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Lego Blog: Lunchtime Building

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Packed Lego

The best lunchtime activity I’ve found is Lego. Reading is okay, but the phone rings. Writing is what I want to do, but the phone rings. Lego however… Lego drowns out the noise. That gentle shake of the case and the consequent rattle and shickling of the bricks gives me a very pleasant warm sensation. It’s nice. So for the last few weeks I’ve been toting a nice metal Ferrero Rocher tin with an assortment of Lego Friends, a bit of Chima and some other random bits and bobs. It’s a nice mix of odd bricks and colours and is proving nice to build and dismantle from.

An Idle Beginning

Without really intending to, I’ve been developing a story of sorts from my random buildings…

Setting the Scene

Going Hunting

This one seemed at it’s best out in the wild. The Lego Friends heads are frustrating to fit into ordinary Lego funtime. They fit well on a spike though. Our brave hunter has succeeded. He also has a bucket of water. Victory!

The next set became a bit more complicated. I’m pleased with the water section – it’s something to do with all those weird crystal Chima things. I just want to take them apart. But it gave a pleasing depth with the tall tree adding to the effect.

I’m looking forwards to further building, it’s good fun and very relaxing. Next I shall build robots again!

Related articles

This week, Monday 13th May 2013

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

I Tawt I Taw A Busy Cat

Pudding MittensMy mistake – now I am busy! Last week was filled with the stressful misunderstandings that employment seems intended for. As such – not a lot of fun. Boo and tits to that. Next week looks to be far more full of activity, in addition to whatever diurnal nonsense transpires. I start teaching the next MissImp Improv Beginners course on Monday (with m’pal Parky) which will be ace but does further compress the week’s free time. I shall maintain my schedule!

What with all that marvellousness I’m saddened to say that I am already returning to a largely zero alcohol existence in order to remain sane and healthy. I am disappointed by this, not least because I adore the bottle of Singleton I opened this week. Oh well, at least the Bavaria 0.0% alternative I’ve settled on is only 25p per can…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhgCDLmMuqI&w=560&h=315]

Something that did sadden me this week was news of Ray Harryhausen’s death. It’s rare that I use the word tragedy, but that’s how his death feels. Although I have not one skill in common with the great man, his films have always inspired me and when I think of monsters, they are his.

♥ This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Shankicide: Shivving with Death Poetry

Back to a few poems of gentle frustration.

Wednesday Lego Blog: Lunchtime Building

Some people relax at work by going outside; I have a travelling Lego case.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Eight: Running Blind

Darkness has swallowed the crew of The Dove’s Eye

Friday Film Review: Iron Man 3 (2013)

Ron’s back! And he has friends as well as splendid new enemies.

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

I like a good old rant and normally I turn to Shankanalia to achieve that, but the week before last some stuff happened that really crawled up my urethra. What I found pleasing about ranting in this case was how diverse the subject felt. Before I knew it I’d banged out a thousand words on the stuff – hence last Tuesday’s sort-of-essay on Interpretation. I’m concerned that continuing to find space even for the little writing I’m doing at the moment is going to get harder – how do other people keep it up?! (And why is there no interrobang key on my keyboard?)

This week I hope to steer The Desert Crystals more or less back on course. This nasty skywards turn was never part of the story! I guess that’s why people plan ahead. My stories always feel to me much more like the stuff I do on stage with MissImp.

Last week’s scribbles

Desert Crystals1Storytelling at The Glee ClubTuesday Autofiction: Accusation and Prejudice Context and judgement afflict us all, how should we make decisions?

Wednesday Live Storytelling: A Story from MissImp in Action When I get to monologise on stage it gets weird, quickly.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Seven: This Hellish Hole Darkness has swallowed the crew of The Dove’s Eye.

Friday Film Review: Olympus Has Fallen (2013) It’s Die Hard in the White House!

Lego

Lego Boxes1As I mentioned last week I’ve been mostly fingering my bricks at lunchtime. Well, that and having a jolly good re-sort over the weekend when I found another suitable box. Categorising your Lego really does bring out the OCD in a person.It’s insanely satisfying to sift through the boxes, removing colours and shapes to whatever insane demands your organising brain screams at you. I go mainly by colour, or utility of colour. I’m very fond of woodland stuff, so greens and browns all get mixed in together. Blacks and greys (all 20 shades) get separated out, as do white and tan. I also segregate little fiddly bits that I think might come in useful, and when I’m building that can become rather full. Primary colours I use least of all and am least fond of so they get heaped up together.

I have much more time for the pastel stuff of Lego Friends, but I don’t have enough to justify a separate box. What shall I do?! Oh, there’s a missing box as well – I keep oddments of minifig accessories, transparent parts and well, things I like in another box. I’m limited to what I can stuff under the sofas, although a worrying amount is currently in models at present. And Jabba’s Palace and a LoTR set remain unopened upstairs…

Improv Comedy

Due to rage last week I missed Fisticuffs – probably for the best as I wasn’t fit for company. We did have Gorilla Burger though which seemed to go well. It’s evidence of my broken mind that I couldn’t tell whether it was going well at the time. I am now better. Excitingly we begin the Improv Beginners course this week. We have a dinky group of 7 so far, and it would be nice to get 8 or 9 but if not, those delightful 7 will have a lot of attention lavished on them. Woop. I’ve taught lots of introductory workshops and endless weekly jams but I’ve never had this particular intensity of time with a group. I’m looking forwards to it.

Media Intake

Books

The_Air_WarI could resist no longer. I tried to, but I could not. I finally succumbed to the allure of The Air War. I’m so glad I did, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s eighth book in the Shadows of The Apt series is heartbreakingly awesome. The battles are magnificent and the emerging weaponry is terrifying. I’m very afraid even more of my favourite characters will die. I’m also afraid that I’ll read it too quickly, so I am absurdly limiting myself to only reading it in the evening. I recently acquired the first book Empire in Black and Gold on Kindle (I have all of them in paper) so I can re-read that at my leisure.

