Adrock, you're it
Since Paul tagged me to do this, here it is and I hereby pass the curse on to Adrock, who will set his answers to some dodgy 'lost' dance classics no doubt:
5 Things In My Freezer
Lots of ice cubes - been so hot even the cats need them in their water dish. Now worried they will start demanding straws next, then they will dispense with water in favour of Baileys on ice.
Veggie bacon - very yummy, bugger all fat, no dead piggy.
Bottle of vodka
Cadbury's Dairy Milk Ice Cream (not for long)
Assorted dismembered body parts (always store your body parts on the lower freezer shelf, people, remember your basic food hygeine)
5 Things In My Car
I live in the middle of Edinburgh, a car is utterly bloody pointless here. 5 things in my bus to work though would include
The Driver
Me
My bag
Other passengers (they ride under glass, you know)
Obligatory old lady who looks a bit like Yoda but makes even less sense.
5 Things In My Purse!!! (PURSE!!!)
Okay, cars, purses, getting the impression this thing is a little skewed a certain way. Will my manly yet stylish Penguin Publishers bag blagged from a kindly book rep do?
Flash memory stick
MP3 player
Digital Camera
New Arabian Nights tales by Robert Louis Stevenson
Battered and dog-eared Film Festival programme (see the earlier post on Film Festing)
5 Things In My Closet
Actually it is a wardrobe, does that count?
Clothes, with assorted bits of cat fur stuck to them like Velcro
One of my many candle stashes
White 'Casablanca' style dinner jacket
The fancy patent leather shoes to go with aforementioned DJ, just in case I ever need to stand in for Rick in Casablanca. I rarely do, but you never know. For similar reasons I keep a copy of the Marseilles handy in case I need to drown out some rowdy Nazis.
5.7 deceased moths
There we go ... now its Adrock's turn.
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
Ouchie
Somehow I've done something to my back over the weekend. One minute it is fine, Gordon and I are walking miles along the beaches while Bruce and his gangly greyhound legs gallop ahead of us. Then a little later a twinge. A little later serious owwwwww followed by JESUSCHRISTONABATTLESHIPBRIDGEMAKEITSTOP! Buggered if I know how I pulled a muscle (and didn't notice in a walk of several miles) but its damned sore and since it is down at the base of the spine it is almost literally a pin in the arse. There's nothing like taking five minutes just to get your shoes on and laced because you can't bend your back right to teach you not to take your spine for granted. Why can't we just spray WD40 on backbones and muscles as well as mechanical components to fix everything? Requests to be given a petite Filippino gal to massage my back regularly on the NHS have been denied. It's an outrage. It is also an inrage.
Then again, perhaps it isn't a pulled muscle, perhaps those sneaky Israeli's have hit my lower spine in a surgical strike after mistaking my magnificent Celtic arse for a rocket launcher.
Somehow I've done something to my back over the weekend. One minute it is fine, Gordon and I are walking miles along the beaches while Bruce and his gangly greyhound legs gallop ahead of us. Then a little later a twinge. A little later serious owwwwww followed by JESUSCHRISTONABATTLESHIPBRIDGEMAKEITSTOP! Buggered if I know how I pulled a muscle (and didn't notice in a walk of several miles) but its damned sore and since it is down at the base of the spine it is almost literally a pin in the arse. There's nothing like taking five minutes just to get your shoes on and laced because you can't bend your back right to teach you not to take your spine for granted. Why can't we just spray WD40 on backbones and muscles as well as mechanical components to fix everything? Requests to be given a petite Filippino gal to massage my back regularly on the NHS have been denied. It's an outrage. It is also an inrage.
Then again, perhaps it isn't a pulled muscle, perhaps those sneaky Israeli's have hit my lower spine in a surgical strike after mistaking my magnificent Celtic arse for a rocket launcher.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
More employers victimise bloggers
Very sad to report that in the last week I have had emails from different people who have had trouble from their employers over their personal blogs - hard to believe that employers will search online and then use information gathered in a deliberate attempt to fire people, even when they have not mentioned the company or named anyone who works there. If you haven't mentioned any of these identifiers than how can any employer claim their reputation could be harmed? More likely their reputation will be harmed by an subsequent exposure of their disgusting acts. Some employers are simply bullies who seem to think they can treat workers in any way they see fit, tramples over their rights and invade their private lives too. You'd think no matter how stupid they were they would consider how badly such actions can backfire on them and their public image. Jenny here is the latest sad example of such blatant bullying and misuse of power. I hope she takes the bastards to an industrial tribunal and shames them for their blatant abuse.
Very sad to report that in the last week I have had emails from different people who have had trouble from their employers over their personal blogs - hard to believe that employers will search online and then use information gathered in a deliberate attempt to fire people, even when they have not mentioned the company or named anyone who works there. If you haven't mentioned any of these identifiers than how can any employer claim their reputation could be harmed? More likely their reputation will be harmed by an subsequent exposure of their disgusting acts. Some employers are simply bullies who seem to think they can treat workers in any way they see fit, tramples over their rights and invade their private lives too. You'd think no matter how stupid they were they would consider how badly such actions can backfire on them and their public image. Jenny here is the latest sad example of such blatant bullying and misuse of power. I hope she takes the bastards to an industrial tribunal and shames them for their blatant abuse.
Screw-On Head
I posted this on the FPI blog a while back and realised I forgot to mention it here - SciFi have made the test episode of Mike Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head available on line and are actively asking folk's opinion to help decide if they should comission a whole series. I thought it rocked - the art is very similar to Mike's distinctive look (as seen in Hellboy) and it has a lovely steampunk feel to it, with the Screw-On Head himself a mechanical agent of Abraham Lincoln's, with different heads for different tasks (a bit like Wurzel Gummidge in that respect!). Paul Giamatti and David Hyde Pierce provide voice talent.
