of it. I'd like to look it up. Hmm.... can't remember which Just William book it was in though.

Lolodysseus

2007-08-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

Odysseus, having cheated the cyclops of his precious flock, decides to celebrate in kitty pidgin.

Gordon Ramsey language

2007-07-02T16:19:00.000-07:00

Another motivator

2007-07-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

Hai Ecclestone, I can be intents too

2007-07-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

Babylon 5 Doctor

2007-07-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

This scene reminded me of the end of season 1 of Babylon 5. Only shite.

Romantic Doctor

2007-07-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo's Doctor

2007-07-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

I am in ur fridge, eeting ur foodz

2007-07-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

Click on the image to see it properly. I'm wondering if anyone's done formal-register macros yet?

(in other words, i am in ur fridge, eatin ur foodz lol!)

Doctor Gums-who

2007-07-01T05:45:00.000-07:00

Two slightly different versions of the same cartoon. Trying to decide which works better. Do we need to see the Doctor's smug face, or is the TARDIS smug enough on its own?

I can resist everything except blasphemy

2007-07-01T04:56:00.000-07:00

Bible stories are my myths. I think I'll always come back to them, scavenging. There's no more irritating and compelling character than Jesus.

This doodle doesn't say anything about that whole psychodrama however. It's just what my hands did when they should've been editing.

Veronica Mars/Doctor Who mashup macro

2007-07-01T04:44:00.001-07:00

Andmoar

2007-06-30T17:50:00.000-07:00

Moar loldoctors

2007-06-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

History's unsent telegrams

2007-06-30T02:27:00.000-07:00

More memes that I like. From Somethingawful.com

Loldoctor

2007-06-30T02:00:00.000-07:00

I've finally worked out how to make my own lolthings, after fumbling around in paint. Here are my Doctor Who macros. Let me show you them.

"You have the attention span of a crackbaby"

2007-05-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

The commentary to Bad Girls says that they cut a line of Buffy's dialogue, because it went too far. She was originally going to tell Faith: "You have the attention span of a crackbaby". Or something very similiar.

Good line, shame to lose it to the censors, I thought.

But then again, if Buffy had more of that kind of gags, it might lose its light, springy humanity. The show makes jokes about dark, nasty things, but it tends to stick to fantastical and exaggerated sick humour. So, jokes about people getting killed by giant snot monsters from space, or "extreme dead guy(s)" stuffed into lockers after being killed by vampires. Real, personalised death doesn't tend to be mocked in the same way - no one cracks jokes about Joyce's dead body. Buffy's deaths are only funny when she's undead again - "Over my dead body. The kind that doesn't come back."

Hmm...I'm now hunting for examples of jokes like the crack baby one that did make it through, and what effect they had on the tone of the show...

Translations: to and from comics

2007-04-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

"The problem is that if comics are always seen in terms of cinema, then ultimately they can only be a film that doesn't move and doesn't have a soundtrack"

"I met with Terry Gilliam to talk about the Watchmen film, and he said "How would you make a film of Watchmen?" And I said, "Well, frankly, Terry, if anyone had bothered to consult me before this point, I would have said 'I wouldn't.""

- Both Alan Moore, interview with mustard magazine (which, incidentally, is very good. Picked it up at random in a comics shop...it's sort of a Private Eye for geeks).

"It is not the literal past, the facts of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language." - Brian Friel, "Translations"

------------------------

I've been reading the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics - the season 8 ones - and thinking about the process of turning a TV show or film into a comic book (and vice versa).

How easy is it to "translate" a comic into another medium? The language of comics and the language of TV and film have a lot in common, but they're not the same. Perhaps like UK and US English, comics and other visual narratives...divided by a common language?

Or perhaps it's more a case of being divided by people's perceptions, with comics as the helpless, handbagged doggie in the special relationship.

The idea that a film based on a comic book has to be "comic-booky" - in the pejorative sense of dumb/schlocky - is fairly well entrenched in the hive brain of the popular imagination. Reading online reactions to the Buffy season 8 comics*, a lot of the comments complain that this continuation of the story isn't as "real" as the tv incarnation, that it's a poor substitute.

I'll put aside the idea that everyone who doesn't love comics and recognise their true glory needs drowning in a sack to wonder.... Maybe it's natural, to love something most in the medium you found it in first? Or maybe something is inevitably lost in translation, especially when you're writing for an audience who you know wants you to recreate the original feeling of the story as it appeared in the first medium.

