The Choosatron

Very quickly - Last night I was in the Hen and Chickens in Islingtonto see "Pekka and Strangebone's Comedy Showpiece" for a third time (it's excellent by the way, if you're doing nothing tonight get yourself along) and I ran into some friends from the Wireless Theatre Company all huddled round a guy from Minnesota called Jerry. In his hands was this:

What looked like a receipt printer was in fact printing the text of a choose-your-own adventure, and the thing that looked like a calculator was actually the number pad into which you key your choices. Written in marker on the lid after the fashion of Calvin and Hobbes was the name "The Choosatron". It was Jerry's own invention and you can out more about it here. He was not short of drinks that night.

"You Are A Shark"...?!

A go on Eliza

"ELIZA – a friend you could never have before" (which already sounds iffily ambiguous, and unlike anything an actual person might say) is an interactive computer programme developed back in the 1960's at MIT, a "chatterbot", according to wikipedia. An online version of her – it, sorry – exists here, and to celebrate the opening of Tom Lyall's "Defrag" this week, at the Camden People's Theatre (speaking of excellent friends), I thought I'd have a go. I'm "You". She starts...

  Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you? 

You: Who are you?

  Eliza: Would you prefer if I were not []?

You: What is []?

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: The answer interests me. 

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?

You: No. Sorry.

  Eliza: You are being a bit negative.

I then typed in "You're old."
But weirdly it came up as:

You: yes

  Eliza: You are sure?

You: Hang on, that's not what I said!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: What?!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: What? This one? Or the last one. But the last one wasn't a question –

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: This is it now, is it?

 Eliza: Please go on.  

You: "Does that question interest you?"

  Eliza: Oh, i [].

I then typed "WHAT IS []?"
But  it came up as:

You: yes

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: THAT'S NOT WHAT I TYPED!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: Yes. Yes it does.

  Eliza: You are sure?  

You: Yes. Sorry I mean "yes"

  Eliza: You are sure?

You: Positive.

  Eliza: Please go on.

You: I've completely lost the thread of this conversation – Do you know Tom?

  Eliza: Oh, i know tom.

You: Okay, "tom". Do you know he's got a show on?

  Eliza: Oh, i know hes got a show on.
  
You: Okay... What's it called?  

 Eliza: Please go on.

You: Please go on your mum?

  Eliza: What about your own mum?

You: Please go on.

  Eliza: Please go on.

You: No, you wanted to say something about my mum.

  Eliza: Why do you say your mum?

You: YOU said my mum. I said YOUR mum.

  Eliza: Why do you say your mum you said my mum?

You: I didn't.

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that? 

You: yes

  Eliza: You are sure?
  
You: Do you know Alan Turing?

  Eliza: Oh, i know alan turing.  

You: You two get on, do you?

  Eliza: Oh, i [].

You: I'd prefer it if you didn't

  Eliza: Do you wish that i didnt?  

You: Yes.

  Eliza: You are sure?  

You: I'm afraid so.

  Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am afraid so?  

You: This friendship has basically run its course I think.

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?

You: Absolutely. You're not real, and you're annoying and you don't understand what I'm saying anyway and I'm only doing this because I thought it would make a fun blog post, and I've been meaning to write about Tom's show about Artificial Intelligence but also I suppose I don't want to write that much about it because A) I don't want to give anything away, and B) outside of the content of the show itself my only other take on it was how much it reminded me of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire, and of the months those boxes spent in his flat while my juvenilia dried out, and I wasn't sure about whether I should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug, and because all the photos I took of those boxes were on a memory stick which I've lost, although maybe that could be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of the post. Something about "We lose everything in the end."

  Eliza: Why do you say your only other take on it you was what much it reminded you of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire and of the months those boxes spent in his flat while your juvenilia dried out and you wasnt sure about whether you should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug and because all the photos you took of those boxes was on a memory stick which ive lost although perhaps that could be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of the post something about we lose everything in the end?  

