Hiatus

Time to state the obvious: This blog is on hiatus.

I am still writing a fair amount, but I reached the stage a couple of months ago where I realised that most of what I was writing was long form fiction. As such, it needs several drafts to reach a standard where I know I will be happy with it. However, the temptation to publish things on the blog, without proper analysis and editing, is too much for me. I’ve never been that fantastic at keeping secrets when it comes to the things I’m working on.

Therefore, for now, the blog is on hiatus.

I can still be found spouting random bits and pieces on twitter. Though, even there, my presence is currently diminished as I have been reading a lot more, scrawling indecipherable gibberish in notepads, and catching up on multiple series and documentaries I had previously been neglecting.

Thank you to those of you who have followed my sporadic ramblings up to this point. I will still be lurking in the ether, scouring through your blogs, and I will return to write here again in the future.

In the meantime take care, and I wish you the best in all you do.

Ben – 12/10/2013.

TableTop Day!

It’s TableTop Day!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, ->CLICK THIS LINK HERE<- to be transported to the official webpage.

For those of you who are clickingly challenged, TTD was conceived by the wonderful people over at Geek & Sundry and is all about gathering together with your friends, family, local gaming group and/or other geeks to have a fun day playing any, and all, types of Tabletop games. It doesn’t matter if they’re games that have been featured on the program, or classics that have been stored in that dusty cupboard under your stairs. The emphasis is on having  FUN with similarly minded (i.e. AWESOME) people.

Have a Great Day!

Quick Update & A Book Recommendation

Hello amazing internet denizens!

I haven’t disappeared completely, honest.

The last month and a half has flown by for a whole array of conflicting reasons, and I realise I haven’t been updating even semi-regularly. But that will change soon as there are a lot of things that I,

a) Want to write about, and,

b) Have already committed to an obscene amount of notepad entries currently littering my desktop.

These will all start to materialise soon.

In the meantime I have been using my twitter feed to stay in contact with the wider world whilst I’ve been getting myself organised.

Now, before I disappear again, I would just like to recommend that you go and take a gander at *this story right here* by Lee ‘Budgie’ Barnett. Here’s the synopsis for You’ll Never Believe A Man Can Fly, ripped right off the man’s very own blog:

“What’s the story about?

The world outside your window has never known super-powered beings until now. The first is a man named Ian Davies, an ordinary man who’s about to face some extra-ordinary events in his life. But what if, instead of giving an interview to The Daily Planet, he gives an interview to The Guardian, a newspaper with a reputation for typos?

He wanted to be known as The Public Defender. But someone at the Grauniad forgot the word Public has an ‘L’ in it…“

Mr Barnett posted the whole thing up over the course of four or five weeks so you can read it all, gratis. However, I strongly suggest that if you like it, you buy it. This can be achieved by clicking on the pay link at the bottom of any of the chapter entries. The story is consistently funny and brilliantly written; it certainly helped to brighten up my lunch breaks at work. (Yes, I bought the e-pub and then still read it as it was posted).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a whole lot of writing to organise and catch up on whilst you get acquainted with Mr Davies and his new found headache/gift.

San Diego Derby Dolls – Indiegogo Campaign, last 22 hours!

Do you like Roller Derby?

Yes?

Then pay attention.

The San Diego Derby Doll’s indiegogo campaign to raise funds for a new, permanent training facility and venue is in its last twenty-two hours. If you enjoy the sport, even a small contribution would be a great way to show your support. The league is heavily involved in its local community and setting up a permanent base would give them the opportunity to do even more, as well as giving them an established  league venue.

But don’t take my word for it, go and look for yourself over on their homepage.

Some of you may wonder what my reason for supporting this particular project is when I don’t even live in San Diego. Fair question. Well, it just so happens that a very dear friend of mine likes roller derby, and her local community have helped her quite a bit over the past few years. When I first met her, around nine years ago, she looked like Tank Girl and had all the associated attitude along with a wicked sense of humour. Over the years she has settled down and had a family, but she’s never lost her edge. She just couldn’t express it as openly as she used to due to the responsibilities of parenthood. Being as outspoken as she is blending in has never really suited her. But she is an Awesome mum – and her kids are just as wickedly creative and hilarious as she is – so she did it.

Then, a few years ago, she started going to her local roller derby league’s events over here in the UK. It’s given her a place to focus all of that pent up attitude,whilst also providing a fantastic network of friends and support within her local community. The kids love it, her ‘normal’ friends think it’s fantastic, and she has a place to cut loose and enjoy herself with her family as they cheer the girls on together. She’s even had the chance to do some skating and roller derby at their community events!

Supporting this project makes sense to me because of the positive impact the sport and local league’s fan community has had on my friend’s social life. Hopefully, some of you will be able to relate.

If you’ve read this far, please, go and watch their project video. This league deserves your support, not just for the teams, but for their community as a whole. As this project is set-up under indiegogo’s flexible-funding campaign banner, even if they don’t reach their overall target, your contribution will still go toward the setting-up of the new facility. So, no matter what, you’ll be helping to make a difference.

Happy 2013!

Obligatory 2012 dissection post will surface eventually with lots of recommendations for reading/watching/listening. Suffice to say, in the UK it’s 5 minutes to midnight and the year 2013. So, whether you’ve already seen the new year in or it’s still a good six/seven hours away, I wish you all a very happy new year.

Have a baby Galactus picture to start it off in style:

Baby Galactus from A-Babies vs X-Babies.

