Snarked!

So, I'm quietly browsing through blogland when I chance on Miss Snark's remarkably enjoyable and informative blog (I am a regular visitor, of course), where I read that the Snarkacious One is hosting one of her last-minute writing competitions: 100 words or less, to include the following terms - 'Reacher', 'Helicopter', 'snazzy', 'moonbeam', 'Dan Lazar', 'griffin'.

'kay, thinks I. Can this be difficult? Then I check the entry window. I check the international clock to see what the time is in New York. I think: 'kay, I have 20 minutes maximum to write and send 100 words to Snark Central before the Great Window Of Opportunity guillotines the nit-savvy from the nitwits.

Like the small child with the snotty nose in the sweetshop, I accept the challenge. My entry wings its way through the aether with a good five minutes to spare. And now it is posted on the SnarkBlog for everyone to see (in this thread, #133 to be exact).

Only after writing the 100 words, and seeing my words on the blog in their full glory, do I bother to check out some of the other entries. At which point, the truth trundles up to my front door and posts a note through the letterbox: "you've missed the point of the exercise, Roots!" My entry includes not a single mention of MS, or KY, or even George Clooney. My words do manage to reference Dan Lazar as some sort of publishing figure, but all the rest of the clues in the list of words to be included have flocked in formation over my head: I expect wingtips may have been pointing in my general direction, and beak-like sniggering may have been heard. And checking back on my entry, I realise that my writing doesn't so much stand out from the crowd, but cowers in the corner of the schoolyard, a scribbled note pinned to its jacket saying "Please ignore me! I am not here!"

Shit. Who needs Miss Snark when I can denigrate my own writing so bloody effectively.

Logographic scripts

Whoever came up with the Chinese writing system was out of his tree and off down the garden path in his three-wheel trolley. Even developing a system of writing that uses thousands of stylised pictures over the course of hundreds of years is, in my view, an act of bedlamic proportions on the part of the society that did it.

So of course I had to try it for myself.

The script below says: "The food has lost its taste" in my constructed language Ákat. I think it looks rather nifty. Of course, it isn't the full logographic swuush (that's a technical term, by the way) - my logographic script will be restricted to no more than a thousand different logobits (another technical term) which can be combined to form phrases and sentences.



More stuff on the various Ákat scripts can be found here and here. Enjoy!

Flame Warriors

I love the Flame Warriors website. Mr Reed is to be congratulated, especially on his cartoons.

Of course, I'm a Big Cat. Whispers to the contrary shall be dealt with in the normal manner: I like my litter to be lined with the corpses of malicious rumour-mongers. Now rub my belly!

Kew Gardens

070223 kew 03
Originally uploaded by adleyrik.

I went to Kew Gardens today, partly to see their tropical extravaganza exhibition, but mainly to take photos of flowers. Particularly snowdrops. Don't ask me why snowdrops: it was just something that had to be done. Anyways, many - many! - photos were taken, and this is probably the best snowdrop photo of the day. There's 7 more photos (not all of snowdrops) on my Flickr Stream for those with time to spare to pop over and coo at my slowly improving photo skillz.

Is it working now?

This poem is starting to give me grief. Please tell me it's working now.

Trade

Between the light and dark, a blink: you take
my hand and net aside the camouflage
to walk inside the room. There's ghosts in here -
they wail in whispers, grunts; the shunts and smacks
of fruitless, faceless love; anonymous
entanglements of slugging tongues. I slip
my hands around your cottoned waist, then down
inside your jeans to cup your muscled arse
and pull our groins together. Can't you see
the devil set within my eyes? I can suck
the wisdom teeth from jaws, the snot from lungs;
I can gnaw through sweat-built chests to lick the hearts
of warriors, my fifteen minute friend
who asked to dance astride this tumid tail.

