GRRRRR x 2

The next fucking person who tells me summat fucking broke or summat doesn’t fucking work properly because I’m using it wrong BECAUSE I’M LEFT-fucking-HANDED (and CLEARLY, therefore fucking BACKWARD) is going to get my much developed left fucking hook with all 170 fucking pounds of me behind it in their fucking face.

I AM NOT A CHILD. I HAVE AN IQ LIKE YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE. If summat’s broken, you fucking fix it. You don’t piss and moan cos OBVIOUSLY you don’t believe that the aberrations and freaks of this world - NAMELY, THE LEFT-HANDED ONES - could possibly be using it correctly but it’s a piece of fucking shit.

Don’t you fucking stand there and ‘awww’ at me like I’m five fucking years old. Don’t you patronise me and fucking giggle like a 16 year-old girl working for McDonald’s cos you think “it’s like, all so funny, right?” Don’t you give me that unctuous, pathetically saccharine smile as if my IQ is lower than my European shoe size. Don’t dismiss me and my shop-bought goods problem cos you, you HANDIST fucking IGNORANT bloody twat of a shop keeper, cannot understand why I want to return a pair of fucking scissors that don’t fucking cut.

There. That’s it. Think I feel better now.

And just fert record, they were ‘universal’ scissors. Obviously not ‘universal’ enough to deal with the most hated and scorned kind of people in said ‘universe’ - LEFT-HANDERS.

I spit on your scissors, and your parochial grasp of ‘universal’. Handist bastards.

And while we’re bitching about shit, how about the earphones I bought in August? Oh and woah woah woah, back up for a second: why did buy them in the first place when I already had perfectly good Apple earphones with which to control iPhone Dax?

Apple, oh Apple, you know I love you. But what IN THE PAST CONTINUOUS HELL were you thinking? Why do you supply the iPhone with the biggest, moon-shaped and downright uncomfortable excuse for earwigs in the known universe? Why must I suffer them falling out of my fucking ears every time I move? Why do I have two dinner plates that, due to their size and lack of curvature, only deliver half the music as it plays? Why must I lose most of the bass and half of each mixed track? And why must I turn it up so high everyone in the fucking train carriage can sing along, just so as I can hear it? And why can I still hear everyone else’s conversations and PSPs around me? This is not why I listen to the iPod function at every opportunity.

So I bought replacements. Nice in-ear ones that fit, that guarantee I can hear all parts of a song, that stop out the outside world (well, 90%, anyway), that don’t fall out of my ears every few minutes cos they’re too fucking big to be wedged in for long - and they don’t even hurt when you use them longer than twenty minutes at a time! Fancy!

Bliss. Even got an inline control and mic, same as the Apple ones.

Suddenly they’re fucked - a great annoyance to Yours Truly, seeing as (1) they were HK$550 and (2) when they’re not being used they’re kept in their supplied carry box. Just another thing to piss me off this week - but hey, don’t worry: we have a new, shiny-shiny episode of ‘Supernatural’ to enjoy tomorrow night, so I should stop moaning and be glad it’s back for the rest of the fourth season. And hopefully, the final fifth. But that’s another rant…

Soopytwist, everyone.

Tags:
left-handed ~ Apple ~ iPhone ~ earphones

Cap in hand

So obviously I didn’t give up writing. I wrote a ‘Supernatural’ story in script format instead. The teaser (the bit before the opening credits) and Act I are already available. Stroke the iTunes, you know you want to.

Also available at the members’ site SPNVille.net.

Going to find a good DVD to watch and then go to bed - got four days off for Chinese New Year and have Big Plans tomorrow (A.K.A. Day One).

Peach and lube!

Tags:
Supernatural ~ fan-fic

Obsession? What obsession?

So I’ve been a member of this writers’ place for a year now, and it’s become obvious that these are the times that try me goals. Why did I start writing in the first place? I’ve always written stuff, my family know that. This last year has been fun, exciting, disappointing, thrilling, warming and unpredictable - and not always in that order.

