A - Z Writing Challenge 2012

Oh look, it's nearly January again!  Last January, in a moment of pure insanity, when I was obviously writer's block-free, I decided to do a 26 day A - Z writing challenge, which involved me writing on a topic from each letter of the alphabet every day until there were no letters left.  It was actually quite fun and didn't really feel challengy at all.  X was a bit of a head scratcher because there are only a few ways you can go unless you speak Mandarin, but I think I dealt with that tricky little consonant sufficiently.

I don't know why I want to do it again.  Bit of an idiot, I suppose.  All I know is that I felt completely inspired to write last time.  The irony is that when I was constrained to topics from a letter of the alphabet it just made everyone flow so much easier.  Although it's only limiting if you limit yourself in your imagination and creativity.  There's the challenge component kicking in!  So, I'm looking forward to a month of alphabet soup that will rival Sesame Street's obsession.  *sigh*

I don't like applying restrictions to creative writing, so my only rules are that I don't cover topics I covered last time, I try to cover topics I know nothing about, and that I finish by 10 February.  Yes, I'm giving myself a 10-day margin of freedom this time, because otherwise it might become drudgery near the end.  And I want to enjoy it and use it to develop my creative writing, not resent it.

Come on January 1 - bring it!

A Bold & Beautiful Confession

Well, this is embarassing.  But it can be resolved.  After I watch today's episode.

Last week I was minding my own business, possibly wrapping Christmas presents or some such undertaking, when I unconsciously turned on the television for a bit of background vibes. It turned out to be around 4:30 pm which happened to be a very Bold and the Beautiful time of the day.

Half an hour later of empty dialogue, frightful acting and one dimensional characters, I was absolutely captivated. So much so that I have been forced to watch this stupid show since then. How the hell did this happen?

I think one of the characters is perpetually stoned. Although it’s hard to be certain, given all the face lifts, botox injections, and general inability to act confusing the matter. If these people could act any shoddier they would be blocks of concrete. Maybe that’s why they are always standing next to pillars, columns and stone structures. So they look competent.

Despite my new brand spanking compulsion to watch this deplorable soap, the only characters I don’t find utterly irritating are the old favourites, Brooke and Ridge, who in real life would be around 80, but in soap years, forever remain around 28 years old. Which is uncanny given their overabundance of twenty something offspring.

But I guess credit where credit’s due for the Bold producers. I ridicule the show, I detest the show, I think it is pure crap; yet I seem to be watching every day. They seem to end every show with a ‘cliff hanger’, if that’s an appropriate description for a really lame, tedious culmination of a bunch of really dreadful scenes.

Perhaps the reason I feel compelled to continue watching this drivel is because it is appealing to my need to resolve situations that involve suspense and the anxiety that surrounds it. No, that can’t be it. I think I just need to turn off the television.

Bogan Vista

I am currently babysitting a house while its owners are skylarking around the countryside. Babysitting a house is much more pleasurable than babysitting an actual baby, given that this place has yet to poo its nappy twenty times a day, scream for hours at nothing in particular and the plants don’t vomit water onto my shoulder after feeding time. Well, so far so good anyway.

The house has a beautiful deck out the back that I completely intended on using as a backdrop for my plethora of reading material that I have insisted on reading over the Christmas break. Which would all be well and good if the neighbours over the back fence weren’t complete bogans who, I have decided, must be avoided at all costs. Why is it that bogans can’t seem to do anything quietly?

I don’t like the fact that bogans exist at all let alone having to converse with them about bogan subject matter that are of no consequence to me and my books. If I wanted to talk I wouldn’t be reading a book, would I? I wish they would take their bogan music and bogan motorbikes and general bogan hysteria and buzz off.

Thus, I am currently sitting at the gorgeous teak (or some other type of glamourous wood) dining room table, which sits just moments away from the alluring, inaccessible back deck, with its mountainous views, if you can overlook the more immediate bogan-inspired vista. Fortunately there is a lovely cool breeze coming off the mountains which sates my desire to be outside communing which nature.

Kokoda

Over the last few days, I have been reading Kokoda, Peter Fitzsimons’ epic narrative of the battle to hold Australian territory in Papua New Guinea in 1942.  I am ashamed to say that my knowledge of the battle those young men faced was rather limited a few days ago. I knew they had been incredibly courageous in the face of great adversity, but I had no idea the extent of their courage and no idea of the degree of their adversity.