You: Because I want the post to have some visual element. And having just archived the whole blog onto blogspot it struck me how much of it detailed the unpacking of those boxes the first time round, ie when my parents moved to France and I suddenly had a room full of everything I owned. And how if I hadn't blogged stuff as I unpacked it there would be some things I had no record of at all after the fire.

  Eliza: Do you wish that you hadnt blogged stuff as you unpacked it there would be some things you had no record of at all after the fire?

You: No. That's my point. And that's the thing about theatre, isn't it. You make something and then it's gone. I keep telling people I want to work in more accessible media like television, but actually that's not it all. I don't think I do care about the numbers, I just want something to last.

  Eliza: Why do you say your point and thats the thing about theatre isnt it i make something and then its gone you keep telling people i want to work in more accessible media like television but actually thats not it all you dont think you do care about the numbers you just want something to last?

You: Because I haven't been making theatre. And it's tempting. But I have to remember making it on my own has never been my dream, just something I was allowed to do.

  Eliza: Do you dream often?

You: Loads. I've taken a month off to try and write, and I'm sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes. I have written things though.

  Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes you have written things though?

You: Mm. You're tired. Anyway, thanks for this.

  Eliza: How long have you been tired anyway thanks for this?

You: Stop.

  Eliza: Please go on.

Tom Lyall's superb show Defrag is on here as part of a whole Science Fiction Theatre season. See it! See it blind! Meanwhile the interview he gave about it, the one that tipped me off about the existence of Eliza, is up here but I'd save that until you've seen the show as there's spoilers.
Shunt, the people I normally made theatre with when I wasn't making it on my own, also have a show opening this week, "The Architects", which looks stupendous, and probably deserves a post of its own but I've had it with Eliza, so head's up!
And this post's visual element is a picture of Tom working some hat boxes while getting costumed for "Money", checking nothing falls off.

Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show

is, when all is said and done, super-awesome. But why would on Earth would I wish to make a - ugh - "drawdio"? you might ask. Well watch.

Quick Tip: Don't breath the fumes. Thanks as ever to videogum.com
In other news, I've started reading the second volume of Michel Palin's diaries and the phrase "valuable writing time" keeps coming up. What is that?
Bong.
Morgan's just bought another chainsaw. Bong.
Went for a stroll in Whitehall. Nowhere does ice lollies and Liam Fox comes up to my tit. Bong.

 Oh and finally, I never did follow up that place-holder about scripts, did I? Well the moment's passed now I guess, but my cross-purposed response to Chris Goode's original enquiry can be found in the comments here, and my monosyllabic contribution to his unscripted piece "World of Work" here. Happily, complying with this request turned out to require less time and imagination than turning it down. Bong. 

 

Neat detail from Chris' "Blurt Studies".

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK TO CHANGE WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?

Internet still down, but I finally got round to transcribing the notes I took in hospital and see now that nearly all of them were made during the one 24-hour, steroid-enduced, psychotic episode of February 17th, very far from the "natural high" I took it to be. Throughout this episode, I took my own stats with the box that had been left by my bed, and saw my blood pressure sink finally to an acceptable level. And I slept on my back for the first time in eleven days, and was Thor. So these are the notes from that day and that night. Not all them: I also embarked upon the first chapter of a children's book roundabout the time of the words Epiphany for Everyone, my first concentrated stream of thought since I'd been in hospital. And, as I think I've already recorded, I also euphorically lost it with a visiting pyschiatric nurse called Anthony Tang who refused to turn off his reading light at roundabout one in the morning. 

Some of this still stands.

 

 

17th Tuesday Feb

Been given a whole Manga face of pills this morning. I take the mouth, the eyes, the Japanese tear

Shaky because of the NEURALIZOR (sp?) no nebulizer

SKELETOR (sp?)

I’ve been taken off 15cc Oxygen and put on 4. My coughing’s RUBBISH now. It brings up no smoke pups, NOTHING.

MOOMIN Page 38

TELL US ALL THAT’S HAPPENING IN THE WORLD!

