Itchy Trigger Finger
"I used to long for time alone. I used to long for a place of my own, and I'm losing faith in everything. I'm lost, so lost. I'm lost at sea, you'll see."
I should be in bed. I have to be up at quarter past five in the morning to go to Barnet and shoot about a million barcodes with a gun that bleeps. There are many things I would rather be doing - like, say, taking a cheese grater to my testicles - but work is work, and my rota says 'stock take'.
Today was full of glorious nothing. I got up at about eleven and vegetated on the couch for a while before taking a bath and finishing The Big Blind, the debut novel from Ray Banks, whom you can find linked from this very page. Without wishing to appear massively biased towards Senor Banquitez, a gentleman I have been acquainted with for some years, he does appear to have written a sinister little bastard of a book that will grab you firmly by the scruff of the neck and squeeze. Hard. Having taken this all-too-brief tour through the more squalid parts of both Manchester and the heads of some really unpleasant people, I have no hesitation in issuing a hearty recommendation. The characters that inhabit The Big Blind won't grab your sympathy, but they'll have your attention until the tale is told. And empathy? Well, you'd never admit to it, would you?
Next up was weird Australian sci-fi/horror/comedy flick Undead. With a tip of the hat to the early efforts of Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson, the brothers Spierig have concocted a tale that centers around a beauty queen, a nutcase, two cops (one a psycho, the other terrified), and a pilot with his pregnant girlfriend in tow. This strange group find themselves holed up in an old house when a meteor shower turns the whole town into zombies. Deciding to fight their way out, they find the undead are the least of their worries, as a group of mysterious hooded aliens start abducting the locals.
Not a bad movie, but not a particularly good one either, Undead is a classic example of a film that doesn't know what it wants to be. While the make-up, special effects, and basic story are all strong, the comedy elements of the movie are painfully unfunny at times. Playing it for laughs is all well and good, but what the Spierigs have essentially done here is undermined what could have been a quirky sci-fi film with a lot of laughs that didn't come from forced lines or poor characters. The film is still a fairly enjoyable romp, and it makes a lot more sense than some of the reviews I've read suggest, but I think these guys can and will do better. I'll be interested to see their next film.
After that, I watched Office Space and The Usual Suspects. I'm pretty sure most of you will have seen both of those already, so I'll leave the reviews by the wayside. If you haven't, well, you should.
And here I am. I woke up this morning knowing I had an empty day, but with absolutely no inclination to sit down at the keyboard and do some work. I've struggled over the weird psychic hurdle that was preventing me from writing, but I'm still finding it difficult to motivate myself sometimes. My life is pretty much chaos right now, and it's hard to focus on a task as daunting as writing a novel. However things pan out, I know that wherever I am six months from now, it's looking less and less likely to be here. I'll be able to write this thing wherever I am, but these stories have very strong ties to the last couple of years, and I don't want to lose sight of that before I'm finished. A lot has changed and a lot more is changing, but I want to show what I see, not pick up the pieces of things that happened once.
Right on cue, it starts raining. The weather is getting warmer, and these April showers remind me of last summer's storms and all the baggage I carried through them. More and more lately, I find myself wondering if the light I see at the end of the tunnel will ever become a reality. Someday soon I'll be waking up in a new place surrounded by new people. I wonder if I'll feel the same, if I'll still have these headaches that tell me when the sky's getting ready to burst, if a window open on a wet spring night will always make me crave a cigarette.
I could sit here and speculate until dawn, and I still won't know anything until it's no longer the future. I dream, though. All the time I dream. I like the Darkened Room, and I owe it plenty, but it's time to move on. Nobody should be alone so often for so long.
Anyhow, the bleeping gun awaits my itchy trigger finger, so I'd better get myself off to bed before I'm left with no time to sleep at all. Tomorrow is another step on a road that's getting shorter all the time. If that isn't an optimistic thought, I don't know what is.
I should be in bed. I have to be up at quarter past five in the morning to go to Barnet and shoot about a million barcodes with a gun that bleeps. There are many things I would rather be doing - like, say, taking a cheese grater to my testicles - but work is work, and my rota says 'stock take'.
Today was full of glorious nothing. I got up at about eleven and vegetated on the couch for a while before taking a bath and finishing The Big Blind, the debut novel from Ray Banks, whom you can find linked from this very page. Without wishing to appear massively biased towards Senor Banquitez, a gentleman I have been acquainted with for some years, he does appear to have written a sinister little bastard of a book that will grab you firmly by the scruff of the neck and squeeze. Hard. Having taken this all-too-brief tour through the more squalid parts of both Manchester and the heads of some really unpleasant people, I have no hesitation in issuing a hearty recommendation. The characters that inhabit The Big Blind won't grab your sympathy, but they'll have your attention until the tale is told. And empathy? Well, you'd never admit to it, would you?
Next up was weird Australian sci-fi/horror/comedy flick Undead. With a tip of the hat to the early efforts of Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson, the brothers Spierig have concocted a tale that centers around a beauty queen, a nutcase, two cops (one a psycho, the other terrified), and a pilot with his pregnant girlfriend in tow. This strange group find themselves holed up in an old house when a meteor shower turns the whole town into zombies. Deciding to fight their way out, they find the undead are the least of their worries, as a group of mysterious hooded aliens start abducting the locals.
Not a bad movie, but not a particularly good one either, Undead is a classic example of a film that doesn't know what it wants to be. While the make-up, special effects, and basic story are all strong, the comedy elements of the movie are painfully unfunny at times. Playing it for laughs is all well and good, but what the Spierigs have essentially done here is undermined what could have been a quirky sci-fi film with a lot of laughs that didn't come from forced lines or poor characters. The film is still a fairly enjoyable romp, and it makes a lot more sense than some of the reviews I've read suggest, but I think these guys can and will do better. I'll be interested to see their next film.
After that, I watched Office Space and The Usual Suspects. I'm pretty sure most of you will have seen both of those already, so I'll leave the reviews by the wayside. If you haven't, well, you should.
And here I am. I woke up this morning knowing I had an empty day, but with absolutely no inclination to sit down at the keyboard and do some work. I've struggled over the weird psychic hurdle that was preventing me from writing, but I'm still finding it difficult to motivate myself sometimes. My life is pretty much chaos right now, and it's hard to focus on a task as daunting as writing a novel. However things pan out, I know that wherever I am six months from now, it's looking less and less likely to be here. I'll be able to write this thing wherever I am, but these stories have very strong ties to the last couple of years, and I don't want to lose sight of that before I'm finished. A lot has changed and a lot more is changing, but I want to show what I see, not pick up the pieces of things that happened once.
Right on cue, it starts raining. The weather is getting warmer, and these April showers remind me of last summer's storms and all the baggage I carried through them. More and more lately, I find myself wondering if the light I see at the end of the tunnel will ever become a reality. Someday soon I'll be waking up in a new place surrounded by new people. I wonder if I'll feel the same, if I'll still have these headaches that tell me when the sky's getting ready to burst, if a window open on a wet spring night will always make me crave a cigarette.
I could sit here and speculate until dawn, and I still won't know anything until it's no longer the future. I dream, though. All the time I dream. I like the Darkened Room, and I owe it plenty, but it's time to move on. Nobody should be alone so often for so long.
Anyhow, the bleeping gun awaits my itchy trigger finger, so I'd better get myself off to bed before I'm left with no time to sleep at all. Tomorrow is another step on a road that's getting shorter all the time. If that isn't an optimistic thought, I don't know what is.
posted by Michael at 9:26 PM
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