The book made me so proud, and also made me laugh, and cry, and, most importantly, explained to me, in great detail, what those men did for Australia. Heroic barely begins to describe the type of diggers that fought, and are still fighting, for our country. And our soldiers haven’t changed; they just have better management (anyone but Macarthur is better), and access to resources, food and ammunition these days.

This afternoon I went for a walk around the mean streets of my locale and reflected on the book so far. Without any exaggeration, our country is what it is today in no small part due to the actions of those men, and all the other soldiers who have fought and died for this country.

During my walk, right on cue, a carload of teenage hoodlums catcalled me while hooning through the neighbourhood, like a bunch of wannabe Michael Schumacher’s without the car, talent or Monaco oceanview apartment.  In that moment, I thought that perhaps it would be best if they drove straight to the closest Defence recruitment centre they could find, so these young idiots could learn a bit of discipline and respect and how not to be an annoying Gen Y waste of space.  If anyone can learn them those skills, the Army can.

The problem for these misdirected youth is that the courageous choose to fight for their country. I know that’s probably a little unfair to the brain dead morons in their stupid suped up cars, and I know that times were different back then, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about it.

A family member recently told me that a distant relative died on the shores of Gallipoli. He was just 22-years old. I like to think that I would do anything to defend my country and my values, but could I voluntarily take up arms and go fight in a war for her?  In my eyes, this decision, this choice, makes soldiers all the more heroic.

Sailing their Wild Oats

This afternoon I watched the start of the highly anticipated, time-honoured Sydney to Hobart yacht sink or swim race. It’s the only time you'll find people racing tooth and nail to be the first to get to Tasmania. Surely it's only for the prestige; but it would certainly make more sense if it was a race heading away from Tasmania.

I am not a fan of sailing or boats or sailing boats or races involving sailing boats, but there is something rather cathartic about watching those itsy bitsy (in the context of the vastness of the ocean) sailing machines slicing through the dark waters off Sydney heads.

Wild Oats is the darling of the race and has been for years. Actually, I’m not sure why any other competitor starts the race with the objective of winning it.  I know that’s not a very professional attitude or approach to competitive sport, but Wild Oats always wins, and has the most cash, and by far the coolest name, and the most talent for manning spinnakers and the like without capsizing.

This year they apparently have a marine on board who can hold his breath for five minutes in case there is trouble with the keel, which is evidently under the boat thingy and steers stuff or something.  I imagine that is his sole role on this fun-filled little roller coaster ride into oceanic hell.

I’m not sure if it is appropriate to call Wild Oats a boat, because that is far too common a name for a racing machine. I imagine they’d get highly offended at being called a boat. It would be like calling a F1 Ferrari a convertible sports car.

The fun for the crew of Wild Oats is definitely not in the journey. They are on a sprint, because this is a race, damn it, not a sail around the damn Caribbean. While one boat has hired a gourmet chef, and are replete with air conditioning, bedrooms with en suites, a wine cellar fully stocked with pinot noir and probably HD TV, the crew of Wild Oats must make doeth with freeze-dried vegemite sandwiches. Sounds yummo. And there will definitely be no sowing of any wild oats aboard Wild Oats.  I know, right?  These people don’t sound anything like sailors.

I don’t know about you, but I am not keen on being onboard a ‘boat’ whose fate rests on what side of the deck I walk or sit on. I also would not be too chuffed about having to wear an orange jumpsuit just in case I fell into the ocean and had to be found and dragged out in the middle of the night by a rescue crew that may or may not get there in time to save me from a rogue man-eating octopus.

Thus, I have deployed my own method of avoiding these dramatic scenarios by not going on a boat across the damn Tasman Sea during cyclone season.

MMXI

It all began one Saturday morning three hundred and fifty something days ago. It was a quiet day, with much of the free world resting sore heads and pledging to start the new year with fresh resolve about changing or improving something in their life; a resolution most never planned on keeping past January 2.

Lots of stuff happened this year, as it seems to do every year. 2011 news bulletins showed us war, revolts, natural disasters, failing economies - all served in convenient, easy-to-forget two-minute snippets and topped off with an inspiring story of courage about a polar bear or somebody in India with an inoperable brain tumour.

