Category: Uncategorized

Jesus sent me an email today. He wanted me to buy viagra…

I used to be a voracious reader. I read a lot. The story I always tell of primary school is that I was upset when I ran out of books to read because they wouldn’t let me read further than 3 years ahead of anyone else. Also of being shooed out of the classroom at playtime to go out and get some fresh air when I was huddled under a table reading.

And right through my teenage years, student years, years at work – I was an avid reader. Tended to stick to the same genres (SciFi/Fantasy mostly) and same trusted authors (Niven and Pratchett).

When I quit my last job and was unemployed for 5 months I read a lot and had started to branch out. Read a lot of books on spec. Got into sort of boys chick lit (Mike Gayle) and other stuff not necessarily just in the SF aisle of Waterstones.

But at some point, some point after I moved down here I think, I slowed down. Then pretty much stopped. I’ve read in the last 7 years the number of books I’d’ve read in 6 months 10-15 years ago.

Why? Well it’s tempting to blame M. Not blame blame, just that talking to her fills the end of day slot where I used to do most of my reading. But that would be unfair, because apart from anything else it’s inaccurate. 2 or 3 years before I even met M. I had replaced reading with watching TV and chatting on the internet until late and then collapsing into bed. Often with the aid of alcohol that ensured I was too “sleepy” to read. This was about the time I became a Buffy fan and so watching DVDs and TV was my new “hobby/obsession”.

So I got out of the habit of reading. Which is a shame. I was never a fast reader but sheer enthusiasm meant I would get through quite a few books because I was reading every day. Not any more. Days, weeks, months went by and I wouldn’t complete a new chapter in whatever I had officially “on the go”.

I am being a little unfair on myself because in many ways I did as much reading as I ever did – it was just not books, it was the internet. Newsgroups, web forums, blogs. I was reading these every day. And with my TV/DVD consumption it didn’t leave much time for books.

And the sad thing is that it became harder to read through lack of practice. I used to have a certain anal obsession with never starting a new book before finishing the old one. An obsession that could lead to me “stalling” on an uninteresting book. But I would force myself to finish them or – in rare drastic cases – write them off. That discipline of persevering through the boring bits was something I’d let slip. Which is a shame because I like the idea of being someone who reads a lot, someone who absorbs different ideas and perspectives. But to do that you have to read stuff you’re not especially interested in or enjoying. But then it becomes part of your experience, part of the background reading against which really good books shine. So if I read a thriller I can compare it to all the other thrillers I’ve read and see what it did differently that did or didn’t work. What the cliches of a genre are and why they work. That kind of thing.

Also of course there’s the fact that many books take a while to get going. I just finished “We Need To Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver which takes at least 50 pages before anything interesting happens and probably 300 to get to the really gripping stuff.

So I’m trying to get back into reading. I’m forcing myself to finish books. I have my old pile of unread books (even though my earlier “reading” years I’ve nearly always acquired new books more quickly than I’ve finished reading them. The general rule would be to avoid bookshops until the unread pile got below 20 or so.) and I’ve also “joined” the Ship of Fools book group. Actually I suppose I started before Christmas with Hogfather which I’ve had for a decade but not read and which was being adapted for TV. I wanted to read the book first – which I managed.

I then re-visited the 5th Harry Potter book – which I picked up about a year ago after seeing the film of the 4th, read about 100 pages on a long train journey and then put down never to be picked up. Well not never, I picked it up again and finished it before reading “Kevin” for the book group. Because there was a deadline for the start of discussions I wanted to finish HP5 quickly and then read Kevin. I had about 2 1/2 weeks to do that. HP5 is 976 pages, Kevin is 468. I did it by working out how many pages per day I had to read, with longer allowances for weekends. M. laughs at me because she’ll ask me how I’m getting on in my book and I’ll say “page 276” which isn’t as informative as “the bit where Harry…” (she’s a HP fan so would know the book) or “about half-way, it’s just starting to get really good”. 

But I kind of cherish my page numbers because they are a sign of progress towards finishing another book. And finishing another book is an achievement in itself but also a step (back) to being a “reader” again.

*sigh*

Did it again didn’t I? I was supposed to post all three “catch-ups” in one evening. In fact by the time I’d done the Riley’d one it was late and I wanted to go home, so I intended to finish the following (two?) night(s). However then I got ill and couldn’t get out of bed. Then I was fine and couldn’t be bothered.

Very briefly – cos I’ve lost enthusiasm a bit – MythTV was about the fact that I’ve decided to build a MythTV box
I even did a proof of concept by installing the MythTV software on an existing linux machine with a Tv card. It works quite well, except that the card’s analogue and I want a freeview one. So the next step is to spec up a cheapish “bare-bones” system with a decently large disk and fast processor but no monitor and install MythTV on it. Step after that is to get it to stream media to other computers and possibly eventually a second MythTv box.