I joined FanFiction.net in October 2006. I’ve posted all my stuff on there for all the world to see - and I’ve had some very nice comments and reviews. Then I joined SPNVille.net around November 2007, but didn’t have the courage to start posting stuff on there till the closing days of 2007. In all this time, I’ve had reviews and comments and nice people saying nice things, and I’ve got into the habit of writing, polishing, posting. Writing, polishing, posting. Writing, polishing, posting. Rinse and repeat. It’s actually started to become slightly monotonous.

Another factor: achievements. When I look at the stories I’ve written, there are a few that stand out. I absolutely loved writing the ‘Supernatural’ story ‘Intervention Pending’, and if it hadn’t been for ‘The Key’ I’d think it were my best stuff. I still do think those two are my best works. But then I look back at ‘The Half Fare’, a ‘Doctor bloody Who’ story that I also loved to write. It wrote itself - in fact, all three of them did. All three were a joy to write, a scream to proofread, and an absolute shame to have to write ‘FIN’ at the bottom of. I missed them the moment they were done, dusted and posted.

But then, looking back, I think about how I started out and got a thrill out of writing about the Doctor, or Sam and Dean, or making up new characters etc. And you know what? I don’t think I’ve moved forward one little bit since I first started posting my stuff. I don’t think I’ve improved, or out-done myself, or made any progress at all in the two plus years I’ve been writing. And that’s what makes me think I should be considering a break. Or a complete stop.

I mentioned as much on the end of the most recent story I completed - that it was time for me to give it up as a bad job, as I don’t seem to be getting any better at this gig. I had some very nice comments, some really uplifting messages from other members. And I thought, well, couldn’t hurt to go back and read some of my own stuff from those early forays into the world of ‘Supernatural’ to see if I remember it the same way it was written. After all, once it’s polished and posted, I never see it again. It’s consigned to the ‘done that’ filing cabinet in my head and, to all intents and purposes, is forgotten about.

It were quite odd - like watching a film you’ve seen and you know the ending of, but can’t remember how it gets there. It’s like finding that someone thinks like you and uses the same phrases - and is coming from the same mindset. It’s like finding something unexpectedly funny where you always remembered it as a bit dour, a bit formal, a bit unremarkable. I can read it and know it’s my writing - there are certain phrases, words, constructions that give it away. But it’s not what I remember. And that makes me a little scared - did I just not see it like that to remember it that way in the first place, or am I actually losing my memory?

And then you can see I have actually got a bit better in my stuff. A more distinguishable style, better adjectives, more outlandish descriptions (my favourite little snippets are the bits that describe Sam going through an eye-roll. You can’t simply write ‘Sam rolled his eyes’, cos that’s just boring. You have to involve buses, gambling wheels or taxis. You just have to.).

So I’m thinking it’s not quite time to hang up my Apple wireless keyboard or pack up my chapters in my old kit bag just yet. This week has been batshit-busy, to borrow my mate’s favourite phrase (birthdays, new season episodes, emergency phone calls, getting ill, dentists, doctors, the works). And yet, in the midst of it all, someone stepped forward and slapped me for thinking I could just give it all up and walk away from it. They made me reconsider something I had already heard but dismissed as fanciful. And they made me realise that it wasn’t writing that I needed to give up, but monotony.

So I did. There as many ways to write a story as there are stories out there. What was it Scully said? ‘The answers are there, you just have to know where to look.’ So I let myself be persuaded into writing a new story with a completely new take on it all. And bang me seven ways from Sunday, but didn’t it just write itself? It’s not as good as the stories I mentioned above. I know it’s still not reaching that standard. I know I have to find the next story that will be up to the grade of those three. I just need time and odd little moments, and it’ll come to me.

So I’ve talked myself out of giving up writing. Looks like I’ll be typing and posting for a while to come. Provided I can find the right stuff to write about.

Peach and lube, everyone.


Tags:
Supernatural ~ Doctor Who ~ fan-fic

Doctor Eleven?

