Hmmmm, what oh what should I blog about this morning? You see, my days are often filled with the same stuff right now so if I just wrote what was on my mind everyday this blog will become far too repetitive. I would be better off just copying and pasting stuff from previous days over and over again.
I suppose if I did want to do that I could perhaps make it a bit more interesting and use one of those William Burroughs inspired "cut up" generators, mix and match a few posts and then copy that new, jumbled up and chaotic text into here. Actually I'll get on it and do that right now. Just a minute....
...Okay, I found quite a good 'cut-u' machine on the internet that you can program to do poetry. The results I found pretty suprising because usually they just generate a complete rhythmless mess of words.
This was my first go at it, and all I did was give it a link to my blog, set it to 5 beats per each line, and got it to create rhyming pairs and this is the result:
Chronicles of odeDan
distraught inroad
Gday trepidation
free titillation
Oops i disgracer
To do bait tracer
Yesterday i stair
To grey silverware
Ll do it a rat
I ll do trail tat
My mind instruction
Clear rent conduction
Doing this thing wig
Quite at that page jig
Want it to be gait
Has pretense roommate
Sort of habit vine
Had the bazaar shrine
Of a blog i maid
folktale allayed
Everyday nard
Have to burr retard
I don t wainwright
The excuse patch height
Was busy master
I did dom tapster
A few drinks after nude
timbrel servitude
Got carried shiner
wildfire recliner
Drank fadrank fa rent
Too much ley lent
Then i was dead beauts
phone acidifiers
I thought some of the stuff in there was pretty funny. Particularly the line: "Of a blog I maid, folktale allayed".
I cut some of it down as well because it was even longer than this. You've probably noticed there's a lot of made up words here, as it seems to take it a step further than most of your basic cut up generators on the internet, and actually take words apart as well to make them rhyme.
Tomorrow, if I feel I can't be bothered to type anything I'll just do this again. It's easy and fun.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
A missed day
oops, I completely forgot to do my blog yesterday. I kept saying to myself "i'll do it a bit later, I'll do it a bit later", but then it totally slipped my mind altogether. A clear sign that doing this thing is not quite at that stage I want it to be where it has become some sort of habit. I've had the tendency to neglect doing it quite a few times lately. It almost become an every other day blog instead of a blog I was to do everyday. I'll have to remedy that.
I don't even have the excuse that I was busy yesterday because I did absolutely nothing. Like I predicted on Monday's post, I went for a few drinks after the writers' circle and got carried away with myself. I drank far too much wine and then I was dead for half of Tuesday, and then kind of in a state of undeadness for the rest of the day. On days like that I will achieve nothing, except for the great achievement of achieving nothing all day.
But I did eat lots yesterday, and drank lots too (only water and squash though). A big part of my recovery plan from hangovers is to eat as much as possible and buy loads of cartons of apple and orange juice. I got my housemate to buy me some pie and chips on his way back from blockbusters yesterday evening, then about an hour later he had cooked dinner for everyone, and like a fat pig I ate that too. Though before that, all I had had to eat were a couple of sandwiches and cherry bakewells so I was starving by the time the chips came.
So today's plan is to get some writing done, and it's often nice to kick that off by writing in this blog.
Until next time...
I don't even have the excuse that I was busy yesterday because I did absolutely nothing. Like I predicted on Monday's post, I went for a few drinks after the writers' circle and got carried away with myself. I drank far too much wine and then I was dead for half of Tuesday, and then kind of in a state of undeadness for the rest of the day. On days like that I will achieve nothing, except for the great achievement of achieving nothing all day.
But I did eat lots yesterday, and drank lots too (only water and squash though). A big part of my recovery plan from hangovers is to eat as much as possible and buy loads of cartons of apple and orange juice. I got my housemate to buy me some pie and chips on his way back from blockbusters yesterday evening, then about an hour later he had cooked dinner for everyone, and like a fat pig I ate that too. Though before that, all I had had to eat were a couple of sandwiches and cherry bakewells so I was starving by the time the chips came.
So today's plan is to get some writing done, and it's often nice to kick that off by writing in this blog.
Until next time...
Monday, 18 February 2008
A quick blog before uni
I'm leaving the house to go to uni in about 30 mins coz I've got library books to return and a writers circle meeting to oversee. If I put of writing in my blog until after there's a chance it might not get done. After last weeks meeting I went out for a few drinks, got drunk, and failed to write my blog. I'm avoiding do the same today.
Because I only thought of writing this just now I haven't really given myself a chance to think of what I could write about, so this could be pretty brief and unfocused. I suppose I could try and talk about what I have done today but i'm not really sure what i've done. I've had one of those days where I haven't seemed to have done that much yet I couldn't tell you what it is that I haven't been doing.