Quick Links: Three things to amuse you

Three things you may have missed whilst playing at being responsible adults:

Bravest Warriors

From the mind of Pendleton Ward comes the other series he was trying to get commissioned before Adventure Time got picked up. It’s a surreal, sci-fi adventure series focused on the exploits of the self-styled, Bravest Warriors. Though if we’re being honest, they’re probably more lucky than brave when it comes to dealing with a crisis.
If you’re a fan of Adventure Time you probably already know about this. If not, the humour is cruder than A.T. (The Cartoon Hangover channel is aimed at teens/adults) but it’s a lot of fun. I defy anyone not to laugh at Butter Lettuce. Seriously, you’d have to be completely mirthless to not laugh at that.

Space Janitors 

The first season is almost over, but that’s OK. It means that you have more to watch all in one go! Whilst the pilot episode is rather blunt in establishing the basic premise of the show, it works. The second episode then introduces the proper, far more streamlined, format of this wonderful little show and it just keeps on getting better from there. The humour is infectious and, really, it’s hard to imagine that any sci-fi geek wouldn’t want to be part of this show if given the chance. Very funny – go and watch it!

My Gimpy Life: My Gimpy Christmas

As previously mentioned on several occasions, I love this web-series. Once you’ve taken a peek at the festive animation, be sure to check out the full first series if you haven’t already. It’s hilarious and IT’S COMING BACK NEXT YEAR! They’ve also been nominated for four International Academy of Web-television Awards. Well done guys, it’s thoroughly deserved.

100

Furi Kuri Ep. 01

And so we reach one hundred posts. That’s a whole hundred more than I expected to do at the beginning of the year. Next goal, two hundred. Also, keeping to the damned schedule would probably be a good thing to do.

Thanks for coming this far with me. Carrying on from here you can expect to see more story snippets, reviews, and general comment on whatever catches my eye at any given time.

Now hush. I’m busy re-watching the full series of Paranoia Agent, probably the only Anime series ever made that surpasses FLCL in dark surreality.

Paranoia Agent Ep. 01

[With the obvious exception of Excel Saga – but we won’t go in to that just now…]

Excel Saga Ep 08

Kickstart the Week, Preview: Peter Pan Comic

Renae De Liz is the illustrator of many gorgeous books, including The Last Unicorn and Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones. She was also the driving force behind the gloriously ambitious Womanthology. So you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled across her new gem of a project thanks to a random follower (@PeterPanComic) suddenly appearing on my twitter feed. (This is why I love twitter).

Renae has already begun the preliminary groundwork (and more) required to adapt the stories of J.M. Barrie’s enduring character, Peter Pan, into a full graphic novel. She has enlisted her husband, the similarly, fantastically talented Ray Dillon, on colouring/inking/lettering and design duties; and together they plan to rule the world! Or at least make a damn fine graphic novel worthy of your support.

You can find their official project blog, replete with sketches and character tags, HERE. And if you like what you see (why wouldn’t you?) you will want to bookmark it and keep a very close eye out for their impending Kickstarter project.

Naturally, I will be hyping this to the high heavens, but not just due to the talent involved. The initial character sketches and full colour images look wonderful. As a father, I would love to have a graphic novel of this quality to share with my kids. Still, even if I didn’t have my son and daughter to read this with, it promises to be a visually sumptuous adaptation of a timeless classic, and good art made with passion is always worth supporting.

Please, go and take a look for yourself. This won’t be the last time you’ll hear me mention it.

Stealth Zines: Pushing Creativity

I mentioned this briefly on twitter this morning but thought the idea deserved a short blog post of its own. Here’s a quick re-cap of my basic reasons for wanting to create and distribute a stealth-zine at work. (Yes, stealth-zine is just a fancy way of saying my name won’t be printed on it.):

As someone who has always created through music, singing, drama, and writing, the idea of making my own zine is not new. In fact I even tried it a couple of times as a teenager, with varied results. Though the fact that those zines didn’t really go very far never discouraged me. The true purpose of a zine, as I see it, is to affect your local social environment. A zine can introduce new ideas and concepts into a closed environment, subtly. An office building that houses multiple companies, such as the one I work in, is an ideal playground for a would-be zine maker. The feedback is instant and you’re going to get the whole range of responses. Some people will ignore it, some will be baffled, others intrigued, and a few will even like it. Those last ones are the people you’re doing this for, besides yourself, obviously. The hope – my hope – is that your zine will encourage someone else to make something.

A zine, in any form, is a tool. It can encourage creativity and stimulate conversation in the most inhospitable environments; like graffiti, or music.

By publishing a single sided A5, stealth zine I can be as creative or as conservative as I want to be. I could write an essay (I won’t be), or I could draw/collage/paint/scribble whatever I want all over it. No matter what form it takes the primary objective is to jolt people out of their daily routine. A zine’s raison d’être should never be the pursuit of profit, or recognition. It should simply exist to affect your unwitting audience. Whether you choose to educate, amuse or shock your readers is up to you.

I intend to intrigue. Intrigue is a fantastic catalyst for creation.

Publishing anonymously in an age where everyone and their *cat has access to a computer & printer is the simplest thing in the world. No computer at home? Go to a library. No library? You probably have a computer at home. Just remember, if you decide to try this idea yourself, the experience should be something you want to do. If making your zine isn’t fun then you’ve slipped off the creative path and you’re probably making a newsletter. You poor sod.

If you don’t want to make it, it’s not worth making.

-fin-

*not-always-photogenic