Let's throw some words about and bandy some language about the screen. Some of it may actually turn out interesting. In the wake of several hours of tutoring, anything more structured might be impossible!
Yes, words on a topic of nothing, which happens every other time on the Quirky Muffin. Perhaps now would be a good time to talk about how well the origami polyhedra have been going down with the primary school students. They really seem to love finishing off the tetrahedra, and then making the giant tetrahedron using four small ones and an octahedron blows their minds. Maybe life is nicer than it seems, hmmm? It's nice to see how wonderful the simple things are.
If only there were more time to read. There's not much time at the moment, but it will settle down nicely in a few weeks. 'The Voyage Of The Beagle' awaits, as does editing down 'Oneiromancy' and a decision on whether to take an OU course or not. If I don't have the time to read for leisure now, how would I fit in another degree? What would happen to all the endless DVD watching and writing of trivial blogs about nothing?
A re-watch of the Rathbone and Bruce 'Sherlock Holmes' movies is coming to an end, and they are truly wonderful movies. Great, great mini-masterpieces that confirm yet again that massive budgets are counter-productive when making quality films. Now, if only they could have kept the series going even longer, but of course it was not to be... We're lucky to have had the wonderful fourteen that exist, and to not have lost any in the intervening time. Viva Watson!
It's time to stop now, dig out a book, and revel in the successful construction of an origami icosahedron. What a wonderful thing it was to convert those five sheets of A5 into a twenty-sided solid! Such a small solid to come from five massive sheets...
O.
Saturday, 14 May 2016
Thursday, 12 May 2016
Film: 'King Kong' (1933)
'King Kong' is an almost indecently good classic film. From the beginning, and even despite the overriding chauvinism built in to the story - perhaps to make the gorilla seem more decent than the humans? - it's a wonderful success story. It was one of the groundbreaking movies for special effects and blockbusting, so it has lot to be blamed for, but it works brilliantly solely as a film.
Right, let's explain what 'King Kong' actually is. It's a movie from 1933, in which a group of filmmakers land on a mysterious island in search of material and discover just what exactly is being kept safely on the other side of the massive wall that partitions off the main part of the island...
Yes, this movie was made in 1933 and is still excellent. How magnificent a feat is that? 'King Kong' is fast, very well paced, and features some of the best stop motion animation that you would never expect to find in a film from so long ago. There are such subtle characterisation moments in the character of Kong himself that you can't help but feel sad about his unfortunate demise. Kong is a wonderful achievement, and some of the effects really couldn't be done any better or more entertainingly now. More glossily and seamlessly, perhaps, but not better.
This is a legendary film, and one which breaks most of the criteria that apply to movies that I like: The monster fights on Skull Island are involved (a bit long sometimes), the spectacle sometimes dominates over all else, the screaming victim Fay Wray screams a lot, and the sad ending is a real tearjerker. None of these things break the movie for me. Why does it work? Perhaps because it powers through and doesn't dwell on anything that would deaden what is really going on. Most of the emotional impact of 'King Kong' occurs after the film, when you might begin to feel really bad about the giant ape biting his last banana after being exploited by the tacky humans. We don't come off well in 'King Kong'.
Great film, great spookiness and atmosphere. Some problems with sexism, which may be tied to the thematic content. Everyone should see 'King Kong'. My only question is this: Why build a giant ape sized door in your massive wall if you don't want the giant ape to ever get through?
O.
Right, let's explain what 'King Kong' actually is. It's a movie from 1933, in which a group of filmmakers land on a mysterious island in search of material and discover just what exactly is being kept safely on the other side of the massive wall that partitions off the main part of the island...
Yes, this movie was made in 1933 and is still excellent. How magnificent a feat is that? 'King Kong' is fast, very well paced, and features some of the best stop motion animation that you would never expect to find in a film from so long ago. There are such subtle characterisation moments in the character of Kong himself that you can't help but feel sad about his unfortunate demise. Kong is a wonderful achievement, and some of the effects really couldn't be done any better or more entertainingly now. More glossily and seamlessly, perhaps, but not better.