Actually, the last few hours I've done stuff. Like having a shower, got some shopping, and I've worked on my feature script a little bit. I'm pretty certain where I'm generally going with it now and have finally made some choices so it's not in the strange king of literary quantum state it was in before. The possibilities have been narrowed down and it's got a sense of direction. The sooner I can get to actually writing the thing the better.
I was hoping to have something to bring with me to my meeting tonight, but my feature idea isn't in a fit state to be read out. Maybe I'll talk about it with the group like I did last week with a boxing feature film idea my housemate and had came up with. It all depends how I feel in the meeting I suppose.
Hmmm... I'm just looking around my room at the moment thinking that it is in need of a good tidy. I've often heard it said that the state of your bed room or working space reflects the state of your own mind and right now I'm inclined to believe that. It is time for some organisation. With the twenty minutes I've got left before I need to go to uni i'm going to get a little tidying done.
Fare thee well.
Because I only thought of writing this just now I haven't really given myself a chance to think of what I could write about, so this could be pretty brief and unfocused. I suppose I could try and talk about what I have done today but i'm not really sure what i've done. I've had one of those days where I haven't seemed to have done that much yet I couldn't tell you what it is that I haven't been doing.
Actually, the last few hours I've done stuff. Like having a shower, got some shopping, and I've worked on my feature script a little bit. I'm pretty certain where I'm generally going with it now and have finally made some choices so it's not in the strange king of literary quantum state it was in before. The possibilities have been narrowed down and it's got a sense of direction. The sooner I can get to actually writing the thing the better.
I was hoping to have something to bring with me to my meeting tonight, but my feature idea isn't in a fit state to be read out. Maybe I'll talk about it with the group like I did last week with a boxing feature film idea my housemate and had came up with. It all depends how I feel in the meeting I suppose.
Hmmm... I'm just looking around my room at the moment thinking that it is in need of a good tidy. I've often heard it said that the state of your bed room or working space reflects the state of your own mind and right now I'm inclined to believe that. It is time for some organisation. With the twenty minutes I've got left before I need to go to uni i'm going to get a little tidying done.
Fare thee well.
Sunday, 17 February 2008
This comic book geek is disappointed
A late blog tonight, but i went to see Jumper this evening and decided before I went that this blog would more or less be a review of the film.
I first heard the premise of the film Jumper sometime last year and didn't think much of it, after all teleportation isn't particularly new in films. It's been seen plenty in Star Trek, and even in regards to the superhero genre we've seen it in X-men 2 with the character of Nightcrawler. To me Jumper just didn't have much of a high concept - that is until I saw the trailer a couple of months ago and was blown away by it. Because teleportation in this film isn't like Nightcrawler from x-men who can only do relatively short distances, and it isn't like in Star Trek, where it is a mode of transportation and not central to the plot. This was a film about a person with the power to go anywhere he wants in the world on impulse. It's about someone having a power that gives them almost unlimited freedom... Too bad they made such a mess of it with the actual film itself.
The trailer looked amazing. You could see it was an action adventure with some really impressive set pieces, and the comic book geek in me got really excited about it. I didn't think it was going to be another run of the mill Hollywood special effects movie because of the people involved in making it. The director is Doug Lieman, who did Bourne Identity and Go (but also Mr and Mrs Smith, so maybe I should've approached the movie with some caution). One of the writers was David S Goyer, who co-wrote Batman Begins with Christopher Nolan, probably my favourite of all the superhero movies in recent years.However, quite soon into the film I started thinking that it seemed like it had been put together by a bunch of amateurs who for some reason had a huge budget to work with. They basically made a film that relied to heavily on its action set pieces, but didn't spend enough time in developing the characters and the emotional core of the movie.
The word that kept going through my head to describe this film was 'shallow'. They potentially had this great premise: To explore what someone would do, and what would happen to them, if they had these amazing powers. But they don't go very far with it. In fact most of these kinds of questions is covered in the first act before Samuel L Jackson turns up with that look on his face that he always does. You know the one: He closes one eye slightly, like he's squinting, and he eyeballs the protagonist in an attempt to act sinister, but instead, after doing this for so long in his films, it just comes across as comical now - get a new sinister face Samuel!
There was so much more they could've done with this movie. I expected there to be more of a relationship between him and the other jumper Griffin. Afterall they have a rare ability, but the main character David doesn't really seemed that suprised or bothered that he has found another person who is like him. I also thought they should've explored the villains and their intentions a lot more because they do have good reason to want to hunt jumpers. The kind of power a jumper has is easily abused, and all the way through the film both jumpers frequently abuse their abilities and there is never a moment when either of them perhaps question this. Some of what i've mentioned here does seem like it was considered in the script, and is touched upon in one or two moments in the film, but it's not really taken very far. Like a scene right near the beginning where David watches a news bulletin on TV about a flood where people are trapped and in trouble, but he doesn't even give it a second look and instead takes a trip to London to get off with some woman. In some ways this was nice to see, because if your average person was to get some sort of superpower his first thought wouldn't be to put on some tights and help some people, it would be "right, how can I make some money outta this?" But they don't attempt to address this issue any further, when they easily could've with the films villains the 'Paladins'. Instead they are an ancient religeous order dedicated to hunting down and exterminating all jumpers because they have a power that only "god" can have.
