Follow Friday

I know its a Twitter traditon, #ff, telling those poor unfortunates who grace you with their attention to grace other people with their attention, too, but I thought I’d carry it out here.

Blogging is a cool thing, and not only for the ego stroke it gives you when you see the number of visits on your site stats creep up. Its cool because it exposes you to other people’s blogs. Other people’s thoughts and opinions. There are blogs out there that put newspapers to shame, writing that would make accomplished novelists hide their faces in embarrassment.

If you’ve stopped by my blog – thank you! I have fun writing it, and its good to know there are people willing to read. But if you’re not too busy, how about checking out some of these guys?

Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth - http://matthewhyde.wordpress.com/  @starmanjack43

 This is a blog run by a good friend of mine, Matthew Hyde. I know, the link is a bit of a giveaway.

Matthew is one of the smartest guys I know. It’s that simple. He’s also got a knack for getting to the heart of subjects that would otherwise elude me. A mix of thoughts of faith, culture, current affairs, history and books, you’ll always find out something you didn’t know before by clicking on to Matt’s blog. Well written, well thought out and updated frequently, Matt’s is everything a good blog should be. Puts me to shame, certainly!

 

The Physical Impossibility of Rad in the Mind of Someone Bogus - http://physicalimpossibility.wordpress.com/  @seanmwelsh

Like cinema? This son of a bitch loves it. Experienced film writer and reviewer Sean Welsh delivers insightful film reviews, thoughtful articles on music and film and interviews with people in the industry. If you’re looking to expand your cinematic horizons, you could do a lot worse than following this blog. I’ll even forgive him for the picture of Superman getting tanked on whiskey.

 

Miso Funky - http://www.misofunky.com/news/ @misofunky

With all the latest news from the Delia-Approved and entirely awesome Miso Funky store, this blog is your one stop shop for cool crafts and handmade goodies with a sense of humour. Have a look and ask yourself, What Would Delia Do?

 

Forty Four Sunsets - http://fortyfoursunsets44.blogspot.com/ @Kirsty44SUNSETS

Now, I know nothing about fashion. As far as I’m concerned, it goes as far as T-shirts with some kind of geek cultural relevance and jeans of gradually darkening shades. Kirsty, on the other hand, is something of an expert. With a chatty, friendly style, a love of fashion and a ton of content, Kirsty’s blog even gets someone as fashion backward as me reading it. Maybe one day she’ll give me a makeover. Maybe one day I’ll live down that I ever suggested it.

And hey, while you guys are at it, tell @pickwick to blog more. Seriously, harass her. If ever there was someone who should be blogging but isn’t (currently) , it’s her.

I’ll stop content dodging soon, I promise!

Taking Flight

So I have a little announcement to make.

After much attempting, delaying, procrastinating and self doubting, I think I’m actually making a comic.

In the middle of last year I was fortunate enough to become friends with a good man named Garry McLaughlin. Now, over and above being simply a good man, which is no simple task, Garry is also a phenomenally talented artist. After a few coffees and conversations about our mutual man-crush on Grant Morrison, I sent Garry a comic script I’d been working on and, to my endless astonishment and flatter, he offered to take the art duties.

I wont put a date on publication, as I’m pretty sure that’s the kiss of death, but I hope to have more news for you soon. What I can say is that I’m immensely excited about this, excitement which only grows when Garry drops off artwork like this:

I hope you guys can pick up the book when it’s released. I honestly can’t wait.

App test. Seriously, that’s all it is.

In an attempt to keep myself blogging more regularly, I’ve downloaded the WordPress app to my phone. I now have no excuse for not blogging, I can do it anywhere.

So tonight I’m doing it from the old homestead. I bought my own house in April last year, but tonight I have my son at the parental home, because of weather that would make Noah long for the speed and efficiency of modern shipbuilding.

I find it so strange being here. I got used to living alone in my own place very quickly, like it was always my house and I just had to wait before moving in. I’m sure I’ll sell up one day, but I’ll be sad to.

