Alasdair Watson

I want to write. It’s nearly 2 am, I’ve got a headful of static, sitting here with the window open, enjoying the chill, and I’m trying to further in on the first of these monologues, and I just can’t hear it. It’s like it’s being mumbled on the edge of my hearing. A secret that she doesn’t want to give up. I’m on the verge of starting over, listening for the opening sentences again, and letting it go somewhere new…

This is the really annoying bit about writing, you know? Where you’ve got the ideas, and you know where you’re going, and the words just sit up there, dug in behind your eyes and refusing to budge.

Black Ink is back, with a new, CSS-driven look. I confess, it’s a template I lifted and modified, but one step at a time, eh? I’m probably going to tinker further with it later in the year, as I get to grips with using CSS for layout (rather than just for text) a bit better. I’ve already got a few ideas for where I want to take it, but as I say, that’s for later. Got to finish 9A first…

A thought occured to me the other day, about the ending of the LOTR film trilogy. If, as is rumoured, the scouring of the Shire has been cut (not at all unreasonable – it’s a nice coda, but it’s not going to work very well for a cinema audience) and the ending of Frodo and Sam’s part of the story is at Mount Doom (and any big happy reunion at the end if there is one, obviously), then I wonder if Jackson will leave Mount Doom unaltered? I wonder if he can? The end at Mount Doom isn’t heroic or redemptive for any of the protagonists – the only who comes out of it looking half decent is Sam, by virtue of well, not doing very much.

The obvious thing to do is make the ending more redemptive for Smeagol, but given the lovely bit of wrong-footing Jackson pulled off in the Two Towers in regard to Smeagol/Gollum I wonder if he’s aiming at that or not. I mean, thinking about it, the end of The Two Towers could be to make an eventual redeption all the more powerful, but I tend to think that’s it’s just staying true to the book, while working in the film’s alteration of Gollum/Smeagol into a split personality affair. We’ll see.

Reading the new Sequential Tart, I discover that Kady Mae has stumbled onto the truth…

Black-Ink.org will be a bit eratic over the next few days. There’s a very slim chance it won’t come back at all, if someone’s been waiting to pounce on the domain name – my hosting runs out, and the domain expires tomorrow, and since I want to move it anyway, I’m just going to buy it again with the new hosts. Potentially foolish, I know, but I’m going to give it a go. So if you find mail sent to me bouncing, that’s why.

2002 has been a shitty year for lots of people I know, myself included. So let’s get it kicked out the door tonight, and get on with a better 2003. I lost most of the last half of 2002 to the Essex debacle, and then gave myself December off to just let the stress slip away. So now it’s back to work. I’ve probably blown things on Marlowe for the immediate future, I’m forced to admit – a six month lapse does not look good to an editor (doesn’t mean I won’t try my hand, but I’m not optiimistic), but I’ve got other things to be doing now – Take A Walk With Me In August, a series of Monologues around and through London, is the next job – I want to try and get at least something half credible ready for Bristol – a minicomic or two will do, and it’s half writing itself already, so it seems feasible.

Other than those two: the 9A redesign is January and February – I’d like it to be faster, but between moving house, starting a new job, and a week in Edinburgh, it just doesn’t seem likely. If I can have that and enough material for Sean to make a start on Take A Walk done by the 28th of Feb, I’m going to be a happy man.

Here’s to 2003, folks.

It’s slow and cranky, but we’ve got boradband back, and an in-house network up and running. Result!

So, naturally, I’m off to Northern Ireland tomorrow. I’ll be sporadically in touch via e-mail, but only for short mails, as it’s on the Visor. Hope you all enjoy your festive season.

After all, I’ve just spent more on a single bottle of booze than I ever have in my life. No, it wasn’t the ten thousand pound bottle of Glenfiddich (one day…), but I have just bought a bottle of the Bushmills 21-year old that I’ve been after for the last couple of years. Assuming, of course, that the website wasn’t lying about them having it in stock…

So I should feel guilty. But somehow, I don’t. I’ll probably feel guilty when I’ve drunk it all, because no matter how slowly I drink it, I’ll still feel like I’ve rushed it. It’s the same logic that has lead me to have a bottle of Bushmills 12 (only available at the distillery shop, and very lovely indeed) unopened all year. My parents bought me a personalised bottle of it as a gift last Christmas, and somehow, there hasn’t been an occaision special enough to justiy opening it all year, this despite the fact that I’ve got through three bottles of whiskey that cost more than the 12…

Apart from an enourmous quantity of swearwords, that is. See, I’m pro-choice. I find it very hard to sympathise with the pro-life view. I mean, the pro-choice lobby isn’t forcing anyone to have abortions, and I think it’s hugely immoral, not to say just plain rude to try and prevent someone from having one.

But at least when an individual person is pro-life, well, it’s just one person, I don’t agree with them, but I know many decent and extremely clever people with whom I disagree on a wide range of issues, including this one. But when a state is pro-life I get incandescent. This is scummy, disgusting behaviour of the first water. It’s fucking religious is what it is. And I disapprove of churches being allowed to set any sort of political agenda, because it’s patently obvious to even a half-bright three year old that they’re not fit to work out a fucking moral agenda, never mind a political one.

Attention Americans: Until you depose your president by armed revolution, and chase him through streets in a mob baying for his blood and the blood of his administration and all their friends and family, finishing by scourging them all to death with rusty barbed wire, the rest of the world will refuse to take you seriously as a sentient people.