Hotter Than Hell

This train will be jumping off the tracks if it goes any faster. Too Hot For Dogs Issue One (or should I call it Issue Zero?) is complete! Has gone to Charlotte to make any last minute art changes that she wishes and then it will be rather ceremoniously dumped in the lap of the gods. The PR and marketing end of the stick I don't even want to look at too closely because it means I will have to walk away from the creative process for a while and tend to what is - in simple terms - glorified admin. I guess when you pick up a stick, you pick up both ends.

Let's empty the head - and then I must tend to humanoid functions before a big bad wolf comes and blows my house down.

If any of you are looking for albums worthy of shelling out on, I have an advance copy here of the debut from Attack! Attack! which is a contender for a place in the top five of the year with ease. To say I have also rediscovered Slaves to Gravity when Scatter the Crow didn't come out that long ago would be foolish... maybe it would be better to say that I have rekindled my affair with it. Yes, that works for me. On the book front, I've just finished some serial killer/CSI type affair called The Secret Friend... was OK. It's a plane/train book but that's all. I might not read anything at all for the rest of the week and just take stock of everything that's on, under and spread across the table. Takes it toll on the eyes does all this reading and writing.

For those of you wondering where the short stories are, they're still out there doing their thing. Apparently, it takes a long time for the editors of small presses to decide what they are going to use - so for once, it's not my fault! They are finished and they have been pitched.

All quiet on the literary agent front too. This is because I have stopped looking. I think it's more pertinent to lay down the work. I'll take stock of the output in the Christmas period and re-evaluate. It's a plan at least.

Finally - I think I'm right in saying it's the last day of voting at the Orange Music thing that 50ft Woman has gotten herself involved in. Take some time out, click a few buttons. Go ahead - make her day.

Is that it for today? Possibly... possibly...

Shocker... and looking out for some pals.

One down. Seven to go. Shocking the Monkey is now available to buy online. Sales and comments more than welcome. Next, Too Hot For Dogs Issue One. Long overdue now. Let's get it on.

Talking of things being long overdue and being as I'm busy 'getting it on', I'm sure there are more things than this that I've said I'd give an airing to, but these are the ones that fall out of my mouth when it opens:

The delectable Miss Minki has thrown herself on the mercy of Orange Unsigned 2008. Check out 50ft Woman right here and vote, vote, vote! She said she would go topless on TV if she won, but I reckon a Twix and a Bacardi might get the same result. Voting is cheaper though, so get on with it...

Well, that's one... what the hell were the others?

Carnival of Souls: An Extract

As promised all those weeks ago, there now follows an extract from Carnival of Souls.

CARNIVAL OF SOULS
Book One: The Stairway to Heaven | Part One: The Waiting Game

Lupin, so named not because he looked like a wolf but because he liked to masturbate in their ears, sat in his tree playing with a box of Sticklebricks he had stolen from a small child. So far, he had made fourteen different designs for his dream car and had wrecked nearly every brick from chewing the aerodynamics into them. There weren’t many left now and the cars were becoming smaller. Lupin was Mavericks right hand 'man'. With ten of the maps sprawled over his fleshy body and one more to come for bravery in the field, (he had single-handedly taken on an entire platoon of renegade scarecrows earlier in the year), he saw himself soon being able to question Mavericks authority and looked forward to the battle that would come with him because of it.

He stretched his legs out from the top of the tree and stood up. He could see for miles at eighteen feet tall, but still felt a little conspicuous with his height. He used to stoop as he had seen the crows do in a Kia Ora advert until one day, Maverick took the piss out of him so much, his sides had split and four of his ribs had fallen out. Not wanting to upset Maverick before the day of reckoning came, he now made a conscious effort to shrink his legs to a more appropriate length. Mass was still a problem though. Twelve feet of legs shrunk down into two and a half, made for a bad cellulite problem and Lupin could hardly wait for the day he could truly be himself again.

