Tilting At Windmills

I started blogging and making those Film Bin podcasts with very few internal guidelines except to be try not to be negative; I didn't want to be writing and recording just for the sake of demolishing, critiquing and being generally negative about people who had actually gone out and tried to make and do things. On some level that positive intention feels like the noble thing to have, and in this rampant Internet-fuelled world of people being far more mean and nasty than is actually called for, it also seems like the right thing. It's also a classic case of 'tilting at windmills' like that mad old character Don Quixote. You see, tilting at windmills is one of the ways some people use to stay alive inside and awake to things that would otherwise be forgotten. We generally need to aspire to making some difference in the grander scheme of things, being humans with egos the sizes of small caravans.

The sad side of tilting at windmills is indeed a very sad side, and again falls in line with Don Quixote. That fine old story, which I still haven't read in its entirety (it's on my pile), is made up of two volumes which were in no way written contemporaneously as their publications were separated by ten years of real time. Pray, forgive my ignorance, if I get any of this factually wrong. At the end of the story the deluded old nobleman, who had been touring around the country and having adventures most wild and imaginary, is cured of his madness and dies a broken man. How is that for a brutal allegory? We have to tilt at windmills or face reality in the face and die on the inside? Oh, reality, I tilt at thee!

My suggestion is therefore that we all tilt at windmills; It's actually quite healthy and we could make a difference to the world. It's akin to Danny Wallace and his insane quest in 'Yes Man', his own tilt at the windmills of life. We can be happier if we try to be more positive. I will continue to try and find good things that no-one pays attention to, talk about them in podcasts and prose, and write mad stories of little to no import. Maybe it will make a difference to someone somewhere, and maybe it won't, but if there's a point then it's not a windmill to tilt at any more. In common parlance, to tilt at a windmill is to attack a misperceived enemy or engage in delusional battle, and only time will tell if any of us are truly tilting at windmills or merely strutting for the crowd and seeking out attention.

It's unlikely that my reading will ever include the second half of Don Quixote's adventures, for that ending sounds especially bleak, but that first half will be finished one day. It's supposedly the best literary work ever written in total, and that doesn't surprise me. Those literary types love a bleak ending. They like not to tilt at windmills but survey the lives of those who used to. It's probably better to re-read instead 'Yes Man', look out at the world and say yes more. That's what Danny Wallace did, and he's a good man.

O.

Story: The Disappearance (XIX)

(Part O , XVIII , XX)


Lily had been true to her word and consulted Abbott the Mesopotamian super-computer. Agnes was holding the transcribed response when we came in and whisked her and our doped prisoner off to McGonagle Biscuits, so many miles away.

Abbott had concluded that the temporal schism had been a consequence of all the effects of the biscuit time travel cheat catching up to our own present. We had reached the time when they had begun sending things back and so the anomalies and the so-called extra mass of the shipments and residuals atoms had begun to annihilate as they closed their own loops. At some point, if there was in truth going to be a temporal explosion, then it would the result of accumulated loop closing. We had to stop those loops from closing by stopping the initial time shipment, causing a paradox and thus forcing the whole story to terminate in a whole other way.

Carter was driving almost maniacally - as was her fashion - and we were steadily getting closer to our destination. Rolf stirred, and I wondered for a moment at the ethics board that would follow when they found out how much time the prisoner had been zonked over this case. Agnes was sitting pale faced and trying not to be sick.

The question as it appeared to me - close shave by a milk tanker - was to locate the source of the time travelled biscuits. We just had to find the real factory. A police car was following us but Carter swerved through a side street and took a parallel tack. The police car didn't make it and lost sight of us, fittingly behind a McGonagle lorry. A McGonagle lorry...

"Carter, I have it, we need to track the ingredients going to the secret plant. They must have begun production by now. That whole thing at the flat was just the beginning, the result of my catching up with the arrival of that me who came from the future. An orphan future now. We've got to get back to HQ and access the traffic camera footage, and dump Rolf in the cells. And deal with the Commissioner too."

Carter pulled a swift left and we headed to Newton's Mill, home of our branch for more than five years. Five years of tragedies instigated by biscuit smuggling from the future. We parked in front and went inside, lugging Rolf, and keeping Agnes close by. Carter got the desk man to help her with the prisoner to the cells and I went up to my office to concoct some cover story.

Unfortunately the cover story was not to be, as there waiting for me was the genial, noble, and thoroughly corrupt Commissioner. The man who had tried to manipulate Carter into causing a crisis.

The problem had come to find me instead of me the problem. As I had before, I took the excuse of there being very little time, and slugged him.

Sheckley and Vine

When I was at school I read a lot. Then when I went to college for my HND I read a lot and watched The West Wing. Then at university for my undergraduate degree I studied a lot, and read less and watched a few more DVDs, and finally during my doctorate I read almost nothing and studied to the point of madness. During all that time I read very few short stories, for the simple reason I that really don't like short stories. We had short story evenings in my house where we would read to each other though, and I had a stock of not terrible examples that served that purpose.