Films

I saw Avatar again on TV this weekend. God, it’s awful. Not only did its effects appear to have dated really badly, but it was quickly evident just how shallow and weakly done the story is. The characters are of almost no interest and it’s so predictable and so much a muted rip off of many other films – Pocahontas being the most notorious comparison. Personally I think Ferngully was better.

A much better rewatch was X-Men First Class. I loved it at the cinema (in quality it managed to achieve somewhere between X-Men 1 and X-Men 2 – we shall not speak of X-Men 3), and I think it’s maybe even more enjoyable at home. It was very pleasing to see young Professor X and Magneto hanging out in bars. It’s shot like a ’70s movie but with modern pace and sensibilities, which really makes it pack a punch. I believe the next one is just around the corner.

Events and Excitement

Knickerbocker GloriousKnickerbocker Glorious – Saturday 18th May

11:00am – 3:00pm at The Fountain, Cathedral Quarter, Derby.
Music, pirate tales and more. All free, all outdoors.

MissImp in Action – Friday 31st May

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

Weeks That Have Come Before

Film Review: Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Olympus Has Fallen I love the Die Hard films, except for the most recent one because it was terrible, dull and contained none of the traditional wrong place, good man doing what has to be done themes (they actually list those in Die Hard 4, perhaps that’s why they thought they couldn’t do them anymore). Why am I on about Die Hard? Because Olympus Has Fallen is a Die Hard movie. Since we saw the trailer we’ve been calling it Die Hard in the White House. It makes the film even more fun.
Our main dude (Gerard Butler) is an ex-Secret Service presidential bodyguard who becomes ‘ex’ after saving the president (Aaron Eckhardt) but not his wife from an icy death. All very unfortunate, but told concisely and well enough that you begin to give a damn about the characters. Fortunately he now works at the Treasury next door to the White House. This will come in handy.
Terrorists! Koreans! Hurray. American gung ho movies are at their most amusing when picking on their Oriental foes (almost as good as having Brit bad guys). It’s so full of hatred and relish in their ultimate defeat. It’s fun to cheer on the bad guys too. Especially in this as they are vastly more competent, prepared and likeable. We are delighted by the vision of a plane strafing Washington DC with machine gun fire (though it’s oddly bloodless, especailly compared with what comes later), a coach load of tourists pulling guns out and shooting the utterly inept Secret Service guys, cops and anyone else nearby. Their insurgency is swift, slick and increasingly bloody. There are lots of head shots to enjoy.
Thank goodness we have Gerard Butler. He’s able to sneak in the back, shooting folk in the head, during the takeover of the White House. He’s gruff, tough and best mates with the president’s kid. There’s no particular need to dwell on the rest of the story – the bad guys are holding the president hostage in his bunker, nuclear weapons, techno-blinkie-thing of doom etc. The action is fast and fun – as I said before, it gets pretty bloody and there is also the sort of beating up of women that Hollywood films are really keen on at the moment. All that aside the action is well choreographed and grim. Butler gets some amusing quips in, as does the baddie played by a glacial Rick Yune. It plaays out predictably and no doubt receives applause in the US cinema.
Personally I never get tired of seeing the White House blown to pieces, and that’s in this a lot. I’m sure it’s supposed to be gritty realism, but the main message is how incompetent the president’s top staff and everyone in the military except for that Scottish guy who used to be mostly naked and oiled. Oh no, that’s 300. Oh well. What I was most consistently amused by were the accurate and critical comments of American foreign policy and selfish wealthy attitudes. These come up several times and are just laughed off. There are also the usual terrible decisions of their military commanders, and the general wickedness of America’s enemies.
There are a whole series of perplexing judgments, not least the decision to withdraw the Seventh Fleet and pull out of South Korea. The USA’s responsibilities apparently end with preserving the life of their figurehead. That same commander in chief tells his colleagues to give up their super secret codes without a fight and praises them for their strength. Weird. It’s very entertaining bollocks and I chuckled along happily throughout. Watch it, enjoy.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWnt2exFm1o&w=560&h=315]

Related articles

The Desert Crystals – Part Seven: This Hellish Hole

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Part 7 – This Hellish Hole

Desert Crystals1

The night reached out and bit the airship out of the world. The moon’s radiance cut off immediately and even the ship lamps seemed to gutter with the shock. They returned hesitantly, and held a weaker luminance than before. Although Rosenhatch Traverstorm trusted the captain to know the dimensions of his vessel the hole had appeared all too small. He and the crew had all cringed as the captain unerringly steered the huge balloon and gondola into the cave. To his credit he had already reversed the velocity engines while they were some way out and they drifted gently into the waiting maw.

The terrific swarm of clawing monsters that bedevilled their flight were vivid silhouettes against the glowing exterior. The pistoliers and riflemen continued to gun them down; their centipede companion braced his forelimbs against the rail and directed the rotating barrels of his enormous battery gun towards their enemies, exploding them into tatters. The tremendous roar of Harvey’s carapace mounted machine gun slowed and reduced to irregular shouting. The cannon whined to a halt and the crew’s individual pistol shots were distinct once again. They too tapered off till the crew stood quiet and still on deck. The creatures had withdrawn as the airship drifted further from the outside world. The cave mouth had shrunk dramatically – as Traverstorm proved to himself, raising his hand outstretched in front of him. He abandoned the view, leaving half of the crew maintaining their vigilance at the rear, to join the rest peering into the absolute blackness ahead.

The dark was peerless. Nothing was visible. The lanterns shrank from the gloom, which was irritating as that only made the darkness more complete. Nonetheless Traverstorm squinted, in the vain hope that some light might be forthcoming from deep within the sky cliff. Harvey’s heavy tread announced his presence, the repeating monster on his back causing him to sway more than usual.

“Perhaps they are afraid of the dark,” he joked, jocularly jabbing Traverstorm with his right mandible.

“Hmm,” murmured his friend,” I do wonder if we ought to be…”

Jasparz, the captain’s aide, joined them at the rail. “Lord Emmaline requests your counsel gentlemen.” The crew took an automatic step or two backwards as Harvey’s repeating cannon lurched over them, even though the crank handle hung untouched to his side.