He had been sitting in the tree waiting for the door to come back. While Maverick and Karly had been out collecting, it had been up to Lupin and Shack to keep watch. Lupin felt completely and utterly duped. Maverick and Karly were expert shapeshifters, and although Lupin was a master of war (and wanking in wolves ears), Shacks’ skills lay in shifting time. Lupin felt like he had been on his shift for more than six days now and all he had seen Shack do was sleep and sometimes scratch his armpits.
"Shack, wake up - it’s your turn in the tree."
Shack raised all three of his eyebrows, and looked at him with two of his eyes while the other took in the surroundings.
"Already? You’ve only just gone up the fucking thing Lupe. The shifts are six hours apiece, you turning into a girly?"
"Aww, come on Shack, it’s got to be your turn now. I haven’t seen you up there once yet - I know you’re pulling time on me."
Shack gave a wily grin underneath his excessively hairy face and submitted.
"Okay, I’ll do my stint. You try and get some sleep it’ll be night again soon. Contain yourself if you can."
"Huh?"
"Come on Lupe - you know what I’m talking about. There is no way on the face of this planet that you’re ever going to perform the immaculate conception on a fucking wolf man."

Lupin went suddenly quiet. He hadn’t expected the whole race to accept his explanation for his uncontrollable habit, but they had. It eased the embarrassment so Lupin kept quiet and hoped that one day they would forget about it. Shack climbed the watching tree not without his own problems. He was way out of shape. His weight had ballooned to fifty four stone over the last two years. He couldn’t understand why, it wasn’t that he ate more than anybody else but he did rather suspect that it was something to do with his love of chocolate. He was always the first to volunteer for an overworld trip. None of the other worlds he had been to came quite close to producing the same quality Snickers bars that he could get here. One hundred and seventy seven bars a day had indeed, done wonders for his figure. Still it was better than being a sad sack like Lupin. Shack had a feeling that the door wasn’t going to come for quite some time. In fact he was almost certain it wouldn’t.

He had sped his mind forward in time and had a look.

He knew roughly when it would come and it was still three weeks away. He had told nobody and volunteered for the door watch to catch up on some sleep and eat some more chocolate. With Karly still one map behind Lupin, but a far better choice for entrance into the human world, that made Lupin the other watchman for the duration. That was cool with Shack. Lupin was a bit slow of mind and could be easily fooled. He would never have dared with Maverick or Karly for fear of his life. So in his tree he sat, with his chocolate - watching Lupins’ ears twitch instead of watching for the door.

***

Lupin slept with his back against the gnarly trunk of the watching tree. His eyes were closed and he was in some kind of sleep mode, but his ears swivelled around to every sound that came drifting through the woods. Shack watched him from up in the tree, almost asleep himself. As he lay with his head on a branch, his eyes began to close and a long string of drool started to sneak it’s way out of his mouth. The lace of animated elastic didn’t take long to reach a point where it was too heavy to be attached to Shacks’ mouth anymore. It snapped at around four foot long and helicoptered its’ way down to Lupins face, where it splashed and drooled with a life of its own into Lupins mouth. A huge grin split Shacks face in half as he wondered what Lupin thought it was - maybe he was dreaming of giving a wolf a blow job. The thought raised Shacks eyes just one last time before his own eyes gave up the ghost and he too fell asleep.

A little deeper into the forest, the wolves were stirring. There were four adults in the pack and six cubs. The adults consisted of two males and two females. It was a homely pack. They each watched out for the cubs in turn and spent the majority of their time hunting food for the little ones. The two adult males had drawn straws for which one of them would have to venture into the night to chase rabbits. Xana, the bigger of the two female wolves had gotten so fed up with their arguing that she eventually volunteered to go herself. Samantha, on the other hand, was quite content with letting the three of them get on with it. She had found herself and the cubs a warm corner in the cave and was more than happy with her lot. The two males, Halo and Lament, sat in different corners, sulking and casting penetrative looks at each other. They had become very protective over the females, and although Samantha and Xana could take care of themselves, the dogs came from the old wolf school, where it was the males job to do those sorts of things. Hence, after two years of living together in this way, an inevitable love square had been formed. Lament and Xana had paired off initially, with Samantha and Halo resigning themselves to each other on the basis that there were no other wolves in the forest.

Xana shook herself down, readying herself for the trip into the night. Outside the cave, she rubbed her shoulders against the rock were the males had been pissing. There may not have been any other wolves in the forest, but these were strange days one never knew what was lurking behind a tree.

