What the Dickens?

"Little Dorrit" is transliterated into little "Dorito" in Japanese. After buying this from BBC, Japanese television now plan to dramatise, "A Tale of 2 Pringles", "Nicholas Nik-Nakelby" and "Martin Chuzzlewotsit."

For some years now television programs have been made by the automated editing of CCTV footage and the pasting in of celebrities.

Now books too are made optimally cheap by following the work flow:

chinese sweatshop -> google translate -> celebrity endorsement -> supermarket shelves

However, as the world's economy is turned upside down, I predict we'll soon be writing our own books for suddenly unemployed celebrities to translate and flog in Chinese street markets.

Riptide

The wonderful "Riptide" are publishing my story "Evelyn Bess", all about despair, love, loss and carpet forensics. The ending is ambiguous unless you spot a clue hidden in the text.

You will be able to get it at http://www.riptidejournal.co.uk/

I'm reading it at the launch party on 5th December at Exeter University.

Laziness Justification

I'm working on the equation

Hard Work * Talent = Published

Or rearranging this we have

Published/Hard Work = Talent

Published is currently a low constant and so, to maximise my talent I have decided to minimise my hard work.

Quiz or Exile

The government has set a test to decide whether my wife can live with me.

Have you gone mad, Gordon? No. It's called "Life in the UK Test" and is compulsory for foreign wives wanting a settlement visa. I think the idea is that anyone settling in this country should be capable game show contestants. Britain is currently on top of the world league in pub quizzes about Britain and TV games shows. The phone-in competitions on TV are almost always answered correctly and there are fears that, of not for the "Life in the UK Test" immigrants will be ringing in wrong answers and not winning tickets to "The Lion King".

What is actually true is that the whole quiz thing is going to be expanded across all of society. By linking the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" format to the benefits data-base, the GCSE, the university degree system, and the "Life in the UK Test" the government hopes to create a meritocracy that rewards people on the basis of their knowledge. Thus to get your income support you might have to answer simple questions such as "When was the coronation?" but to get paid really well you would be asked, "What are the 5 main alternatives to coronary bypass?" or just really useful questions like, "Where did I put my keys?"

Stop writing now

There is so much writing out there. A recent important survey showed that a certain percentage of people were writing a lot. It was a true. The idea is that society will reward you with money for what you write. Money buys things like food, kitchen implements and non essential operations.

How about if we were rewarded for how little we wrote? Writing grants seem to suffer from a fundamental problem. You can fund a writer to write his weird book about llamas wearing hats but it doesn't mean anyone will read it. It's not like funding art that people will see. What use are books unread? The solution is not to encourage writers but to discourage bad writers. The next time some dullard celebrity inflicts his memoirs the funding bodies should pay off the publishers and have them burn the manuscripts or make sure that each one has at least 10 pages of proper writing.

Ugly Veg Comeback

I was outraged and disgusted on the new European rules allowing misshapen vegetables. Do they mean to tell me that my new banana guard was a waste of money?

Yes we Kan-garoo

A black president of the US? It's not as amazing as a female president of Pakistan or a Japanese president of Peru. Wake me up when a panda is in charge of China. Then they'll all be saying, "He's not a real panda, you know, he's half badger."