This is a legendary film, and one which breaks most of the criteria that apply to movies that I like: The monster fights on Skull Island are involved (a bit long sometimes), the spectacle sometimes dominates over all else, the screaming victim Fay Wray screams a lot, and the sad ending is a real tearjerker. None of these things break the movie for me. Why does it work? Perhaps because it powers through and doesn't dwell on anything that would deaden what is really going on. Most of the emotional impact of 'King Kong' occurs after the film, when you might begin to feel really bad about the giant ape biting his last banana after being exploited by the tacky humans. We don't come off well in 'King Kong'.
Great film, great spookiness and atmosphere. Some problems with sexism, which may be tied to the thematic content. Everyone should see 'King Kong'. My only question is this: Why build a giant ape sized door in your massive wall if you don't want the giant ape to ever get through?
O.
Tuesday, 10 May 2016
Six Hundred And Ninety Two
Rain, a bicycle, some singing. More rain. Huddling under bridges. A prolonged spell of dampness while tutoring GCSE students. Such is the way of things on a Tuesday in May. The dampness has permeated the very fabric of the universe, and even now the Fates are asking for umbrellas to be sent up to their retreat.
Please, don't misunderstand me, oh deranged, improbable and phantasmic readers. Rain is the best weather of all, and has been ever since school. Many a lunch hour was spent in the arches, reading while listening to the rain come down, and enjoying the humidity. Rain is a greatly underrated kind of weather. You can sing in it, dance in it, experience episodes of sadness and joy, and become intensely wet. At university there were several occasions that saw literal 'Singing In The Rain' episodes while walking down to the town from campus. Yes, I know, it's very strange that I've never been locked away.
Six hundred and ninety two posts in, it should really be much harder to write these things. Perhaps it's the effect of practice and a total disregard for making sense or being interesting! Perhaps a writer who will happily spend paragraphs talking about rain is someone with no shame? Maybe it's a result of reading so many books and watching so many films and television series. Today, the original 'King Kong', from 1933, sneaked in via disc rental, and it was brilliant! It will certainly be the topic of the next post, so well constructed and conceived it was.
Rain is a very organic form of weather, shifting back to the original theme, and very entertaining in its own way. Is there a greater relief in the temperate world than summer humidity breaking into a refreshing shower? Is there any more thrilling circumstance than being out in a storm and listening to the thunder?
It's always raining at the Quirky Muffin. In a good way.
O.
Please, don't misunderstand me, oh deranged, improbable and phantasmic readers. Rain is the best weather of all, and has been ever since school. Many a lunch hour was spent in the arches, reading while listening to the rain come down, and enjoying the humidity. Rain is a greatly underrated kind of weather. You can sing in it, dance in it, experience episodes of sadness and joy, and become intensely wet. At university there were several occasions that saw literal 'Singing In The Rain' episodes while walking down to the town from campus. Yes, I know, it's very strange that I've never been locked away.
Six hundred and ninety two posts in, it should really be much harder to write these things. Perhaps it's the effect of practice and a total disregard for making sense or being interesting! Perhaps a writer who will happily spend paragraphs talking about rain is someone with no shame? Maybe it's a result of reading so many books and watching so many films and television series. Today, the original 'King Kong', from 1933, sneaked in via disc rental, and it was brilliant! It will certainly be the topic of the next post, so well constructed and conceived it was.
Rain is a very organic form of weather, shifting back to the original theme, and very entertaining in its own way. Is there a greater relief in the temperate world than summer humidity breaking into a refreshing shower? Is there any more thrilling circumstance than being out in a storm and listening to the thunder?
It's always raining at the Quirky Muffin. In a good way.
O.
Sunday, 8 May 2016
Story: The Glove, XI
( Part X , XII )
Dialogue in an inn's banqueting room
A: Was that them? The giant inkeeper and the suspected spy?
B: Yes. Our information was good. We don't know anything about the boy, except that he's seen Octavius himself.
A: This ravioli is good.
B: It never fails. Every time we go to a restaurant to watch people, you end up talking about ravioli.