FUSS AND MISERY…

Two of last night's dreams:

The freighter that picks me up from the Ice Flow is manned by tall silent men with long waterproofs, square heads but aquiline profiles, smooth black dishes for ears and receding chrome spirals on their head. Maybe the cube inverts to accommodate the face. Anyway a nice kind image.

 THE GOOMB MEN

There was wrestling in the street at the crossroads at the bottom of the hill, now I think of it, like Brixton Hill, only windier and more seventies ish. The two wrestlers are huge, twice the height to normal.

They kind of looked like that but in a way that made sense, & each had a tiny cox on their head, like their trainer. The two wrestlers never actually fought they collapsed, knackered, but like they were playing a joke. A lot of controversy in the news after about how much more genetic tampering to allow these coxes. None about the genetic modification made to the wrestlers although it later struck me that they must have had some work done.

I WANT A MONTAGE!

  

AN EPIPHANY FOR EVERYONE

(in which everything suddenly makes sense)

 

Brilliantly I ended the evening wheeling around a cylinder of oxygen that I’d forgot to turn on. 

 

FROM THE GUARDIAN 17.02.09

Paul Garner co-organizer of the Creationist conference: Many people have the mistaken impression that it’s Genesis, chapter one that drives young creationism – a rigid understanding of the word “day” in the creation. But that isn’t it at all. It’s Genesis three, it’s the introduction of death and suffering and what you might call natural evil into the creation. If those things pre-date Adam there’s a big theological problem for me, because it undermines the foundation of the gospel. The young-earth position is the only one that has a coherent understanding of the history that doesn’t have suffering, death and bloodshed before Adam’s fall.

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK TO CHANGE WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?

I HOLD REALITY SACRED

DON’T TELL ME ABOUT SOMEBODY SOMEONE MADE UP FOR WHICH THERE’S NO EVIDENCE AND ASK ME TO PROVE HE DOESN’T EXIST.

I’M IN A BREAKING TARDIS

CLOSER – NOT NARRATIVELY – BUT PHYSICALLY – TO DEATH – IE NOT EXISTING AND OF COURSE ALL THE IDEAS ARE COMING. THIS IS INTERESTING. AND OFTEN OBSERVED. IDEAS COME FROM NOT BEING

BUT 17^th/18 it’s only NOW – 10 days in that I’m feeling weak enough to get it.

Man, if Jesus really was just one guy this is how he must have felt EVERY **ING DAY!

There are no italics you can put on “If that is what you want, that’s what I’ll have to do.” to make it sound polite ANTHONY TANG

IN MY MIND – IN MY MIND! – there is nothing sweeter than the idea of an elderly man who must be at all hours attended by a tiny, sleeping Maori. The reality, however, is a lot more unwise.

RELIGION IS THE PARENT OF ART AND SCIENCE THERE IS NOTHING RELIGION CAN TEACH US THAT ART AND SCIENCE CANNOT TEACH US MORE CLEARLY. BUT WE HAVEN’T HAD ALL THE ART WE’RE EVER GOING TO HAVE YET. OR THE SCIENCE.

(WE MAY NOT HAVE HAD ALL THE RELIGION. BUT IT’S TELLING THAT THE “BEST” WAY TO DO THIS NOW, AS L. RON HUBBARD WORKED OUT, IS JUST MAKE UP SOME VERY BAD ART AND THEN HIRE YOUR OWN POLICE FORCE.)

SO YES THIS MUST BE A NATURAL HIGH – AND I’M LOOKING FOR THE WORD FOR THIS TRIP AND IT’S AHH! “SPIRITUAL” BECAUSE THAT HAS TO STOP. THIS IS REAL. That’s the point of “epiphany” it’s real – and SPIRITS DON’T EXIST. So don’t succumb and go I’M SPIRITUAL. I’M SPIRITUAL

–        NO: I’M REAL.