But even all that wouldn't have mattered so much if they had just spent more time developing the characters and their relationships with one another. The film was so emotionally vacant, the characters were barely even one dimensional, and aside from the protagonist you don't really find out that much about them. The character of Griffin seemed like he could have an interesting past, and while it's hinted at and you could possibly fill in the gaps, you wanted to know a little more about him and why he is the person he is. It was just bad writing.
So to sum it up, Jumper was a film that delivered far less than it could've done, relying on some entertaining set pieces and fun action scenes in an attempt to dazzle audiences past the fact that it lacks any sort of interesting emotional or moral story at the centre of it.
I first heard the premise of the film Jumper sometime last year and didn't think much of it, after all teleportation isn't particularly new in films. It's been seen plenty in Star Trek, and even in regards to the superhero genre we've seen it in X-men 2 with the character of Nightcrawler. To me Jumper just didn't have much of a high concept - that is until I saw the trailer a couple of months ago and was blown away by it. Because teleportation in this film isn't like Nightcrawler from x-men who can only do relatively short distances, and it isn't like in Star Trek, where it is a mode of transportation and not central to the plot. This was a film about a person with the power to go anywhere he wants in the world on impulse. It's about someone having a power that gives them almost unlimited freedom... Too bad they made such a mess of it with the actual film itself.
The trailer looked amazing. You could see it was an action adventure with some really impressive set pieces, and the comic book geek in me got really excited about it. I didn't think it was going to be another run of the mill Hollywood special effects movie because of the people involved in making it. The director is Doug Lieman, who did Bourne Identity and Go (but also Mr and Mrs Smith, so maybe I should've approached the movie with some caution). One of the writers was David S Goyer, who co-wrote Batman Begins with Christopher Nolan, probably my favourite of all the superhero movies in recent years.However, quite soon into the film I started thinking that it seemed like it had been put together by a bunch of amateurs who for some reason had a huge budget to work with. They basically made a film that relied to heavily on its action set pieces, but didn't spend enough time in developing the characters and the emotional core of the movie.
The word that kept going through my head to describe this film was 'shallow'. They potentially had this great premise: To explore what someone would do, and what would happen to them, if they had these amazing powers. But they don't go very far with it. In fact most of these kinds of questions is covered in the first act before Samuel L Jackson turns up with that look on his face that he always does. You know the one: He closes one eye slightly, like he's squinting, and he eyeballs the protagonist in an attempt to act sinister, but instead, after doing this for so long in his films, it just comes across as comical now - get a new sinister face Samuel!
There was so much more they could've done with this movie. I expected there to be more of a relationship between him and the other jumper Griffin. Afterall they have a rare ability, but the main character David doesn't really seemed that suprised or bothered that he has found another person who is like him. I also thought they should've explored the villains and their intentions a lot more because they do have good reason to want to hunt jumpers. The kind of power a jumper has is easily abused, and all the way through the film both jumpers frequently abuse their abilities and there is never a moment when either of them perhaps question this. Some of what i've mentioned here does seem like it was considered in the script, and is touched upon in one or two moments in the film, but it's not really taken very far. Like a scene right near the beginning where David watches a news bulletin on TV about a flood where people are trapped and in trouble, but he doesn't even give it a second look and instead takes a trip to London to get off with some woman. In some ways this was nice to see, because if your average person was to get some sort of superpower his first thought wouldn't be to put on some tights and help some people, it would be "right, how can I make some money outta this?" But they don't attempt to address this issue any further, when they easily could've with the films villains the 'Paladins'. Instead they are an ancient religeous order dedicated to hunting down and exterminating all jumpers because they have a power that only "god" can have.
But even all that wouldn't have mattered so much if they had just spent more time developing the characters and their relationships with one another. The film was so emotionally vacant, the characters were barely even one dimensional, and aside from the protagonist you don't really find out that much about them. The character of Griffin seemed like he could have an interesting past, and while it's hinted at and you could possibly fill in the gaps, you wanted to know a little more about him and why he is the person he is. It was just bad writing.
So to sum it up, Jumper was a film that delivered far less than it could've done, relying on some entertaining set pieces and fun action scenes in an attempt to dazzle audiences past the fact that it lacks any sort of interesting emotional or moral story at the centre of it.