Africa continued to starve due to the policies of the United Nations. So the U.N. did the only thing the U.N. knows how to do, which is to kowtow to suppressive regimes who know that the U.N. lacks any real power to do anything because it is completely ineffective and pacifist.  Although one thing the U.N. did in 2011 was to designate the year the International Year of Forests and the International Year of Chemistry, which would make one big accelerant bonfire.

Thanks to Facebook and other social media we watched the birth of Arab Spring, which resulted in most of the shitty countries of the world that have yet to discover democracy - Syria, Egypt, you name it - rioting and rampaging towards, well, who knows. All I know is there is a whole lot more anarchy in store. The criminal sect of the unemployed youth of London rioted through Tottenham, but not over a desire for change; just a desire to obtain a free HDTV.

Italy and Greece showed the world that they don't deserve to be nation states – SHOCKER - and they sure as shit don't deserve to have the rest of Europe bail them out. But the E.U. bailed them out.

The E.U. continued on their merry way of making important, yet stupid, decisions.

The Osama bin liner was expertly killed by a team of SEALs in Pakistan and the world went awesome! Except for the leftwing fools in the west who think that the U.S. government don't have a right to kill a man who is the definition of evil because he has human rights, you know. These human rights lawyers and the like don’t have a clue what life is like outside Toorak or the North Shore, let alone in a Middle Eastern country.  And they think the west killing a madman means we are just as bad.  Ah, the leftwing and their beloved dichotomy of good and evil. 

They seem to think the west is always on the precipice of crossing over to the dark side. I am always confused over the leftwing's confusion over who the bad guys are. The way I see it, the bad guys are the ones who deliberately fly aeroplanes into buildings and strap bombs to their chests and detonate themselves in packed nightclubs with the intention of killing a lot of westerners. And the good guys are the ones trying to stop them. I hope that clears up any confusion or grey area.  Same goes for Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-il. Good riddance.  I hope their next life is everything they didn't want it to be.

Natural disasters lived up to their name.  Japan got hit with a massive earthquake, then drowned from the resultant tsunami and then had to deal with four leaking nuclear power plants. Our own Queensland and Victoria did not fair any better with unwanted attention from mother nature.

Wills and Kate got hitched. Two billion people watched. Bert and Ernie also got married, even though they are just friends. I think a bunch of confused 6-year-olds were forced to watch by their politically correct parents who are willingly destroying their kid's childhood.  

The highly reputable British trashbag tabloid, News of the World, was shutdown due to a phone hacking scandal. Apparently every other newspaper in the world is scandal free.

Barack Obama canned the 40-year-old NASA space program because it was gnawing away at funds that he preferred to spend on useless government programs that did nothing but create more bureaucracy, more socialism and more welfare dependent citizens. The U.S. space program has devoured US$196 billion over the years (around US$450 million per mission), but it was, without a doubt, one of the best things to come out of the United States.  And there goes the hopes and dreams of a generation.

118 not out...

Around June this year, in a moment of pure insanity, I decided that I was going to write 120 blog posts this year, which averages out to 10 a month.  Which doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't, but it feels like a slog when you set yourself a goal and feel the need to achieve it.

I set myself this goal because I wanted to get into the habit of writing, and of writing daily.  It all fits into my grand plan of one day writing a greatly stupendous novel that will be read by a total of four people.  But I have realised that even though I am not always in the mood to write, when I do get an idea, I am vaguely disciplined enough to sit down and flesh it out.  The motivation is there when the ideas start to flow.  My perceived lack of motivation is actually a lack of ideas, rather than a lack of writing motivation, and I'm okay with that arrangement.  For now.

This blog has been fun so far, although I imagine it is a sleeping pill in online form for any sucker reading it.  Actually, anyone reading it should be grateful that they have found a destination where they can find out stuff about a subject they previously had no interest in and possibly even less interest in after visiting here.

So I'm currently on 118 posts not out, with two more to go for 2011, and then I'll take a creative break for a few weeks to recharge my creative batteries, but not in the wanky wine-and-cheese intellectual fashion. You know those types who talk about the zeitgeist but are, in reality, so out of touch with the zeitgeist that they think a painting of a red blob on a canvas says something about life as we know it.