Lord Emmaline was busy lighting a cigar. The glowing tip added a fraction more light to the darkness.

“Good instincts Lord Emmaline,” commented Traverstorm, accepting one of the captain’s cigars (which he himself had brought aboard), “we seem to be safe from them for now.”

“Unless they’re now massing within, preparing to come upon us from all directions,”

“We’re not likely to see them coming,” Harvey chipped in, “but this place is curious. It has the most unusual emanations.” His final pair of legs, which pointed directly behind him quivered and twitched gently.

“Harvey’s kind are highly sensitive to vibration,” Traverstorm offered in response to Lord Emmaline’s quirked brow, “his sensitivity is remarkable, and in circumstances such as these will doubtless prove of greater value than our poor sight.”

“The walls, the whole substance of this unusual aerial structure is positively vibrant. Why, it feels as if the whole rock is alive.”

“A roost perhaps? A vast eyrie, like the ghastly shite-spattered cliffs of Grimdown – only within the hollows rather than on the cliff itself. This must be the resting and probably breeding space for the species. Where else could they fly to? This may be the only object of its sort in the sky. A rare species – indigent solely to this bizarre honeycombed mountain…” Traverstorm’s eyes glazed over as the evolutionary possibilities of the curious cliff bedazzled him.

Lord Emmaline was not so blinded and whilst the explorer pondered he stuffed his pistol into its holster and directed Jasparz to maintain their present cautious course.

“Fix the lamps at fullest extension lads,” he called out through his clenched cigar.

The crew unfolded the hidden booms, stretching an extra set of lights out as far as they would go. They seemed even dimmer out there, but the combined radiance produced a faint reflection off the sides of the cavern, just barely enough to be sure they were not on an immediate collision course. With the oppressive darkness held at bay Lord Emmaline grew conscious of the dank heat that surrounded them as surely as the dark.

“So now what?” asked Traverstorm.

“While I was briefly torn between remaining here or reversing our route and facing that endless horde once more, I believe we ought to follow our intent – to find young Jacob Bublesnatch and rescue him from this hellish hole.”

“Splendid. Harvey here believes he can use his sensitivity to the queer vibrations to at least partly map out the warren that we’re presently plumbing.”

Indeed, the giant centipede had unrolled a large sheet of paper and was even now deftly manipulating a pair of charcoal pencils to plot out the network of tunnels. Beside the sketch he added florid tables of personal symbolism depicting depth of vibration, intensity and irregularities he could detect.

“We shall shortly come upon a vertical passage which looks to lead further into the heart of this place. Given the lack of denizens thus far I’d speculate that they cluster tightly as far from the outer reaches as possible. There we might well discover our missing night watch mate.”

“Excellent,” declared their captain, “I want two men on top of the main frame in five minutes. Take your safeties and pistols. Contact us as soon as you reach the top,” the crew exchanged worried looks and a series of surreptitious ‘rock-paper-scissors’ were soon underway. Lord Emmaline turned back to Harvey and Traverstorm, “there’s a platform above the bag’s frame. I’ll have them spot for us from up there.” A pair of men bounded up the rigging and vanished into the gloom.

“I do hope they took lights with them,” remarked Traverstorm.

“They’ll be fine. Capable fellows,” Lord Emmaline’s response seemed dreadfully glib when with a scream, one of the two men plummeted past the railing and into the depths, “perhaps a little hasty with the knots though.”

Next Week: Part 8 – Running Blind 

In the same series:

Live Storytelling: A Story from MissImp in Action

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Use Your Braaaaaaiiin

Storytelling at The Glee Club
I like making stuff up. Sometimes it’s with pen and paper (keys and metal?), sometimes it’s just with an audience. I find both to be much the same. One of the differences is that if I’m on stage I can’t just wander off and make a cup of tea or play Plants vs Zombies for an hour. Well, I could, but I’d have to justify it pretty hard. I like the live stuff – there’s no possibility of editing it unless I think about the story as I go along, and it’s probably quite clear that I don’t think ahead. What does work is setting the scene. Once I’ve done that I can come back to it again and again. As with everything we begin with words and add more. Remembering what has happened so far is important on stage because I can’t flick back through the story so far for names and places (I fail at one of those in this story!), partly because repetition is important for reinforcing a theme and reminding the audience (and me) what is happening.

Word Lies

I’m not a very visually-oriented person; when I imagine I don’t see pictures often, I mainly see the words I’d use to describe it. Some words seem weighted – “dawn” is one, and it was the first word that popped into my head at the start of the monologue below. From that all sorts of nonsense is drawn forth. The style of monologues we often do during MissImp in Action are what we call ‘insert word’ stories. The audience are given magazines and when pointed to during the story they provide us with a few random words or phrases, we have to seamlessly fuse them into the story. I use them to twist and tilt the stories – I like to use those phrases to justify or explain. That inevitably leads to some mental contortions as the plot changes completely. It’s fun.

Sad In The Rain

Hope you enjoy the story:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtaWrg_VU7o&w=420&h=315]

MissImp in Action is performed on the last Friday of every month at The Glee Club in Nottingham by MissImp, Nottingham’s improv group.

Autofiction: Interpretation

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

This Is Not A Work Related Post

Interpretation

Just wanted to be clear about that. Apparently it’s important. Perhaps to be even clearer, this is a fictionalised account of the sort of thing that might happen to a person. When I reach out for a name, perhaps when I can’t quite remember someone’s name, or when I allocate a default, it’s usually Dave for a man and Julia for a girl. I don’t really know why. Maybe in my head they are everyman names – certainly they’re fairly common, but more importantly they don’t conjure any specific connotations for me. That makes them useful, I can project what I fancy for characterisation when on stage and since they are average-type names I find them empathetic and sympathetic – they are just like everyone else.

 

Of course, that doesn’t stop other people from having different assumptions. It’s possible that a reader or audience member might think that I thought all Daves were insane skin harvesters or that all Julias enjoyed knitting during stockbroker meetings. They might even assume that since they themselves share a common name that this is in fact a judgement upon them, and respond to it as if they themselves were the focus of the scene. The question, I guess, is which of these opinions is the more important or accurate, and whether we ought to grant the audience member the right to make those assumptions?