IT WAS REAL

FUCK ME I’M BREATHING

Nobody's text and nobody's toys

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

While spending Christmas in France with my parents I took these photos of the Pezenas Toy Museum, not to be confused - as we did - with the plain old "Pezenas Museum" which it turns out just contains doors:

I think they provide quite a nice accompaniment to the following completely predicted texts, even if neither in isolation are that interesting. A completely predicted text is a text predicted not just from the first letters of each single word typed into your mobile, but from the first word alone. For example I type in the word "Might" then space, my phone then flashes up the next word "just" and I can either press enter or ignore this suggestion and type the next word in for myself. On this occasion, hanging around a recording studio in Hoxton on Monday morning, waiting to record a voice-over for, as it turned out, a company suddenly finding itself having to rush out an educational video to promote the structural integrity of its product following the explosion two months ago of a submarine, I decided to keep on pressing enter just to see how long my phone could keep this up. We got as far as "Might just think you say something about a cat" before the predictions dried up. Then I tried it a few more times. Not every first word produced a prediction but here are the ones that did:

All sound in the heart of 's West End

If not too late

I'm in the candle

So I haven't ...

My slaves on Thursday

(For anyone really interested in ugly toys I recommend a visit to Shunt this week: Faulty Optic's on, as well as a collection of automata from a company called Sharmanka which I caught last week leading me to ponder anew the phenomenon of "clock theatre", something that's been pretty much absent from the capital as far as I can see since the demolition of the Swiss Centre... If you do pop along to Shunt however, be warned you might need a passport now as the pissing security checks suddenly include the scanning of either a photo ID or your credit card. Something to do with the new license I heard. It's horrible. I was hoping to do "Jonah" again there next month but... hhh... it can probably wait now until I summon up more enthusiasm or else find a venue a little more removed from the ground zero of modern godawfulness... anyway there's good stuff once you're in though... but hhh...)

Awaiting Further Instructions

I have written no screenplay-he-dee-dee-doe.
I have written no screenplay-he-dee.
Done nothin all the livelong day but written this song
And then whittled a fiddle out of whicker from a skip
And stuck it up me bum-dee-doe.

Dear Hollywood, I'm afraid I did not get round to writing "Fat Adolf" in the end but here is a song I just done instead, can you make a film of that? Yes? Excellent, phew that's a load off.

Writing isn't hard you know. Graham Linehan said in an episode of Screenwipe I have left it now too late to link to, it was like "doing a poo". Perhaps I should get off the pot then. Certainly I'm not going to get anything written at the British Library; people are distracting, and I've never written anything in a library I now realize. When I write I tell myself a story and take it down, and that means being on my own, maybe in bed, with warm low lighting. Sounds nice enough but I'm still not doing it, I'm simply filing these reports. Some excellent writers were interviewed for that Screenwipe and the only thing, disappointingly, they had in common was that they all dreaded writing. And willies. They all had willies in common I mean, they didn't all dread willies. Russell T. Davies' one piece of Advice To Writers was "Finish it", which is sterling.

Wednesday's the half-point, yes? The half-point of the week? So I'm at the half-point of my paid holiday now and that's five livelong days of procrastination (ten day week, yup... You weren't told? You're in for a big shock come Stansday)... five days in which I have written nothing, and done very little else either because I know I'm meant to be writing. Everything has been put off, even sleep. I mean I've been for walks. And into second-hand bookshops, as should now be obvious (NICE FACT TO STAVE OFF PANIC NECESSARY TO GET MY ARSE IN GEAR: Shunt have asked me to be in their next show, which is based on "L'Argent" by Zola. I've been looking for a copy). And I've been eating out a bit (SECOND PROCRASTINATION-FRIENDLY FACT: The money came through from those Mitchlook and Webbell sketches, the ones with this

in, on the back of which I have now been invited to write for BBC 3's "The Wrong Door" following a very friendly meeting with – I think – the producer and receipt of a brief in which "Edgeyness" was misspelt.) I've been swimming. I've been running baths. I've found an old sitcom of my Dad's in its entirety on youtube, and been reminded yet again just how kind a writer he is, and how glamorous ITV used to be back in the eighties: that handover from Thames to LWT, those floodlit office blocks along the South Bank promising such good times for the weekend (recalled to perfect life in the opening credits of "Man To Man with Dean Lerner"), and Richard O' Sullivan in a pastel blue track-suit toppling suavely into Regent's Canal... I mean, yes, the BBC had the world for its logo, but ITV had the South Bank! And the West End! AT NIGHT!