The Jolly Red Man

Given that it's Christmas and I have a slightly large Christmas obsession, it's time for the obligatory blog about Santa.  Numerous people over the years have joked that Santa is not real but I know this to be false, because he is currently signing autographs and entertaining hordes of shrieking, bratty children at my local shopping centre.  If that's not proof of life then I don't know what is.  Crazy, unbelieving grown-ups.

Although Santa's wholesome image is somewhat tainted in my view, given that he must be on crack to be able to personally deliver presents to billions of people in roughly ten hours.  Maybe the missus slips something into his cookies. 

By the looks of things, the jolly rotund red dude has been putting in some time at the gym over recent months.  He's looking rather buff-ish, but he still could do with a little more time rocking the treadmill.  His weight loss was probably instigated by the new sleigh weight restrictions, which have been tightened this year due to back injury complaints from some of his beloved reindeers. 

On the plus side, Santa has been approached by those people who make calendars of men in uniform to do his own 12-month spread to raise money for starving elves in Africa.   It was a no brainer for Mr C. 

I have heard on the rumour mill that I need to try harder because I am slipping down Santa's nice list.  I am a little surprised that I made the cut in the first place.  I went to Santa's website the other day to try and find out what I had done wrong and how I could redeem myself in the next six sleeps.   

The first thing I noted about http://www.northpole.com/ was the fact that the domain name would be perfectly suited for another type of toy and entertainment site, but one that is more appropriate for adult viewing.  I'm not judging, but what the fuck?  And the first thing that popped up when I hit the site was toy advertising, as if Santa would stoop so low as to buy toys from Amazon made by those communist wannabe elves in Chinese factories.

The website heavily features Raymond, the trainee reindeer who evidently won't be flying this year, perhaps because he doesn't have enough miles under his collar just yet.  I'm sorry, but who the hell is Raymond in Santa Claus folklore?  There is also Biff the Mailroom Elf, who has a PH.D in Mail Sortation, which means he is qualified to work at McDonalds North Pole, and Will the North Pole weatherman, who has studied Snowology. 

I wish I studied Snowology rather than psychology, journalism and underwater basketweaving (the latter being the layman's understanding of how Arts students fill in their days at university).  Will's hobbies seem to include weather forecasting, but his special skill, like many of the staff at the Bureau of Meterology, is incorrect weather forecasting.  Although the North Pole Frosty Weather Reader Meter, which is a sort of glorified weather station, must assist Santa enormously.

And that is the magic of the jolly red man.

Bogan gingerbread housing estates

It is widely acknowledged that I am somewhat obsessed with all things Christmassy, but there is one thing that really gets my goat.  Gingerbread.  There's nothing like the smell of fresh gingerbread cooking in the oven.  It's been over twenty years since I last ate gingerbread, when I was suffering from glandular fever and hepatitis-A, and I must say the aroma still makes me want to run and barf into the nearest garbage bin.

The odour is utterly, utterly repugnant to me.  You may smell sweet, sweet candy; I smell warmed up old garbage bags full of vanilla and cinnamonny grossness with a hint of burnt hair.  I don't much care for the taste either.



For some unfathomable reason, people who like to rampantly bake things think it's a super idea to make mini-me houses from gingerbread and other confectionery at Christmas time.  I call this out as a stupid tradition. 

Although this dirty little baking activity would improve immeasurably in my eyes if they instead created bogan housing estates and the like, rather than pretty stand-alones in the suburbs.  Everyone knows the 'burbs are densely populated with middle-class bogans and not marshmellow men with carob bud garden beds.  Let's keep it real, Martha Stewart wannabes.

Given the tremendously traumatic experience faced by those two young hoodlums, Hansel and Gretel, you'd think that baking edible housing estates would be discouraged, and you'd think their self-inflicted tale of terror would be used as an example to show the kiddies that eating apartment blocks will make you fat.  The timely message is right there, ready to be rammed down the throats of those little cake overeaters.  Educating kids on obesity; you're doing it wrong, Federal Government. 

The Christmassy lollies that have me in a dither at the moment are Cadbury's Electrical Chocolates, which contain insulated conductors that are used to produce a charge through your brain when you chew them.  Totally true story; I wouldn't make this up.  Cadbury calls them Magical Elves, but I like my name better.  The current batch have a particularly high wattage due to what Cadbury determines as 'popping candy', but I think they are wrong and it is due to some super duper electrical wiring.  