A: I like ravioli, alright?
B: <sigh>
A: He doesn't look like a spy, does he?
B: No, he just looks like a country bumpkin. You've got cheese on your tie.
A: Thanks. Should we watch them some more or take photo from the pepper-cam back to the boss?
B: I really can't take you anywhere. Especially with that fez.
A: Sometimes the best disguise is to be obvious!
B: We'd better get back to the boss. Freddie will keep an eye on the kid.
A: Freddie will just get distracted by the potatoes. Have you tried this mash?
B: <pushes chair back in disgust> Come on!
To be continued...
Dialogue in an inn's banqueting room
A: Was that them? The giant inkeeper and the suspected spy?
B: Yes. Our information was good. We don't know anything about the boy, except that he's seen Octavius himself.
A: This ravioli is good.
B: It never fails. Every time we go to a restaurant to watch people, you end up talking about ravioli.
A: I like ravioli, alright?
B: <sigh>
A: He doesn't look like a spy, does he?
B: No, he just looks like a country bumpkin. You've got cheese on your tie.
A: Thanks. Should we watch them some more or take photo from the pepper-cam back to the boss?
B: I really can't take you anywhere. Especially with that fez.
A: Sometimes the best disguise is to be obvious!
B: We'd better get back to the boss. Freddie will keep an eye on the kid.
A: Freddie will just get distracted by the potatoes. Have you tried this mash?
B: <pushes chair back in disgust> Come on!
To be continued...
Friday, 6 May 2016
A Gentle Walk
One of the great things about having free time is that you can reliably go for genial walks and trail your fingers through the air. There's nothing like trailing your fingers through a gentle country breeze, while nature continues obliviously on its way around you. It's almost as if you can feel the molecules flowing around your fingertips, or even that you could reach out and pop behind a given atom to reach Valhalla, just as in 'The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul'.
It's nice to stop and relax from time to time. One wonderful method is to go to the wonderful land of air conducting, while another is to simply and slowly spin, and feel the air all around you. Yes, there is time in the world to spin if you allow there to be. It might sound like new age gobbledygook, but it works. We are frantic inhabitants on a giant rock spinning in space, so a little meditation couldn't hurt, and spinning ourselves can only add more consistency to the system, and thwarts Ralph Waldo Emerson in the process.
It's a particularly quiet weekend, as I loiter here and dogsit, wondering how best to while away the time. There's a story entitled 'The A.L.C.' to finish, which will certainly occur, and an extended session of tutoring, but otherwise leisure is upon us here at the Quirky Muffin. I would tell you what the 'The A.L.C.' stands for, but the fear of ridicule and guacamole retribution is too great. Any level of guacamole retribution is too high a level!
Maybe it's time to go outside and waft a little more. If only wafting were more socially acceptable. As it is, wafting without due cause is akin to being a suspicious deviant, and finger trailing through the air can only be undertaken in deserted areas or the privacy of your own rooms, much like watching 'Flash Gordon', or inventing new games of solitaire.
It's a wacky world sometimes.
O.
It's nice to stop and relax from time to time. One wonderful method is to go to the wonderful land of air conducting, while another is to simply and slowly spin, and feel the air all around you. Yes, there is time in the world to spin if you allow there to be. It might sound like new age gobbledygook, but it works. We are frantic inhabitants on a giant rock spinning in space, so a little meditation couldn't hurt, and spinning ourselves can only add more consistency to the system, and thwarts Ralph Waldo Emerson in the process.
It's a particularly quiet weekend, as I loiter here and dogsit, wondering how best to while away the time. There's a story entitled 'The A.L.C.' to finish, which will certainly occur, and an extended session of tutoring, but otherwise leisure is upon us here at the Quirky Muffin. I would tell you what the 'The A.L.C.' stands for, but the fear of ridicule and guacamole retribution is too great. Any level of guacamole retribution is too high a level!
Maybe it's time to go outside and waft a little more. If only wafting were more socially acceptable. As it is, wafting without due cause is akin to being a suspicious deviant, and finger trailing through the air can only be undertaken in deserted areas or the privacy of your own rooms, much like watching 'Flash Gordon', or inventing new games of solitaire.
