Completely my idea

Writing - Is my latest hobby (Not for the past few days I hear you shout... You've forgotten all about your faithful daily readers haven't you, you horrible, horrible, man).

Yeah, sorry about that, I got a bit caught up in the old paying work thing... Won't let it happen again... Actually, thinking about it, I probably will, all things considered - Lot of meetings coming up in the next few weeks.  The Blog might go all sporadic, I apologise in advance, and arrears too probably, but I'll do that later.

Anyway, writing, or at least popular writing, was once described (by me) as a collection of ideas you've stolen from various better writers, changed just enough so that they can't sue you, and glued together in a slightly different order.

I mean, the chances of any one person having a completely original idea - Something you can't say 'Isn't that a bit like...' or 'Doesn't that remind you of that bit in...' is like, a bajillion to one.  I don't mean it doesn't happen, but it certainly doesn't happen very often.  I freely admit, and have stated publicly, on the Blog, that I sometimes steal ideas from successful authors and pass them off as my own.

Yes, this makes me a bad person, but I'm also good looking and funny, so you're probably going to let me off eventually.

It's difficult not to really - The book I'm writing, the agglomeration and expansion of my previously Blogged Edward Teach stories (See, I even stole that name!) is just a rehash of old tropes.  I mean, just look:

• Airships - Jules Verne et al.
• Ion weapons - The Empire Strikes Back.
• Powered Armour - Robert Heinlein's Starship Toopers. (The book and cartoon, not the films)
• Sentient Robots going a bit nuts - The Terminator series.
• Fantasy Feudality: Anything featuring Elric by Michael Moorcock.
• Young girl mentored by unsuitable older man - And, actually, vast swathes of the story itself: Charles Portis' True Grit.

And, as late night Rock 'n' Roll CD complilation adverts might say, 'And the list goes on'.  Have I not actually got an original thought in my head?  Well, plainly not - Apart from the eccentric 'let's all rub aardvark fat all over ourselves, dress up like herring and go to the zoo and annoy the sealions.' kinda stuff, but you couldn't do a whole book like that though - If I did, people would only say I was stealing from the stylistic musings of the acknowledged king of anapestic tetrameter, Theo Geisel.

But it's not just me, you look closely enough at any film, or book or what-have-you and you'll see themes that you've experienced elsewhere.  Admittedly, the further you go back, the more difficult it is to find them, but they're there.  Even the religious texts of the ancient religions nicked ideas from existing, more ancient, texts - S'true, do some research, it'll save you going out in this awful sunshine thing that everyone keeps raving on about.

We can trace the plagiarism back even further, Remember our old friend Urk? One of his ancestors once probably visited a cave belonging to one of his friends and saw a story painted on the wall that said 'Went to woods, fought a Arctodus Simus, kicked it's ass, went home, made a nice necklace'.  When he goes home he grabs the finger-paints and immediately draws on the wall 'Went up into the mountains, fought an entire family of Arctodus Simus, kicked their multiple asses, went home, made two necklaces and an attractive pair of bearskin flip-flops'.

Totally copied the story, but made it better - As long as he never invites that friend to his house, then Bob's your heavily brow-ridged Mother's Brother.

So, I guess I'm fairly safe, it seems that the few artists that I've blatantly nicked ideas off are either dead or in their 70's and I can run faster than both of those types of people, just about.

When the map was pink

So, tell me this cyberspace... Where does being a proud member of your country end and being a racist Nazi begin?

(I've used the word, Nazi, quite a lot recently haven't I? Loads of times yesterday, about flying disks and suchlike... Great word, so many possible uses - Did you know it's a contraction of 'Nationalsozialismus' or the National Socialist Party? That sounds much more fluffy doesn't it, something you could really get behind?)

Anyway, back to the question in hand, I'm an anachronistic kind of guy, I like hats, I wear a beard and sideburns completely unironically, I wear silk waistcoats and regularly use a pocketwatch... You'd be quite within your rights to think that I live in the past.

In fact, you'd probably be right. Why do I do this? Well, it's obviously because the past was a better place. There was clean air and long summer days playing in the woods, you could make a bow and arrow and your Mum knew how to make jam. It wasn't all great obviously, there was slavery and quite a lot of syphilis, but that was a small price to pay for being able to go to exciting new countries and expect everyone you met once you got off the ship to be able to speak English.