This is seriously the least interesting blog in the world tonight, just testing the new phone app and ending up with a digital message in bottle from my old house.

Hope you’re having a nice evening, everyone.

Conversations with the Universe

I used to fight with the Universe. Seriously. It was Me Vs It, every single year. The Universe would try and take things from me, hold me back, thwart whatever ambition or desire I had. It would claim lives, uncles, aunts, grandparents. It would claim hope. I would try and wrestle whatever I could from its ever expanding grip and further the cause of Me in every way I could. It’s a hard bastard, the Universe, but I was pretty sure I was equal of it. Every New Year’s Eve would see us taking stock of losses and gains. One of us would come out on top, the other would retreat to lick their wounds in that hovering moment of timelessness between this year and the next. Then it begins again. Sometimes I’d sleep through the change, so confident in my ability to come out victorious that I believed I could rest for 8 or so hours while the world was celebrating still being there. I was wrong, of course. If the Universe catches you sleeping on the job that’s as good as exposing your flank to an armoured cavalry division with laser guns and Me-Seeking Torpedoes. Never again.

However, after nearly 26 years of fighting my worthy adversary, it occurs to me that it’s time for a new approach. Peace in our time. I can’t nuke the Universe, like some one-man USA exacting atomic revenge on my aggressor. Pretty sure the Doctor would stop me. I can’t give in, either. It’s a pride thing. But maybe we can talk, the Universe and I. Maybe we can reach an agreement. Mistakes have been made on both sides. I, perhaps, have been too greedy in my yearly ambitions. The Universe, for its part, has been an unutterable capital-B Bastard. But for the cessation of hostilities, I’m willing to put it behind us. Start anew. The truth is, I love you, Universe. You’re big and shiny and full of mad stuff. You put a face on Mars just to mess with conspiracy nuts and you’ve laced metaphors all over yourself for me to contemplate long into my super extended phase of adolescent introspection. You’ve given me the moon, for which to shoot, and stars to always look at. Without you I wouldn’t have apples, from which apple pie is made of. And I love apple pie. Coffee beans, too. You saucy minx. I could list things all day, or until I got bored of it. Instead, I’ll write for you an ode to 2011. 20 things I learned, and 11 things I’m looking forward to. Here you are, you big, sexy expanding cosmic space of mentalness. It’s been a good fight, but it’s time to kiss and make up.

20 things I learned in 2011

1 – Drinking on New Year’s Eve when you have work the next day and a flu coming on is just the worst idea ever.

2 – People don’t notice if you fall asleep upright at your desk on New Year’s Day. Or if they do they don’t tell you.

3 – The comics industry still has some courage and daring. It’s not going anywhere.

4 – Always remember solicitor’s fees when you’re buying a house.

5 – Houses are expensive.

6 – Though not as expensive as babies, in the long run.

7 – Babies are worth every penny. Especially mine.

8 – Even a year on, a random, mental year at that, my girlfriend can still surprise me. I won’t say she’s the best girlfriend ever, but only because I learned that in November 2010.

9 – People are generous. Between house and baby, the help I received was enormous. Thank you, all.

10 – I think I like mussels and paella. And here I thought seafood was the one gastronomic area that was safe from me.

11 – I STILL love steak. It’s just amazing.

12 – You’re never too old to make new friends.

13 – And you’re never too far from the ones you’ve always had.

14 – Never – NEVER – trust the pictures on a holiday rental website. They don’t show you the suspiciously-like-a-brothel place outside.

15 – I’m actually really unfit.

16 – How long it takes to paint walls and a roof. Hint: Ages.

17 – Babies are FUNNY.

18 – I still get nervous before dates. (We have one tonight – Sherlock Holmes 2 or Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?)

19 – The Conservative Party aren’t as bad as I thought. They’re so, so much worse.

20 – I’m much stronger than I think.