The following post is based on real events. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I have two very remarkable students. The first (we’ll call him Richard) is five. I’ve been teaching him for two ninety-minute lessons a week, going on a year now. As a result I think we know each other pretty well. He knows not to give me brown mooncakes at Mid-Autumn Festival or cards with hearts and flowers on them for my birthday. And I know he’s not really the five year old he appears to be.

He moves into the room like he’s lived this life before. He looks at everything like he’s too old for this shit. He has an almost hangdog, knowledgeable expression that tells me exactly how he feels about choosing between ‘a’ and ‘an’ for an orange or a car. Sometimes it’s downright scary, other times it’s comforting.

I’ve got into the habit of calling him ‘Old Man’. Cos that’s what he is, and he just smiled wisely when I first did it by accident, so I gave in and just carried on. It’s all cool, all understood and almost expected. It’s 40 year old Ben Sisko calling Jadzia Dax ‘Old Man’ cos she’s really 380-odd years old, not the 28 years she looks. It’s perfectly fitting cos he’s obviously at least 130 years old trapped int body of a five year old.

The second student (we’ll call him Harry) is very nearly six. I’ve been teaching him for nigh-on two years now. I see him once a week, early Saturday morning, and he’s a never-ending source of insight and cunning intelligence that usually leaves me wondering if his parents have taken my advice and had him tested at Mensa yet.

About a year ago he saw the stickers on the front of my folder and asked me who ‘The Doctor’ was. (Gifts from kids going to and from Blighty - bloody marvellous.) I said he were some bloke from a TV show called ‘Doctor Who’. He looked thoughtful and I presumed that was it, endy story. But no. Two weeks later and he’s asking me why the Doctor looks like he’s only his dad’s age and doesn’t have much hair (while his dad still has his). Upon my questioning it turns out the little lad’s made enquiries and managed to wheedle the whole of New Who series one out of his parents. In English. With no subtitles. Or in fact any clue at all of the whole concept of the show. No idea of the origins, the previous incarnations or ideas, absolutely nowt at all. He literally sat down, watched the first episode of series ‘one’, and then patiently watched it again.

Not only did he pick up enough information to understand what was going on and why, he had enough ammo to ask me all about it later. While I had seen the episode, I was vague on the actual details. After all, it’s Christopher Eccleston, and I can’t watch him cos he is my uncle as he was during my formative years. Even has the same accent.

Anyway, fast forward six months and wee Harry has ripped through all of series one and two. Now he’s asking me about werewolves and huge telescopes that aren’t really telescopes. He’s filled with questions, but it’s more than that. He’s full of exactly the same childlike wonder and amazement that these things are laid out before him as a certain actor I like to watch as Doctor Ten.

Now he’s asking how Martha knew some answers to the pub quiz questions on the spaceship, and why she didn’t ask the nice man in the escape pod to join the TARDIS too (which was exactly what I was thinking, but more on that particular point later). He’s just been hit by the ‘Utopia’ episode. I can only wait and see what he thinks of the series finale, replete with John Simm and John Barrowman. Then he hit upon a hyowj conundrum: if the TARDIS translates languages and signs and everything for her residents, then how does the Gallifreyan alphabet work? I asked what he meant, and he picked up piece of paper and drew some circles, looking remarkably like Time Lord type diagrams that occasionally pop up on monitors or on the back of, say, a fob watch. He reasoned that this must be writing, especially when it appears on the monitor in the TARDIS and the Doctor reads the information it obviously gives. So his question became how he could figure out what it says.

He’s still working on how to separate the circles into their different components to try and fathom if a large circle full of smaller ones is in fact an entire word, or a group of words. He’s informed me he’s going to assume that each circle is a single word, and go from there - that the position of the smaller circles within denote separate letters, and the concentric or opposite order in which they appear is the key to finding out the order of reading them. I told him to go easy, as he’s not quite six years old yet.

Like I said, he should be tested at Mensa.

