Take Two

There was already one attempt at writing this post, but it fell foul of the Great Cosmic Jinx (GCJ) that occasionally takes the place of Thursdays. The GCJ/Christmas conjunction is quite rare, though. The doubling can cause all kinds of bizarre pressures! Even now, I shudder at it all. Actually, I shudder more at the sheer madness of ASDA in Llanelli earlier today. It wasn't a full on Christmas panic - they don't happen in Llanelli - but it was verging on ridiculous. What is it that happens to people at Christmas, exactly? It's only two bank holidays in a row, after all. You don't have to buy several trollies of extra food for just two days, do you? My incomprehension is probably linked to a secular upbringing. Maybe the extra food is for Father Christmas or his reindeer, or needs to be there in case of a spontaneous papal visit.

Oh, Christmas, that tricky time of year. What should be done with the free time? Sadly, this year it will be all study, as there are weeks of lagging behind the OU schedule to rectify. Who would have thought it would be that hard to stay on schedule? At least there's scope here for a New Year's resolution. Oh, that's a good idea. New Year's resolutions! There's a good one planned for 2017, and it involves a boat. Somehow, the resolution is that enough money will be saved to pay off a long cruise sometime in late 2017. Yes, a cruise... If it happens, expect a mass of ship-related in about a year's time. Oh, the joys of restful sea travel... How unlikely it is.

Argh, this is quite a difficult one to write. It's late at night in mid-December after a very strange day of endless self-interruptions. Even now, mental discipline is wavering endlessly. It's probably the accumulated effect of all the 'Conan' stories that I've been reading by Robert E Howard. Soon, very soon, there will be a Quirky Muffin on those stories. The writing is excellent, although in the current patch there have been a few too many dark bat-like demon monsters in a short space of time! I suspect it will become more diverse in time, and it's just a consequence of the collected editions printing the texts in internal continuity order instead of the publication sequence. The scope of the 'Conan' stories is cast, but we'll get to it all in good time.

'The Ninja Of Health' rolls on and is tentatively scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2017. Even now, ideas are failing to percolate, but there is an extremely vague outline rolling around in the brain space.  How do we get mutant carrots from Mars into this narrative, anyway?

Oliver.