It's a wacky world sometimes.
O.
Wednesday, 4 May 2016
Book: 'Armadale' by Wilkie Collins (1866)
This novel took some effort to read, including two abortive starts over (I think) three years. It's one of the Wilkie Collins 'Big Four', along with 'The Woman In White', 'No Name' and 'The Moonstone', and is big on many levels. For one thing, my copy was six hundred and eighty pages long, excluding notes and introduction, and split into six sections. The narrative shifts from third person to first person via diary entries, moves across several protagonists, and fundamentally changes in its very nature several times. If it fully worked, then it would be a masterpiece, but it doesn't fully work and so becomes something that might charitably be called a bit of a mess.
The chief problem may be that the various sections work well within themselves but not with each other, specifically fouling the novel's internal consistency. On the other hand, perhaps it's the sheer convolutedness of the narrative that is the problem, it being founded on the coincidence of two men being identically named Allen Armadale, and also being the sons of two men named Allen Armadale. Perhaps it's a good idea to talk about the plot, but it might take several thousand words...
Before the main narrative, an Allen Armadale is murdered by his cousin Allen Armadale, the latter of whom leaves a letter for his son on his deathbed. The sins of the fathers threaten to wreak punishments on the sons, via a prophetic dream and the machinations of a rogue lady and adventuress called Lydia Gwilt. In 1866, the term 'adventuress' was not a flattering one and concealed a multitude of crimes, and Lydia Gwilt had not stinted in her previous career. Upon her entry into the narrative, the whole story steadily swings behind her to the point that it literally becomes her diary. Were she to succeed in marrying one Armadale, the poor one, and killing the other in order to pose as his widow and gain his money, she would be one of the greatest and most well constructed villains in literary history, but instead she falls in love and we get something else entirely. Is her ultimate, if terminal, redemption the redemption of the novel or does the zigzag nature of the epic defeat that purpose? It's hard to say.
'The Woman In White' and 'The Moonstone' are undoubted classics and the crown of the Wilkie Collins canon. 'Armadale' is okay, and fits into the Big Four, but it's nowhere near as consistent. Perhaps its lasting influence is in Lydia Gwilt herself, a tortured female antagonist who sets a precedent for feminine villainy not to be forgotten.
Read 'Armadale' if you dare. It has good points, and you need only struggle through the overly portentous and forbidding prophetic portion in order to reach more enjoyable times, before another shift drifts you away once again.
O.
The chief problem may be that the various sections work well within themselves but not with each other, specifically fouling the novel's internal consistency. On the other hand, perhaps it's the sheer convolutedness of the narrative that is the problem, it being founded on the coincidence of two men being identically named Allen Armadale, and also being the sons of two men named Allen Armadale. Perhaps it's a good idea to talk about the plot, but it might take several thousand words...
Before the main narrative, an Allen Armadale is murdered by his cousin Allen Armadale, the latter of whom leaves a letter for his son on his deathbed. The sins of the fathers threaten to wreak punishments on the sons, via a prophetic dream and the machinations of a rogue lady and adventuress called Lydia Gwilt. In 1866, the term 'adventuress' was not a flattering one and concealed a multitude of crimes, and Lydia Gwilt had not stinted in her previous career. Upon her entry into the narrative, the whole story steadily swings behind her to the point that it literally becomes her diary. Were she to succeed in marrying one Armadale, the poor one, and killing the other in order to pose as his widow and gain his money, she would be one of the greatest and most well constructed villains in literary history, but instead she falls in love and we get something else entirely. Is her ultimate, if terminal, redemption the redemption of the novel or does the zigzag nature of the epic defeat that purpose? It's hard to say.
'The Woman In White' and 'The Moonstone' are undoubted classics and the crown of the Wilkie Collins canon. 'Armadale' is okay, and fits into the Big Four, but it's nowhere near as consistent. Perhaps its lasting influence is in Lydia Gwilt herself, a tortured female antagonist who sets a precedent for feminine villainy not to be forgotten.