Saturday, 16 February 2008
Celebrity autographs and other stuff
I went to a comedy gig last night and saw Richard Herring perform his latest stand up act "oh fuck i'm 40" but I'm not going to start quoting bits from the show or critique it in anyway except to say that I enjoyed it. It was funny.
I got to meet Richard during the gig backstage, and afterwards i bought his latest DVD, which he signed for me, and we got a lift off him to the train station. Now to most other people none of this will be any kind of a big deal. It's not as if he's someone really famous like Tom Cruise or the Queen. In fact hardly anyone really knows who he is or that he was on TV some years ago now as part of the double act Lee and Herring, in Fist of Fun or This morning with Richard not Judy. But I watched those shows as a teenager and loved them, and i really like his stand-up act so meeting him (well it's actually not the first time i've met him) was kind of a big deal to me and I felt nervous about it and didn't really know what to say. I'm bad enough when it comes to speaking to "normal" people I meet for the first time, so when I meet celebrities (who I am afraid to say are better than the rest of us lesser mortals) I lose almost all power of communication for fear of embarrasing myself or the people i'm with in front of these "demi gods". I am exagerrating a lot here. Fame doesn't really excite me that much - or at least it shouldn't. I don't want it to.
I'm not really into a lot of the other weirdness that comes with meeting the rich and famous either. The main one is the celebrity autograph or signature. To me, that is something completely meaningless as an artifact to take away with you. I know I said Richard signed my DVD, but I didn't actually ask him to, and I wanted to tell him not to bother signing it but i didn't want to sound like a dick. It was a nice gesture and everyone else who bought the DVD before me were having thiers signed, but to me signing his name on the DVD sleeve over the picture of his own face was akin to graffiting the brand new DVD i had just bought.
I know what you're thinking "you ungrateful shit - that was a friendly gesture from one of your comedy idols and you're complaining about it" - but no, that's not true. I am grateful for meeting him, i'm grateful for seeing his show, getting a DVD (signed), and I was grateful for the lift to the train station. I'm just using this example to attack the fascination with celebrity autographs; they're stupid. What do they actually mean? Proof that you've met a celebrity and they can write your name? - Even as proof of meeting a famous person I would say it's pretty weak. It's not as if they're signatures are very readable - they're an eligible scrawl across a piece of paper, most of them don't even look like they're writing out real letters, they're quite often a curvy line with occasional dramatic bumps and ridges. It's no accident that they're like that either, the celebrity has perfected them so they can be written with speed. And if someone comes up to you waving a piece of paper in your face saying that George Clooney just signed it how are you able to verify the truth of what they're saying? It's not like there's a huge database with the signature of every celebrity from Angelina Jolie right down to Wolf from Gladiators that I can check to see if that person is lying or not. In this digital age where people verify who you are with pin numbers and electornic finger printing, could this be the future of the celebrity autograph? A celebrities pin number or thumb print? Will celebrity stalkers ditch the notepad and pen for a personal verifone machine?
Getting your picture taking with someone famous is something I can understand because that way you do have verifiable evidence that you were standing in that spot with that person at that time. Although even that can be faked now what with Adobe photoshop and digital technology. With time and effort (a very sad and wasteful use of anyones time), you could have a picture taken of yourself fucking your girlfriend (or boyfriend) and afterwards photoshop in the face of Lindsey Lohan (or Brad Pitt if you went with the boyfriend scenario, or even if you didn't go with the boyfriend scenario and wanted to make this interesting) to make it look like you slept with someone famous. But that's just sad and not to mention insulting to your lover (i did consider putting in a joke after that sentence saying something along the lines of "that's probably why my last girlfriend left me", but i thought it too obvious and crap. In fact I don't actually see why i'm bothering to mention it. I might delete this part. Besides me and my last girlfriend broke up because of my own personal insecurities, and I'll thank you for not forcing me to bring up those painful memories again - I joke.)
Hmmmm, todays blog has gone off in a slightly different direction to what I planned. My original intention was to make a point about meeting people that are only famous to you. I was hoping to lead on that bit about meeting Richard Herring on to my desire to meet one of my biggest idols Alan Moore. Another person that very few people will have heard of despite being (in my opinion at least) perhaps one of the greatest writers of the last thirty years - which I agree is a pretty bold thing to say, even more so because he writes comics not novels. But a lot of people will be familiar with his work through the terrible film adaptations they make such as V for Vendetta, League of extraordinary gentelmen, From Hell, and the upcoming movie The Watchmen. If it wasn't for Alan Moore's The Watchmen you probably wouldn't have stuff like Heroes. He was the first comic book writer to write something that got comics taken as a serious work of fiction making the term "graphic novel" popular - a term used by those who read them but are too ashamed to call them what they are: comic books.
