Alasdair Watson

Well, that’s the weekend over, but I don’t care, because I’ve got the week off work. Huzzah! Plans include a trip to the Tower of London at some point, to see the ravens (Marysia and Andrew are completely unimpressed by prospect of Ravens, or at least, not impressed enough to pay the entrance fee. I live with philistines…) but since I haven’t had a break since last Christmas, I’m mostly just going to laze about not do very much.

In other news, it’s Fin and I have been dating for a year and day now. Not entirely sure how that happened, as it only seems like yesterday that we were watching Rififi and eating at Ed’s on our first date. To celebrate, we went to see The Woman In Black at the Fortune Theatre, and then out for dinner at a fairly posh restaurant in Covent Garden – I can safely say I’ve never eaten anywhere that posh before, and while I can’t afford to do it every time, I think it was well worth it – the food was uniformly excellent and the service fantastic, but the to-die-for chocolate souffle I had for dessert would have justified it on it’s own.

Right. Well, I’m off to make a drink and think about reading for a bit.

Art – Alan Moore and Tim Perkins
Whistling Past The Graveyard – Tom Waits
All Tomorrow’s Parties – The Velvet Underground and Nico
Train Tracks – Jason Webely
Salty Dog – Flogging Molly
One Tree Hill – U2
No More Shall We Part – Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

asks:

AS LEADER OF THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

What will your official title be?
Bob.

Who will be by your side?
Oh, anyone that sounds like fun at the time.

How will those who serve you be rewarded?
There will be special shiny badges. Not unlike the ones found in McDonalds, now I think of it.

How will you punish those who try to stand in your way?
I will make them work in McDonalds.

What monument will you build to your own greatness?
There will be a small, tasteful, statue of me in every household. People will be encourgaed to leave non-biodegradeable offerings at its feet. Once a month, someone will come round a collect the offerings, and bring the more interesting ones to me. Failure to supply interesting offerings will be noticed…

WHEN THE REVOLUTION COMES

Who will be first up against the wall?
People who are opposed to the welfare state, and people who start sentences with phrases like “But why should I be expected to…”

Who will be next up against the wall if they don’t mend their ways?
People who abuse the welfare state.

What will be made compulsory?
Lizards. Everyone must have a pet lizard. Size to be determined by owner…

What will be banned?
Kittens and puppies.

What music will play to herald the dawning of the new era?
Prince Charming – Adam and the Ants

So, still playing with the new toys. I’ll get bored of them in a week or two, I’m sure, but for now, there’s a new photo that I really like on the photolog, and I’ve updated the WAP channel (http://tagtag.com/tawk) for the second time in two days. Do not expect this rate to keep up, even if I don’t become so bored that I neglect it entirely. In the event that there’s someone out there what wants to hear me witter about London who doesn’t have, or care to use a WAP phone, then you can just visit TagTag.com‘s frontpage, where you’ll find a form that’ll pop-up a faked WAP display in your browse, allowing you to read any WAP site you care to name. Including mine, obviously.

So, like I said, I got a new phone the other day (if I should have your number, mail it – I lost all my old numbers when I lost my old phone). It’s got exciting new phone technologies like WAP built in. Actually, my old one had WAP, too, but it wasn’t something I ever bothered to learn about. But since this one is full-colour sexy, I thought I’d have a bit of a play, you know?

Of course, being me, this doesn’t mean that I’m just browsing WAP. It means I’m looking at setting up my very own WAP site. Tagtag.com will do me for now, until I get my arse sufficiently in gear to write and host my own WAP site, which may well be never.

So I was wondering what to do with it, so I started thinking about WAP. It’s a transitory medium – not just in that it’s bound to be replaced as phone tech improves, but in that it’s something to use in transit. Something to look at on the bus – accessing it isn’t tied to location. So, naturally, I wanted to do something about a geography, and being me, it’s going to be London. I thought I’d use it for feeder material on TAKE A WALK. Something between the note-taking and the final words.

If you point a WAP browser at http://tagtag.com/tawk (see how kind I am? Piece of piss to type in on a phone keypad) you’ll find “Innaugural” the first entry about London. It’s not all going to be history – there’ll be bits about things I see, places I go and modern London in general, but I thought I’d start at the beginning, as it were.

