It appears twitter feed has started allowing me to use URL shortening services other than tiny.url. unfortunately I can’t seem to find my old login so I’ve setup a new one. Just checking it doesn’t post twice…
I had an idea for a story while in the shower this morning, set in a noot too distant future where people aren’t capable of having emotions anymore.
In order to experience an emotion you would have to take a pill/drink that imbued you with that emotion. Some emotions would be fairly common happiness for example would be available in bars, and would be provided to guests at weddings. It would be a bit of a social faux pas to turn up to a funeral not having taken some sad and maybe a little bit of remorse.
Some emotions would be rained and only available over the counter like love. Others would only be available from black market dealers like rage and anger.
I think some emotions would be addictive to some people, use of self righteousness for example would be rife in the religious establishment.
Other emotions would only be available to the police, I envision the use of fear gas grenades on rioters who’d taken too much anger. Maybe detectives would stock up on inquisitive while trying to solve a case.
I think that rather than experiencing an emotion you might get a craving for it, and that would lead to you seeking it out.
The plot as it is centers around a police officer/detective who is investigating black market emotions and stumbles onto a rage dealing ring
I don’t have much more in the way of plot, at the moment its just a concept. I’m going to think on it and see where it goes.
So I got a panicked phone call from Annabel this afternoon, she said the flats across the the road were on fire, I have to admit that at first I thought she was being a bit silly the flats have been empty for the past 18 or so months and have been the target of random acts of arson and a small scale at least twice in my memory, but this was a little different.
Turns out the whole block of flats were on fire, and in a really big way. The fire crew soon arrived and the flats were evacuated, Annabel wasn’t given a chance to get the kittens together and take them with her, the firemen assured here that the cats would be okay and asked her to leave, so she did.
I rushed home as soon as I could at this point not realising how serious the situation was, my taxi got caught in traffic and I ended up just getting out and walking the rest of the way. Everyone had been evacuated to the community centre by this point, and I met Annabel there. When I got there I was confronted with a distraught Annabel she was heart-broken that she had left the kittens in the house all by themselves.
Annabel was interviewed by a lady from Clyde One, the self same lady asked Annabel to send her a picture she’d taken of the fire. the picture is on the Clyde One article on the subject. The quote about the Sun being blotted out is also Annabel, I’ve not had a chance to listen to the sound byte, because I’ve not got Audio at the moment.
The BBC and STV also have articles on the subject. A while after we had been in the community centre we were told that we wouldn’t be able to get back in for a few hours so Annabel my Mum and I decided we’d go and get dinner at Brae Head. As we crossed the river on the ferry I took a couple of of photos of the burning flats.
It’s crazy that those flats were essentially turned to rubble.
We got a phone call while we were having dinner and were told that we were allowed access to our house, unfortunately for the people who told us this they had not been allowed to stay in their house, apparently their house was too close to the flats and the flats were unsafe. The scary thing is that their house is right next to ours, that could have very easily have been us.
We are luckily safe and sound, there is little to no damage to our house, there is a lot of ash lying about, which is a mess, and there is a little melted bit on one of our window sills, it could have been much worse. Our neighbour has just had new decking put in and it was set on fire and the fire crew had to hack big bits out of it to stop the whole thing from going up.
Thank god for insurance…
Anyway the whole block has been reduced to rubble and at a little after 9 this arrived:
What remains of the flats are being demolished as we speak, I don’t think we are going to get much sleep tonight…
There is awesome and then there is using a chainsaw and the motor from a treadmill to power the light from a car headlight. It’s a little rough around the edges but it’s still a chainsaw powered flash spotlight. CHAINSAW POWERED!
I’d like to see someone juggle three of these… On fire… While blindfolded!
via Instructables.
The new BBC adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story “Sherlock” is nothing short of amazing. If you’ve not seen it what they have done is taken inspiration from the original Arthur Connan Doyle stories and created three crimes for a 21st century Sherlock to solve. I won’t go into any more detail as I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t watched it, but if you are one of those unfortunates then you should rectify that post haste.