11 things I’m looking forward to in 2012

1 – My first day off. The festive period is EXHAUSTING.

2 – My first birthday with my son.

3 – Our second Valentine’s Day. I’m a sap, it’s documented, I’m OK with it.

4 – The Avengers, The Hobbit, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises. AKAGeek Movie Heaven.

5 – Creating my first comic with a new friend. It begins.

6 – My son’s first birthday.

7 – Bruce Springsteen in Dublin, courtesy of a very tolerant girlfriend. Born to run, baby.

8 – Never saying “baby” in a sentence again.

9 – Watchmen prequels. Yeah, I’m that guy. Oh stop your complaining, you know you’ll buy it.

10 – Our second anniversary. See second sentence of #3.

11 – New Year’s Eve 2012. Just to prove the Mayans wrong.

Cynical of Cynicism

So that was Black Mirror, then. A popular princess is kidnapped and a truly troll-worthy ransom request to the Prime Minister has pubs packed with the cheering masses too busy speculating on Twitter and discussing their favourite directors to ask why the UK Government are making an exception in this case and, in fact, WILL negotiate with terrorists.  The civil servants are no better, exchanging sensitive information for a tit-shot on a mobile and reassuring the Prime Minister that it’s fine to capitulate to the demands of a terrorist and disgrace the leader of a country so long as it keeps the opinion poll figures up – princess be dammed, we don’t want them muttering about us on that there Twitter.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Charlie Brooker just fine, I just don’t think the feeling is reciprocated. Charlie Brooker thinks I’m a bastard. He thinks you are, too. If your country was being held to ransom you’d think little of it, you wouldn’t have time to think any more as most of your brain power would be taken up by discussing at length the “ins and outs”, har de har, of Prime Ministerial coitus with swine. You have hashtags to think of, for god’s sake!

I get it. Honestly, I do. “Black Mirror.” He’s holding up a dark mirror to society as a cautionary tale about the results of our passive, speculative society and our appetite for the salacious, the outrageous and the downright malicious. He’s Charlie Brooker, if he wasn’t being satirical he’d be out of a job, probably several. As a whole, I do think the show was well written, well acted and well directed. It had a goal in mind and it seems to have achieved it pretty well, so long as you overlook a minor detail or two regarding how a country deals with terrorist demands.

My issue isn’t really about a lack of negotiation protocol with unknown terrorists. It’s not even about the idea that the people in charge of the country are, in various degrees, incompetent, shallow and more concerned with appearance than  they are with right and wrong. I’m annoyed that stuff like this is so popular.

It feels pretty self defeating, creating a show warning against mob fascination with the macabre and sensational, a show that so successfully attacks modern cynicism and commentator culture, when the majority of the viewers of said show are watching because they loved the writer’s column wherein he so savagely commented on modern culture with a cynical slant. Brooker’s intention is likely that the viewer sees themselves in his mirror and walks away having learned something, or with a slightly new outlook on things. Admirable, definitely, but I’m not entirely sure it was achieved. A random sampling of the #BlackMirror hashtag tweets:

“I have only been watching #blackmirror for 10 minutes and it’s already the funniest thing I’ve seen all year.”

“Black Mirror was disturbingly brilliant.”

“#blackmirror interesting to see the true reflection of society being crystallised in a brutal but effective medium. Gameshows next week…”

“The #blackmirror PM may have fucked a pig on TV, but the real life PM fucks us all ever day. Eh? Eh? Right guys? #satire.”

“Feel strange tweeting my thoughts on Black Mirror”

 

OK, so not all of those are entirely damning, I did want it to be random and not biased towards my opinion, but lets look at them anyway. The first one. Funniest thing all year. Lesson learned. People engaging in amorous activity with farmyard animals is hilarious, especially if its the Prime Minister. Third one down kinda depresses me. If Black Mirror was a crystallisation of society then we’re pretty much screwed. The last one is closest to my opinion on it. A show designed to make us look at our darker appetites and how we express our opinions essentially has most people expressing opinions about edgy material on Twitter. Or making jokes about Cameron.