On a related note, I was looking at tagtag.com’s content directory. 4000 adult wap sites? How? Why? I mean, you can fit maybe 50 owrds on screen at a time, and I really don’t see porn looking good in black on grey-green. Jesus…

It’s been a short week, but by christ, it needs to be over, right damn now. I got in the morning to dicover that I’d lost some files I was working on, thanks to the powercut. My own stupid fault – I thought I’d saved them before I left the office, but evidently, I hadn’t, so I’ve worked all morning just to get back to where I was when I left the office yesterday.

I’m completely shattered, too. Feel like rubbish. Late night on Wednesday, then a late-ish night last night, followed by a seriously disturbed night’s sleep – I don’t think I got a continuous hour’s kip through the night. My guts have been churning all morning. Don’t know why, as I didn’t really have all that much to drink last night, and I don’t have any other hangover symptoms.

In other news, I got a mobile that’ll take pictures. Yeah, yet another new toy. So, my website now has a photolog. As and when I’ve actually taken three photo’s, there’ll always be the latest three there. Otherwise, you’ll be able to find them at alasdairw.textamerica.com, if you really must look through anything older that a few days.

Now, if I was feeling madly cunning, I’d alter my blog-to-LJ script to automatically note it when there was a new photo on my photo log…

So, I ran across this site today. It’s a Russian site that offers a paid-for MP3 download service. Apparently, record labels/copyright management agencies are much more willing to reach deals with with on-line music firms in Russia, and they’ve got an impressive catalogue of material there. Much like with emusic, I’m looking at them thinking “there has to be a catch”. The deal’s not as good as emusic’s but I’ve signed up for a gig’s worth of data, mostly because I wanted one track that I can’t get anywhere else, but I thought I’d just see if anyone knows anything about the legality of it before I go hunting for other stuff on the site, and hoover down a shitload of MP3s that aren’t as legal as I thought…

My brain has been kicking an idea around for a while now. It is not an idea I like one little bit, and I can’t let go of it, and I’m starting to get massively, massively fucked off with it. The idea is this: write a novel.

This is a shit idea. I don’t do long prose, because I’m shit at it. But I have reached the point, after some 18 months of kicking it, where I am forced to concede that if ever I am to do something with MARLOWE it won’t be a comic (or at least, not any kind of mini-series of the sort one could pitch as a previously unpublished writer). But I don’t want to sit on it. So I need to make it into something else. Something where I can place different demands on the thing, and make it another sort of beast, while still exploring the themes I want to. And the only form I can find that would make it something fit to see the light of day is to write it as a novel.

This doesn’t just suck because I don’t want to write a novel, by the way. This sucks because it means a totally different approach, a complete re-thinking, and, most crucially, it means doing a fucksight more research than I needed to for the comic. My head has Betrayed me. I must kill it. Or at least talk myself out of writing a novel.

Yes, I’ve got consumption again. All I need is to start noncing about in a big frilly shirt writing poetry and getting into fights, and they’ll be mistaking me for a romantic poet. So, in the spirit of cultural critique:

“Frontline” by The Newcranes. Guitar and accordion drive Midlands crustyrock from the early Nineties. Nostalgia exercise. Levellers-esque, eaither with a greater sense of whimsy or just dodgy songwriting. “This love was made in heaven/This love was so divine/But now instead of sweet white wine/It tastes like turpentine”.

“Gravelands” by The King. Belfast-born Elvis impersonator doing covers of classic rock tracks in the style of, well, Elvis. Annyoingly, I see that I apear to have an older version. With less tracks. And it cost more. Arses. But it’s ace, so that’s ok.

24, Series 1 & 2. Already seen series 1. Hadn’t seen Series 2, and am coming up on halfway through it now. And getting slightly tired of the plot twists as two minutes two the hour. So far, I think there have been two episiodes that haven’t had them, and that’s just because they’ve managed to set up a character’s life being in peril about ten-fifteen minutes earlier, and keep them in that state for the rest of the episode. Also, am completely failing to give a fuck about the sub-plot with Kim. Can we just write her out of the next one, please?

The Man Who Sued God. Adequate Billy Connoly vehicle, weighed down by gross sentimentality in places. Enough good moments to mean that I didn’t feel I wasted my fiver, but one that could easily wait for video.

Pirates of The Carribean. Decided to see it again. Enjoyed it just as much the second time around.

New coffee grinder. Finally bought a burr grinder, for the making of better coffee. I fully endorse this product and/or service. Now I just need a decent espresso machine…

I’ve lost my mobile. If you’ve been trying to get hold of me on it since Saturday, that’s why you’ve been failing. I should be sorting out a new mobile in the next week or so, but until then, e-mail’s your best bet, or my home phone, if you’ve got that.