Impractical Criticism

I fondly remember the enjoyable pointlessness of GCSE and A Level English Literature in which we were told about the various interpretations there are of characters and themes in Shakespeare, Chaucer, Webster, Austen and many others. We were encouraged to root into those works and dredge up whatever connotations and assumptions we could justify, using the flimsiest or most complex interpretations we could. While we could easily present a case of racism (or whatever) against the author we could equally easily cry post-modern bollockisms and reinterpret the work in the light of the death of a fishing village in Portugal.

Were any of those ideas true? We found evidence, sure, and chose to interpret it along a set of assumptions. Were they what the author intended? We had no way of knowing as the author had not been thoughtful enough to provide a full justification of their work. Even if they had, we were still encouraged to disregard it, interpret their own explanation in the context of the war, the incipient homoeroticism of the age, a letter inn a newspaper that criticised their love of daffodils. So the author’s intent became the least important aspect of their work.

Their Shoes Are The Wrong Size

I personally think that is total bollocks. Sure, you can partly understand a piece of prose in the context that it was written, but ultimately unless you can get into the author’s head (which you can’t) or ask them about it (you probably can’t because they’re usually safely dead before we rip into them), you either like or dislike the piece of art. That’s it. “I like this book because it reminds me of a sheep in a river”. Fine. But “the sheep, stranded in the river represents Nazism stranded at the end of WWII in the faster flowing ideological tide of communism” is just a load of wank.

Incredible Credulity

It gets worse of course. If one abstracts a sentence or two from its natural context and submits it, anonymously (for fear of prejudicing the reading, one can only assume), to some critical body with powers to act upon the content of the phrase – what would we expect to happen? Undated, timeless, free of context and reference – what is the sensible course to take with such a quote? In GCSE history we were taught to analyse the sources of information. Highly prized was the motive in supplying information. Anonymity makes something impossible to check for accuracy (was the phrase written by the named author?), context. Anonymity itself makes the item suspect. Especially if it is possible, or even likely that a remark taken out of context and handed to a prejudiced observer, might seem to imply a criticism or abuse.

Judge. You Must Judge. At Once.

On receipt of such an item what should that reader do? Ignore it? Well, someone has taken the time to draw one’s attention to it. We shall assume the earnestness of that someone – that they are merely trying to be helpful. Without context it would be difficult to judge malice, surely. So this ‘thing’ – with no context, history or evidence of its source, what can we do but assume, assume like banshees shrieking in the wind. It is obvious therefore that the cited phrase is in breach of some agreement, that the unnamed, unreferenced person or organisation that we assume (from the hidden prejudices of our our mind) is in someway ourself, or the organisation that we represent. Therefore the phrase is offensive, and the author (of whom we yet have no proof) must be both blamed and reprimanded.

Our first move must be to censor (admittedly without cause or certainty), to enforce our rules (which we may not have yet read through, to be certain that the quoted offence does indeed transgress those rules, and to thereby attain the moral highground), and to reprimand the individual identified by an anonymous source for an action whose date, context and existence are as yet undetermined.

It doesn’t sound like a great plan does it?

A Polly Oggy

Is it just barely possible that we might have acted inappropriately in our presumption of guilt, of thoughtless credulity at the offered evidence, of ignorance of our own rules, of prejudice in our assumptions about the intentions and meanings of another’s thoughts expressed in ambiguous and non-referential terms. Might we even be considered foolish for such an action, for colluding with the (more likely) malicious intent behind such an action as lifting a phrase out of context and sending it anonymously to one with the power to punish the author (apparently without proof or investigation), for harrassing, bullying and attempting to impinge on the freedom of an individual to express themselves without fear of censure or censorship when they do in fact comply entirely with the rules we failed to check before acting blindly?

Yeah, maybe. Hope that person isn’t really pissed off…

This is a fictional account of something that might have happened somewhen to somebody.

Related articles

This week, Monday 6th May 2013

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Summertime and Living Is Queasy

Zoetrope1The weeks flash by like crudely animated horses in a Kinder Egg zoetrope. Consequently I can barely recall what I’ve been doing… it was a quiet week in the evenings at any rate and a modicum of progress has been made. A modicum ain’t much no matter how you quantise it. I’m going to assume I did loads and that the sheer weight of effort has overwhelmed my primitive memory.

This has been my last zero alcohol week too… I am disturbed to find that there are a few of those beers that I really do like. The last one I came across was Bavaria 0.0%. It’s delicious. Even better it’s sold at the insane, face-slapping-awake price of £1.50 for 6 330ml cans. That’s cheaper than any other soft drink I can think of. It’s about to become my regular non-beer drink for the summer. Seriously that price blows my mind. It has a creamy smooth texture which I suppose is most like cream soda. I’m sitting in the cinema with two of them set to accompany Iron Man 3…

♥ This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Autofiction: Accusation and Prejudice

Context and judgement afflict us all, how should we make decisions?

Wednesday Live Storytelling: A Story from MissImp in Action

When I get to monologise on stage it gets weird, quickly.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Seven: This Hellish Hole

Darkness has swallowed the crew of The Dove’s Eye

Friday Film Review: Olympus Has Fallen

It’s Die Hard in the White House!

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

I’m chasing myself to keep up at the moment. The mornings are a time of blind gaping until shower and coffee are absorbed. Maybe I need to get up earlier… Hmm. But yeah, I spent last week catching up. I didn’t write The Desert Crystals Part 6 until Wednesday evening. I just didn’t manage to start it earlier. I suspect it might be a bit weaker than some of the other chapters. I will do better! Once I’d found the time it wasn’t a struggle to write, which remains encouraging and enjoyable. I fancy the prospect of this becoming a very long running series, though that might make it tricky to catch up with should someone come into it half way through. Sorry!