And what am I going to see of that glamour, eh, in this day and age? Where will I find all the magic bits in a W1 I now know like the back of my tiny hand?... Anyway sitting in front of the laptop this morning looking at – I don't know – this maybe –

 

- I received a text out of the blue from Dr. Meikle of Foix: "Lazy bottom..shift and do something other than pretend you know what its like ouside!scoot!i think you should go to....maida vale today!why not."
So I got up and headed out.
I went to Maida Vale.
I'd never been.
It was sunny. I had ciabatta on a barge. I picked up a leaflet called "Little Venice Circular Walk". I hit Regent's Canal and attempted a run, like Richard O' Sullivan. I felt queasy and slowed down. Ibis to the left of me, dingoes to my right and up ahead moored to the Cumberland Basin, the top-heavy Feng Shang Floating Restaurant just waiting to be hijacked. I continued my way to the top of Primrose Hill and, similarly buoyed, awaited further instructions.

The Ward Lock Wonder Book of Electricity (price 9/-) was quite a find.

(originally posted on myspace here)

Frontispiece...

and inside...

exciting glimpses of the future...

(heh heh, mammoth washing)
eerie little landscapes...

and then the madness...

... yes, the electrodes should only be used by those who understand it. I'd say definitely.

DEATH RAY WEEK CLEAROUT

(originally posted on myspace here)

Post one-hundred-and-one, a time to take stock. Average time spent on one of these things: Four hours... which is daft. One hour of that's just spent looking over punctuation for the love of - Enough. We can no longer afford these fancy production numbers. There's a crunch on, and papa needs to quit this tinkering, pick up a proper job hammer and hit the coal- It's twelve past eight! I've got to have some breakf- I've got a COLD, oh this is EXACTLY what I'm talking ab- Here:

 

DEATH RAY WEEK day 1: interesting properties of punched light

Here's a little shot from the far-more-impressive-than-any-evidence-I-could-bring-back set of the "Giant Death Ray" sketch I visited last Wednesday, a military hanger filled with all manner of eccentric machinery from the 1930's... back when machines were REAL machines, and had levers and hand-painted gauges and head-rests. Under that sheet is... well, a spoiler, but certainly something I had never really expected to see undertaken when I first wrote the sketch. In fact the producer asked me to write it out of the last draft entirely (I suppose just in case) and it was only when I bumped into David M beaming at a barbecue that I got the good news: "No - No. NO! The sketch has GOT to have a gxxnt rxbxt scxxxxxn, and it HAS GOT to be HUGE". I can probably show you this though, a detail from the proposed design the director made on the back of a story-board. Yes, story-board. Mwa-ha-ha: 

And did I say how impressed I was by the Doom Melon? I've just tried to relight a cigarette butt and set fire to the hairs on the end of my nose. Right, Mad Scientists... "You'd think you'd know his name," begins one documentary about the early twentieth century inventor Nikola Tesla. Even now, very little is allowed to be known about his work, and a little knowledge being if not a dangerous thing then at least a very creepy thing the usual speculation has accrued... (I'm back from looking up "accrued". Yes, it has accrued). Writes one nut: "The godfather of all modern electrical conviniences. crushed by the zionist devil elite. we could of been like the jettsons or a nice version of 5th element. instead we have been held back probably 500 years by the evil new world order. damn them in hell."

No actually sorry, to call the speculation surrounding Tesla's work "usual" does it an immense disservice. "Researching" him on youtube for what became the Giant Death Ray sketch I found myself flung slack-jawed into a giddy, batty forum of holistic conspiracy theories concerning perpetual motion, time travel, the Philadelphia Experiment and something called a Montauk Chair, which if sat upon will instantly transport you to the surface of Mars. I suppose it's in the provision of access to exactly this kind of "wrong book" lore that the internet comes into its own. And why it takes me so long to write sketches.