All this is because I now have two rooms with a TV in. I have my DVR – which I love – but if I record something on it I can only watch it in the lounge unless I unplug it and move it to the bedroom.

DVD Rentals – not sure what I was going to say about that – except that I hadn’t watched any for a while and maybe talk about how you really need to be honest with yourself that you want to watch something.

That’s all for now. I have another topic in mind but if I promise to post on it I’m bound not to and then look stoopid.

The Five US channel is showing Dawson’s Creek from the beginning. It’s perhaps appropriate that I started watching since in a sense I would never have become a Buffy fan if not for Dawson’s – so perhaps it’s right to complete the circle. There’s also a sense in which Buffy fandom was about stuff that had happened to me in my – for want of a better phrase – spiritual journey. And Dawson’s was a kind of precursor to that. I started watching it (intermittently) when staying home from church (deliberately). But before a certain point I hadn’t really watched it consistently.
(In fact I wasn’t someone who always tuned in to see a particular show until I left church, Newcastle, and living with others, behind.)

Anyway. Part of my enthusiasm to watch now is to fill in the missing gaps in the early seasons and to wallow in a bit of nostalgia for the later ones.

Which is all pre-amble to what this post is about – which is Andy MacPhee. She was the one they brought in to be Pacey’s girlfriend in Season 2. At the end of which she gets carted off to a mental health institute amid tears and haertfelt protestations of her and Pacey’s feelings for each other. Season 3 opens and someone has obviously decided that not only must MacPhee-Witter split but that she must be the one to bear the blame.

Why? Because they wanted to set up the Dawson-Pacey-Joey triangle. You can’t have Joey be the one to break them up as that would damage her likeability. Pacey can’t be to blame because we need to start seeing him as the kind of man who’s good enough for Joey. So Andy draws the short straw. Which involves –

• a revelation in the first episode that she’s slept with someone whilst in the institution
• stealing exam results to further her academic career (not specifically to do with Pacey but it damages her character for a while)
• manipulating Pacey into getting back together with her when he’s really not wanting to (this is genius because not only does it show her downside, it shows that from his pov she’s not the one for him.)

I never realised it first time around (probably because I missed those episodes) but this all feels like they’re trashing Andy’s character merely to further the plot. Which kind of reminded me of Riley Finn – hence the title.

Riley – Buffy’s S4/S5 boyfriend and rebound guy after Angel – started off as simply a good guy. He had a secret but it was a good secret (he’s a monster fighter too). But people not loving him and the Buffster together. Unlike Andy I think there were plenty of people who disliked him before the writers moved in on him. I found him boring but ok. What I disliked intensely  was the way the writers decided they needed to write him out (fair enough if he’s boring at best) and so proceeded to make us dislike him in order to justify his exit. At least that’s how it felt. The S4 Riley wouldn’t have being seeing vampire “prostitutes” and complaining about Buffy not being there for him whilst she dealt with her mother’s ultimately fatal illness. But he had to have a reason to leave, and from the first moment, when he told Xander that “she doesn’t love me” it struck and incongrous note and I knew something was up.

So I’ve always felt that Riley was sacrificed on the altar of plot (on-going). He wasn’t a bad guy he was just written that way.

Andy MacPhee was totally Riley’d. They made her the scapegoat, made her the one to blame and dislike so we could safely root for the Pacey-Joey romance to come. They give her other things to do and to some extent she becomes ok again and we like her, it’s just she’s not going to be with Pacey. She leaves completely after the High School seasons (I can’t figure out if that’s S3 or whether they played with the time and stretched it out to a S4, seems like there’s a lot of stuff still left to happen)

In a way it’s a shame. I did enjoy the Pacey-Joey-Dawson triangle, but the Andy-Joey romance was so sweet and life-affirming.

I’m going to attempt to do some catch-up posting tonight. Attempt to do it quickly i.e. 3 posts in under an hour. You see what often happens is that I get an idea for a post but never get around to writing it. This is even more true now that my internet access is at work only. Then I’ll get the idea for another post, perhaps developing the theme of a previous idea, and then I’m loathed to post it because I haven’t done the previous one. Then – usually after about a month, 6 weeks – I decide it’s been too long and the events I wanted to refer to aren’t current enough.

Hence my catch-ups. They will be:

1. They RILEY’d her!
2. MythTV
3. DVD rentals

Here goes.

This only really occurred to me whilst writing the previous entry and working out exactly how long it could be before I’m back online.