They say you should write what you know. I’ve never decided if that limits or exposes you – I think it can be both. Clearly what I write about are not events that I have or could have experienced, but I do try to write my characters in ways that I can conceive of. Their feelings are sometimes mine, and their reactions and responses are, as in improv, things that I can imagine doing or saying. Whether another person can know that this this is the case, or guess it from what’s given in stories and these autobiographical bits is unclear to me.

Last week’s scribbles

The Desert CrystalsMinifig MadnessTuesday Shankata – Layers of Hatred Accrued Poetically Just a few more angry rantings for you.

Wednesday Lego Lego Blog: Minifigure Madness A little delve into my Lego heap and some playing with hair.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Six: The Sweet Night Air The beasts in the night!

Friday Beer Review: Three Zero Alcohol Beers  Perhaps the final three no alcohol beers I shall ever drink…

Lego

Lunchtime build 1I really enjoyed getting my minifigs out last week (if you know what I mean) and taking pictures of them. Oddly I don’t recall playing with Lego as a child in the same way as I would with Star Wars, Action Force and Transformers toys. It was the building and disassembly I enjoyed. So I think that hour with swapping heads and hair was more than I used to play even back then.

I’ve been taking a travelling case of Lego to work with me for the last week – see the awesome gold Ferrero Rocher box in the picture. It makes for for a very relaxing half hour’s play at lunchtime. I’m not great at relaxing, but the sound the Lego makes as I turn tht case over sparks a flame of joy in my heart. I’m focussing on miniaturisation due to time constraints using a heap of Lego Friends stuff and Lego Chima.

I also watched a couple of Feminist Frequency podcasts recommended by a fellow Lego enthusiast about Lego’s messed up gender segregation. Really interesting and right on the mark. Check ’em out:

Improv Comedy

No Fisticuffs this week, which was a sadness but a blessed night off too. I ran last week’s improv jam though and tried to fuse what Parky and Lloydie have been focussing on for the last month into something new and cool. My aim was sychronisation of minds, that elusive group mind concept which is tough enough to get with people you know well and a step harder with near-strangers. So it was to be an intimate, intensive affair. I was therefore thrilled when we got abruptly shifted out of our regular space (some art installation thing) and into The City Gallery – a tiny venue. Then twenty people turned up. I could have compromised my plan, I chose not to, except for dropping a warm up game that required three times the space for half as many people.

We played a series of familiar exercises. First a form of rope, in pairs identifying the key groundings for a scene – names, activity, place and feelings. There was a lovely energy and the setups were simple, funny and concise. Next came justification and agreement. I borrowed Jules Munn’s simple “that’s because” exercise, in which every exchange begins with justifying what had just been said. These get hysterical and ridiculous quite quickly. I found mine returned repeatedly to hippy attitudes in the ’60s Odd. Finally we moved on to inspiration, patterns and games: word association in pairs again but spread out through the room. The cycle begins with a statement and the association follows that, responding both to the word that you hear and holdng the initial statement in the back of your mind. Tricky, but it produced a lot of laughter and really interesting patterns and wheels of ideas.

Those exercises and the habits of grounding, justification and inspiration lead into three person sets of scenes. Each set was preceded by a quote from one of three books I’d brought. The trio would then word associate (focussing on each other) until they felt ready to begin the first scene. The three scenes were mostly fairly short, but they all got to the point and were set up quickly and smartly. Whatever we did seemed to work!

Come And Learn…

Mebbe you’d like to improvise too? Well, Parky and I shall be running the next MissImp improv beginners course starting on 13th May for 6 weeks. 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 the second of Terrence Zavecz’ Cretaceous Station novels, Hunter’s Moon. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first, but I still enjoyed the dinosaurs (feathery!) and the lists of scientific articles at the end of each chapter to back up his research. I moved on to a collection of short stories. Still chewing my way through them. I’ll get back to you when I’ve finished it.

Events and Excitement

Gorilla Burger – Thursday 9th May

7.30pm at The Corner, Nottingham.
Improv for everyone – on stage!

MissImp in Action – Friday 31st May

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

Weeks That Have Come Before

Beer Review: Three Zero Alcohol Beers

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Optimism: The Glass Is Half Empty, But It Can Be Refilled

3 Alcohol Free Beers_headerNot content with finding a few good non-alcoholic beers I was convinced that someone else must do a good one – there’s no way I could have found a winner so fast (Erdinger). Well, I did. Yay me. I’ve found three more alternatives (and no I’m not drinking fruit juice) to proper beer. This is my last week of not drinking alcohol and I cannot wait for whiskey and real beer again.

Holsten Pils Zero Alcohol Beer

Imagine my relief when I found pubs in Nottingham with an alternative to Beck’s Blue! This seems to be the only other regular alternative. It’s not bad, and they have it in my Thursday regular The Cock And Hoop. Like most bottled pub beer it comes in a 330ml bottle, which I find a pitiful quantity. I realise that groups of men wearing identical checked shirts regard this as the natural accessory to looking like an identikit over-the-hill twat in town. However, for the rest of us who normally drink from glasses and don’t have a bandy legged swagger, this is a disappointing amount to be charged almost as much as a pint of decent ale for.

The price/volume is all I’ve got to complain about when pressing this to my lips. It tastes fine – like most of the poorer pilsners it doesn’t taste of a great deal, but it is quite refreshing. I’m happy to chug a couple in the pub. The next day though – wow. I have never had hangovers like the headaches I seem to get after this stuff. Might just be me, so I’d be interested in hearing if others get zero-alc hangovers. Kind of annoying…
Rating: Highland Cattle

Bitburger Drive Alcohol Free Beer

I’ve been asking for recommendations during this period of self-imposed torture. Remarkably most people offered Beck’s Blue (I now disregard every opinion they put forward) or Bitburger Drive. I finally tracked this one down in the Kean’s Head. Delightfully the barman provided a range of fancy glassware to make me feel better about drinking it.