Lupin stirred from his sleep wondering how he had managed to drool on his own eyebrows. He was about to turn over and go back to sleep, when his nose began to twitch. Wolves! He stood up and was about to call up to Shack but a sly grin beat his mouth to it. So excited was he about the smell of wolves, he forgot to be angry that Shack was asleep when he should have been watching out for the door. They would have words later.

Scratching his balls, he stood up and stuck his nose into the air. Making his nostrils twice as big as they needed to be, he picked up the scent and went in search of his hearts desire. Xana too had picked up on Lupins scent. Not recognising it as being anything like she had smelt before, she frowned a wolfs frown and cocked her head to one side. To investigate or not. A part of her said it could be something they could all feed on for the next couple of days, a bigger part of her told her to get on with what she was doing. Warily she opted for both and went searching for rabbits in the general direction of the strange new smell. The moon shone full from behind it’s disguise of clouds. It cast a shadow through the forest like the sun never could. Xana liked the night for this reason alone. It was so quiet and peaceful. Something she could never get enough of in the cave, what with all that squabbling all the time. She sat down in a small clearing. How long had she been gone now? An hour? Maybe longer. There had not been so much as a sniff of rabbit all night. Something peculiar was going on and the female in her demanded to know exactly what it was and why. Picking the strange scent up out of the air, she followed it down a track and into a muddy square of land. The scent led to a tree, but didn’t stop there – the scent had become all consuming and was all around her at any one time. As far as she could tell, the mud around the tree had been caused by too much tooing and froing. Somebody had been feeling restless.

From a hedge not six feet away from Xana, Lupin sat downwind of her and hoped for the best. With a little stealth, it was quite conceivable that he could sneak up behind her and get the job done without too much fuss. It was a little too much to hope that she wouldn’t notice, but Lupin figured he’s give it a try anyway...

That's all folks. Picked entirely at random from chapter two and squared off for continuity purposes. Unedited with only the briefest of spell-checking, I shall apologise now for typos made in my haste to lay the words on the page. I'll post another in a few weeks - let me know what you think.

...and yes, the other two books in the series are indeed called Book Two: The Highway to Hell and Book Three: Knocking on Heavens Door. I'm just a pop culture whore damn it.

Did I get hit by a truck?

Certainly feels like it. Went back to JuJitsu on Sunday after taking months off to heal up the shoulder/knee/back/wrist combo thing I had going on. Seem to be OK but you never know up there... also a little shocked to find oneself entered into International competition again but the head and heart are willing, so let's get it on. Seven weeks is absolutely ages to get in shape.

Isn't it?

Monkey Shines

No blog for almost a whole week? Where did the time go?

Have finally completed the reproofing and redesign of Shocking the Monkey. So if anybody happens to be paying attention, it will probably be available a little earlier than the 10th, but by the time I get round to editing the button in the sidebar, the 1oth is likely to be a good estimate. This means I also have to spend some time designing the storefront at LuLu.. which I am trying to avoid due to their crappy interface. If they could get that sorted I'm sure everybody would have much better storefronts over there and - gasp - sell more stuff!

Just the PR and marketing to sort out then... sheesh.

So with that past project dusted, time to move onto the next one. I should be focusing on the big books (Almost Human and Carnival of Souls) but these "machine gun" books are a vital tool for emptying my head. The next one will be Black Dye, White Noise - another collection of musings, along with my entire lyric books from both bands, more scraps of paper that wouldn't fit in Monkey and some new material.

The prologue of Too Hot For Dogs also gets finished tomorrow. I'm torn now between releasing it and keeping it for the BICS event. Will chew on that.

Later that same day:

Working on the Mac in the kitchen, I thought I would strip some junk out as she's getting bit slow. I found an old app of Entourage that I was using for mail back in 2004 with loads of mail on it from when we kick started Burn. Amongst a whole bunch of old adverts and pic attachments stealthily sent from work browsing back home, I found this that Ian sent me for a chuckle. I had forgotten all about it... what are chances of that. I wonder what kind of a guy he was. Probably an incredibly decent bloke, but I'm just guessing.

More later still...

Enter the Sinner: sneak preview. Plus: the Sony Reader Initiative.

I'm a happy man now. After months of emailing backwards and forwards and me rejecting pic after pic and concept after concept, Charlie and I finally agreed upon the look and feel of my character Sinner:619.