The first two issues of the comic - The Long Way Home parts 1 and 2 - have a lot of charm, and some interesting, you-can-only-do-that-in-comics narrative moments, but there are a couple of problems.

Firstly, when you're used to a single unit of Buffy being one episode, they feel very thin. The action of one issue only amounts to a fraction of an episode. Not sure exactly how large a fraction, though I'm sure someone's worked it out. Will find and post another time. Perhaps the only solution to that is waiting however long it takes for the trade paperback to come out, to avoid the frustration of a fragmented narrative.

Secondly, there's the issue of the humour. A lot of the comedy on Buffy-the-tv-show was based on intonation, on vocal nuances and on facial reactions. While facial expressions can be used for great comic effect in a comic (ok, wishing those meanings didn't have the same word right now, makes things tricky), a comics artist can't replicate the experience of seeing an actor's face change.

And yet, the comics are still laugh-out-loud funny in places, so perhaps the humour will just be a bit hit and miss until the writers and artists perfect the transition to a new medium?

Re the Alan Moore quote at the top, the one about Watchmen, I don't agree that Watchmen is unfilmable. I just think that it would need to be approached carefully so that the essence of the story could be taken and transformed into something new by making it into a film.

I reckon the best way to do it justice would be via an unfaithful adaptation, or rather, to be faithful to the spirit by playing fast and loose with the form. The way the comic plays with time and space and perception could be expressed on film without seeming silly or over the top - think Stalker. Like nudity, if it was done tasteful-like, I think there's a good film in Watchmen.

I can see why people - Alan Moore in particular - would be sceptical about comic-book-to-film adaptations, given that I can't think of any good ones off the top of my head. Hmm... maybe Spiderman? I rather liked Batman Returns, but I was 12...

But, whether or not any good ones have been made so far, that doesn't mean it's not possible, if the adapters show respect both to the origin medium and the medium they're working in.

Rather a big "if" for Hollywood, but I'm still praying for Halo Jones the movie.

*These ones - http://www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=14-111 -which Joss Whedon has indicated are meant to be just as much a part of the Buffy canon as the shows.

William Blake and Alan Moore go into a bar and don’t come out

2007-01-15T14:57:00.000-08:00

I remember hallucinatory clarity
At dusk when the branches are black and wet
Like the ink of a Chinese painting
And my face looms at others
A dangerous zombie
Paler and further away
Than the dinosaur fish
Fossiled under the sea.

Since then, as a captive pig,
Shamefully comfortable
I’ve blinded wild eyes
Tamed atonal songs
The cracking voices
On a raw record player
Scratching the Aspidistra
All the old odd things
I have packed away
and I’m sat on the box
trying to remember
what was inside.

Cowboy Bebop...Firefly...could they possibly be related?

2007-01-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

Are all groups of cowboy-designated thieves on a space ship - featuring an innocent girl who's good with machinery, a tart with a heart, a hulk of grumpy stupid manflesh and a hot lead who looks good in tight pants - necessarily related? Is everything that echoes linked, or am I linking them just because I'm looking for connections to things I know already, forming a comprehensible map of a crazy world?

See: The Regeneration of the Cool.

Recyling my own ideas is ok when it's a matter of perennial truth. Yup.

Today in Hatton Gardens I saw...

2007-01-08T05:57:00.000-08:00

Christmas trees on the pavement
reclining like over-stuffed Romans
stripped for the bin men.

A Hassidic man pulling on his beard
tugging a thick handful
somehow obscene, the gesture (or am I five?)

A tall man in a smart coat
singing along to “don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?”
in a newsagent that sells mostly crisps.

Christmas apocalypse

2006-12-23T05:52:00.000-08:00

"If I drive down this afternoon I'll be in time for..."
"I'm spending Christmas day at my dad's, then boxing day at..."

All the snippets I hear
are carrying the glossy rats away
we're leaving London,
having made it it filthy enough for this year
we've had enough of ourselves
and of one another.

Everybody hopes it will be new
when we get back
a gleaming Metropolis,
instead of this Gotham
we're leaving behind.

I fancy being the last to leave,
I have visions of street-cleaning dragons
dashing down brown office blocks
licking the pavements clean of kebab scraps
or a giant cityboy ape in a suit reaching up
to crush the tired sun.

Everybody's leaving
and soon all this jovial panic
will be January rubble
the decorations overhanging,
glitter creepers in a reclaimed city

The barbarous hordes will
have to hack a path back
expecting a Christmas miracle
getting in early to work
to pick up exactly where they left
only slightly fatter.