Short stories are difficult, because you are currently stopping and starting and switching narratives to the point of madness. To date there have been exactly two sets of short stories I can read painlessly over and over: 'Sherlock Holmes' by Doyle and the 'Star Trek' episode adaptations by James Blish. There might be a third though, someone unexpected and someone just as unknown as Blish. That author is Robert Sheckley, lord of the funny/satirical tale and a forerunner to the far less prolific Douglas Adams. Sheckley is the storyteller's storyteller, much as Stanley Ellin is in crime fiction.

Now, Sheckley is a fascinating figure and as I work through 'The Store Of The Worlds' the Quirky Muffin will surely get back to him. For now, here you will find a tenuous link to someone far more current and hopefully well known; The unifying aspect of practically everything I find interesting is humour, and there is exactly one standup comedian clean enough and silly enough to appeal to this mad old mind. Who? Tim Vine, of course, the creative mastermind behind 'Pen Behind The Ear', 'Flag Hippo' and a thousand thousand one-liners and puns.

Tim Vine is a fascinating performer, clearly motivated to avoid innuendo and smut and thus almost unique amongst the comedians of today, but also still driven by whatever primal forces puts those people on a stage. Those forces are almost diametrically opposed in this cynical age, and one day you wonder if he'll just expire holding a brain on the end of a fishing line while telling you to cast your mind back. Tim Vine is just funny, silly as he may be, and in ways his silliness is a very telling subtlety. You can overlay a level of imagined satire of the world as it is, in the furious attempts to be different by simply being innocent. In a grand world of cynicism he is naive, although that naivete does come with a sense of pathos at times, especially in the bonus features on his DVDs. Oh, cat fishing is so lovely.

Tim Vine is a reaction to the world of comedy, much as Sheckley was a reaction to the world of science fiction and sometimes literature in general. They're both worthy of study, if you have the time.

O.

Story: The Disappearance (XVIII)

(Part O , XVII , XIX)

"An Interlude In The Pub"

"Long day?"

I stared morosely into my glass of frankly inferior beer and responded with the epitome of a vacuum. The barmaid moved on and I nursed my beer until it was duly drunk. Then a soda water and lemon appeared and slowly followed the beer into the great abyss of drunk drinks. I was never a big drinker but life for non-imbibers always seemed to consist of an endless battle between sugary water and glasses of milk in pubs.

Carter, my long-time partner, sat down next to me. "When I woke up this morning, I definitely didn't expect any of this." She ordered a beer, drank some, and then grimaced. "Especially THAT." She peered at me curiously, putting a crocodile grin back into its cage where it would live to grin another day. "Thanks for the note."

"No problem. It must have been pretty confusing. I know it was for me." I chuckled like a man with a migraine who had been up for a thousand years.

"Some day I'll find out your name and then I'll hold it over your head every time I get dragged into one of these ridiculous interludes." She punctuated with slightly anguished sips of her beer. "I could have done it already, I suppose, having been in your digs. Maybe I already did."

"Keep talking. I've had the kind of day that no-one else would ever believe, or believe three times in parts." I plucked out a napkin a napkin and a pencil and literally sketched out my subjective sequence of events as Carter talked about hypnosis, our formerly unimpeachable commissioner, and how long we had until the event of the supposed implosion at McGonagle Biscuits. "Twenty hours to go and, not withstanding a trap, we're going to have to deal with it."

"And then the commissioner."

"Yes, and then our dear lovely crooked commissioner. Let's put him in the same place as our lovely prisoner and see what happens."

Carter patted me on the shoulder. "Best get back and put the prisoner back to sleep. And get a hire car. Don't be long. There are things to do."

"Thank you, Danielle. I'll be along in a moment. There's one more thing I need to do here." A steadiness had seized me, dispelling a queasiness I hadn't even known was there. No more overlap, no more multiple mes out there in the world. Just one self again. One splash of water in the restroom was all that was needed and then it was time to get on.

Outside in the bar I tipped the barmaid a drink and walked out into the sunshine. It was a lovely day, the sun was out, and all reality was going to have to be saved. All because of a few cheap biscuits.

Next: We go into the final straight!

On the challenge of changing a single digit

A long time ago, getting into the habit of writing the new year wherever it appears would have been a lot simpler. Or perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps this is all a hoax, designed to lead you down the garden path, and trapped into something far more complicated. Look, numbers...

Changing a single digit is easy, but remembering why we have to is not. We live in a world which runs on various utterly arbitrary calendar systems, designed by various learned ancient people in order that farming can happen reliably. Farming is the only reason why we ever developed the things. The ancients noted that a year took about three hundred and fifty days, and then science identified the exact figure. That figure becomes imperceptibly larger every day as the Earth slows in its rotation, just as the core of the Earth slowly cools, and the Sun grows ever so slightly bigger. However, ignoring all that, we get about 365 days in each year before the whole seasonal scheme gets back to where it began.