So then, onto the reason I’ve gabbed about these two favourite lads so far. Cos after the news of the casting of Doctor Eleven broke, I had an immediate thought: Who the hell is Matt Smith? But I live overseas, and have missed all the shows in which he’s guest-starred or appeared to warrant a mantle as complicated and worrisome, not to mention exhausting, as The Doctor from legend.

And then just today I was at work. I sat back in my chair, blowing on my exceptionally hot tea, and I had a sudden brainwave. If only there were a way of combining wee Richard and Harry. They would make the perfect Doctor! One half worlds-weary and impervious to the cares of small-minded people and their petty problems like losing a pencil over the edge of the table in the way only such an elderly person can pull off, and one half sparking, voraciously curious slightly nuts scientifically math go-getter who just loves a puzzle. Can you think of anyone better?

As I know nothing about New Boy (and haven’t yet seen the Confidential episode that went with the announcement), I can’t really give an opinion on his appointment, other than I hope he will be everything I hope he will be. If that makes sense. At least they cast a kind of unknown, rather than someone semi-famous. But a part of me (a big part - I don’t go to the gym to show off my trainers) wanted an older actor - Tom Wilkinson would have done fine. I really wanted a return to the old, cranky, crabby, snappy man that really made it worthwhile when he deigned to smile upon you. Not that I think David Tennant’s happy gurning is not without merit - it’s endearing, amusing, knowing. It’s bloody ace. (And, for the record, of course I’m really going to miss Ten. Really really. Really very very. But times moves on.) But I want the next Doctor to be different. And if you have some mardy old goat whose rare smiles aren’t given freely but mean so much more because of it, how much more different could he be? And onto the point I referred to earlier - Riley the lovely lad from Manchester not being asked by Martha to accompany them in the TARDIS at the end of ‘42’. Could we have a male Companion this time? Just to really shake things up (and yes, that was sarcasm). And just for a change, could he not be in love with the Doctor (yes, I know Donna wasn’t, and that part of her success)? And could he also, say, NOT be from fucking London? Just to really be different? Cos if you had a bright young thing, cute as a button but also really quite brainy (for a human) then he would take care of the ratings market. Imagine the legions of fans switching uncomfortably from Ten to Eleven, the blow softened by the new Eye Candy in the form of the new Companion. Easy. (And another mostly unknown actor would be ace.)

I think that’s pretty much all of the points I was trying to make. Should anything else occur to me, I’ll let you know.

Peach and lube, everyone.

Tags:
BBC ~ David Tennant ~ Doctor Who ~ Matt Smith ~ teaching ~ Hong Kong

Panic button

Instructions for an easier, phobia-free life:

1. Ignore what you’re doing as you go into dentist’s surgery and wait for appointment.

2. Ask Nice Lady Dentist if you can keep your headphones in for the whole procedure.

3. Unlock iPhone. Go to iPod. Choose playlist ‘Panic Button’ and press ‘Shuffle’. Sit back and concentrate on it like nothing else exists in the universe.

Sample playlist (personally tried and tested):