Just William and the Summer of Love

2006-12-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

If the various-era versions of Just William had grown up, what would they have got up to?

20s William... grows up and joins the RAF, fights in WWII, becomes a nazi spy and is executed for crimes against humanity.

Title: William the War Criminal

30s William... runs away to seek his fortune in the bright lights of Hollywood in the 1940s, gets a job as an animator at the Walt Disney studios and is responsible for lots of subliminal phalluses in Disney films.

Title: William Does Disney

1940s William...becomes a Communist in the 50s, defects to Russia, and gets to live out his childhood definition of Communism, ie, "making things better by taking everyone's money off of them and then killing them" (or words to that effect).

Title: William and the Warsaw Pact

1950s William...joins the Beatles in the 60s and gets shot shortly afterwards because he's such a big-headed cock.

Title: William's Greatest Fan

1960s William...grows up to be a Tory and joins Margaret Thatcher's government in his late 20s... until he's disgraced publically by the discovery of his torrid affair with a rent boy.

Title: William and Rough Trade

Welcome to the Cardiff-mouth

2006-10-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

Torchwood, episode one: Everything Changes

I read a few reviews of this before I watched it, so I knew the basic plot. But there were a few surprises. In the spirit of "man bites dog", one large shocker - Jack doesn't get laid, or even snog anyone. Perhaps sex and death are just as intimately linked for him as they are for Buffy? Buffy, feeling dead, shags to feel alive. Jack, not being able to die, loses the will to shag, since there's no sense of gather ye rosebuds.

As Donna Moss explained on the West Wing: "Gather ye rose buds, while you may, Josh. You know what that means? It means you should take the time to gather rose buds now cause later you might not be able to."

"Interpreting the classics with Poet laureate Donnatella Moss," Josh snarked back, failing to gather the Donna-scented buds for another six seasons. Lame.

But I was talking about Torchwood. My diversion probably shows that I'm yet to be convinced that any UK drama can live up to the best US shows...but Torchwood's definitely not shite.

I love the illuminated body at the start, there was something startling and uncomfortable about that. The emphasis on the mundane that RTD seems to - and says he does - love can get tiresome, kebab gags and whatnot, so I liked the eerie sense that that opening conveyed.

From the start, I liked Gwen's face, but I had to keep saying to myself "just because she's welsh, doesn't mean she sounds like Charlotte Church." But I kept on calling her Charlotte in my head anyway.

I was very amused when the police types were told to pull back from the scene and they dutifully did so. Makes me wonder, if they shot 24 in the UK, would Jack have to spend time queuing to go through customs rather than hopping on a stolen helicopter?

Then along comes the cool kids in their flowing coats. Captain Jack's looking a little puffy around the face. Must be all the pig's blood. Cause...those arial shots of Cardiff, they're like Angel's LA only moving more slowly. Plus the Batman-esque posing that Captain Jack does on the roof? He's Jack-gel, Time Traveller with the Pet Hand in a Jar, cursed to walk the mean, crime-plagued streets of Cardiff for all eternity, unable to find love because he's such a self-involved jackass (jack...ass...why did we not see this in the episode? That's what I signed on for).

Loving their fan-nods with the M-preg joke.

Question: Why does bringing back the dead stop the rain? Is it water-powered? Then, never mind helping the police. They should really use this alien technology to find environmentally friendly alternatives to fossil fuels.

After Gwen (not charlotte, not charlotte) does her nancy drewing in the rain, she returns looking like she's just stepped out of a salon. Must have really good blow dryers at the police station.

That pub fight she walks in on...when they said this post-watershed show was going to include violence, I thought they meant gunfights and maybe some shirtless torture scenes, not just some beered up blokes having a bit of a scuffle. But, nevermind, it advanced the plot and everything, getting her to hospital and giving her a logical reason to be seeing weird things so that her obligatory "normal" sidekick (Micky 2.0) can pooh pooh her sci fi visions.

After a few scenes of Gwen and Jack, I began to get very irritated with her constant bloody questions. Who for why that how happened what him who?

Points for use of the word sillybuggers. Though, worrying that the weevil gets more screen time in this ep than he has so far in the whole of season 3 of Veronica Mars.

When the hospital porter guy approaches the weevil (who does not, in this case, love you long time) and says "that’s just like real teeth," it's rather unfortunate that his severed jugular produced some distinctly fake looking blood. Leads to attack of viewer cynicism and desuspension of disbelief that does.