I think I've said all I feel like saying today. Until tomorrow.
I got to meet Richard during the gig backstage, and afterwards i bought his latest DVD, which he signed for me, and we got a lift off him to the train station. Now to most other people none of this will be any kind of a big deal. It's not as if he's someone really famous like Tom Cruise or the Queen. In fact hardly anyone really knows who he is or that he was on TV some years ago now as part of the double act Lee and Herring, in Fist of Fun or This morning with Richard not Judy. But I watched those shows as a teenager and loved them, and i really like his stand-up act so meeting him (well it's actually not the first time i've met him) was kind of a big deal to me and I felt nervous about it and didn't really know what to say. I'm bad enough when it comes to speaking to "normal" people I meet for the first time, so when I meet celebrities (who I am afraid to say are better than the rest of us lesser mortals) I lose almost all power of communication for fear of embarrasing myself or the people i'm with in front of these "demi gods". I am exagerrating a lot here. Fame doesn't really excite me that much - or at least it shouldn't. I don't want it to.
I'm not really into a lot of the other weirdness that comes with meeting the rich and famous either. The main one is the celebrity autograph or signature. To me, that is something completely meaningless as an artifact to take away with you. I know I said Richard signed my DVD, but I didn't actually ask him to, and I wanted to tell him not to bother signing it but i didn't want to sound like a dick. It was a nice gesture and everyone else who bought the DVD before me were having thiers signed, but to me signing his name on the DVD sleeve over the picture of his own face was akin to graffiting the brand new DVD i had just bought.
I know what you're thinking "you ungrateful shit - that was a friendly gesture from one of your comedy idols and you're complaining about it" - but no, that's not true. I am grateful for meeting him, i'm grateful for seeing his show, getting a DVD (signed), and I was grateful for the lift to the train station. I'm just using this example to attack the fascination with celebrity autographs; they're stupid. What do they actually mean? Proof that you've met a celebrity and they can write your name? - Even as proof of meeting a famous person I would say it's pretty weak. It's not as if they're signatures are very readable - they're an eligible scrawl across a piece of paper, most of them don't even look like they're writing out real letters, they're quite often a curvy line with occasional dramatic bumps and ridges. It's no accident that they're like that either, the celebrity has perfected them so they can be written with speed. And if someone comes up to you waving a piece of paper in your face saying that George Clooney just signed it how are you able to verify the truth of what they're saying? It's not like there's a huge database with the signature of every celebrity from Angelina Jolie right down to Wolf from Gladiators that I can check to see if that person is lying or not. In this digital age where people verify who you are with pin numbers and electornic finger printing, could this be the future of the celebrity autograph? A celebrities pin number or thumb print? Will celebrity stalkers ditch the notepad and pen for a personal verifone machine?
Getting your picture taking with someone famous is something I can understand because that way you do have verifiable evidence that you were standing in that spot with that person at that time. Although even that can be faked now what with Adobe photoshop and digital technology. With time and effort (a very sad and wasteful use of anyones time), you could have a picture taken of yourself fucking your girlfriend (or boyfriend) and afterwards photoshop in the face of Lindsey Lohan (or Brad Pitt if you went with the boyfriend scenario, or even if you didn't go with the boyfriend scenario and wanted to make this interesting) to make it look like you slept with someone famous. But that's just sad and not to mention insulting to your lover (i did consider putting in a joke after that sentence saying something along the lines of "that's probably why my last girlfriend left me", but i thought it too obvious and crap. In fact I don't actually see why i'm bothering to mention it. I might delete this part. Besides me and my last girlfriend broke up because of my own personal insecurities, and I'll thank you for not forcing me to bring up those painful memories again - I joke.)
Hmmmm, todays blog has gone off in a slightly different direction to what I planned. My original intention was to make a point about meeting people that are only famous to you. I was hoping to lead on that bit about meeting Richard Herring on to my desire to meet one of my biggest idols Alan Moore. Another person that very few people will have heard of despite being (in my opinion at least) perhaps one of the greatest writers of the last thirty years - which I agree is a pretty bold thing to say, even more so because he writes comics not novels. But a lot of people will be familiar with his work through the terrible film adaptations they make such as V for Vendetta, League of extraordinary gentelmen, From Hell, and the upcoming movie The Watchmen. If it wasn't for Alan Moore's The Watchmen you probably wouldn't have stuff like Heroes. He was the first comic book writer to write something that got comics taken as a serious work of fiction making the term "graphic novel" popular - a term used by those who read them but are too ashamed to call them what they are: comic books.
I think I've said all I feel like saying today. Until tomorrow.