Read 'Armadale' if you dare. It has good points, and you need only struggle through the overly portentous and forbidding prophetic portion in order to reach more enjoyable times, before another shift drifts you away once again.
O.
Monday, 2 May 2016
Getting Started
Having decided to get going, finish some stories and write books, it has now become impossible to begin! How bizarre it is! Obviously, my curse is a lack of ambition and commitment. Indeed, back in the olden days, research was easy except for the weeks spent in procrastination. Whenever something becomes important, it seems to also become unbearable...
Of course, in line with this theme, it was a day full of distracting podcasts and DVDs, including 'Jaws', 'The Avengers: Escape In Time', and now Tim Burton's 'Alice In Wonderland'. That last one is a greatly underrated film. I wonder why it was lambasted quite so much at the time? Ah, perhaps it's because it's so much of a blockbuster and degenerates into gibberish? Perhaps. Something about it defiantly works, though. Oh, such distractions. I should be writing 'Wordspace' and working through the huge backlog of unfinished short stories!
I used to do Twitter stories, but the unrelenting drudgery of life began to get to me. It's difficult to remain creative while suffering endless strings of interview failures and personal misfortunes. Of course, it wasn't really that bad, but the tendency to pessimism was rather compelling. Oh, that pessimism and distraction, such a curse to getting things done! Get back, pessimism.
What could this planned novel be about? Or the novella, at least? Is it wise to begin without some sensible idea, or would it be better to continue on the basis of the serialised stories already planned and queued for this Quirky Muffin blog challenge? How did Wilkie Collins do it? Well, hopefully an addiction to laudanum isn't an essential part of the writing process as that is simply not going to happen. No, Wilkie Collins did it by virtue of having no choice, for I assume he quite liked having a house in which to live, and food to eat. It's quite easy to do things when you have no choice...
The grand writing projects will, then, have to be 'Wordspace' and 'Oneiromancy', both of which were great fun to write. Even 'The Plain Chocolate Digestive Detective' (a.k.a. 'The Disappearance') had its moments, while 'Triangles' is ripe for expansion and continuation. This will require extensive time away from the computer and free of all distractions. Does anyone have a log cabin free for use, without payment? I promise to not invite in any bears or itinerant harpists.
O.
Of course, in line with this theme, it was a day full of distracting podcasts and DVDs, including 'Jaws', 'The Avengers: Escape In Time', and now Tim Burton's 'Alice In Wonderland'. That last one is a greatly underrated film. I wonder why it was lambasted quite so much at the time? Ah, perhaps it's because it's so much of a blockbuster and degenerates into gibberish? Perhaps. Something about it defiantly works, though. Oh, such distractions. I should be writing 'Wordspace' and working through the huge backlog of unfinished short stories!
I used to do Twitter stories, but the unrelenting drudgery of life began to get to me. It's difficult to remain creative while suffering endless strings of interview failures and personal misfortunes. Of course, it wasn't really that bad, but the tendency to pessimism was rather compelling. Oh, that pessimism and distraction, such a curse to getting things done! Get back, pessimism.
What could this planned novel be about? Or the novella, at least? Is it wise to begin without some sensible idea, or would it be better to continue on the basis of the serialised stories already planned and queued for this Quirky Muffin blog challenge? How did Wilkie Collins do it? Well, hopefully an addiction to laudanum isn't an essential part of the writing process as that is simply not going to happen. No, Wilkie Collins did it by virtue of having no choice, for I assume he quite liked having a house in which to live, and food to eat. It's quite easy to do things when you have no choice...
The grand writing projects will, then, have to be 'Wordspace' and 'Oneiromancy', both of which were great fun to write. Even 'The Plain Chocolate Digestive Detective' (a.k.a. 'The Disappearance') had its moments, while 'Triangles' is ripe for expansion and continuation. This will require extensive time away from the computer and free of all distractions. Does anyone have a log cabin free for use, without payment? I promise to not invite in any bears or itinerant harpists.
O.
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