When the Torchwooders put a bag over his head, I did agree with their asthetic judgement. He'd never get any votes on hot or not dot com, even though he does have very nice straight white teeth. Alien-American?

Speaking of which, I found it rather convenient and unlikely that the older officer (lesbi-having you lady) a) has access to army records from the 40s on her computer, though maybe the CID research and filing system is more thorough than I assume? or b) that he'd be the only Captain Jack Harkness on record. I'm tempted to do a quick google to test that theory...except I live in a universe where there's probably about a million naughty fansites devoted to the fictional Jack Harkness so it'd take a while to get to the real ones. Plus I can't be bothered, which is often the largest factor in this kind of thing.

Gwen's pizza delivery routine? Surely a plot device considered old hat even in porn movies. Then, the communal Torchwood response to her ruse was painfully unfunny. Rather like Ricky Gervais's character doing his "you're having a larf" routine in Extras. Oh, and if they're such a bonded team who plays together and stays together...how come none of them noticed that Susie was a dangerous glove-lovin' psychopath.

Gloves = evil. We should all know this by now. Yellow Submarine AND Buffy both teach us as much.

Love the Torchwood station. Makes me wonder what they're doing in the now-closed Shoreditch station. Probably nothing, but if I see anyone delivering pizza there I promise I won't ask lots of annoying questions when I go down there and inevitably, like Mary Sue, get invited to join the team and share lusty glances with the tight-bunned leader.

When Gwen stares out weevil (who perhaps would love you long time now I think about it, just so long as you enjoy m/f bloodplay (if anyone's written a fanfic about that already...you are a sick fuck. But a quick-off-the-mark sick fuck) she gets kind of teared up, which makes me think she's a bleeding heart liberal there to teach those stony-hearted Torchwood types a lesson or two about humanity and sympathy for the devil. Or maybe she's just a bit of a wuss/slightly challenged/has hayfever.

When she goes on about "my boyfriend says" re acid-spiked terror water I did wonder, do they not have feminism in Cardiff?

When Jack says "That's so Welsh!" I was wondering whose benefit that gag is for. Because, as an English person, I've never made that assumption about the Welsh, so it doesn't work as a stereotype gag. So maybe it's for Welsh people, kind of an inside joke?

Hmm, Torchwood Four went missing...so did Babylon Four...could they possibly be related?

Nasty Jack, giving the nice lady a rufie.

Good Gwen, writing it all down...I was yelling at the screen for her to do so, then she did. Maybe I'm controlling the television with my brain?

When the crazy glove lady talks about getting all the bollocks and the filth, and maybe there's brilliant stuff out there, that sounded like a meta shout out to Doctor Who, where everything is "brilliant" and "fantastic". Is this them planting their flag in the territory of doom, gloom and swearwords?

As the show goes on, so do Gwen's pointless questions. "What have you done?" Well, love, she's shot him, I would've thought the gun was a giveaway. Fair enough asking questions about who are these mysterious strangers, but, really.

Then again, on a metaphysical level, perhaps it was a fair question given that the chap can't die, leading to moral questions about can you murder someone who doesn't stay dead.

Sadly, I knew that Jack was going to come back from the dead so there was no element of surprise. Then again it's unlikely that there would be much surprise even if I hadn't been spoiled, given that he's the hero. While Spooks taught us that killing an apparently main character early on in the game (Buffy too, for that matter) is doable, killing the big star that everyone's tuning in to see would be a little reckless.

I'm bloody glad Gwen rememberes everything after the shooting. If I had to go through all that exposition again I'd be following Susie's example on the blowing out of brains front. Maybe that was her motive too?

Again I say, surely Jack or ther others must've realised she was nuts before. He didn't look very surprised, so maybe? But then, why didn't he do something earlier? And, was it something in Torchwood that sent her nuts? Or should he be looking into a more stringent psychological profiling of new employees? Rather than, say, just asking any random waif or stray to join the team after knowing them for a day.

Jack's character shifts from his Doctor Who incarnation are interesting. I like the fact that he badly wants to lead, and keeps trying to assert his authority, telling her that she'll want to follow him, just like people wanna follow the Doctor...but if you need to tell them, they're not going to follow you, honey. His queries about what's it like to die at the start of the episode were...well, they seemed a little random, really. Sure, the theme of death is big in his arc setup. He's died before, he's come back, he can't die...there's a whole im/mortality theme going on. But it felt clunky, and didn't quite mesh or lead into the "I can't die" reveal naturally. But maybe it will make more sense when I've seen future episodes and tie in better to where they take him and his deathless state next?