I suppose in the end, I can’t quite see the point in it all. It seemed to chant in a loud voice, “People are shit!” And people responded with a resounding, “Yes, we are!” It’s no surprise to those who know me that my usual tastes when it comes to cultural intake are pretty far removed from that. There’s every chance that this is just me personally being fairly boring and shying away from edgy material. It may also be my lack of faith in the viewing public, as I think the intended message will be missed by those who need to hear it most. I think I just don’t like my mirrors black, or dark or otherwise obscured. Kind of defeats the point of a mirror.

Longbox R.I.P?

If you’re a comic book fan, this topic is more divisive than Moses at the Red Sea. Though the idea of reading comics on a computer is hardly new, technological developments have given it the ability to fulfil it’s long held promise.

iPads and other tablet computers, by and large, have screens roughly the same size as your average comic book page, so no narrative-breaking scrolling down or across the screen. The Comixology app that has claimed the digital ground as it’s own also has a function for zooming into individual panels, so you can really appreciate all that detail.

And what of that under rated pleasure, the Page-Turn Reveal of Something Cool? It still exists, as your digital page is turned with the drag of your finger. Yes, it seems digital comics have it all. But they still have their critics.

The most common, and to my mind the most valid complaint is ownership. Sure, the price of a digital comic is lower than its print cousin, but what do you actually get for your money? A file? Ones and zeroes? Do you actually “own” anything? And what if it gets accidentally deleted? But most of all, what about the joy of having something in your hand, like a good book? As much as I love digital comics, they dont compare to my Absolute All-Star Superman.

But my Absolute All-Star Superman is a luxury item. It’s bound wonderfully and is bigger than the average comic. It’s not designed to be in the same category as a monthly floppy. It’s the blu-ray DVD box set of that TV series you recorded.

And it’s certainly not portable.

My iPad currently contains at least 50 comics, bought over a period of months. I’m on a train right now, and can choose from the complete Planetary by Warren Ellis, Birds of Prey by Gail Simone, and any number of DC Comics’ New 52. To carry print copies with me would be heavier and cumbersome, and could even damage my comics. No, thank you.

Ultimately, digital or paper should come down to personal preference, but with the state the comics industry is in, we may not have that luxury. Costs for printing are high, and most comics barely break the 20,000 sales mark. Digital gives an ailing industry a cost effective way of publishing and reaching more readers than those with access to a local comic store. Bleeding Cool has recently reported that Shonen Jump are due to cease printing their monthly anthology title in favour of a weekly comic to be downloaded, for only 99 cents. While DC and Marvel court controversy with their price points, both digital and print, Shonen Jump are showing just what kind of value for money digital distribution is actually capable of.

With a dying economy and less money in my wages, the appeal of this may outweigh any affection I have for print comics. Add to that the fact that I’m just way busier than I’ve ever been. Though it’s barely 2 miles away, I haven’t had time to visit my local comic store, the fantastic A1 Comics in Glasgow, in a very long time.

Due to time and money issues, with the exception of high quality trades for my favourite stories, I can see my consumption being solely digital in the very near future.

How about you? Ink or information, what’s your preference?

Dragons

So it’s been a while. I know, I know, I suck. Have I been busy? Yes. Too busy to update once a week? Even I can’t stretch that far. I’m lazy and need to fix that.

My last few posts have reflected my lack of inspiration. I covered the August Riots in August, and September 11th on September 11th. I swear to God, if I blog about pancakes on the 21st February next year I want you to delete my WordPress. If you want to keep up the monthly theme, you should head over to my friend Matt’s blog for some info on the October Occupations, and a lot more besides.

Meanwhile, I’m going to talk about how we just love killing people.