Friday, 15 February 2008
Alder hill and back - the 'Odyssey' in bite-size
I've been ordering a lot of books of Amazon recently to the point that it's almost become some form of addiction. I can find almost any book I want on there and they all look so very cheap as well. You can get books for £3.50 or even cheaper sometimes. But you soon realise that the prices almost fool you because you end up paying a couple of quid for postage and packaging, but it still works out cheaper than buying it from a shop. Play.com has free delievery but it doesn't quite have the range Amazon does, and the books themselves tend to be slightly more expensive, so again the amount you spend wouldn't be much different if you went Amazon or play anyway.
One book I ordered was James Joyce's Ulysses. It's always ranked high in the top 100 works of modern fiction so i've been thinking of giving it a read for some time. It's been a while since I've read any challenging kind of prose writing - most sci-fi or thriller writers aren't particularly skilled in that area. They're good on plot and action - a style of writing much better suited to screenwriting than novels. Dan Brown is a prime example of a writer who can plot well and come up with interesting and exciting situations but he can't write for shit. Not that I can either, that's why I'm doing screenwriting.
So the book was supposed to come through the post yesterday, but given the girth of the thing, it couldn't fit through my letter box so the postman left one of those cards to come pick it up. In itself the story I'm about to tell isn't particularly exciting, humourous, or full of action, but it is kind of ironic, so I think it's worth writing down here (with the rest of the often mundane and trivial crap you find in blogs).
I had to walk to the nearby post office with the card to collect my book, but when I got there they told me the book isn't there. I have to collect it from another post office in Alder Hill. This doesn't usually happen if we miss the postman in the morning. He would usually have the sense to leave it at our nearest post office.
The alder hill post office was about a mile away, at the top of a very big and steep hill, and after a long and arduous journey (not really, but I'm putting that here for "dramatic effect" *yawn*) I finally reach the post office. They tell me my post isn't there yet. The postman hadn't returned from his rounds. It was now a quarter past twelve, the office shuts at one-thirty (why am i writing the time out with letters instead of numbers? It just means more typing (why am i typing "why am I writing the time out with letters instead of numbers?, i'm giving myself more writing to do just by pointing this out! and when i write my blog directly into my blog like this there isn't even an option to copy and paste so I had to type out virtually the same sentence twice giving me even more writing to do)). Back to the story - the postman should be back within the next forty minutes, but the place would be closing shortly after that so I didn't feel it was worth me going home only to have to walk all the way back again. Instead I decided to go for a wonder.
The delightful irony of what was happening dawned on me. Like Ulysses is James Joyce's modern reworking of Homers Odyssey, my efforts to track down and pick up a book that was supposed to be delivered to my front door had turned into a sort of bite-sized version of Homer's greek epic. I was in some far off land far away from home and a journey that should have taken me 5 minutes to complete was now going to take me an hour and a half (oh the horror!).
I decided I would see what was on the other side of the hill and it was then I was lured by a sirens call, (for those of you not familiar with the Odyssey, it's a reference to that but i'm not going to explain it here - just means more typing for me, look it up on wikipedia if you can be bothered). Not far off in the distance I saw a big yellow M. It was calling me to it, and I knew that i should resist it but I couldn't. The Alder Hill McDonalds drive thru had me under its spell and it pulled me in. Shamefully I sat down and had my fill of burgers and chips. (quite an amusing little side note to my visit to this McDonalds: I saw a kid of about seven run up to what he thought was a drive thru speaker, stick his head right in it, and start shouting food orders - it was an outside astray).
Not much happened in my "adventure" after this. Unfortunately this was as far as my story of getting the book would parallel the journey of Odysseus in Homer's poem. I didn't meet any men with one eye, or offered some modern drug equivalent of the lotus leaf. I just waited around a bit, did a bit more exploring of some of the shops nearby, laughed childishly at the name of the pub next door to the McDonalds (it was called "The Dorset Knob), and went back up the hill to collect my book.
One book I ordered was James Joyce's Ulysses. It's always ranked high in the top 100 works of modern fiction so i've been thinking of giving it a read for some time. It's been a while since I've read any challenging kind of prose writing - most sci-fi or thriller writers aren't particularly skilled in that area. They're good on plot and action - a style of writing much better suited to screenwriting than novels. Dan Brown is a prime example of a writer who can plot well and come up with interesting and exciting situations but he can't write for shit. Not that I can either, that's why I'm doing screenwriting.
So the book was supposed to come through the post yesterday, but given the girth of the thing, it couldn't fit through my letter box so the postman left one of those cards to come pick it up. In itself the story I'm about to tell isn't particularly exciting, humourous, or full of action, but it is kind of ironic, so I think it's worth writing down here (with the rest of the often mundane and trivial crap you find in blogs).