I enjoyed Gwen's very weary "okayyy". If they keep some of her sarcasm under the radar, so JAck doesn't detect it, there could be a really interesting dynamic. If they (the writers that is) don't go all out on the knowing winks, and instead work with the idea that they can't always communicate, that he has secrets, that she doesn't quite fit into his world, nor does she want to..on a more general level, if they don't try to make the charctacters fit too neatly together in a Mulder and Scully package, that'd be nice.

When Jack offers to get involved, it seems a bit weird that it’s only just occurred to him that they should help the police. More realistic would've been that Torchwood had discussed the idea of helping the police but dismissed it for whatever reason, rather than that they'd never (apparently) had the discussion before. Ooh, I hope she's not going to be the farking conscience of the group who opens their eyes to truth justice and beauty. Pisses me off when a naive character is used to do that. It’s like all that crap about how the wonder of children helps us see the world with fresh eyes. Sometimes clever people know stuff too you know.

Pterodactyls over Cardiff - If Morissey lived in Wales, I imagine he'd write songs with titles like that.

I help the hopeless

2006-10-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

I like lost causes and underdogs, though not enough to actively fight for them. So, when I read an article in a Sci fi mag (maybe Dreamwatch, maybe SFX) that laid into the Pylea arc in season 2 of Angel, I considered writing a letter, but scaled down my effort to writing a blog entry about it instead.

There's a tangental question - do blogs create apathy? We feel like we've done something because we've moaned about it in a technically public forum?

But back to Pylea. The article was a regular feature called "Jumping the Quark" and it had the Pylea storyline down as one of the low points of the show, though not an actual shark-jumping moment.

Ungrateful, blind wretches. Pylea's over the rainbow reworking of the Angel mythology was inspired. The fairy tale knights in armour stuff, alice in wonderland mirror tricks, and the discombobulation of the self, wizard of oz wish (self) fulfilment with an added joy of Angel being on the equivalent of red kryptonite and being tranformed into both beauty (checking himself out in the mirror) and the beast (all green and scaley),...I just don't see how you can turn your back on all of that, unless you're a 14 year old boy who thinks it's "gay", and doesn't realise that queer metaphors are only one aspect of the superhero myth of hidden or split identities.

The reason why people buy cars

2006-09-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

The bus resembles the Marie Celeste. Empty seats, everywhere, upstairs and down. Only two seats are taken: the one I'm sitting in, and the one where I'm resting my shopping.

So why does the grim-faced, officious, no-doubt-would've-ratted-out-friends-and-neighbours-as-communists-during-the-mccarthy-era, woman head straight for me, in full huffy sail?

"Excuse me!" she says, meaning "Aha, sinner, I am here to rip out your black, black heart and show it to you, for I am the righteous, and if I disappear suddenly, it's because the rapture has come and I, being worthy, have been taken, while you remain behind, burdened down by your guilty seat-filling shopping."

I move my shopping onto my lap, but I do not excuse her.

The Spam Factory

2006-08-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

Looking through the spam section of my yahoo account, it struck me that the invented names of the junk email senders had a lot of character, so I thought I'd write a little bit about each of them, in a late night stream of consciousness sprawl of, well, junk, probably.
......................................

Kathie Clifton had a headache. It began in her teeth, then spread as a tingle through her cheeks, coming to a halt in a clamp around her temples. The clunking and humming of machinery all around her wasn't helping.

"Are you ok?" asked Paul Stapleton, the paunchy, pasty man who worked next to her on the production line. "You look like you could use a nice lie down."

"Huhuhuhuhuhuh". Dale Wall, opposite and to the left of Kathie, took everything in a dirty way. "I bet," he said. "I'll bet she does."

"Shut up, Dale." Paul glowered. "Would you like some asprin?"

Kathie shook her head. What she really wanted was to win the lottery and never have to see any of these bastards again. The faces all along the production line were flesh ghosts. None of them were real. How could they be, among so much active, thrusting machinery? The machine was real, they were little puppets, dancing a Peter Crouch robotics routine. None of them had anything to offer - not Dale, not her, not Bud Geiger in accounts, or Regina Terry in IT.