Virgin are not the cheapest ISP around but they are ok. I went with them originally because they offered a month-to-month contract when everyone else wanted a 12-month minimum. Bear in mind that in my mind I was leaving the flat in 6 months or less. Of course I’ve been leaving the flat in the next 6 months for at least 3 years, probably 4.

Anyway on moving out the plan was to get my new phoneline, transfer my existing Virgin account so I could keep my email address. Once I moved and found out the phone wasn’t going to be a quick thing, I checked with my old landlord that he had no objection to me keeping the old phone, and therefore broadband, connectied (he’s not re-renting straight-away, he’s re-furbishing). He said ok and my plan was to have moved everything over before he needs to start showing it (mid feb probably). However given the timescales I just worked out that’s not going to work out. Not only that but I’ll be paying for internet access that I don’t have.

So what I should do is contact Virgin on monday about cancelling broadband and going back to dial-up. That would keep my email account active. Although I have a sneaky suspicion that you can only dial-up from a nominated phoneline and I doubt that will be allowed to be a mobile.

So maybe I should just bite the bullet and cancel Virgin outright. I don’t think any friend has that email address. It may be the email account of various online things. I’d need to trawl through old emails and check. I think it was the official email of my online gas and electricity accounts. However since I’m with a new supplier in the new house that doesn’t matter.

The advantage of this would be I could go with BT for both phone and internet. I think that would a) work out cheaper and b) well, I’ve heard stories where all these delays and removing markers from lines etc, mysteriously get sorted quicker if you’re signing with BT rather than one of their competitors (remember BT still have to activate the line even for other ISPs).

I haven’t got a phone at the moment. A landline I mean. I still have a mobile. You see I recently moved house and…

(WHAT?? You mean Shuggie who has lived in the same flat for nearly 7 years, who hates change, who has at times wondered if he’s agoraphobic he so likes his routine and his ‘safe place’, has moved?

Yup and as you can guess there are many many things I could write about to do with the new house. But let’s talk phones.)

…and I rang BT to take over the phone line. I need to be with BT because I want to stay with Virgin as my ISP for broadband. However the previous *tenant* in my new house was with a different provider – Bulldog – and haven’t cancelled their account. Did I mention this is now MY house? as in I bought it? Anyway the only contact information I have is an address for the previous *owner*. I have no address for the previous tenant and no phone number for anyone. Just after Christmas I forwarded a bunch of mail via previous owner with a letter asking them to a) give me the forwarding address for the ex-tenant and b) ask the ex-tenant to cancel their phone account.So far I’ve had no response.

By the way, the phone has a dial tone but if you ring anywhere it tells you that the line is prohibited from making outgoing calls except to Bulldog Customer Service. I tried ringing that – using the phoneline. My logic was that hopefully they could tell that I was using that line and possibly allow me to cancel the account. Unfortunately it rings, takes you through the menu options and then cuts off.

What I’ve done instead is to ring BT a couple of times – since they can check whether the “marker” is still on the line. I was going to write another letter but haven’t done so yet. Anyway the couple of times I’ve called BT the account was still there.

So today I rang BT again and asked them if this could just go on and on and what could I do? They advised me to speak to Bulldog as they claim that they cannot do anything at all, regardless of how long it goes on if Bulldog own the line.

So I rang Bulldog. There was no menu option for my situation (or even an “everything else”) so I just choose the first one. I spoke to a gentleman with an Indian accent who informed me that his system was down and could only give general advice. I explained my situation and he told me there was nothing he could do while his systems were down and I should ring back in 15 minutes or tomorrow.

“But you can do something if the system comes back?” I asked sceptically.

“Yes.”

I thanked him and rang off. I dutifully rang back 13 minutes later and this time spoke to an Indian-accented lady (looks like Bulldog’s callcentre is not in the UK). I explained my situation and by now the system was indeed back up. She took my details and gave me a fax number. She told me I need to Fax a copy of a proof of ownership of my house to the number and this will start the “Gone Away” process which will lead to the cancelling of the account and me being able to take it over. She told me to include a short covering letter and what to put into it. She was very helpful.

The only problem is that the “Gone Away” process takes time – 15 working days from the day they receive my fax (which is looking like Monday now). 3 weeks! Add to that the 7 working days BT quoted for a new line. Add to that the 15 working days that Virgin quote to transfer an ADSL connection (and I’ve heard horror stories of it being much much longer) and it could be 2 months before I’m back online.

I’m hoping some of these times are maximums (or averages) and it could be shorter. Though I suspect the “Gone Away” one might be fixed. I guess in that 15 days they’ll try to contact the ex-tenant.