Ah, there you go - You see the first warning sign right there, the expectation that we had (and still have to a large extent) that Johnny Foreigner will speeka-da-English. At the height of its 450 year history, the British Empire covered a quarter of the world and comprised a fifth of the total planetary population, the Sun quite literally, never set on it. We sailed to foreign parts, planted a flag, claimed the land for the King or Queen (delete as applicable) of the time, enslaved the natives (but we taught them English and Christianity, so technically they still owe us), spread a light smattering of syphilis and cholera, exported all their food, rinsed and repeated.

We invented stuff though, and built things. Everywhere you went there were huge copper and brass steam engines, pumping water and mining coal to keep massive copper and brass steam engines running so that they could pump water and mine coal, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera as Yul Brynner might say. There was cast iron and battleship chain and mass produced bone china - You might counter that with 'Yeah, but five year old children were being seriously maimed in woolen mills, and young boys were catching scrotum cancer from sweeping chimneys for fourteen hours a day.' And I'd look at you funny, because no-one likes to hear the words 'scrotum' and 'cancer' in the same sentance. But honestly, wouldn't you rather see children sweeping chimneys than hanging around on streetcorners with their jeans around their knees, stabbing old ladies for an out of date tin of catfood? (And by children, I mean other people's children, obviously)

We had a Navy which ruled the waves (Which there's a song about, so it must be true) and an Army which kicked ass pretty much everywhere it went, especially when their cannons and muskets were turned on people armed with sticks and lengths of rope. We didn't have all the supply problems and the 'But I'm suing the Government because my Kevin had to buy his own body armour off of eBay and it came from China and it was made of papier mache' nonesense that we have today because we would take what we needed without a second thought... Without a first thought in some cases.

Sorry? What was that you said? Rape? do you mean of the indigenous populace or the country? Both? Well, yes, I suppose there might have been a small amount of that sort of thing here and there, I mean you get a few bad apples in any expeditionary force don't you? It's not like we exterminated anybody is it? No native tribes ever got wiped out because they were a bit close to places where we could mine copper, or diamonds, or pitchblende... *cough*

The women of the Empire (which, even to me, sounds like badly written Star Wars fan-fic) were proper women, with the big hats and skirts and parasols. Demure and cosseted, they ate bon-bons from silver trays, brought to them at 3:00pm sharp by Philip, the nice dusky gentleman that they'd had brought in from Bechuanaland especially for this purpose. Most importantly, they knew their place, which was atop a pedestal, being showered with gifts and the only thing they had to do on a daily basis was to look pretty whilst their husbands got on with the very real and worthwile job of being a good Captain of Industry and not getting gout... Or syphilis...

Wouldn't it be easier if things were how they used to be? The UK being the only real world power and thus guaranteeing no global war ever again? Children gainfully employed rather than roaming the streets like feral weasles? Women being sedate and wonderful and pretty and domesticated? Johnny Foreigner doing all the simple hard work in the hotter climates? Worthy but expendable lower-class people doing all the skilled hard work in Blighty?

You know it would, deep in your heart of hearts - A better time, a more rewarding existence for all... Well all the important people like us at least. But it'd still be best to keep a few ampules of Doxycycline about your person just in case.

　

I'd like to finish with a few definitions, see if you can guess where they fit in:

anachronism (əˈnækrəˌnɪzəm)

— n

1. the representation of an event, person, or thing in a historical context in which it could not have occurred or existed

2. a person or thing that belongs or seems to belong to another time: she regards the Church as an anachronism

　

satire (ˈsætaɪə)

— n

1. a novel, play, entertainment, etc, in which topical issues, folly, or evil are held up to scorn by means of ridicule and irony

2. the genre constituted by such works

3. the use of ridicule, irony, etc, to create such an effect

　

irony <sup>1 (ˈaɪrənɪ)

— n , pl -nies

1. the humorous or mildly sarcastic use of words to imply the opposite of what they normally mean

2. an instance of this, used to draw attention to some incongruity or irrationality

3. incongruity between what is expected to be and what actually is, or a situation or result showing such incongruity</sup>

This IS the Blog you're looking for

In hono(u)r of my first real follower (Anakin.1138, the Chimping Empire is glad that you have found us, and hopes that you will be a powerful ally in our assault on the Rebel Blogosphere) I have decided to tackle a thorny issue - One that has divided the most astute minds of our, and no doubt many other generations to come.

