Alasdair Watson

God, but I would commit murder for a cigarette right now. In one week, I will have been quit for a year, and I have no fucking intention of re-starting now. But there’s something in the air tonight. Got home too late to get to the gym with enough time to do anything useful, so I decided to take a walk. I found myself wandering the backstreets of Tooting, Tom Waits “Mule Variations” on the headphones, absolutely dying for a smoke.

And then it started to piss it down, fittingly. So I stamped back home, all wet leather and drowned rat, and am drinking a dose of whiskey in a fruitless attempt to take the edge of this craving.

This has happened quite a bit in the last few weeks. I make jokes about being willing to tear someone’s arm off for a tab, but most of the time, I’m pretty good, to be honest. But just this last fortnight?

I’ve done a pretty good job of re-wiring myself over the last year. I am Healthy, now. But there’s part of me that still smokes, in my head.

Most people seem to have a pretty concrete image of me. There is, apparently just something about me that people can see a base state in. For example: even my friends who say I would look better with short hair, admit (for the most part) that I wouldn’t look like me with short hair. This extends to my personality, as well, where I am, I’m told, either distressingly easy to read, or totally impossible to figure out. There’s just something I project – “an energy about me” as one friend puts it. Everyone does it, I’m sure, but a few people have been commenting on it to me in the last month or two.

But nights like tonight make me wonder if this base me, the one that my friends form a picture of in their heads, smokes.

Because I’m pretty sure the bastard does.

Dammit. So much for getting a load of work done this week. I’m at my parents tomorrow, and I’ve got the 2000AD Birthday Bash on Thursday. Fucksticks. Wtih any luck, I’ll be out of here in half an hour or so, and home by 9:30, so I should be able to get a bit of work done tonight, but it’s still pretty pitiful…

Site Update: Teaser information for the forthcoming SIX STRINGS by myself and Neil Evans now available in the sidebar link, replacing the now-dead Electricana project.

Because I think “what I did at the weekend” posts are pretty fucking dull. But I had an absolutely cracking weekend. So I’m writing about it, as much to justify having done no work at all over the weekend as anything else. Booked in to get a tattoo (from Miles at Into You) in March, then went to see Ocean’s Eleven with Lyssa before having to rush off to Camden to make an eejit of myself on a dancefloor all night. And entirely fabulous Saturday all round.

Sunday was quieter, and started later. Spent the afternoon watching Farscape with Andrew and David (at some point I must get around to writing an essay about that show…) and then we went for Italian and to see Monsters Inc. Might write a couple of short reviews for the films at some point.

But the downside to this is that I absolutely must get a load of work done this week. I’ve got a pitch to finish, and a series to re-plot, as well as a column to write, a code re-write to complete, and I’d like to get some more work done on Thoughtbombs, before I send out my call for contributors.

pantsonhead.com. My co-workers run this site. The gallery is often traumatic. Some of the dowloads are kinda nifty. The reason I’m writing this is that I’ve just been looking at it, and found, at the bottom of the page the following line: “Patience is wasted on the incompetent.”

I laughed.

I use a little CSS on this page – mostly to control the font faces without long tags. But I’ve been reading these CSS tutorials, and I’m seriously considering switching to a CSS based layout system, rather than my current tables based one. At the very least, the site I’m currently developing is almost certain to be CSS-based. Hmmm…

Bleed Music is back. Normally, I don’t give a fuck about music journalism, but this is free, and written by many people who you normally have to pay for. Many of them are funny.

In particular, I direct your attention to this column, written by the delightful Brem X Jones, known to his friends as Mr Kieron Gillen, who is also known as Minister Drill-Cock among the freaks over at Grammarporn.

The boy ain’t right. Go read.

Yeah, I know. Awful. I was stuck for a title. Another Alan Moore interview. As usual, there’s something in there worth examining. In this case, it’s the question of “Why magic?” The answer, according to Alan:

“I’ve always sympathised with Brian Eno’s theory, that if you were a mechanic you’d want to know what to look for under the hood if the car seized up. I’m dependent on writing for a living, so really it’s to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you’re going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.”

I note with interest (via Script Sales) that Philip Pullman’s trilogy has been optioned. Personally, I think the comparisons it has had with Harry Potter have hindered it – it’s about a child in a fantastic world, but it’s darker and smarter, with bigger and more complex themes that Potter, where the emphasis is firmply on wonder and fun, more classic fairytale escapism. By the sound of it, the deal is to adapt the trilogy into one film (which should actually be pretty workable), and I’ll be watching to see the direction they take with it…

At some point this year, I am planning to get a tattoo. When I turned 18, I promised myself that if I still wanted one at 25, I’d get one. I still want one. This year feels like a good one to fix something in my flesh that’s symbolic of my life at this point. So, I’ve been trawling symbols.com digging up reference material. Mind you, I think I may have the tattoo henna’d on first – I’m not about to have something magically charged (as I’m currently planning( put into my flesh without some form of trial period.