I had to walk to the nearby post office with the card to collect my book, but when I got there they told me the book isn't there. I have to collect it from another post office in Alder Hill. This doesn't usually happen if we miss the postman in the morning. He would usually have the sense to leave it at our nearest post office.
The alder hill post office was about a mile away, at the top of a very big and steep hill, and after a long and arduous journey (not really, but I'm putting that here for "dramatic effect" *yawn*) I finally reach the post office. They tell me my post isn't there yet. The postman hadn't returned from his rounds. It was now a quarter past twelve, the office shuts at one-thirty (why am i writing the time out with letters instead of numbers? It just means more typing (why am i typing "why am I writing the time out with letters instead of numbers?, i'm giving myself more writing to do just by pointing this out! and when i write my blog directly into my blog like this there isn't even an option to copy and paste so I had to type out virtually the same sentence twice giving me even more writing to do)). Back to the story - the postman should be back within the next forty minutes, but the place would be closing shortly after that so I didn't feel it was worth me going home only to have to walk all the way back again. Instead I decided to go for a wonder.
The delightful irony of what was happening dawned on me. Like Ulysses is James Joyce's modern reworking of Homers Odyssey, my efforts to track down and pick up a book that was supposed to be delivered to my front door had turned into a sort of bite-sized version of Homer's greek epic. I was in some far off land far away from home and a journey that should have taken me 5 minutes to complete was now going to take me an hour and a half (oh the horror!).
I decided I would see what was on the other side of the hill and it was then I was lured by a sirens call, (for those of you not familiar with the Odyssey, it's a reference to that but i'm not going to explain it here - just means more typing for me, look it up on wikipedia if you can be bothered). Not far off in the distance I saw a big yellow M. It was calling me to it, and I knew that i should resist it but I couldn't. The Alder Hill McDonalds drive thru had me under its spell and it pulled me in. Shamefully I sat down and had my fill of burgers and chips. (quite an amusing little side note to my visit to this McDonalds: I saw a kid of about seven run up to what he thought was a drive thru speaker, stick his head right in it, and start shouting food orders - it was an outside astray).
Not much happened in my "adventure" after this. Unfortunately this was as far as my story of getting the book would parallel the journey of Odysseus in Homer's poem. I didn't meet any men with one eye, or offered some modern drug equivalent of the lotus leaf. I just waited around a bit, did a bit more exploring of some of the shops nearby, laughed childishly at the name of the pub next door to the McDonalds (it was called "The Dorset Knob), and went back up the hill to collect my book.
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
6 weeks to hand in
So Sunday night we received an email ("we" meaning everyone in the 3rd year of the Bournemouth media school), reminding us that we only have 6 weeks left in which to write our dissertations. For me, the disseratation is the thing I have given the least thought, because everytime I start to think about it I just get very stressed and upset, and a strong desire to simply run away and dissapear takes hold of me. I have spent the last 5 years working towards assignment deadlines and I'm absolutley sick of them. For the past couple of months I've really wanted to do some creative writing, but in my own time, not for a university deadline. This makes it hard to justify why i've been so lazy with writing my major, but in a funny way, it's not because I'm lazy that I haven't been writing as much as I should it's because I'm feeling rushed to do it, and I'm overly concerned with how good it needs to be.
The big fact is, I can't handle pressure very well. But I'm not talking about pressure from other people, or from my course, I'm talking about pressure from myself. It's strange, but the best way I can describe it, is that its like i'm short circuiting my own brain. When I feel under huge pressure I become anxious and confused and suffer a strange sort of breakdown. This happens to me almost everytime I think about my disseration, and would happen with every theory assignment I have written in my three years at University. I would constantly get confused about what was expected of me and how I should be writing my essays. The marks I have receieved for my essays these past couple of years are quite eratic. I've had a couple of firsts but I've also recieved thirds - only just barely passing assignments sometimes. When I try to communicate my difficulty with discursive writing to other people I generally get the same response "why don't you look at what you were doing in the assignments where you got a first and see what you was doing differently". I've tried that. It's strange though, I'll read my good assignments and walk away with an understanding of what I've got to do, but it will only last a short while, then when I try to tackle my dissertation again i'm like "I have no fucking idea what is going on... I'm confused." I don't think anyone can help me with this because it's something in my head doing this. Some bad experience with an essay I did in the past that I can't seem to get over maybe, I'm not sure.
I was reading a chapter from a book yesterday called Optimal Experience, psychological studies of flow in consciousness. But now that I think about it, the particular chapter I chose to read was the last thing I should be reading right now.
Anyway, it's one of the books I've been looking at for my disseratation, and it's about how people are most happy in an activity that creates a state commonly reffered to as "flow". The flow consiousness occurs when you are emersed in an activity that is challenging but not beyond your abilities to achieve it. All of your energy and concentration becomes heavily invested in the exercise and all sense of time goes out the window, and the world around you blurs into the back ground. You need only examine the face of someone engrossed in a game of Tetris to see the flow state at work. However, if the task at hand becomes too challenging the flow state will be broken by feelings of stress or anxiety, and conversely if it becomes too easy boredom takes over.