The man everyone just knew as Geoffrey was sweeping up iron filings and keeping up his thankless cleaning routine. The factory was filthy and depressing.

"Shouldn't be allowed," said old, sad Alden Dodd, on Kathie's other side, grimacing at a large oil slick on the floor. "This day and age. There are rules about this sort of thing. Health and safety."

"We're not real," said Kathie. "It doesn't matter."

"What was that, dear?" Nice old Celia Burroughs craned over from the next-door conveyor belt, leaning her hunched old back as far as it would stretch, in case she was missing out on juicy stuff. Celia should've been spy, Kathie thought. One of those ultra deep-cover types, where they're so mild mannered and unassuming, that no one suspected they even had a life outside the context you see them in (in this case the factory, but you see Celias everywhere, hobbling around and nosing in people's tedious dirty laundry) never mind leading a double life of excitement and espionage.

Celia gave Kathie a vague look, as if she'd forgotten who she was for a moment, even as she tried to juice her for information.

"Nothing," said Kathie.

"That's nice dear," said Celia, going back to her own production line.

Carla Salazar, a few places further up the row, worked in silence. She was a mystery. Too beautiful for this kind of job, but maybe without enough English to get a better one.

Troy Greenberg was staring at Carla, Kathie noticed. He was slack-necked and old before his time. Only 35, maybe, but had the dried-out look of a man in his fifties. Riddling lines spread all over his face, mapping out late nights and twisted, perverted, debauched nights of...Kathie wasn't sure why she was reading him like this. He was probably a nice man. She never spoke to him in the tea room, but he always let her get to the sugar in a kind sort of way, stepping back to let her waddle in closer, without making her feel uncomfortable for being a "great big fatass" as her son liked to say. Kathie's son watched far too much American TV.

"At least I'm not out taking crack with hos," was his reply to accusations like that. Kathie had no idea whether he meant it as a serious attempt to imitate the MTV people, or whether he was playing with her ignorance of all things relating to the under 40s, trying to make her look stupid by mistaking irony for imitation.

Whyever am I thinking about Scott? she wondered. He's not part of the factory. Sometimes Kathie wondered if this place was sending her insane. It just kept coming.

"Henry, pass us that wrench!" someone was calling to someone at the other end of the factory. It was a miracle Kathie could hear it over the noise. Through the thumping of headache and machine and the twittery chatter of her co-workers, Kathie couldn't judge distance any more. Maybe Henry was nearby. She didn't know who he was. But he must have passed the wrench, as the request didn't come again. Or maybe it did, and she didn't hear it.

Kathie worked on, inserting one bit of metal into another, just like her training, just like her morning, afternoon and (on bad days when the world hated her and her manager circled her name on the chart) night shifts.

Yahir Phillips came and took over from Paul. It was a new shift, but Kathie was on for a double. She didn't mind now, she was into the rhythm. Yahir nodded to her and muttered something. Kathie didn't hear but didn't ask him to repeat it. She nodded too.

The faces along the line were changing. Valeria Law took her place solemnly, with her pinched in cheeks and poking out bones, 16 years old and gaunt as Kathie's old mum. Leather, her skin was like, but tight young leather, a rack of skin being stretched, ready for the coffin. Her overalls were the smallest, but too big. Probably a health hazard, having all that baggy material, thought Kathie. She didn't report Valeria though. The little bird boned girl scared her.

She was probably on drugs, and maybe under her overalls were a stash of needles, strapped about her waist in a belt of some kind, ready as weapons if anyone pissed her off. Kathie smiled. I'm turning into an old woman, thinking everyone young is out to get me and mug me, I'm turning into a tabloid even though I don't read the papers. The papers don't make us think things, it's all in your genes...get old, stop trusting people. Or not genes. It's in experience. I'm laughing at myself here, thinking badly of this girl. But I'm thinking badly of her because other ones just like her, with that same look, did bad things to me and to mine and especially to my kitchen window.

The manager came strolling by, with nothing to do but look and try and find a fault to justify him being there at all. Kathie thought he should just go back to his office for Sudoku. He was more likely to put people off their stride, prying about like that, than increase efficiency or whatnot. Mr Alec Richardson was a pointless part of the machine. He had nothing to say that was helpful. He was always there though, like a dormant virus, herpes ready to come back at the worst moment. He was an empty little man, Kathie thought. His eyes were holes. Pissholes in the snow, actually. White and red shiny face, boxy suit under his protective coat thing. He wandered off down the line, with no reason behind his actions but trying to look purposeful and thoughtful and full of authority like a real man not a pissweasel.

