I Have Travelled Back In Time From 2542
Another week of gentle hell… work is properly scrambling my brain at the moment – so badly I’d actually forgotten we had a show on Friday until lunchtime. Nicht so good. It is incredible to find that although I only rate myself average in my general IT skills and common sense that our organisation manages to recruit so many below the 50% mark. It shouldn’t be possible. Nonetheless… a week of increasingly stupid questions, inattention and lack of comprehension skills combined to make me wish I was drinking. Speaking of which – it’s my last zero alc week! Hurray!
Aside from that, this has been a good if rather busy week of improv activities and nights out. We finally celebrated my other half’s birthday – we were severely delayed by the happy acquisition of work, but at last we found a suitable evening on Saturday. Also – had Wednesday out to wave off a good friend who is working in New York for a month. Lucky devil. It’s nice to be out and about but it does make it difficult to get anything done, especially when most of the day is wasted on work… The coming week looks very much like we have only one evening out. Bring on the Lego.
♥ This week’s scribbles
Tuesday Shankata – Layers of Hatred Accrued Poetically
There ain’t nothing like a good bit of spitty rage.
Wednesday Lego Blog: MiniFigs Old and New
Grubbing about in my box I’ve found some lovely older figures.
Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Six: The Sweet Night Air
The beasts are out! Dare our heroes enter the sky cliffs? (probably)
Friday Beer Review: Three Zero Alcohol Beers
I found more; they’re okay.
Updates on my thrilling life
Writing
Zero update. Almost. Since I’ve taken to my five day schedule I’m mainly writing just to keep up with it! That means I’m failing to scribble enough extra stuff to genuinely plan ahead. I don’t know how I’m going to fix that – maybe some evenings at home will help. What has worked for me and writing is setting myself targets. I don’t really have much personal sense of ambition and I am not a ‘driven’ person so normally being told I have to do something matters not a toss to me. It’s weird then that if I set myself a target and promise it to the anonymous wonder of the internet that I feel responsible. So mebbe I need to set myself an additional random 300 word story per week aim…
Last week’s scribbles
Tuesday Shanktimonious: Self-Righteous Angry Poetry There ain’t nothing like a good bit of spitty rage.
Wednesday Lego Friends: My Best New Friends For girls? Don’t be so sexist. They’ve got lovely coloured bricks.
Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Five: The Obsidian Eyrie Will death save young Jacob Bublesnatch, or will the horrors take him?
Friday Book Review: The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson A delightfully surprising read.
Lego
Holy Legalooza! Series 10 Lego Minifigures are out! I am looking at the 8 of the little devils we’ve acquired so far. It’s going to be one hell of a hunt for Medusa and the wild goose chase Mr Gold. Mwha haha! That’s perhaps too many exclamation marks for so short a paragraph.
I had a lovely time talking about Lego with my pal Parky and his daughter on Saturday. We all like Lego Friends. It’s also nice to show off my Lego to someone who really gets it.
Improv Comedy
We went for some freeform improv at Fisticuffs on Tuesday which produced a couple of great narratives, including a fun story about a pair of birds with differing attitudes to being watched while mating. Then we played with the Aliens Vs Predator (AVP) script, which is terrible and produced true strangeness. Very good fun though!
We had a fucking excellent show on Friday at The Glee Club. In part that was due a lovely audience filling up the space and being really responsive, especially to the compering duo of Lloydie plus ‘Voice of God’ James, but we also had a special guest: the lovely (and diminutive – look at the photo) Heather Urquhart from The Maydays, though we know her best from giving us incredible musical improv workshops with Joe Samuels. It’s an absolute delight and huge tilt to have someone new on stage; we’re still enjoying the freshness of Ben; and Heather made beautiful scenes with the team. I regret not having any scenes with her specifically… sad face. Next time Gadget, next time. Still, I had an especially fun Samurai/Geisha scene with Martin (I was the Geisha!), shouted at Ben, told a time-travelling story and rollercoastered happily with Marilyn in accents and genres! I declare aceness.
Very soon – in fact in a week or so, Parky and I shall be running the next MissImp improv beginners course. It runs for six weeks on Mondays starting 13th May (we’ll probably skip the bank holiday Monday, but that will be up to the group). It’s the third MissImp beginners course and we’re really looking forwards to spreading what we know like comedy butter onto the minds and souls of a new group of improvisers. If you’re interested, and you should be – check out the details here: http://missimp.co.uk/improv-comedy-training-in-nottingham/improv-comedy-courses-in-nottingham/
Media Intake
Books
I finished off The Heroes of The Valley by Jonathan Stroud; I enjoyed it, especially the consideration of how myth and legend grow but felt it oddly lacked the bite and excitement I was hoping for. Not to be deterred, I plunged into a novella by Neal Asher Snow in the Desert. I think I must have read it before, but it was still a satisfyingly odd little scifi tale of one albino whose testicles are desired by others. As I said, it’s been a busy week so I next chose by plunging into my Kindle. There I found the second Cretaceous Station novel by Terrence Zavecz- Hunter’s Moon. I still love the dinosaur setting, but sadly it’s being overwhelmed by some dodgy writing. I’m not sure if it just needs a brutal proofread but it lurches between past and present tense from sentence to sentence and there are a lot of typos.
It sounds a bit petty to moan about spelling and bad proofing, but I find them off putting. It’s hard to edit your own stuff; I certainly find it almost impossible to find the time during the week, but then I’m writing fast and loose – that’s my excuse. A lack of editing seems to be a feature of many independently published ebooks I buy. I want them to be better! Can I help?
Films
Just the one this week: we finally caught Oblivion at the cinema. I don’t really have much to say about it. I love the clean, retro-future ’70s designs and (a bit like The Host) there’s a really good alien invasion story in there somewhere. There was another one of those stupid American trailers that go on for ever and tell you the entire story, which definitely helped undermine it. Actually, even without that the ‘twists’ are incredibly obvious and predictable. There’s some nice scenery and chases (I love the Terrahawks style drones and the noises they make) but there is no tension at all. Sad really.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGpjlfCfe2Y&w=560&h=315]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY-7R_jd2ZU&w=420&h=315]
Events and Excitement
MissImp in Action – Friday 31st May
8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.
Weeks That Have Come Before
- This week, Monday 18th March 2013 (captainpigheart.com)
- This week, Monday 22nd April 2013 (captainpigheart.com)