I like ordinary Bitburger, it’s clean and refreshing. This ‘driving’ version is also a smooth drink, but has a bewildering dehydrating property. I swear this stuff was wicking away the moisture from my mouth even as I drank it. Incredible. If they put Bitburger Drive in sports t-shirts they would actually work. It gives me a slight dilemma, because it did taste fine (like the Holsten Pils) but I was coughing and had to get a glass of water to go with it. Very odd.
Rating: Camel

Kopparberg Alcohol Free Cider

3 Alcohol Free Beers_cleanI know what you’re thinking – that’s not beer. And you are correct. It certainly is not beer. It was the only alternative to the deathbrew Blue at a Wetherspoons and I was feeling experimental. I don’t often drink cider, not after the 12% white cider my Dad brewed when I was a teen, but I figured this would be like Appletise or something. It’s a 500ml bottle so looks sensible in a pint glass and I felt like I fitted in again. It was lovely until I tasted it.

My first impression was that Willy Wonka had produced a drink to kill small children with diabetes. So sugary that my teeth instantly hurt. It has no flavour other than sweetness. If you got a brick of Haribo sweets and threw them at your own face it might replicate the drinking sensation. That’s not fair – it’s more like Swizzels and Matlow’s Double Dipper in drink form. I drank it with a straw.

Sadly I had to abandon this one about halfway down the glass as I couldn’t taste the food I was eating and the sweetness gave me a headache. The aftertaste, reminiscent of Lemon Tango used as mouthwash, stayed with me through half a packet of gum and toothbrushing. Impressive. I don’t know what Kopparberg is usually like so I can’t speculate about how badly, or accurately they’ve converted it.
Rating: Sugar Glider

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The Desert Crystals – Part Six: The Sweet Night Air

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Part 6 – The Sweet Night Air

The Desert Crystals

Lord Emmaline Corshorn’s airship The Dove’s Eye raced through the night sky, propellers forcing her forward, in hot pursuit of the creature that had torn the nightwatch mate, Jacob Bublesnatch, from the cockpit while they were thousands of feet in the air. The airship had reached unheard of heights – no one knew what might dwell in such a rarefied and chilly band of the atmosphere. The deck was jammed with men – the full complement of crew and passengers gaping at the sight that offered itself to their curiosity.

To those standing agog on deck it seemed as if a black twisting mass were being vomited upon the airship. In reality it was just the caves of a vast floating cliffside disgorging its armada of winged and clawed monsters upon the airship. That didn’t help with the panic. The presence of the Sky Mountain had already shaken the nerves of a superstitious crew, and the frothing flock of teeth and claws heading their way might have inspired a marine crew to abandon ship. But it was a long way down and aeronauts are of sterner stuff.

Still, the crew dallied; agape and with shaking fingers they muttered, shouted and wailed. Their passengers, by way of contrast were engaged in an escalating argument about the nature of the beasts:

“They clearly have wings of skin – see how their shape is so clearly lined by the moon. Therefore they must be mammalian. How else could they retain their body heat?” demanded Rosenhatch Traverstorm.

“Well, first I’d dispute your assertion by the distance over which you judge them. A closer inspection will doubtless reveal their reptilian nature. Furthermore-” Harvey’s critique was interrupted by a bellow from their captain.

“Man your posts for battle!” cried Lord Emmaline, “Jasparz to the armaments – arm the crew.” His words cut through the nervous confusion, his crew swiftly moved to their places and began handing out the airships weapons. He grimly laid his own pistol on the sill of the cockpit and hardened his grip on the wheel.

The creatures flew directly for the speeding airship. To Traverstorm it seemed like just moments before they met. His eyes were fixed on the incursion, spotting and identifying characteristics, comparing them with his encyclopaedic knowledge of beasts known and rumoured. He cursed under his breath as the first of the swarm approached. Their wings were arranged in pairs, with two pairs of black leathery wings beating in alternate rhythm. Beneath and between the wing beats hung long distended bodies, like the tortured thorax and abdomen of a Gorilla Beetle; hanging off them a thrashing mass of jointed tentaculate limbs, viciously clawed, reaching out for the crew. The face… the head seemed nothing but teeth, slavering lips drawn back taut leaving a ring of fangs to thrust forward, ridged larval tongue lashing out – tasting the air.

Traverstorm hunkered down, telescope in hand, between a pair of burly crew toting rifles and gave them a wide-eyed look, “I’d shoot first if I were you.”

The first wave of winged monsters came within reach of the guns; tattered wings and holed bodies spiralled downwards. The crew were admirable shots, but the flock was undeterred. Thicker and heavier they swarmed the airship. Rifle and pistols discharged, killed, were reloaded and found yet more targets. Presumably drawn by the presence of the men on deck, it took the creatures a few waves before they noticed the balloon hanging above the ship. Dozens of them peeled off from the attack to rush, claws extended at the vulnerable bag of gas. The crew kept their shots away from the balloon. Jasparz, the man who had handed out the armaments watched the beasts begin to alight on the ropes and network that bound the airship together. He waited far longer than Traverstorm was comfortable with before finally calling to the captain,

“Now, sir!”

Lord Emmaline grimaced and flipped open a panel on his console, then flicked the pair of switches beneath. A terrific surge of electricity roared through the cables winding about the balloon, and through the sky beasts clinging to them. They convulsed, then dropped steaming out of the air.

“That should deter them. Keep it up lads.”

The crew continued to fire into the horde, but they were relentless. The first of the beasts gripped the rail of the airship and seized a mate by the face. He fired directly into the creature’s body and it fell back, hauling him over the side. His safety rope snapped out, swinging the hapless man under the airship. His mates moved swiftly to reel him back in, but their action left a gap in the line; the creatures filled it. They swarmed into the space, over the bodies of the men engaged in rescuing their friend. Abruptly they were on deck and behind the crew – as well as in front.

Men began to fall under the clawed onslaught and the crew turned to vicious knives and axes for close quarters combat. A violent stuttering roar filled the air and the wave of crawling stabbing monsters exploded in gouts of gore and chitinous flesh. The crew cowered under the slashing rage of the sound, as their foes were cut to ribbons and hurled from the airship. The roar paused, as did the steady chink of brassy shells that bounced off the deck and out into the void. Harvey had rejoined the crew, a massive spinning cluster of barrels bound to his segmented armour. Firing controls were gripped firmly in his foremost appendages and he clacked his mandibles in satisfaction .