Conner Murphy came up behind Kathie and pinched her bum. "Goosey goosey," he snickered. Conner never made much sense. Kathie didn't turn round, just waved her hand behind her to get him away.

Hours more passed. Kathie's headache dissolved into the dozy numb state she got into by the second half of a double shift. Noise, noise, noise, like sleeping on a train with your neck awkward against the window.

She kept her eyes on the production line. She could just see hands. Hairy ones coming out of Rory Durham's sleeves. Little stubby ones on Gwen Lutz's fat wrists. Tiny child hands belonging to Mina, five places down.

They all worked on and on in the factory, and Kathie lost herself until it was time to go home.

Giving people their Propps

2006-05-12T10:55:00.000-07:00

After a friend said "your blog sounds like it was written by a teenage boy", I thought I'd talk about something a bit more ladylike: passing scathing judgement on others for fun.

People are infinitely varied, each with their own little quirks and their own unique essence. However, judging people individually - or not judging them at all - takes compassion, patience, self-knowledge, careful thought and other things that require far too much effort. I find it saves time if you assess people using a shorthand of types.

Here are some of them:

The Ratboy - This creature lives for the rat race. It doesn't have to be a boy, but it usually is. His eyes are often too close together, he has a lot of nervous energy and he never ever has a conversation without an ulterior motive. He has no redeeming features, unless you're stranded on a desert island and need someone to decide who gets eaten. He will enjoy this task a lot.

Catnip girl - This person is brilliant, exciting, guaranteed to set your pulse racing...but try and spend too much time with them and they drive you insane. Everything for them has to be the best of the best, the most thrilling of the thrilling. Again, doesn't have to be a girl, but usually is. Invite them to a party and they will probably turn up around 1am, with ten friends that they just met. But they will always dance, and that's a good thing.

The holy fool - The best kind of person, I think. They're often a little socially strange and don't quite fit in to the modern world. They're the opposite number of the rat boy. They're acutely alive and aware of others, which leads to quite a bit of suffering. It can also lead to a rather wicked sense of humour, that you wouldn't expect from someone so nice. They don't miss a trick (although they're often too kind to say anything).

More types later, have to go now...

Running Scared

2006-04-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Are you into the idea of wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm? Do you write stories about your fantasies? Then you’re not alone (though perhaps you should be).

http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/karl.htm

Favourite lines:

'Roy has succumbed to a heart attack and is clinically dead,' he explains, indicating a certain well-known man in black sprawled on the floor of the vehicle.

'So,' I say.

'Are you perchance a doctor?'

'No. I studied at a catering college for some years but was forced to leave for reasons I prefer not to disclose.'

and…

Of course, I reflect as I return to the patient Jetta, there can be no question of him enjoying it, for he was dead at the time.

The people who made that website also made a song. I don’t think there’s anything I can say that would do it justice. Feast your ears:

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/street/xjk95/Sounds/roy.mp3

Incidentally, I found out about these sites from a friend who was researching Roy Orbison. I did not google for it out of a deep desire for the Big O, dead and wrapped in plastic.

Now where did I put my clingfilm…

The Regeneration of the Cool

2006-04-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

There was a whole page on Doctor Who in Now magazine last week. There was a competition about Serenity in Heat last year. The boys from Supernatural and Lost are all over various trashy celeb magazines with their tops off.

What’s going on here then? Genres that were previously geek-havens seem to be merging with mainstream pop culture, getting glossier and more tottycentric as they go.

No more wobbly sets and used-for-every-alien-planet quarries. Lost may be a meandering pile of crap, plot-wise, but it’s very slick. Doctor Who was mainstream when it started out, but its reinvention as a pop(bitch) phenomenon is a new one.

I can’t decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm hoping it'll mean that lots of money gets pumped into sci fi and fantasy shows in the UK, so we'll get lots more well-written, well-acted, well-etceraed genre telly in the near future.

But maybe we're looking at the O.C.-ification of genre stories? It’s a fine line between emotionally-involving, humane sci fi and soapy tat. Buffy usually managed to stay on the right side of that – humour’s a good antidote to melodrama – but now I think about it, quite a few episodes of Battlestar Galactica could be summed up to sound like an episode of the OC.

“This week on Battlestar Galactica, Sharon finds out she’s pregnant, everyone’s worried about Ty’s drinking and Starbuck punches someone in a broody, sexy blue-collar way."