All of which means I may look into getting my mobile sorted for modem access. I’ve found it can do GPRS (which is dial-up equivalent speeds) previously it was only doing whatever the one before GPRS is called (which was ancient dial-up speeds v.slow but fast enough for web browsing if you mainly read text sites). I’ve connected the phone to the laptop, I’ve successfully dialed. I’ve even been able to browse O2’s website using it. But not any others. Which makes me think I need to call them and get them to ‘switch me on’

I’ve got a new laptop and I’ve been uploading my CD collection into a fresh install of iTunes,which is taking a while. It’s also causing me to listen to some songs I haven’t listened to in years. Some I haven’t listened to at all (tracks on albums I hardly played). Some Christian music, which obviously I don’t listen to much.

One for instance was a compilation I made for M. the first Christmas I knew her. It was full of quite depressing songs.

Another was a Martyn Joseph album I bought but never played. I just heard a beautiful song called ‘Have An Angel Walk With Her’ which was pretty – but more it reminded me of an old album of his I used to listen to when I was a student. Listen to and feel sad.

I got to thinking about church and faith. There is something which nourishes there. I’ve heard people in sacramentalist churches talk about Communion that way. I never had that but there was something – in worship, prayer, maybe in rolling around the floor (yes I went to one of those churches) – something that was like refueling. Life would wear me down, my enthusiasm, energy, optimism would decline, and I’d get a boost from that. OK sometimes I felt like I didn’t. But it’s something I definately haven’t felt for a very long time.

I’m missing something.

So this was the second or third night that I’ve tried this staying late at work and writing thing, and arguably the first when I actually wrote fiction. It was hard work. I wrote an outline of an idea I had for a story, got interrupted and then actually tried to start writing a second, different story. The time dragged and what I was writing wasn’t that great. For a while I just sat there staring at the screen, waiting the appointed time for the revelation.* Sadly, tonight at least, it never came.

See, because in the past I’ve tended to give up easily, and because I feel I’m good at spotting problems and fixes in a draft – because of this I’ve tended to concentrate on just getting it down. Get a first draft, no matter how bad, written and then edit. But actually that’s not much fun if I can see I’m producing crap. It’s not the fun I have when I ramble in this blog and the ideas are flowing, like yesterday with the footnotes. OK, so call it was it is, I was goofing off and it won’t produce anything worth re-writing, but there are nuggets (the lap of luxury thing) and I enjoyed it.

This was just hard. But the books all say the same thing: create a routine and stick to it. Write even if you think it’s rubbish. Inspiration hits a moving target it seems.

In fact I did have some fun with the writing today. On my daily walk into town I thought about some of the story ideas I’ve had for a while, and a brand new shiny one for an AFO challenge. The ideas were buzzing and I was excited.

When I came to write it, it was a different story. OK, lovers of irony prepare for a feast. My story, my brand new, I’m so excited to be getting inspired again, story is called ‘Turd’.

That’s right ‘TURD’

And what had seemed so clever and funny when I had the germ of non-specific idea in my head on the way back from lunch, turned out to be disappointed when I simply tried to ‘get it down’. It did in fact just lie there on the screen like a…

Well you get the idea.

Still I’m writing and that can’t be all bad.

(*explanation of the title: back when I was a student, I was also something of a charismatic evangelical Christian, as was my friend Alan. Alan and I had a practice of thinking up a random Bible reference, and looking it up to see if it was profoundly speaking to us. This was semi-tongue-in-cheek. Tongue-in-cheek because it almost never produced anything sensible. Semi- because if it ever had come up with something profound I think we’d both have claimed it was God speaking.

Anyway, one time it did work, sort of.

I can’t remember the reference and I can’t be bothered to look it up, but it was from one of the minor prophets and it said something like ‘The revelation awaits the appointed time, wait for it and it will surely come’.

This sounded suitably profound but was a bit non-specific. Alan took it to mean that we should stay up until 2am at which point one of us would have a revelation of some kind. We tried this. We had a laugh, a good chat. I don’t recall any revelation.)

(new entry because I really couldn’t do another footnote*)

I did try asking my neighbour to keep quiet, turn the music down etc. It worked the first two or three times. But then she got fed up with me. I haven’t felt able to face her since. And since I’ve been officially “moving any time now” for at least the last 3 years, I didn’t see the point in a lot of conflict.

But as I said, the flat, a whole other nightmare.

(*It’s not so much the number of footnotes but the repetition of the asterisk** that looks wierd after a while)

(**A long time ago a friend of mine made an album called “The Celebration of the Azimuth”, I like to think of “The Repetition of the Asterisk” as one of his later works)