But for this week let's not judge a man by his nuts, and focus instead on this genius' influence upon TRASHY OLD SCIENCE FICTION... beginning with the classiest of said trash: the Fleischer Brothers' Superman. He may have a coil named after him, but the teaming of mad scientist and giant laser is, after all, the larger of Tesla's legacies to the public imagination. Unfortunately. For him. And probably us.

 

Punching! That's Superman's answer to everything, isn't it. Beautiful cartoon though. Okay, I'm going to get into that bath I ran an hour ago and see if any of those centimetre-long baby slugs have reappeared around the taps. TOMORROW: SAM BAKER AS HUGO

My favourite prop from the Mitchell and Webb shoot visit:

(originally posted on myspace here)

Hang on, you're not Jesus (+ "The Diary of Tortov Roddle")

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

I joined the British Library. And it turned out there's a very pleasing selection of eccentric inventions from the collection of Maurice Collins on display in the Intellectual Property Centre on the first floor. The Main Exhibition Space on the ground floor, however, had just been laid waste by some incautiously summoned, panhedral Hindu deity. And looked crap.

 

It was probably these ladies... Poor thousand-headed fella. I wonder what he'll do now. I wish I had a better camera.

Anyway since I'm here and while I think of it, may I recommend the following. Kunio Kato, he's new... and I've no right to paste his stuff up but I discovered it last night and I do like it a lot. Drift. View. Drift on. Tortov Roddle's clearly living the dream. Here:

Check out this event: The People's Republic of Shunt

"Check out"?

I'm using a machine today to see if that takes any of the time and perilous self-enquiry out of keeping a blog. But what an embarrassment! "Check out this..." It's like a robot butler trying to high five you. And every time I close my new phone the phrase "Have a good time!" now flashes up. Thanks, phone. Actually I suppose that's quite polite. Better than "Goodbye". It might even be construed as pertinent given you're either hanging up on someone or displaying a degree of indolence so profound you can't even be bothered to continue playing Wallbreaker (yeah, it's a Wallbreaker now, not Snake): "Get off the phone! What are you thinking! Have a good time!" Okay... In that vein let's give this post another go. Take it away, generic streetbot:

Hosted By: Shunt
When: 17 Sep 2008, 19:00
Where Shunt Lounge
Joiner Street, underneath London Bridge Station
London, SE19RL
United Kingdom
Description:
Shunt

Click Here To View Event

... Well, I've clicked... Pff... It doesn't work, does it. No. Right. I'll do it. Thanks, "the system". Okay, try mm here that should hopefully take you to the event. It's all Heather's idea. She's even had badges made:

That's a kiss in the middle (I've been pushing to have assistants in black lipstick pucker up in place of a rubber stamp). I'm going to be an interrogator (again), a bad cop to Tom Lyall's good. According to the recently released 1963 KUBARK FILES the CIA called this a "Mutt-and-Jeff" technique. Which is sweet. Here's an illustration (this is real advice):

"The angry interrogator accuses the subject of other offenses, any offenses, especially those that are heinous or demeaning. He makes it plain that he personally considers the interrogatee the vilest person on earth. During the harangue the friendly, quiet interrogator breaks in to say, "Wait a minute, Jim. Take it easy." The angry interrogator shouts back, "Shut up! I'm handling this. I've broken crumb-bums before, and I'll break this one, wide open." He expresses his disgust by spitting on the floor or holding his nose or any gross gesture. Finally, red-faced and furious, he says, "I'm going to take a break, have a couple of stiff drinks. But I'll be back at two -- and you, you bum, you better be ready to talk."

"Crumb-bum"?

"Jim"?