I think I like a bit of sentimental pap sometimes, and I like a little eye candy, but not to the exclusion of everything else. I hope, if they do make that Spike TV movie, the main plot device isn’t James Marsters taking his trousers off (cf Smallville and Angel…in the former he turns up naked and the latter he gets mystically naked by episode 4).

That makes me think of Decline and Fall: “in the quad…without his trousers…dear me!"

In fact, if you consider Spike’s lewd conduct on Buffy and Angel (plenty of nudity and wanky poky) followed by his rebirth as a college lecturer on Smallville, it fits Paul Pennyfeather’s pattern:

"I'll expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour."

Decline and Fall (1928)

But that kind of fannish behaviour above – finding ways of linking just about any bit of culture back to the object of your devotion – is the aspect of sci-fi and fantasy that probably won’t catch on with the main Heat demographic. Obsessiveness and "reading too much into things" are probably somewhere below Cheryl Tweedy on the barometer of magazine cool (you know, those "going up/going down" sliding scale thingies).

Drooling over the new Doctor is easy to incorporate into a celeblicking girly-girl worldview.

Discussing way in which Doctor Who and Buffy use alien-ness or undead-ness to explore ambiguous sexuality….not so much. Unless I’m making up a demographic, and actually all Heat readers are secretly part-time armchair-critic, Guardian-reading, Joss Whedon-squeeing ponces.

Selling global warming to eskimos

2006-02-28T01:14:00.000-08:00

I'm always interested in how people try and persuade me to do things - adverts, door to door salesmen, those Irish men who phone up to ask me if I'm happy with my mobile plan. I find the process of selling icky but compelling.

A couple of New Labour council people just came to the door with their pitch for the local council elections. One was young, pasty and eager, with stubble. He looked like he'd been raised in a warm dark cupboard, like a mushroom. Let's call him Earnest.

Earnest did all the talking. I assume he'd been given all the youf voters to pitch at.

His older partner hovered in the background and seemed stiff and nervous. He wore an overcoat that looked like it belonged on a private detective. When he finally introduced himself I felt an urge to shake his hand to make him feel more included. Compassion strikes at odd times.

They were perfectly nice, but they made me think that the idea of a slick New Labour spin machine is nonsense. And "The Thick of It" seems all too accurate (if still not actually very funny).

For a start, Earnest spelled my name wrong as he took my email adress down. Fair enough, it's not an easy name to spell. Except he already had it printed on the form in front of him. If a person can't cross-reference within one sheet of paper, I'm not sure they're the best person to co-ordinate initiatives across a community (or whatever councillors claim to do).

Then he tried to coax me into a bit of a public hate session for George Galloway - my MP, as Big Brother watching friends are fond of reminding me, with big shit-eating grins on their faces. That was a fairly good bit of demographicing on Earnest's part, though. I do think Galloway is rubbish and I certainly didn't vote for him.

But I could just smell the crisp-and-orange-squash whiff of focus groups hovering around that bit. When someone tries to sell to me in such a smarmy way ("You're in your twenties, you clearly read Heat, we totally do too, so what about that twat Galloway? Vote for us intead, you know you love it!") I lose interest.

Actually, I don't always. If they were selling something I wanted to buy, and using focus groups to find out what was actually important to me, I wouldn't mind being so clearly marketed to. Perhaps I wouldn't even notice it, I'd just assume they were talking about important issues - because, naturally, the issues that excite me are the important ones.

However, when it came to their main pitch, they certainly did not pick the right route into my ballot pants. There I was on the doorstep with the Guardian in my hand and my unbrushed bluestocking hair...and they started in about increased police presence, cracking down on crime, sorting out drug dealers etc etc, I wanted to take them gently by the hand and explain that I'm a bleeding-heart liberal and I feel far too much middle class guilt to condone anything so draconian as punishing criminals.

Seriously though, I think they need to adjust their patter just a little bit. I suppose there are a lot of OAPS and mums on the estate and they were probably on a roll with the anti-crime thing, it'd probably been going down well in all the previous flats.

Once they'd left I looked at the leaflet they gave me. They'd spelled "it's" wrong. As in "Labour Tower Hamlets Freeze It's Council Tax".

I've now moved from mild surprise at their poor marketing skills to "let's go on a gun crazy councillor-culling murder spree, grammar-slaying motherfuckers!"

I suspect my job is starting to affect my priorities. Perhaps people who work in publishing should be denied the vote?