I posted this on the FPI blog a while back and realised I forgot to mention it here - SciFi have made the test episode of Mike Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head available on line and are actively asking folk's opinion to help decide if they should comission a whole series. I thought it rocked - the art is very similar to Mike's distinctive look (as seen in Hellboy) and it has a lovely steampunk feel to it, with the Screw-On Head himself a mechanical agent of Abraham Lincoln's, with different heads for different tasks (a bit like Wurzel Gummidge in that respect!). Paul Giamatti and David Hyde Pierce provide voice talent.
Reviews list of links
I've set up a very basic blog, Joe's Reviews, which is essentially a list of links to various reviews I've posted. I've done a lot of reviews over the years, some of which were in print of broadcast media and I no longer have, but I thought perhaps I would list some of the ones available online. I may spruce it up a bit later on, but for now its just a blog with a big list of links to reviews, split up into SF books, Fantasy, Horror, Younger Readers, Non Fiction, Graphic Novels, Movies & DVDs (I hadn't realised how many movies I had reviewed on the Alien Online) and some other material (mostly interviews).
Some are drawn from the FPI blog and Emerald City, but most are from The Alien Online reviews; there are also some much earlier reviews on my old (first) site The Library of Dreams, which although I can't access it anymore to change it, is still up there, but due to the basic layout (it was an early site from the 90s) I can't link directly to each review, so you have to scroll down each page. Also on the reviewing front the third FPI podcast from myself and my two colleagues Paul and Crowbar is now available to stream or take as an MP3.
I've set up a very basic blog, Joe's Reviews, which is essentially a list of links to various reviews I've posted. I've done a lot of reviews over the years, some of which were in print of broadcast media and I no longer have, but I thought perhaps I would list some of the ones available online. I may spruce it up a bit later on, but for now its just a blog with a big list of links to reviews, split up into SF books, Fantasy, Horror, Younger Readers, Non Fiction, Graphic Novels, Movies & DVDs (I hadn't realised how many movies I had reviewed on the Alien Online) and some other material (mostly interviews).
Some are drawn from the FPI blog and Emerald City, but most are from The Alien Online reviews; there are also some much earlier reviews on my old (first) site The Library of Dreams, which although I can't access it anymore to change it, is still up there, but due to the basic layout (it was an early site from the 90s) I can't link directly to each review, so you have to scroll down each page. Also on the reviewing front the third FPI podcast from myself and my two colleagues Paul and Crowbar is now available to stream or take as an MP3.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Drinking bloggers
Yvonne of the excellent Nemeton blog and her other half were in town on holiday so last night the Silvereel and I met up with them and had a lovely chat in Rutherfoard's Howff, one of the favoured pubs of Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle. Not exactly a sparkling location, it has to be said (we had two seperate gadgies approach us to offer to sell us good ranging from shampoo to joints of meat - I shall refrain from casting aspersion on the providence of these goods) and not one I have been in for years, but the booze was cold and the company good. It is one of the things about the digital age, knowing people, sometimes for a long time, but never having actually met them - I know a raft of people all round the world who I keep in touch with online, bloggers, writers, publishers and others, some of whom have become good friends - I'm sure plenty of others have similar online friendships. Still, it is always nice to actually get a chance to meet some of them from time to time and sit down in a real-world pub (if indeed real world this is) and enjoy a drink and a natter.
Yvonne of the excellent Nemeton blog and her other half were in town on holiday so last night the Silvereel and I met up with them and had a lovely chat in Rutherfoard's Howff, one of the favoured pubs of Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle. Not exactly a sparkling location, it has to be said (we had two seperate gadgies approach us to offer to sell us good ranging from shampoo to joints of meat - I shall refrain from casting aspersion on the providence of these goods) and not one I have been in for years, but the booze was cold and the company good. It is one of the things about the digital age, knowing people, sometimes for a long time, but never having actually met them - I know a raft of people all round the world who I keep in touch with online, bloggers, writers, publishers and others, some of whom have become good friends - I'm sure plenty of others have similar online friendships. Still, it is always nice to actually get a chance to meet some of them from time to time and sit down in a real-world pub (if indeed real world this is) and enjoy a drink and a natter.
The (im)morality of war
One of the most intelligent writers I know (and an all-round good egg) Ken MacLeod discusses the lie of attempting a moral justification for killing civilians, as well as noting uncomfortable similarities between current events and the manuscript he has just handed into his publisher (which I can't wait to read). Ken sometime picks up a reputation for using his novels as a sopa box for left-wing politics, but this simply isn't true. Yes he often does have politics, especially left-wing politics in his work, but he doesn't preach at folks and any political/social system is a part of the novel, not a mere device to push his own beliefs. Besides, his material is intelligent, erudite, inventive and elegant and he is genuinely a writer who I look forward to with each publication.
One of the most intelligent writers I know (and an all-round good egg) Ken MacLeod discusses the lie of attempting a moral justification for killing civilians, as well as noting uncomfortable similarities between current events and the manuscript he has just handed into his publisher (which I can't wait to read). Ken sometime picks up a reputation for using his novels as a sopa box for left-wing politics, but this simply isn't true. Yes he often does have politics, especially left-wing politics in his work, but he doesn't preach at folks and any political/social system is a part of the novel, not a mere device to push his own beliefs. Besides, his material is intelligent, erudite, inventive and elegant and he is genuinely a writer who I look forward to with each publication.
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