Now, our modern calendar system has two bizarre and incongruous facets built in to it: One, there never was a year zero, and two, the very strange number of months and the different numbers of days in each. The first forms the basis of a new story (with an awesome first line), while the second has puzzled me for ages. Calendar months are different to sidereal months, that latter being the time it takes for the moon to return to the same point in the sky as we observe it. A sidereal month is slightly less than twenty eight days. Incidentally 'moon' and 'month' come from the same linguistic roots. Simple arithmetic reveals that the year divides into a simple multiple of twenty eight days with one day left over, so why don't we have a load of twenty eight day months and one of twenty nine, which would then quite nicely track the moon and fit well into the calendar? We'll get to that in a moment, because it's silly.

Instead of a lovely sensible calendar system, we have what we have, which is nice in its own way. We have a system where there are seven months of thirty one days, four of thirty and one of twenty eight which acquires an extra day once every four years to compensate for the unaccounted for quarter of a day we get each year. The only way to remember which months have however many days is to learn a rhyme - which is personally extremely forgettable - or the sequence of numbers. And why do we do this? The reason is simple, for as like all superstitious peoples we do not like the number thirteen, and thirteen months we would have if we used lunar months.

Getting back to the first point: Why don't we have a year zero anyway, it messes things up and means that any new century begins a year later than we think. I'm reasonably sure it also stops me getting pie when I need it but that causal relationship is yet to be proved. Blast it all. If I'm writing slightly strangely it's because I just watched 'Sherlock: The Sign Of Three' and it was awesome. It was also fundamentally connected to 'Doctor Who: The Green Death' and the sheer nerdery in knowing that and all the canon references in the 'The Sign Of Three' is rather scary. Also, it was sad to see Sherlock walk away alone at the end. I've done that at parties and nights out far too many times myself. Still, not about me. Look, a three headed monkey!

O.

PS It was all about changing a single digit after all, just not the one you thought.
PPS Blast you, heartless Molly Hooper!

Pulpy

Being sick for a week can have a disastrous effect on writing (such as a tendency to talk about being sick!). Suddenly your radius of experience shrinks down to a room or two, mealtimes, and battles to get your sleep instead of spending whole nights reading to battle off insomnia. Oh, and also you become subject to the disjointed thoughts of the truly deranged and dehydrated, those pseudo ramblings of someone rendered creatively inspired but incoherent.

I wonder how many masterpieces have been wrought by people with glazed expressions and fevered brows, holding their minds together solely with the power of a furiously burning idea? Or, similarly, how many people been been held captive by storms and natural phenomena - and there are storms right now in the United Kingdom - and turned to something new and exceptional in the flickering candlelight.

Being sick is also a perfect excuse to get pulpy and read and watch all the things you want to read instead of all the worthy and serious things that should consume your attention. It's a perfect excuse to get pulpy! On this occasion, it was lovely to break out into a massive run of movie marathons and pump through a sequence of Patrick O'Brian's maritime novels. You may argue about whether those books are pulpy but they're certainly easily enough read, simple and marvellous in their detail. They resemble Dashiell Hammett far more than they do Dickens and so they are pulpy. If my stories are good at all, they're good in a pulpy way, the blog being the logical current equivalent to the old pulp magazines.

Now, it's time to dedicate myself to Orpheus once again, and wonder what to pack into next few days. Unfortunately Aberystwyth is in a state of crisis right now so my return to work might be a bit disrupted. I hope everyone I know there is okay and wish them well.

O.

Positivity

Positivity is a really hard thing. Scores of people might be presented to illustrate the fact that my tendency is to cynicism and pessimism, based on the fact that nothing ever works! However, it is the New Year and perhaps positivity is in order. The PhD paper will find its resolution, meaningful progress will be made toward a Statistics project, and there will be lots more diversification. There will be a way; It is assured. Once the brain muscle has been exercised back to effectiveness there shall be marvellous things done, including a mild refit on the readability of the Quirky Muffin.

Positivity is an attitude, the ability to think well and constructively about events and experiences. It is also a general attitude, a plausible happiness that becomes harder when faced with the vagaries and unfairnesses of life, but one that is never impossible. So, let's embrace positivity for a time and be the happy-go-lucky types that started the Quirky Muffin in the first place. A whole New Year of the Muffin awaits... But what will it contain? Will we have the first guest authored piece? Will a story finally finish? Will muffins finally rear their actual heads?

The nature of the Quirky Muffin in the New Year... a quandary in five parts...

This is a blog currently very much in search of a destiny. Experimental, unnecessary, story-laden and self-indulgent, a review of books and media that worked and didn't work but passed my door. An exercise in articulation that's uncaring of its audience. What will come? And how I rue the day I lost that excellent random word generator! There will be stories but one at a time. Currently that means that the current phases of 'The Disappearance', 'The Glove' and 'Oneiromancy' will be knocked off before 'Wordspace' and 'Year Zero' can come into play for the first time and the second phase of 'Triangles' finally debuts. It's a loaded schedule, dependent entirely on finally finishing the glory that is 'The Disappearance', which began with a cosmic mystery on the power of plain chocolate digestive biscuits!

Oh, positivity, you are the dough that great loaves of future rise from like ecstatic birthday cakes. And you make just as much sense!

O.