Not “we” as in the people reading this blog (Although if you are reading this blog and DO love killing people, you should really turn yourself in.) I mean “we” as in the West. “We” the wronged. A few months ago, Abdelbasset al-Megrahi still wasn’t dead, and people were pissed. Now, don’t get me wrong, the man’s a murdering scumbag who blew up 270 people. There were only ever two reasons that he should have been released – imminent death or innocence. He had neither, so should still be in prison. We should have perhaps thought better of handing him back to a regime who would lie through their teeth about his guilt though, let alone one who would welcome him back with celebrations.

In May, Osama Bin Laden was shot and killed by a US SEAL team. Now, if Megrahi was a scumbag, Bin Laden was some kind of scum county, with its own flag and national anthem. America’s most wanted man for nearly 10 years, the BBC reported that, “Crowds gathered outside the White House in Washington DC, chanting “USA, USA” after the news broke.”

And of course, a few days ago, Colonel Gaddafi was caught and killed by rebels in Libya. Another Professional Villain, Gaddafi has been the dictator of Libya for longer than I’ve been alive. He did horrific things, perhaps even ordering the Lockerbie Bombing. Which is why we’re allowed headlines like this, right?

But hey, what else did I expect from the paper that brought you “GOTCHA” after the sinking of the Belgrano? The headline does, however, say it all about the mentality I find so disturbing. “THAT’S FOR LOCKERBIE.” They should have saved themselves the characters and typed “REVENGE”.

Because it sure as hell wasn’t justice. For a man like him, men like Osama Bin Laden and Al-Megrahi, there is no justice. There is no measured response or penalty that can be levied for atrocity of this scale. We stop them, we catch them and we make sure they don’t kill again, but never can we sink to their level. Never can we make hypocrites of ourselves and abandon our principles in favour of theirs by claiming any kind of justification for taking a human life in anything other than immediate self defence or an end to suffering. There’s no such thing as a righteous kill, only a tragic or brutal one.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sorry they’re dead, or in Megrahi’s case, dying. I won’t give their passing a moment’s thought after this. I’ll lose no sleep, and the world will lose even less than that.

But I amm sorry that we as a society seem to take so much pleasure in it. That it’s not enough to beat the badguys, we need to seem the suffer and executed as well. Where does this come from? JRR Tolkien believed that myths held great human truths. That there are great themes and foundations to humanity that we uncover and replay with every creative act. Tolkien believed they were divine in nature. I’m less inclined to go that far, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was something to it. If there were great themes, like death and justice and resurrection hard wired into humanity. Many great stories have them – from the death and resurection of Jesus to the death and resurrection of Superman and Harry Potter. It seems no great story is complete without a death, of a hero or a “dragon”, and maybe that’s the cause. God knows Gaddafi will be the devil of the new Libya’s creation story. There could be a great philosophical point to be found in that, about facing our own mortality. Instead, we’ve crafted action movies that aren’t complete without Hans Gruber falling to his death from Nakatomi Plaza or John Malkovich being crushed by a conveniently placed construction appliance. We show righteous kills as entertainment over and over until we’ve almost convinced ourselves that that’s the way things work. It’s not.

I’ve never lost anyone due to a murderer or a terrorist. I don’t know what it’s like to hate someone on that level and I can’t begin to imagine the pain that the families of victims of such violent crimes feel. The thought of understanding it is actually a frightening one. I have a son and a family and a girlfriend that I love beyond the telling of it, and were something to happen to them I might just chance my tune on when it’s right to kill, and I’d be dead wrong. There’s a reason victims of crime to get to choose the punishments. Pain very often begets pain.

I’m not saying that these men weren’t some of the worst to walk the earth, nor that we should feel bad that they’re gone. What I’m saying is that we need to remember what it was they did that we hated so much. We need to remember that we get to hate them and stop them and oppose them because we are nothing like them.

I loved fairy tales as a child, and I still do. Like GK Chesterton said, they tell us that dragons can be beaten. They just don’t have to be slain.