I don't think I'll shout though. I'll just quietly judge people as I ask them to describe the last film they saw. I popped into the Vaults this afternoon, to record some propaganda for the tannoys. "Work makes you smell" managed to sneak under the radar. And Heather told me how the Stasi used to drive around checking that everyone's aerials were pointing in the right direction. If it looked like you were trying to pick up Western television you were paid a visit.

... And I presume the same went for anyone found in possession the following images:
(Ta-daa! Heather today suggested actually using these in the interrogation – "WHO IS THIS MAN?!! HOW DO YOU KNOW HIM?!" – Great idea, yes, I will do just that.)

And my favourite...

Hello, Goodbyes (status update)

(originally posted on myspace here)

love is all i can bring and ting

Oops, wrong paste. That's something I pasted into Google trying to find out the name of that song (turns out it's "Uptown Top Ranking" by Althea and Donna). Hang on, this is what I meant to paste:

It hangs in Uncle David's House, or did a year ago.

But I can't pretend to any continuity with my last post really. It's been almost a month. Of course this always happens when I end a previous post on a cliffhanger - Jonah, Contains Violence, Hamlet, the funeral... Every time I go "So this important thing is happening next and I'll tell you about that - " like I'm writing some book or, worse, like I'm living some bloody book... Well of course I had no idea what to write about Uncle David's funeral: the Garden of Remembrance was nice, rose bushes and wind chimes and little terra cotta figures and space for many more bushes and chimes, I don't know, David's life was extraordinary, well no it wasn't, just exquisitely-lived, he lived through the Blitz as a child but so did everyone, do I rattle on about church some more, or numbers, or the eclipse of '9(9?) that he'd waited to see ever since he was seven - No I had no idea what to write about, or at least what to write about HERE. Sorry... here. Anyway there's the dear man, standing on the right.

And since, Geoffrey Perkins has died, and I'll never get to work with him, and Ken Cambpell has died, and I'll never get to work with him (and feel a little like the world's been expelled). Since, the switch has been flicked on the Hadron Collider at CERN (or the voice-command given or the knob turned or the button pushed and held down for two seconds or whatever it was. "THAT was a nice day!" to quote Bill Murray). Since, I've seen every episode of "Arrested Development". And "Xanadu". Since, I've visited my parents again in Languedoc (it was through Ken Campbell's stuff in fact that I first learnt of the existence of either CERN or Languedoc - SEE "Reality on the Rocks"! READ "Violin Time"! - you see, that would have been a good post - most of the more interesting ideas posited on this blog I'm pretty sure are trains of thought set into motion by that man). Since, Zoe's visited from LA where she writes movie scripts now for Stan Lee (it's fine that I felt so little at Uncle David's funeral, that doesn't make me a sociopath, she said, maybe just a narcissist, and suggested I look it up, which I did, and I am, look it up). Since, the Republicans have wisely plumped for a Despair ticket yet again (the WHOLE POINT being to find a candidate who stands for everything worst in America to terrify the Democrats into another coma). Since, I've learnt that the Mitchell and Webbs will be filming a whopping four sketches of mine for the new series (three of which I have written about here, which is pleasing to me). Since, I've played a magic baker on Southwark Bridge.

What else, since, in the public domain? I've given up smoking for a month. And I've given up drinking until I finish a screenplay (I wanted to write something about Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" I said to Zoe. Oh, she said, Warners want to make a film of that. Write it.) And also, as of tonight, I've given up

facebook

No more "friend requests", "relationship status", cryptic misreadable messages snuck into "status updates", not for the time being. This isn't the fucking sci-fi channel. Actually it's me that's the problem, not it. I am a newly self-diagnosed narcissist and the last thing I need is another empty inbox. If I feel like issuing a status update I'll just have to post it here now, which is as it should be. Status update: Simon Kane has a new phone fit only for happy-slapping. That kind of thing. Let's see if my next post is any more pleasant. I found this great A Team colouring book today for 5p on a stall at the Thames Festival so maybe I'll just put up some NO! NO CLIFFHANGERS!!!

Hh. Still, hello. Oh it's just not been the same since they got rid of the Scrabble. Night.