Trade (re-write)

A complete rewrite of a previously shite-ridden draft of a poem, for your delectation:

Trade

Between the light and dark, a veil: you take
my hand and palm aside the barrier
to walk inside the room. There's ghosts in here -
they wail in whispers, grunts; the shunts and smacks
of fruitless, faceless love; anonymous
entanglements of slugging tongues. I slip
my fingers round your cotton waist, then down
within your jeans to cup your muscled arse
and pull our groins together. Can't you see
the devil sat within my eyes? I can suck
the wisdom teeth from jaws, the snot from lungs;
I can gnaw through sweat-built chests to lick the hearts
of warriors, my fifteen minute friend:
this lustful demon's trade beyond the veil.

Eating Out (redraft)

A redraft of an earlier love poem thingy. This one is now cooked to my requirements, and ready to serve. Enjoy!

Eating Out

When he laughs his tongue
splits his lips, spider lines
compressed like the accordion
serenading the the diners;
the veins across his bow-nose
beacon his joy of fine malts.

Her joy is sedate, her oatmeal
hands clasped to the linen
where she hides her smile,
her beige eyes tuned to his face;
I watch her water-stretched heel
stroke along the curve of his calf.

I carve designs on the tablecloth
with the steel of my knife, quiet
amid the clatter. As I wait
for your late arrival I refuel
on cheap house white and the sight
of the waiter's tight groin.

Can you see the rikweb?

It's probably just my computer, but I seem to be having problems viewing certain pages on my website using the new IE7. Whenever I try to view a dynamic page with IE7 - such as the poems archive the browser throws an "unable to connect to the database" error (and then starts dribbling at the mouth). This isn't happening with Konqueror or Firefox, which are either too dense to worry about such errors or too laid back to care. Or alternatively it could be some supernatural glitch where whenever I use IE7 (and ONLY when I'm using IE7) my website's server goes on strike. I don't think it's a cache thingy because the pages are dynamic and so have to be reloaded every time they're called.

Maybe I just need better quality drugs.

Learning to write

After agonising for ages about how to begin the story, I've finally written the first (short) episode and posted it to the new blog.

This is going to be a very "episodic" affair. My plan is to try and post a new episode every Friday, or if I'm feeling particularly creative more often. But there should definitely be a new post every Friday because that's what it says I'll do in my writing diary.

So in structure it's probably going to end up a bit like Tales of the City, following the stories of different people as and when I develop them. But I also want it to be science fiction, so I get the chance to experiment with different ways of infodumping. And I want to see if I can weave the alien setting into the story wherever possible - one of my favourite reads of the past couple of years was The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency which managed to show me Botswana through the stories of the main characters rather than in spite of them. I've spent over 30 years developing my constructed world: unless I can find an effective way to immerse the reader into the world then that's probably 30 years of work down the metaphorical drain.

I've also decided to label the episodes according to the characters appearing in that episode. The idea of "multi-linear" storytelling attracts the less stable side of my mind, but this is the only concession I'm going to give that demon in me, at least until I've learned how to do plots in the traditional way.

Love poem revisions

Just because I'm going to start writing science fiction, it doesn't mean I've escaped from the clutches of the Poetry Mistress. Here's a revision to one of my alleged love poems:

Take this Man

I married you on a couch in Clarkenwell,
its stuffing the curls of groin-hair
that Sebastian had buzz-cut from clients.
We held hands as he dabbed the needle
in vodka, pressed its exquisite point
through the seam of my glans. Not once
did you glance from my face to watch
my testicles dance to the pain. We swapped
our vows in white-hard hand grasps and later
we kissed, my trousers loose on my waist
and a dribble of lust on my newest ring.

And seeing as the juices are flowing (so to speak), a more substantive revision to another one:

Stood outside the office, smoking

Winter spit taps on my skull:
cold drops print "you don't belong
out here" on the paving slabs.

These shoes I borrowed pinch
my toes and your coat's too thin
to keep the wind at bay. Still,

this morning's kiss still warms
my lips. I puff smoke between the rain
and respond: "you don't belong in me".