Early briefs went from different pictures of me with horns - little ones like a freaking goat, right across to huge stag killers like Tim Curry in Legend. Then Pan and various other satyrs got involved but that just wasn't dark enough. Thus, my final brief of "I want him to look like Rob Zombie but homeless and with a lion-esque face" seems to have hit all the right buttons on both sides of Watford. If it's good enough for Gaiman with Death and Tori Amos, it's good enough for me.

It had it's downside of course. Now that I know what he looks like and he's also a major player in the Too Hot For Dogs sequence, the plot spiralled from "that's very clever" and me looking quite smug to being devilishly complicated, far too intelligent than I have the right to be writing and all in all, bloody excellent. Just hope everybody else will think so too.

We'll find out soon enough. I have one more proof to pull back from the print shop and then we'll unleash the hounds - promo, PR and marketing first and then it will be off to BICS with a lot of boxes.

Anyway, what you see here is a trial cover for Sinner:619 | Seven Days of the Gargoyle. This has a fantastic story, but judging by my experience with the rewrites of 2H4D, I would be foolish to think it will just drip off the tongue. Next job? Finding an illustrator. I'd love Charlotte to do it but she's kind of got her hands full with 2H4D and some other things we have on the boil. If I suggest it, odds are that I'll get a punch in the mouth - and rightfully so.

On my tour of the online excellentness that is book buying, at the Waterstones site today (and presumably other days) they are hosting a banner for the Sony Reader. Available in the States for quite some time, I believe this is the first big pitch at the UK audience.. I guess it must be if Waterstones are pimping it. The price tag on it is £200. I don't think that's too outragous at all. People keep telling me that people love books and it will never take off. I say, people used to love vinyl as well - in fact it was positively sacred - and look where that ended up.

My belief with the Sony Reader (and maybe also the amazon Kindle, although it will never sell because it looks like a heap of junk from the late sixties), is that it will revolutionise books and the book selling market. It will be hard and it there will be much written about it, but once it starts, just like music, it will be unstoppable.

Let me tell you why - I read a lot. I love books that look great. I have many hundreds. I also love - or at least like very much - books that I just want to read for the sake of the story. The books I love, I will continue to buy and they will live on 'the shelf'. However, some things like Koontz, Patterson, King, Deaver... (it's a long list), I just want to read and this is where the Reader strikes hard. On they go, dive in, dive out. Aeroplane, train, holiday, business, pleasure. I'm a man that loves to travel light. With an ipod nano and a Sony Reader with a backpack for a laptop, I'll soon be kissing those luggage collection points goodbye!

Can I position Dark Hollow comic books and Burn Magazine to be available on the reader? It handles pdf, so I don't see why not. The future is very exciting. First job: get hold of one and see what it can do. I'll host various posts about it here, but if it gets out of control, it might end up requiring a blog of its own!

Watch this: Henry Rollins interviews Marilyn Manson
and also this

Zodiac Rides Again - but nobody rides for free.

This is so freaking cool - and an absolute steal at $300. Now - if only I had $300! If anybody I know has come into some money and is feeling generous, you could grab it here and send it on over!

Got myself into a jam today. Been redrafting some of the layout and story in Too Hot and got it into my head that it still wasn't good enough, so I killed it and started from scratch. Reading much better for it though... the plan is to finish it this weekend and move swiftly on. I can't keep coming back to it like this but every time I do, I'm happier with it.

Rather excellently today, my publicist in New York (actually, she's my friend who lives in New York who happens to be a publicist, but it's close enough), reminded me that she was starting a new industry blog - I'll post the address both here and in the sidebar when it launches. Yours truly has been invited on board as a guest blogger - uncensored! Not strictly a music gig, but I'll probably make my part of it based in r'n'r - right now there's just so much to take pot-shots at it will be hard to resist.

Right... back to the grindstone you lazy pig. Lots to get finished this weekend. Watch out for some promotional Too Hot For Dogs e-cards coming your way in the next week or so too...

Currently listening to: Folklore and Superstition from Black Stone Cherry, Into The Sun from Candlebox and the advance Inner Party System album.
Currently re-reading: Lucifer - the legendary Vertigo imprint. Couldn't resist just one more go on the ride.
Currently getting wired for: Season four of Supernatural and season four of Prison Break.
Currently being badgered into: Going swimming tomorrow.