The particular chapter I was reading was examining school pupils who had been given an assignment to complete. The first part looked at two pupils where "overarousal" was a problem. They were two students who knew and understood their subject matter but ran into huge problems from the word go due to anxiousness. Obviously, every student goes through feelings of anxiety when completeing an assignement but for these two students it turned their essay writing experience into a nightmare, and their mental state was clearly reflected in the assignments they turned in. The writer of this particular chapter of the book, Reed Larson, said the two pupils caused this state of panic by having expectations for their essays higher than they could meet. What they saw themselves achieving in their heads was never as good as what they put on the page, and the harder they tried the more overwhelmed they became with their work to the point where they lost control of it. When they handed it in they were so confused and anxious about it they really had no idea of what mark they would get from it.
Reading this chapter brought back memories of past essay writing experiences, and it is for this reason that I haven't even been able to get properly started on my disseration. Everytime I think about it I get hit by these same feelings of anxiety and confusion, and all I've been doing recently is reading. That's what I've been doing today. Trying to ease myself into it by just reading some books and writing down whatever comes to mind. But its always there; a creeping sensation of anxiety coming over me and wrecking havoc with my ability to concentrate and take what I'm reading in.
These feelings are only going to increase dramatically and with greater frequency over these next two months so I better start getting used to it now and get on with it.
The big fact is, I can't handle pressure very well. But I'm not talking about pressure from other people, or from my course, I'm talking about pressure from myself. It's strange, but the best way I can describe it, is that its like i'm short circuiting my own brain. When I feel under huge pressure I become anxious and confused and suffer a strange sort of breakdown. This happens to me almost everytime I think about my disseration, and would happen with every theory assignment I have written in my three years at University. I would constantly get confused about what was expected of me and how I should be writing my essays. The marks I have receieved for my essays these past couple of years are quite eratic. I've had a couple of firsts but I've also recieved thirds - only just barely passing assignments sometimes. When I try to communicate my difficulty with discursive writing to other people I generally get the same response "why don't you look at what you were doing in the assignments where you got a first and see what you was doing differently". I've tried that. It's strange though, I'll read my good assignments and walk away with an understanding of what I've got to do, but it will only last a short while, then when I try to tackle my dissertation again i'm like "I have no fucking idea what is going on... I'm confused." I don't think anyone can help me with this because it's something in my head doing this. Some bad experience with an essay I did in the past that I can't seem to get over maybe, I'm not sure.
I was reading a chapter from a book yesterday called Optimal Experience, psychological studies of flow in consciousness. But now that I think about it, the particular chapter I chose to read was the last thing I should be reading right now.
Anyway, it's one of the books I've been looking at for my disseratation, and it's about how people are most happy in an activity that creates a state commonly reffered to as "flow". The flow consiousness occurs when you are emersed in an activity that is challenging but not beyond your abilities to achieve it. All of your energy and concentration becomes heavily invested in the exercise and all sense of time goes out the window, and the world around you blurs into the back ground. You need only examine the face of someone engrossed in a game of Tetris to see the flow state at work. However, if the task at hand becomes too challenging the flow state will be broken by feelings of stress or anxiety, and conversely if it becomes too easy boredom takes over.
The particular chapter I was reading was examining school pupils who had been given an assignment to complete. The first part looked at two pupils where "overarousal" was a problem. They were two students who knew and understood their subject matter but ran into huge problems from the word go due to anxiousness. Obviously, every student goes through feelings of anxiety when completeing an assignement but for these two students it turned their essay writing experience into a nightmare, and their mental state was clearly reflected in the assignments they turned in. The writer of this particular chapter of the book, Reed Larson, said the two pupils caused this state of panic by having expectations for their essays higher than they could meet. What they saw themselves achieving in their heads was never as good as what they put on the page, and the harder they tried the more overwhelmed they became with their work to the point where they lost control of it. When they handed it in they were so confused and anxious about it they really had no idea of what mark they would get from it.
Reading this chapter brought back memories of past essay writing experiences, and it is for this reason that I haven't even been able to get properly started on my disseration. Everytime I think about it I get hit by these same feelings of anxiety and confusion, and all I've been doing recently is reading. That's what I've been doing today. Trying to ease myself into it by just reading some books and writing down whatever comes to mind. But its always there; a creeping sensation of anxiety coming over me and wrecking havoc with my ability to concentrate and take what I'm reading in.
These feelings are only going to increase dramatically and with greater frequency over these next two months so I better start getting used to it now and get on with it.
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