Alasdair Watson

Ninth Art is one year old today. (Well, actually, we turned one year old on the 1st of May, but we’ve just entered our 53rd straight week of publishing.) We’ve had new material every Monday and Friday without fail for a year. Most of the credit for this belongs with Andrew, who co-ordinates everything, and who works like a mad bastard to make sure we have all the content we need. He and Antony are the ones that actually have to do stuff without fail every week – I just have to make sure that their mad whims can be catered to. But we’ve made it. A full year publishing twice weekly, without a break.

World largely unchanged. May lapse back into coma, simply because I have nothing better to do. It’s Friday night. I am not yet sufficiently alive to want to go out and party, but I’d quite like to do something. But there’s fuck all on at the cinema, and I can’t think of anything interesting to do, or indeed, anyone l know likely to be at a lose end. And I can’t very well resort to ringing people up with a demand to be entertained, can I?

Can I?

Between the whiskey, the cold and the exhaustion, I’m about ready to die. I’ve just been dumping out the last of the ideas that occured to me while recording the latest spate of Triple A articles for Ninth Art, and I’m so glad I have the next few days off work.

Coma happens now.

The sky’s fading from blue to pink, here. I’m drinking some seriously evil coffee (the condensed dregs of what was left in the office pot – lots of caffeine, but tastes stale as fuck), listen to Nick Cave scream out “Loverman” at absurd volume and working late on 9A – writing the first stage of the long-overdue overhaul of our image upload process, while also doing my semi-regular check for sites that link to us, jsut to gauge how we’re doing. Favourite comment beside the link so far is from here: “Ninth Art is to be trusted”. If we go for a T-shirt at any point, that should be the slogan.

I’m in the office. I have been here since before eleven on Saturday morning.

But at least the e-mail to blog feature works. Slowly, and late, but it works.

Utilikilts. God help me, I’m actually tempted to buy one. I fear my mind may be going.

This is really beginning to irritate me. I’ve got the rough re-plot of 2 BEAT SIDEWAYS done. I know the character arcs, I’m happy with the pacing and all the remains to do is write the pitch. I just can’t seem to get it to hang right. There’s no punch to the opening, and I can’t hit the right notes – I think I’m going to have to cut a key element out. It’s too big to make it just one part of a larger story, and trying to play it down just doesn’t sit right. But if I lose it, the first couple of issues fall over and die. Shit.

Tonight I shall hit my brain with coffee and whiskey, and see where it gets me.

So, the damn thing doesn’t want to work. I’ll fix it later in the day, but for now, thanks to Fiona who pointed out that it wasn’t working right. So, instead of buying me gifts, you lot can send her your finest meats and cheeses (or if it’s easier, just buy something from her wish list) instead.

I do not like this Things Other People accomplished website. It is depressing.

Regular readers will be familiar with my fascination with Gene Ray, the man behind the Time Cube. I am currently listening to a weird MP3 of some of the time cube material read via a computer speech synthesiser and set to a chilled beat. With added copacabana strangeness.