I'm not letting this wattage thing go, Cadbury, so it's best you come clean on your sugary secrets.  It's probably a bit negligent of me to discuss these electric powered chocolates, given that Cadbury has copyright on magical elves, the ellipse device, the colour purple and probably the word purple for all I know.  I'm like the Julian Assange of the confectionery world.  I better watch my back or I'll be kidnapped by gingerbread men in licorice balaclavas.  

And while we're on the subject of confectionery, I'd like to make a comment or two on Cadbury's lack of attention to detail when making their Flakes.  I have been one of their clients for many a year; indeed I imagine my purchases of their products have put some of their CEOs children through years of private school education.  But I to say that my disappointment - my DISMAY! - in their packaging has boiled to the surface.  The Flake bits FALL OUT IN MY HAND!!!  They are making my life a misery.  Can't they teach the people in their factories to seal the foil properly?  How hard can it be?



You callin' me a fackin bogan aye?
Gingerbread this, aye!



Walking with a Narcissistic T-Rex

Being rich means having a lot of dosh, or something yum with a fairly significant amount of butter or cream. I guess they both can kill you in the end in different ways.  Even though the title is as helpful as ever, I'll give you a hint of what this post is about; it's not about me making a batch of scones.

Brian loving himself sick.

The BRW Entertainers List has recently been released, and the biggest surprise to me is that we have entertainers in Australia that don't have to supplement their income through waitressing jobs or working as adult entertainment to keep a mansion over their heads.  Despite the fact that man holds dominion over all animals, at the number one spot, raking in $60 million big ones in 2010-11, are a bunch of dinosaurs.

Global Creatures, the production company who brought us Walking with Dinosaurs - The Arena Spectacular,  have one of the those pretentious websites that is completely confusing and incomprehensible. It is designed like that because they are important artists, you know. If everybody could understand and navigate their website, and have an insight into the intricacies of their complex artisitic brains, they wouldn't be talented artists any more, they'd just be nerdy kids into animatronics who got lucky.

Felipe is the company's Inflatables Expert, which can't get him many dates. Or maybe it gets him a lot of dates; who knows the ways of artists.  Inflatable dinosaurs, you say? Yeah, okay, that totally doesn't need any further explanation.  How big can the kinky market for inflatable dinosaurs really be?  Poor Felipe probably has to constantly explain himself at arty tete-e-tetes to cretins who can't get their minds out of the gutter.

I imagine Felipe's job is a bit like a paleontologist; only really necessary when a movie director needs someone to explain dinosaurs.

We Aussies like to blow our own trumpet on the world stage when it comes to, well, pretty much everything.  Like when an actress wins an academy award and the dress designer's sister works in the factory where they made the fabric and knows someone there who is Australian - AUSTRALIAN! - and all the major networks in the country run with it as breaking news.  It's all just a little embarassing.

The actresses of the world, like our Naomi Watts (Number 3) and Nicole Kidman (4) must be pretty pissed about being trumped by a bunch of extinct prehistoric creatures for the honour of being the most entertaining.  Youth is king in the world of celebrity, and dinosaurs have to be only thirty years old, if not younger.  So by this logic, Naomi and Nic are older than dinosaurs.  They must be full of resentful bile at the moment.

I wonder if the Walking with Dinosaurs dinosaurs are as excessively preoccuped with themselves as their fellow actors, and spend their off duty hours falling in love with their own reflection.  I guess if anyone has caught them dry humping a mirror we'd know we had ourselves a narcissistic T-Rex.

Dinosaurs don't have to worry about keeping themselves beautiful for the papparazzi either.  Their days of botox shots and endless pampering went out the window a few billions years ago.  Maybe they can get a skincare commercial, like Kate Moss; because they're worth it.  Who would notice the difference?

The Red Queen's new Slipper

Once upon a time there was a Speaker of the House of Reps in Canberra called Peter Slipper.  The Slipper spent years on the right foot, but as a rather overstuffed novelty version of house shoes that annoys the crap out of anyone who wears them, he was never the right fit in a party full of sturdy birkenstocks and scuffy, old but reliable mocassins, and he was rather softer and more lightweight compared to the other types in the Howard Collection.