“Apologies for the delay gentlemen, this takes some time to strap on,” the centipede stalked up to the centre of the foredeck and let loose with another pounding salvo into the encroaching pack of demons.

“Captain,” cried Traverstorm, clinging to the glassless hole of the cockpit, “we’ll never hold them off here – they can attack on all sides and their numbers seem undiminished.”

“Once more, my gratitude for your keen observation overwhelms my natural irritation at being instructed in the how best to apply saliva to an egg,” Traverstorm had the grace to at least blush, “that is precisely why we are going there-” the captain thrust his arm forwards. Traverstorm followed his finger. It lead to a vast cave that loomed before them. In the heat of battle Traverstorm had barely noticed that they were still heading for the sky mountain. They were now merely a hundred feet from the cliff – it stretched high above and below them, as if they were falling to earth.

“But captain, we have no idea what lies within!”

“We know what’s out here and we can’t survive it for much longer. In there they will be unable to surround us,” he turned from Traverstorm and bellowed to the crew, “Clear the decks! Prepare yourselves!”

The cave mouth yawned over them and they were swallowed, deck, rigging and balloon all.

Next Week: Part 7 – This Hellish Hole

In the same series:

Lego Blog: Minifigure Madness

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Wrooargh The Bricks Of Change

Minifig MadnessMinifigs, minifigures, Lego men (and women). They are an amazing complement to the sheer joy that the bricks can bring. They have improved over the years too. I’m sure when I was little there were only two faces (smiling and not smiling), nowt but yellow in the physog department and accessories were either walkie-talkies (still ace) or things that might be guns.

The recent blind bag series that Lego have brought out (we’re up to series 10 now) have made my obsession with Lego acceptable to my partner, who is now in a bag-squeezing frenzy to find Medusa. We don’t dick around by buying tonnes of them – blind bags are an abomination and a vile exploitation of enthusiasm. Screw them – just spend a bit of time in the supermarket fondling the packets.

I’ve acquired a decent little collection of minifigs over the last few years, plus a handful from the decade before (in which Lego purchases were an escape from crippling depression and guided by alcohol). I thought it might be nice to ramble about a handful of favourites. I’ve mostly left out the newer bagged minifigures because I reckon they get enough exposure. 

Joy

Fabuland Heffalump

Does anyone else remember Fabuland? It was the Duplo animal headed weirdness of the early-mid ’80s. My mum found this chap for me in the wreckage of my youth. I don’t know why he doesn’t have eyes. There is the suggestion of them though. Perhaps in the darkness of boxes skin grew over his eyes… I’m sure that’s it. I loved these guys. I also have the crow figure but he’s so badly scratched I can’t show him here for  fear of affrighting you.

Space man, I just want to fly away (or something)

The little blue dude here is from a Lego Space jumper I had, he’s got a plastic press stud on his back and came unstuck constantly. Terrible idea for clothing. I had tonnes (maybe four) of these guys and always loved the zip on the suit. It’s nice to see how far spacemen have come in Lego. Next to him is the recent hot pink spacelady. New faces, detail jobs on full front, back and legs. Awesome face, good hair and a quite different helmet.

Aliens

These chaps didn’t seem to hang about for long, but I adore their faces and the chest images. The interestingly shaped helmets, some of which were transparent have remained some of the coolest things that Lego ever made. They came with a rather nice flying saucer that I must rebuild one of these days.

Increasing Awesomeness

Lego accessories, paint jobs and hats have come a very long way. We’re almost seeing some gender balance in the recent minifigure series. The Bee Lady is one of several brilliant costumed figures Lego have put out (I used the Godzilla costume here). The hat is rubber, like the new Yoda heads and a few other hair accessories (see the Friends below). She also has wings. Wings. Gorgeous all round.

A Nice Bit of Skirt

The new ‘skirt’ pieces for lady figures has made them easily identifiable in blind bags, but it also makes the model rather lovely too. The Wicked Witch of The West is very satisfying, and has a nice broom. The other figure here is a vampire hunter – the lovely garlic clove and ripped clothes add texture and freshness to all of these figures. Her hair is also rubber and has a crossbow bolt in it. She was one of the first figures I saw with two faces – both with a scar.

Just More of Everything

The Ewoks were the first figures I saw with the short legs now in general use for Hobbit, leprechauns and so on. The Ewok paintjob and detail has improved from their first appearance as well. Logray is much cooler than unidentifiable forest shadow. It’s almost like Lego were slow to realise how much everyone would love the Star Wars range. I believe they know now.

Hats On, Hats Off

The Green Goblin and the Apeman Costume show the details improving over the years, along with a sense of humour. The sweaty little ape costumed fellow is a winner, with nice paunch on the front and a splendid helmet. The Green Goblin is from a few years ago and you can see that in the moulded but unpainted helmet. He’s got a great face and armour though (and the back of his head is painted).

Lego Chima – the new Fabuland?

I’ve only got a few of the Chima dudes, but I pulled in when I realised the faces were helmets and they had dual expressions underneath. Everything about these guys is brilliant – detail all over them, plus the faces, masks and they often cool things like wings and weapons you have to assemble. The faces are a bit odd. The croc dudes are genuinely scary and the lion’s eyes worry me.

Lego Friends Reunited

I blogged about Lego Friends last week. I’m still keen, especially once I realised that although the heads can’t be swapped, the hats and hair can be… I could do this literally all day:

 

Shankata – Layers of Hatred Accrued Poetically

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Shankanalia9I haven’t read these poems for a little while, and I’ve thankfully forgotten exactly what inspired them. They are a little more personal than my usual spilling of bile. That doesn’t necessarily make any difference of course. As far as I recall from studying poetry at school you can read whatever you like into them and that has equal validity with the artist’s intentions (obviously I jest in referring to myself as an artist!) That never made sense to me.

Surely a work is ultimately what the author intended? Anyway, I’m not going to even try to tell you what these are about, or what they mean to me. I would however, be interested in hearing what you think they are about.