Anything Goes ~ AC/DC
Ain’t That A Bitch ~ Aerosmith
No Buses ~ Arctic Monkeys
Takin’ Care Of Business ~ Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Easy On My Soul ~ Bad Company
Ready For Love ~ Bad Company
Heartbeat ~ Bad Company
Foreplay / Longtime ~ Boston
Peace of Mind ~ Boston
Come Around More Alabama ~ Steve Carlson
Wasted Jamie ~ The Steve Carlson Band
Beautiful Stranger ~ Deacon Blue
Feeling A Moment ~ Feeder
I Woke Up From The Strangest Dream ~ Liam Frost
November Rain ~ Guns N’ Roses
Don’t Cry ~ Guns N’ Roses
Seven Stories Underground ~ The Gutter Twins
Somewhere Over The Rainbow ~ Israel Kamakawiwo’ole
Strange Religion ~ Mark Lanegan
Lemon Song ~ Led Zeppelin
The Song Remains The Same ~ Led Zeppelin
Over The Hills And Far Away ~ Led Zeppelin
Free Bird ~ Lynyrd Skynyrd
Tuesday’s Gone ~ Lynyrd Skynyrd
Crazy Love ~ Jason Manns and Jensen Ackles
Nothing Else Matters ~ Metallica
Oo-De-Lally ~ Roger Miller
Invincible ~ Muse
All Around The World ~ Oasis
I’m Outta Time ~ Oasis
Hard To Cry ~ Marti Pellow
Some Things That Glitter ~ Queen and Paul Rodgers
Silent Lucidity ~ Queensrÿche
Look At You ~ Screaming Trees
Dollar Bill ~ Screaming Trees
I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You ~ Tom Waits
Fight The Good Fight ~ Triumph
Bonnis Brae ~ The Twilight Singers
Me And Baby Brother ~ War
當年舊事 (That Was The Year That Was) ~ 郭富城 (Aaron Kwok)
信 (Belief) ~ 郭富城 (Aaron Kwok)
強 (Strength) ~ 郭富城 (Aaron Kwok)
不能怪我 (Can’t Blame Me) ~ 郭富城 (Aaron Kwok)
夜的第七章 (Seventh Chapter Of Night) ~ 周杰倫 (Jay Chau)

4. Keep it together while focusing very hard on the instructions the bird’s giving you that go with your Amoxycillin.

5. Wobble home. Set alarm for twenty minutes before you have to leave for work. Re-engage playlist and turn volume right down. Sleep like your life depends on it.

Tags:
dentist

Odontophobia

So I went down the Winchester fert pub quiz last night. In amongst the whisky shots (don’t ask) I helped us snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and then hung about afterwards debating turkey and stuffing flavoured Lays (Walkers) crisps with Best Mate of Bestest Mate.

Dragged myself home, got to bed about 1, got up at 7am. Went to the bank for 9am (ATM was being refilled) and then waited patiently at the crossing to get to the next block with my dentist’s surgery on.

Green man lit up.
I crossed the road.
Got about six feet from the dentist’s door.
The entire dental procedure flashed before my eyes.
All the while I’m starting to sweat and I can feel myself shaking, actually physically shaking.

So I turned around and walked two blocks home again. When I was absolutely sure you couldn’t hear the fear in my voice I called up and apologised for missing my appointment and made a new one for Wednesday.

It’s got to be done, I know that. But I just couldn’t put my hand on the door. Couldn’t do it.

‘Couldn’t’ is a big word. Never realised till now. I had no control over it, and that’s what scares me. I didn’t want to leave cos it’s just delaying the inevitable. But I just balked at the threshold, turned tail and ran.

Coward.

Coward shaking and sweating like I’ve just run a two-minute mile. Carrying a forty pound army rucksack.

Curiosity #1

Got a dentist’s appointment for Monday morning. Root canal. Piece of cake. Absolutely. Well, kinda. Actually? No, not at all. Will ask Nice Lady Dentist if I can keep my headphones in and listen to my Bad Company library on shuffle. Or Steve Carlson. Cos otherwise I will be shaking with fear, gibbering like Dean Winchester suffering from Ghost Sickness. How’s that for an image?

Speaking of which, got a lovely lovely super smashing great excellent early birthday present from Newest Mate: an official Warner Bros. ‘Supernatural’ calendar from 2009.


It’s taken pride of place next to Jarvis II (my iMac). I can’t stop staring at January. It’s… inspiring. At least, it makes all kindsa things pop into my head at random. Couldn’t say why.


And while we’re on pictures, I should show you the weird one I snapped while making my way home after the gym t’other night. How bizarre, how bizarre (“da na na na, da na na na, da na naaa naaa”). Yes, behold the sofa abandoned at a tram stop.


And that’s it. Going to get back on Skype and prove to my Big Sis that the opening riff of Japanese band L’Arc en Ciel’s excellent track “接吻” is almost identical to Jay Gruska’s background guitar music used in too many ‘Supernatural’ episodes to mention. Bwah.

Soopytwist.

Tags:
dentist ~ Supernatural ~ L’Arc-en-Ciel ~ Hong Kong ~