Will anyone actually die because Lucasfilm is now a part of Disney?

Simple Answer: No - The End. (Shortest... Blog... ever..!)



Ah, right, you want more? Fair enough.

Let me explain my basic standpoint on the current six films, I liked them all. Not every part of every one, I mean, they could probably have cut episodes I-III down to two films by cutting out all of the Shaak riding and the no dialog, soft focus 'Oh how deeply in love we are' bits, then bulked it back up to three films again with more Pew-Pew Dakka-dakka-dakka "Ah! Jedi scum, you've only gone and cut my other arm off". And Jar-Jar? Meesa Likea kick yousa in da Poodoo... But other than that, on the whole, pretty good.

Did I like the special editions I hear you ask? - Again, some good bits, some bad bits - Mos Eisley was a lot more impressive, Han treading on a slimmed-down Jabba's tail - not so much.

And of course... HAN SHOT FIRST! - That-Is-All

Did George Lucas ride roughshod over our collective childhoods with his spikey death boots of death? No, not really - As I understand it, the accepted reasoning says that there were things he wanted to do in the original trilogy that the technology wasn't up to - so when the technology was available, he added the extra bits and got some of it a bit wrong.  And it's not just me that thinks this, actual real people think the same thing, take the popular blogger Bob Suicide for instance - She's very passionate about it

(If you don't know who Bob Suicide is, I suggest you don't google her unless you are over 18 and not at work)

All in all, taken as a franchise, they're good, old fashioned, Saturday Morning fun films - I mean even the wipes and fades that are used between scenes evoke that feeling, completely intentionally I might add.

So, I hope we can all accept that they're a source of entertainment and not a religion or a way of life (Even though I freely admit that put Jedi on my Census document).

So, put yourself in Uncle George's (Spikey Death) Boots (of Death) - You make a trilogy of films that take the world, quite lidderally, by storm - They're globally applauded as the best thing since hot and cold running sliced bread. You make a potload of cash, you ride the wave for ten or so years and start re-mastering the originals - They're not so applauded, it's the kind of applause you get when a magician pulls a rabbit out of his previously empty hat, but it's dead - Still pretty impressive, but there are a lot of people who would have preferred not to see it.   Then a few years after that, you go back to the beginning of the story and go a bit SFX-mental with fully digital actors and suchlike. You try to sell the story to a new generation of kids who expect everything to float, glow, be Wi-Fi / HiFi / HD / 3D / 5.1 Surround and Smel-o-vision. The kids love it, but the Fanboys hate it, and when I say hate, I mean squeeze your pet Pangolin through a mangle then wear it as a codpiece style hate. This time the rabbit's not just dead, the magician's left holding a pair of cute little bunny ears that look a bit green around the edges and smell like a zombie's jockstrap. So you realise the kids are the future and produce an animated series, targeting the kids directly - Then you re-imagine the cartoon series in full CGI - Then you realise that you may well have 'Jumped the Shark'.

So, whaddya do? Who could ressurect this franchise that's spiralling down towards Coruscant without a fireship in sight? Who knows more about selling stuff to kids than anyone in the known Universe? Who didn't kill the Marvel franchise when they bought it? Who's already been successfully marketing Star Wars toys for at least the past 10 years?

I reckon that it was his only real choice. Of course if Episode VII is completely dingo's kidneys (fetid or otherwise) then I shall replace this post with one that's just a picture of George Lucas being crucified - in 3D. And then deny that this version ever existed, you can think of it as "This IS the Blog you're looking for - The Special Edition"

Two-Handed Lightsaber? [Edited Meme]

Originally posted on Facebook 28/6/12

As some of you may (or may not know), I recently changed the text notification sound on my crappy phone to the Lightsabre 'Power-up' noise from Star Wars... What? you didn't know I was a geek? Really?

I was in the Westfield Centre yesterday when I needed to use the facilities. I walked in, to find that only one of the urinals was free between a couple of burly gentlemen. I carefully maneuvered between them and undid my fly - It was at this point that I received a text from an Agency, and of course, the Lightsabre noise went off!

The two guys looked at me quizzically, I very calmly turned, looked at them both and said -

'You know, that's happened every time since I bought the Special Edition on Blue-Ray'