The urge to write is strong in me today. I wrote last night, into the wee small hours, keeping Jen awake with my constant tap-tap-tap (sorry, sweetheart). It was gold, too, the good stuff. Not pouring out of me like it used to, but I like to think I've replaced quantity with quality.

I've done my usual trick of making myself believe that this might be the one, the book that gets finished and submitted. I'm not bored of it yet, despite a temporary diversion into the world of sci-fi (a weird place, full of words I wouldn't dare use in 'real' fantasy, like synchrotron), and that's a good sign. To come back to a book so often gives me hope that I might see this one through. I'm a bit of a plot magpie, and that has to stop if I'm ever to get anywhere.

So, the dream is still alive, dreamt in the hours between when I'm meant to be asleep and when I actually get there.

I'll keep writing this post, every so often. It's littered throughout the history of the blog in so many forms. One day I won't have to write it any more. One day.

Sunset over the Peaks

Driving home from a friend's house last night, I was confronted with this sunset. My new camera phone is still way short of what a real camera could achieve, but for making sure I don't miss moments like this, it's priceless.

'King of Pop' goes all Diana on us...

Well, that's going to spark several days of national mourning, more's the pity.

I have sympathy for Jackson's family and friends - at this point in time the world will just have fallen away from beneath their feet. The coming days and weeks will be full of pain for them.

For the rest of us, though (that's the vast majority of the world who have never even met the guy), we have no right at all to show such overblown levels of 'me too', self pitying grief. Oh, poor us, some bloke who sang a few good songs died. So what?

You know what I'll be mourning today? The death of proportionate and appropriate response.

Fictionary Entry of the Day: Moddle

Moddle (mŏd'l)

1. noun the unsteady, rolling gait of an overweight internet discussion forum moderator

2. verb to walk in such a fashion

Fictionary Entry of the Day: Stegular

Stegular (stĕg 'yə-lər)

1. adj. pertaining to members of the Stegosauria sub group of the Late Jurassic Epoch

2. adj. having features characteristic of a Stegosaur

Twitter Making Me Exclusive?

Have a look at this. Turns out that joining Twitter might not have been quite the flocking exercise I thought it was! All I have to do is continue to tweet and read others' feeds and I'm one of a rather limited bunch. Go me, and my continued tweeting.

(my Twitter feed here)

Up their own Endemol

It appears the entire production company for Big Brother has, against all the laws of anatomy and several of those of physics, disappeared up its own arse.

Last night, the nine-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty-eighth series of Big Brother (or was it the nine-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty-ninth? I may have lost count somewhere between "I don't care" and "please, Big Brother, fuck off and die") started with the shock revelation that none of the people going into the house are 'housemates'.

Pardon? Really do regret to have to burst your bubble like this, but just saying they're not housemates doesn't mean they're not. You see, they're in the house, and they're being watched with cameras for our (and I really hesitate to abuse the word like this) 'entertainment'. That really does cover it as far as the definition of a 'housemate' goes.

I suppose my annoyance at this whole thing is fuel'd by sheer disbelief not at the 'audacity' of the production team, but at their gentle insistence that this is somehow meant to be highly entertaining and a plot twist quite Machiavellian in its cunning.

Which it isn't.

More Cat

Another one of the great beast, this time demonstrating that quite frightening ability cats have of making you feel about three inches tall...