My Idea is more or an exercise in literary reverse engineering, the 3 currently existing episodes of Sherlock draw a lot of inspiration and pay homage to the original works, however as I understand they are new stories unto themselves. The exercise therefore would to imagine that the original works never existed and to attempt to rewrite the current TV show as if it were set in another time period, like Sherlock’s Victorian England, the American civil war, or maybe even in space.
If you’ve read the original you could try and pay homage to both the original and the series by taking the references to the original which exist in the series and intentionally misinterpret them.
Well there you go an idea for any budding writers out there, possibly an idea for a NaNoWriMo? I’d best get cracking.
I just passed a couple of my neighbours in the street, these aren’t neighbours I’ve ever had much interaction with just a couple of people who happen to live in my neighborhood.
As I passed by them I instinctively felt the need to acknowledge their presence so when I reached what I thought wax an appropriate distance I said simply “Morning” to them, to which I got the reply “Morning”.
I suspect that many people have this self same interaction with complete strangers and immediately forget about it. But I’m in a bit of and odd frame of mind today so it got me thinking.
“Morning” is obviously a shortening of “Good morning” which I would assume is a shortening of “May you have a good morning” or “Good morning to you”.
The dropping of the part of the phrase that implies that you are wishing a good morning to the other party is fine because the implication that your statement of “Good morning” implies that you are wishing the other party a good morning, or the very least that you are asserting the fact that it indeed a good morning for one and all.
Remove the good from the equation though, and it almost changes what the statement implies. You may just be being informal, or lazy, and omitting the “Good” from your greeting; but the turn of phrase has in doing so lost it’s original purpose, you are merely stating to the other person that it is indeed morning, and they by replying with morning are ratifying your statement: yes it is indeed morning.
There is no implied good will in this interaction, merely a statement of a fact, followed by an acknowledgement of that fact. No information is passed in this transaction, I would assume that both parties involved already knew that it was in fact morning.
The dialogue is in essence pointless, there is no transferrel of good will, no exchange of informarion, merely an exchange of words with no meaning, with someone of no social consequence to us.
Despite this I will probably continue with this redundant salutation, because I feel obliged to, and because saying that single pointless word as you pass a stranger in the street alleviates the social awkwardness of passing by someone and there being nothing but a wall of silence between you. We are afterall social animals and we are bound by our instinct to interest regardless of how pointless that interaction may be.
This awesome trailer for a Lando Calrissian movie in the style of Shaft is as previously mentioned just awesome!
Via Topless Robot
I seriously can’t tell if this guy is taking the piss or if he is serious… If he’s taking the piss it’s mildly amusing if a bit long, if he’s serious though and I think he is… what a douche!
Via FailBook
How to be a Retronaught have found a set of images from the version of the Hobbit published in the USSR in 1976. I think I recognise all the characters but it’s really strange seeing characters that I picture one way (Thank you Rankin Bass) in a completely different light as interpreted by a different culture’s artists.
Via How to be a Retronaut via English Russia
Images Videos and more after the break… » Read more…
Having messed around with I write like I got to thinking that I need to actually get down to doing some writing. I’m not going to get much of a chance to write in the next couple of weeks as I’m going to be going on holiday to China and I’m not taking a computer with me but I think when I get back I’m going to try and make a concerted effort to get some writing done.
I’ve got two incomplete NaNoWriMo stories to finish, and I’ve written snippets here and there for other things. I have a vague Idea what I want to do for my next NaNoWriMo, My first one was going to be a bit cyberpunk, my second was Scifi so my third must be fantasy… I’ve got a vague idea of the world I want to set it in, I’m trying at the moment to take the story from it’s embryonic state in my mind through the and I’m trying to walk it thorough a war-zone of ideas while trying to avoid plagiarism mines.
The basic premise is that it’s been 100 years since the gods fell from power, in that time an empire of man has come into place lead by the descendants of the “Hero” who brought the gods down. Exactly who the gods were, why they had to be brought down is something that no one is entirely clear on, some people reason that there never were any gods at all, and that the Emperors ancestors made the whole thing up.
Some people say that the gods were evil some that they were good, some that there were some good and some evil, there are a hundred and one stories as to why they had to fall and it’s not clear which if any of them are true. All that is known is that at the present, there are no gods and the emperor is becoming a bit of a tyrant.