Alas, one fateful day, Slipper got booted out of the car window by the other right footers, the Liberal Nationals, which can explain at least one of the those random shoes you see on the side of the road.  The Nats dumped their Slipper due to his alleged overuse of parliamentary entitlements and his crankypants attacks on the party, so it was a fairly mutual clothing disposal.  

The lone Slipper spent a few years as an independent piece of footwear, which meant he served no useful purpose and spent his time reading important parliamentary papers like House and Garden, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, occasionally crossing the floor, and just generally scuffing up the place as best he could.  Alas, no-one likes an odd shoe, so he mostly stayed in the cupboard until someone was desperate enough to drag him out of there.  

Finally, one day this year, the Red Queen looked to the Slipper as a means of support for her burgeoning foot problems.  She already had a bunch of silly, vibrant and colourful scuffs in the Gillard Collection, but most had no sole and were inflexible as shit.  She also had an assortment of ugg boots, but they were all sheepish on the inside and god knows what on the outside.  Fortunately for the Red Queen, the Slipper had no issue walking across the floor, and ended up on her left foot.

As luck would have it, the Red Queen had no problem airing her slippers in public. While showing off the Slipper may be seen as an act of passive aggression or even rebellion against the electorate who stupidly voted her into power, it may also be a statement that the wearer holds no interest in any person who disapproves of anything she does while in power.

The newest addition to the Red Queen's Collection, the Slipper, is just as thick as the other wannabe socks, and fortunately he has a set of rubber grips along his soles which should provide some traction.  He's gonna need it.

Although, buyer beware for the Red Queen too, as the Slipper's renown lack of support can result in the foot rolling inward - occasionally crossing over to the other side - with can result in serious health problems and perhaps motions of lost confidence in the Gillard Collection.


It's quite clear that I have nothing to blog about anymore.

Scarecrow creator

I recently met my second fave author, Matthew Reilly, when he came to Canberra for a book signing to promote his new novel, Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves.  Serial killer thriller writer Patricia Cornwell, author of the Kay Scarpetta series, is my number one, but number two is pretty good, given that I don't particularly care for Reilly's action-adventure-thriller genre.

To be honest, I have been avoiding his books for years.  I admit I have been swayed at times by the rave reviews, but not enough to get me to pick one up and read it; although curiousity kept them on my radar.

Alas, a few months ago, I found myself a little bored one Saturday afternoon, so after years of saying NO THANKS to his crazy town works of fiction, I picked up Ice Station, Reilly's first novel in the Scarecrow series, and didn't really put it down until I got to the other end.

The bastard hooked me in right from the get go, and before I knew it, I had read my first completely improbable, multi-plot, non-stop-action roller coaster thriller ride of a narrative.  It was a brilliant read.  Loved every second of it.  Was rabbiting on about it for weeks.  This guy could write about paint drying on a wall and turn it into an exciting, unputdownable thriller.

The hero of the Scarecrow series, Captain Shane Scholfield, or Scarecrow - his Marine call sign - is relentlessly subjected to the vicissitudes of commando life. One minute he is standing around looking splendid in his flash-free ray bans, the next minute he is fleeing from a mutant, overgrown elephant seal the size of Sydney's Centrepoint Tower or a rogue British SAS commando that suffers from numerous and varied psychological and personality disorders. 

In the ensuing month, following Ice Station, I read all of the Scarecrow series and all of the Jack West Jr series, which meant I spent a couple of weeks dreaming and hallucinating of kick-arse commando units, maghooks, the arctic, antarctic ice shelves, the freakishly indestructable halicarnassus, mutant nuclear radiation-generated elephant seals, and claustrophobic, health-hazardous Egyptian tomb deathtraps.  Thanks a bunch, Matthew Reilly.

The best thing about Reilly's novels is that he doesn't interrupt the action and jabber on with detailed descriptions of how the wind stirred the branches of the damned trees, et cetera, or boring, space-filling conversations between heroes and villians.  He keeps the momentum going for the whole book.  A full-on proper action-adventure thriller.  His novels need to be made into movies; I just hope Hollywood doesn't completely ruin them with their cheesy, trashy, sleazy ways.