Shocking the Monkey & Too Hot For Dogs...

An update on some product here. I've delayed the release of Shocking the Monkey for about a week to around September 5. I just got a proof copy back from print and need to make a few changes - the biggest being the cover and how my excellent idea of transparent sections didn't work out so well. On the same track, the first proof copy of 2H4D came back this morning as well. I need to make a few changes to that and we're away.

Thinking about it, I don't think I've discussed much about how these are being released. One word. LuLu. I believe I said a while back "Let's see what the web is capable of when it comes to print on demand." Having got hard copy back of two very different formats, I can safely say that the web copes more than happily with it. I've seen a lot in my time and I'm more so much more than happy with the results. As the months turn into years, scary things will be done with this technology - but more on that later.

So far, so good. Let's get these puppies put to bed!

Burn Magazine - another flash post.

Bank holiday weekend here in the UK - that means more hours to multi-task. Over at the Burn Magazine blog, I've just posted our 50 Greatest Bands of all Time. It makes for interesting reading - especially as we went out of our way to avoid anything that might have gone before in Rolling Stone, Kerrang!, Spin etc. It's a truly unique snapshot on the view out of our window.

Wall to Wall - a flash post.

I had the bloody awful misfortune this morning to sit through Wall-E. Come back Johnny 5! All is forgiven!

Whetever...

I dived into Canterbury today to pick up a copy of Wormwood and thought I'd best replace the last two issues of the Umbrella Academy which I stupidly spilt coffee on a couple of weeks back. I went into Incognito, which has always been my store of choice. The big boss wasn't in this afternoon but there was a big boss stand-in. On the shelf, there were issues 1 - 4, but not 5 and 6. So the conversation went like this:
"Have you got the last two issues of this" - (obviously brandishing the other four)
"Have you looked on the shelf."

Now, to be honest, I thought that was pretty obvious as I was waving them around...

"Yes. They're not here."
"No, we haven't then."

And with that, she went back to whatever she was doing before. Anyway, the comic store that I'd never been in before - Whatever Comics - had moved to its new location not 30 feet away. I go in - it's a good looking store:

"Have you got the last two issues of Umbrella Academy?"
"Yes." The guy gets up off his ass, walks around to the racks, picks them up immediately and hands them back to me. Sold.

You know what? I'm a pretty loyal kinda guy but Incognito can kiss it. The new kid on the block just kicked your ass... but I still bloody forgot to pick up Wormwood.

Bite Size People and a response!

A couple of days ago, I was rummaging through my external drive looking for some docs that I had cut from 2H4D quite some time back. Along with what I was actually looking for, I found some poetry that I had carelessly archived 'job lot' in a folder called Untitled 6. (Don't ask - if you know me, you know why it's called that!)

Most of them aren't too shabby at all - there are a few that will remain in that folder forever, but there's a good haul that I figured I should do something with. I was going to post them here, but poetry is a bit subjective and that's not really the purpose of Zodiac Lung.

A little homework later and I found a site called Webook. It seems to be a pretty good site for all kinds of writing, but for me, I thought I would load every scrap of poetry deemed fit for public consumption and see what happens. It's as good a place as any for it - especially when the alternative is to leave it on the hard drive.

If that sounds like your bag of cats, the link to Bite Size People is here - you can navigate your own ass around the rest of the site from there. A couple of passers-by have already left some comments. Nice things too - which is cool... let's see what happens by the time I've emptied the hard drive. If it's looking swell, I might just do something else with it all.

Today also saw a response from an agent. I'm not going to prey on the negative of the rejection itself - I'm honestly seeing it as more of a positive for a few reasons. 1. It was a response 2. The submission had obviously been read and 3. It was a really nice reply. For the record, the submission was a first draft of issue one of Too Hot. I'm not too surprised but I think my submission letters are getting better and that can only be a good thing. Just hope I don't run out of agents before I've perfected it!

Also today, I took the Saab in to have get its brakes fixed up. Damn wheels were grinding more than Blackie Lawless' codpiece. The garage was this really old place called Rose's where the guys who do the work don't wear overalls, they wear short blue work coats. I picked it up when he said I could, he charged me what he said he would, he walked me to the car and shook my hand too. Holy crap - in 20 plus years of driving, I don't think I've ever had something called 'customer service' from a garage! That's the way to keep business coming back. They even did some bits I never asked them to. They'd also covered the seat in a thick cover branded with Castrol GTX - normally, you just get those disposable see through jobs, which kind of suggests the staff are looked after too. I know it doesn't sound much, but I tell you... it makes the world of difference to me.