At the moment I’m trying to figure out in my head what the heck actually happened historically before I go into what’s going to happen. I’d like it to become quite dark, but to be honest knowing me it’s going to be satirical in some way shape or form, in fact thinking about it now I might excuse my accidental plagiarism by stating that the entire work is a satire on the fantasy genre.
Character wise I’ve only got two in mind one is a charlatan “magician” who specializes in sleight of hand and distraction to con people into thinking he has magical powers. As it turns out he does have magical powers much to his surprise. How he gets them and how they manifest I’m not clear on. I do know that magic is uncommon and or non-existent and that has been the case since the gods fell.
The other character is a eccentric old man who is convinced that he is the king of some country somewhere, he just seems to have misplaced his kingdom, and he can’t remember where it is or what it was called. It’s going to be hard to write such a character without him being irritating but I’m going to damn well try.
Both of those characters I’ve unfortunately since coming up with the idea seen parallels to characters in other fantasy works, I’m going to have to try and avoid them being the same. The magician is a bit like Schmendrick from The Last Unicorn, and the old man is a little similar to Fizban from the Dragonlance Novels, hopefully I can steer both characters away from the characters who may or may not have consciously or unconsciously inspired them… I guess there are archetypes and tropes that seem to appear in all kinds of stories, fantasy especially.
I need more characters, I see the now deceased emperor who brought about the godsfall as a strong warrior type, whenever I try to picture him in my mind I see this:
Which is unfortunate, because it’s Conan the barbarian and I don’t want him to be Conan the barbarian, I see him as a reluctant emperor who was thrust into power by dint of being the guy who happened to “Save the Day” on the right day. I guess a bit like Ned Stark from the song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin? I also see his descendants turning out a bit like some of the Lannisters from the same series, I’m not sure though, the idea is to progress from a just be reluctant ruler to a power crazed tyrant in 2-3 Generations. There might be people about who still remember the old king.
Above I imply that I’m taking inspiration from George R.R. Martin (He who is not your bitch), but I in no way shape or form think I can get even close to how brutal his books are, I’d like to be a little brutal though, I personally think that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs and you can’t make your readers actually fear for the lives of your characters without showing them you are are willing to hurt and or kill them. George RRM is very good at this, he goes through his books on a merry killing spree, maiming and killing characters left right and centre, I doubt I’ll be that harsh, but I’d like to be at least a little harsh.
Another thing I’d Ideally like to take from G.R.R.M. (His name get’s shorter and shorter the more I write it) is the way he manages to make you hate a character in one chapter and love them in the next. As such I’d like to have a much better idea of who all my characters are before I start writing. I’d like it to be the case that although you may not agree with what the “villains” are doing you can at least empathise with them. And if they change from villains to heroes that maybe just maybe you might be able to look beyond their past and forgive them.
I’ve never really tried a character driven story before, my last two NaNo attempts focused on one character, they never changed point of view. Although the more recent one sometimes changed tense from chapter to chapter. I’d like to try and write each chapter from the point of view of a different character, because I think that it’s a really effective way to get the reader to empathise with all your characters, if not all maybe some. I’m not sure I’ve got the talent to do that, switching between characters essentially means you have to change the way you are thinking at the end of every chapter and start thinking in a different way, and you have to remember how you think when you are writing character X as opposed to character Y. I think I’m going to try it though, I’ve got 4 months (I think… Or is it three) to come up with character concepts, I’ll have to move on from there…
This is turning into a bit of a waffle about something that I may or may not write come November, I might just drop this whole train of thought and write a story about vampire cats (Yes I have notes on a concept story about vampire cats…) or something completely different that I think of on the 31st of October…
In the mean time I think I’m going to try and get some more words added to one or other of my NaNoWriMo stories, I don’t think I’ll have the bandwidth time wise to finish one, mainly because I don’t wan to burn out before November, but I’l like to take them both forward at some point. I’m thinking of putting up the rough draft that I have of what I wrote Last November, its just over 9 thousand words long, I’m not sure it’s any good, and I didn’t even get to where (in my head) the story starts.
Anyway on the subject of writing according to I write like this blog post is in the style of (Drum roll)…
I think the reason behind that is that it’s written like a diary entry…
