Freecycle

I've been monitoring Norfolk freecycle:

Wanted: Good quality camera
Wanted: New PC
Wanted: Spare cash.

Offered: Rubble
Offered: 17 tins of Asda new potatoes
Offered: Rotten turnips.

It's mostly rubble actually.

Golden Age Ends when we're Bored

Before computers novelists had to pass a stringent test in order to get published. Namely they had to press a set of keys in the correct order with the correct strength and they had to do this around half a million times. I talk of typing.

These days you can cut and paste your emails together to form a book. You can be good at football and have people write books for you. You can even get a computer programme to generate prose for you or you can even outsource your writing to China.

Of course those that used the pen were probably saying the same about the typists. Yet there seems to be a sweet spot, an optimum that was the typewriter. No great literature came from scratching on cave walls with a bloody mammoth bone. At the other extreme how can you find the gems when they're covered by the landfill.

Happiest Day of My Life

I'm looking forward to the happiest day of my life in mid December when my daughter pops out of my wife. It seems that there will be a lot of worry before and after the event, there will be scenes in the hospital that I don't want to look at and there will be too much well meaning advice. It's all tolerable but not exactly happy making.

To compensate I am expecting some really good movies I hadn't heard of, a win for Norwich City, the publishing world to finally realise my genius and an Indian buffet including fluffy naan breads and chicken shashlik. Yes, I cannot envisage the happiest day of my life not including chicken shashlik because if it didn't how could it be the happiest. I could just have the same day again but this time with chicken shashlik.

It's all rubbish

Is it just me or is everyone disgusted at everything from the bimbos who now read the news to harassment by SKY salesmen to handing out wadges of money to corrupt Eurocrats to packaging that is neither appealing nor functional nor minimal?

But as soon as I start whingeing I feel like Mr Daily Mail reader outraged becoming grumpy old man and I'm still in my 30s! But of course they, the people making everything worse, would want me to think that. Actually I read the guardian, have a very balanced panorama of the world and have a perfectly normal level of outrage. It's just that award winning eco-buildings only last 10 years, Joanna Lumley is the most powerful force in the country, banks, estate agents, I can't open the coffee packet like it says I should, Tichtmarsh...

Self non-publishing

Remember that guy who put his self-published novel on the shelves in Waterstones thus bypassing the troublesome publishing industry? Now I hear about someone who is doing a PhD on TS Eliot, Auden and her own unpublished poetry thus bypassing the troublesome publishing and criticing industry. In fact, in the true spirit of "self-publishing", you could just bypass the whole troublesome "people outside your own mind" industry and just keep your thoughts to yourself and then judge them and award the best ones a prize.

Allowable Litter

What are you allowed to litter? Cigarette butts used to be but not anymore. I dropped a receipt yesterday and it blew right away. I wasn't going to chase that but I suppose I should have done. Money? In Japan you pick everything up, even the smallest coin but that's more a matter of respect for money than littering. Here, I don't stoop for a penny so is that littering? What about a fiver? If I just let them go is that littering? What about an Ipod or a car or a child? Oh God I think I've been littering all the time. What about a breath or an aura? It could make you worry about your social niceity.

Also

Also you don't just have to put your own book in the bookshops. For years I have been editing my own newspapers - drawing all over the pictures, rewriting the stories in a way I like. I've played havoc with the financial markets and Norwich City always win the Universe champions super-premiership. Also, when I go to a restaurant I edit the menus or add things onto the specials that I might like. Also:

Leave your favourite pens in the stationers and buy them back
I've taken all the apples off my apple tree and left them on the shelves in Tesco
Adjust the interest rates offered by banks by putting your "12%" signs in their windows
Take a photo of a house you like and put it in an estate agents window
Drive to your local dealership and ask how much for your own car
On the bus time-table write in the time that the bus actually comes

Unclear Power

I'm wondering if nuclear power is a good thing and so I made a graph:

As you can see, with the nuclear power option the end is postponed for a generation or two as we move away from oil power and climate change accelerates less fast. However once the end does come, and the reactors fail then the whole thing goes down.

With the non-nuclear option the world end's "not with a bang but a whimper," although the end comes a little sooner.

Our chances seem slim. It's not the time for the safe options of wind farms and "Oh my God you want a PLASTIC BAG!". It's the time for wild gambling. Our chances seem much better if we adopt the nuclear programme in the short term and see if we can sort it all out in the extension we get.

Jobs I couldn't do Number 1) Lottery ball announcer

Last night he said, "Ah, it's good to see number 7 again."

Now they've sent me a pocket sized e-celebrity.

Congratulations to my online banking security system which has won the Information Security Project of the Year award. Yes, well done, but no, wait! Does my online banking security system have the functionality to vote, to sit at a round table and joke with its peers, do they compere, do they make acceptance speeches, do they cry?

Football Name News

I still have never really got over someone called ARSene taking a job at ARSenal football club. But ARSene Wenger (French) seems to have a real brain on him and so (unlike the Marie Curie, Maria Callas, Mariah Carey thing that I have now come to terms with) it can't just be a coincidence. I really think he is a top joker.

This thesis is now proven since he has recently completely revised his transfer policy and spent £15m on a man called ARShavin just because of the first 3 letters of his name. This morning it is reported he has locked himself in his office and given the day over to giggling to himself.

It's no surprise that he chose football for his silliness, though, since the only other options for him involved arson, arsenic and arses.

Gordon's Choice

A fat cat regularily comes into my garden and leaves its "toxic debt" there. Should I squirt him with my hose and enter a new world of mice? Or should I welcome the prestige of my garden being the cat's toilet and thank him for giving me more work?

I got my first ever payment for writing - a cheque from riptide - and am wondering what to do with it.

If I am God (creator of universes = writer) then I should probably be amused at the thought of mortals paying me and show it off to my other God mates.

If I am to be a canonical author then I should probably save it for the "Museum of Gordon" along with my nail clippings and the best of my ear wax collection.

If I am to be a minor author/amateur scribbler then I should probably cash it.

Overall I'm going to interpolate status as somewhere between God and bum and cash it.

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?