Those production values keep on filtering out...

Spandex at the ready!

I know I can be preoccupied sometimes, but eventually I will notice that things are not as they should be - and so it was today that I noticed one of my favourite magazines DeathRay had not been around for some time now. A quick investigation of the web and it appears I am indeed, correct. From a full on 13 issues a year (that's a 4 weekly schedule if you're not in trade and are wondering how that might be) down to just four? I'll buy that - so long as what I'm buying into is the truth. I seem to recall being in those shoes myself not so long ago, but for the time being, I'll go along with the keeping the faith.

The full story about the current status of DeathRay and its now owner plus forthcoming sister titles is here. Fingers crossed guys - it's not just rough out there, it's positively shark infested.

Although the summer is almost over, it never really took off did it? Thankfully, there are some things happening this Autumn that we can rely on, namely:
This
This
This
and this

I love the autumn.

Ouch

For all those of you living in the UK who happened upon the twin programmes of "My Perfect Vagina" and "A Girls Guide to 21st Century Sex" whilst waiting for either Blade II or Hellboy to start (great programming huh), I'd just like to point out that having your labia surgically removed, your hymen reattached or your cock straightened out because it's bent all have nothing on the day I sprained the top of my thigh muscle at a martial arts competition and accidentally sprayed 'the whole package' with half a can of Ralgex or the day I pulled my shoulder out, treated it with Tiger Balm and then rubbed my eye with the same hand.

Please feel free to leave comments concerning maximum pain.

Entertaining the Troops

Here's what your evenings and weekends hold in store over the coming months at ye olde picture house. Enjoy!

Max Payne (right up my alley - bring it!)
The Spirit (possibly one for DVD, but you never know)
Punisher: War Zone (definitely one for DVD, but hey - it's the Punisher)
Cthulu (not sure about this one... )
Quantum of Solace (can't come fast enough for me!)
Watchmen (likewise)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (the Christmas sleeper?)

Empty Head Syndrome (I)

Started a plan of action today. This is more for my benefit than anybody else, but in time might prove to be a useful point of reference. Kind of looks like this:

Too Hot For Dogs:
Launch firsts two issues at BICS in October with the following issues coming out a month at a time after that. Just figuring out the virtues of hard copy vs soft copy at the moment. I'm edging towards choosing every available option for issue one and then settling into one of them very soon after - not necessarily the one that makes the most money either. I'm rather looking at the one that's got the most mileage in the system.

Carnival of Souls:
Three different promotional previews will be available for free download/podcast before I unleash Carnival in its entirety. Being a three book series, who knows what will happen. I want it out in the big bad world through a major publisher, but I'm not going to wait, so limited quantities will be available for a equally limited period. Shall investigate a pre-Christmas idea I have with some branches of Waterstones over the next few weeks - but let's get the damn thing finished first. I've brought this forward to before Almost Human simply due to other things happening which impact on the story...

Short Stories:
The plan of three a month for three months is going well. For September, The Tuba Farm is looking good, The Boy with Wasps for Eyes is not lagging far behind and to be honest, Soulbender is giving me some grief but that's OK. She has long legs and jut need pointing in a direction. This trio of terror will come out as follows:
One for free download here and various other sites
One pitched at a small press
One available as a free podcast here and various other sites

Which means that between now and the end of November, nine stories will come out - all of which have relevance on the bigger picture in some way.

Being as the self-publishing route might be a necessity in the early stages, I've also set up (gulp) an amazon account so those goodly folk of the world can actually get hold of things. This is starting to get serious! Let's get this show on the road.

Tubas, wasps and more wasps

Real news: finished first draft of The Tuba Farm tonight. The first short story off the block and I'm really pleased with it. I'm going to sit on it for a week, edit it next and in the meantime finish off The Boy With Wasps for Eyes and edit that the week after - with the wind behind me, that's a realistic schedule to get six shorts out into the public domain.

That's all today.. just busy hacking it out. Unless you count this message from my old Tae Kwon Do instructor:

"Great idea for a tribute band. Queen Wasp. I'll camp it up and be Freddie, you glam it up and be Blackie. Simple. We'll earn millions. All we need is a band who can play and be told what to do."

Strangely, I'm almost tempted...

Clip of the day: Font Conference (it's a design thing...)

and then I found this which had me on the floor: Scooby Doo CSI

Hello England... Poland calling!

Wonders will never cease. For those who have been following the tale of the beloved Audi and the sale thereof, I just received an email from Les, the guy who bought it - and I quote - well, cut n paste:

Hello Mate.
It actually did the whole distance :)
I only had problems with the transmission. It didn't want to change gears sometimes. I am amazed it didn't brake down. Now I hope I'll manage to sell it with a bit of profit :) Take care.
Regards
Les

In my heart, I knew she would make it. Not sure about that 'transmission' bit though. She'd only ever been in either Drive or Reverse for the last six years, it was probably a bit of a shock to the system if he put it in anything else. Funny the things that can make your day huh.

That haircut thing happened today as well. It may take a while for what's left of said hair to get over the shock but I think it will be OK. It's not like some Navy Seals type of thing going on or anything, but it is markedly shorter than previous. When we've got over the shock and it does what it's told, I may even post a picture.

Brave.

Spooks - Code 9 or Code Red?

I was really looking forward to Spooks:Code 9 but having lived through the first two episodes, I'm not so sure anymore. It appears to be pitched somewhere between Spooks and Torchwood. It's fast cutting and graphics suggest this at least, so why are we not getting along? Let me list the sins:

The 24 style clock and shooting a man in the foot because he wouldn't talk. Only Jack should do Jack. It's not homage, it's ripped off and smells like it too.

After two eps, I can only remember one characters name and I don't care if any of them dies. That's bad. Combine it with I don't relate to any of them or even care about them is a bad thing. This suggests that either a) I'm too old to get it or b) it's not written very well. On the basis that a) is correct, stop pitching it at my peak viewing time. If b) is correct, bloody fix it because the premise is actually pretty good.

See, I want to like it and I want to like it a lot, but they're not helping. If they cut the bad language, the guns and the shagging references it could be moved to a kids tv slot. That's how much it wants to be all things to all people - and if it wants to do that, it needs either some aliens or monsters, but then I suppose it would be TorchWood. File under pending.

Meantime, can we have Spooks back please.

Official site: www.bbc.co.uk/spookscode9
First two episodes currently available on iplayer.

Do Not Become Attached to Inanimate Items

She's gone. Left. No longer to ever be seen again. My beautiful Audi 80... the tale of where she's gone is pretty neat. She was bought by this really nice Polish guy who is basically going to drive her to Poland to be taken to pieces and sold as individual parts. When I asked him if it was worth a lot, he said no. It would just about cover his petrol money to get there. I didn't ask any more questions than that. There must be more to it than that otherwise, why would you do it? I might try and hook up with him when (if) he comes back - I'm genuinely interested in what the story is there.

I watched her drive away up the road until I could see no longer... but that would be because of the smoke coming out of the exhaust and not because he'd gotten too far. Good luck my friend! May you have as many exciting adventures as I did.

My buddy Kahn - ex Mr Deputy Ed at Burn - sent me a text this morning too letting me know he'd just done his first gig as a stand-up. I am so jealous. It was a 10 minute opening slot but I bet it was the longest 10 minutes in the entire history of the world. Like I said, I'm jealous - what that actually means in the real world, I dread to think but I understand the implications fully. Damn.

Yesterday, we all went to a place called WildWood. It's a conservation area for native British creatures. So, £30 later and I'm looking at animals in enclosures that I can see for free if I look out of my window:

Fox - check. He was trying to get in the garage to empty the bin.
Heron - check. Last seen fishing for breakfast on Thursday in the river.
Raven - check. They're currently still nesting in the trees in the graveyard next door.
Adder - check. Last seen trying to escape from Lilly and Poppy in the garden. One day they'll get the conservation message.
Beaver - er... OK, so we haven't got a beaver and they're pretty cool but you get what I'm saying.

Kids had fun though.

It's 12.30 on a Sunday afternoon and world is tilting on its axis already - must be time to start writing in a minute.