Follow @shankanalia on Twitter for live pain.

Shankanalia – Layers of Hatred Accrued Poetically

Fuck You
Your thoughts
Persist through me;
In me;
Defrauding me
Of free will-
Genuine intent.
In knowing this
I emasculate you,
Turn on you.
My head;
My rules.

I’ll Remember Your Ashes
You might be in my head
Alone
Hiding
In the dark,
I will find you.
I’ll burn you out
Till your eyes are cinders
Bones of ash
Raise you
Raze you.

Abmanagement
The tension I feel
(Cos you don’t know the question
To the answer you posited
With a sneer of authority)
Is my insides
Revolting at your stupidity.

Remember Morph?
I prefer to use my fingernails
To get inside your skin.
Peel back layers of flesh and fat
and claw the bones inside
Scrape out the marrow;
Make a toy.

Blubbery Tearing
Weep
Cry
Drown you in my sorrow.
Choke on my saline,
Ocular sweat,
I can see inside your lungs:
Rasping desperate red,
Like the lids of my eyes.

What A Pleasure
Tension crawls up my spine
A tremor in the tendons
A twist in the muscle
Bunched
Writhing
Inside out
Contorted remembrance
Scorned bones.

Mini-You
I’d blind you
Take your eyes
And hands
Make an homunculus
To dwell in darkness
And torment
To make you real
Gift you suffering
Bless with pain

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This week, Monday 29th April 2013

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

 

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

The Desert CrystalsFull setTuesday 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.

MissImp in Action with Heather
(L-R) Me, Ben, Heather, Martin, Marilyn, Lloydie at The Glee Club Nottingham for MissImp in Action

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

Book Review: The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Bauchelain

I have a bit of downer on fantasy as a genre. I read a lot of fantasy when I was younger and it just ran out of new ideas. Everything felt rehashed: irritatingly unpronounceable names, set in one of maybe five identikit fantasy worlds, probably a Viking thing. I just didn’t care anymore. Rare books and authors escape that (note – George R.R. Martin is exactly the blandness I’m talking about) – either by virtue of their humour and loving parody of the genre (like Terry Pratchett until he started repeating himself after about eight books) or an astonishing sideways leap from the genre (Adrian Tchaikovsky‘s Shadows of the Apt).

My other half and I acquire random bargain books for each other and get maybe twenty each birthday or Christmas. This was in my Christmas heap, and I didn’t know the author’s name, quite liked the write up on the back, noticed that it was short stories and put it on the heap. I should have read it sooner. I’ll start by saying I knew nothing of the Mazalan Empire series until after I’d read this, and will likely pursue them once they are meaningfully cheaper on Kindle.

There are three novellas here, which follow on chronologically from each other, though with some substantial gaps between the second and third. The first is a detective story set in the wonderfully named Lamentable Moll. A series of terrible murders provide a guide into the lyrical writing style and black, bleak sense of humour Erikson soaks every sentence with. The main character, or at least the lens for the story winds up as the manservant for the eponymous Bauchelain and Korbal Breach. They are a splendidly wicked, murderous pair of necromancers who seem to be generally on the run. I gather that they appear in the main series, but these stories are sufficiently stand alone that I perhaps enjoyed them more with not knowing the overall tale and their place in it; I suspect I’ll be disappointed if they don’t feature heavily.

The second is a sea voyage (which as a shift reminded me of the change between The Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequel Red Skies Over Red Seas), with a doomed crew carrying the dark magicians through a sea filled with huge monsters, supernatural enemies and a very bloody resolution. I loved it, and want more of the rest of the crew. The third story sees Bauchelain and Korbal Breach deposing the ruler of a peculiar city which has I suppose gone health and safety mad, banning all dangerous activities and vices. I enjoyed the last slightly less, perhaps just because it had fewer thrills in contrast to the awesome sea voyage.

None of that summary above gives you a sense of the dark wit and grim playfulness of Eriksons’s prose. The characters’ names alone had me smirking and the delicious amorality of the antiheroes is thoroughly enjoyable. Since I haven’t read any of the rest of the series I don’t know what the overall story arc is but I immediately fell in love with this complex world of crazy politics, religion, magic and monsters. This is everything fantasy is supposed to be but so rarely achieves.

Steven Erikson

Get The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Breach at Amazon.co.uk

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The Desert Crystals – Part Five: The Obsidian Eyrie

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Part 5 – The Obsidian Eyrie

The Desert Crystals

Jacob Bublesnatch was having a bad night. He was surprised to discover that being hauled through the broken cockpit window of the airship by a fiend of the night was only the beginning of his terrors. The wind rushed beneath him as he dangled from the beast’s claws. Jacob made a distinct effort not to look down at the ground thousands of feet below, but it was unavoidable. An anguished wail left his mouth every few moments, as the creature shifted its grip and he swung horribly over the landscape.

In a time of less stress Jacob might well have admired the dunes below. Endless waves rippled across the desert, punctuated here and there by wells and hollows formed by the fierce winds and currents. In the moonlight it seemed like the sea caught in an instant of lightning that went on forever. It would be a long way to fall and it would not be a soft landing. That death might still be preferable to the unknown fate that awaited him.

He shuddered uncontrollably from fear and the cold that gnawed at his face and fingers. By twisting his head uncomfortably he could just make out The Dove’s Eye far behind them, her blazing lights illuminating the front of the balloon like a roseate bruise swelling in the sky. Jacob wondered if they knew he was gone. He wondered if they would rescue him. He wondered if they would rescue him before he was eaten. Jacob tore his eyes away from that homey, hopeful sight and winced as the beast’s claw dug into his left shoulder again. They were flying almost directly towards the moon, and it loomed so large and bright that Jacob had to squint.

When Jacob peeled his eyes open the moon was gone and his future was black, a blackness so profound he feared that he had already died. Then the moon caught the very edge of a vast cliff that loomed out of the night. They were flying directly towards an opening ringed with moon-brightened fangs. The image of flying into a mouth was inescapable, much though Jacob tried to tell himself it was just a cave his mind screamed that he was about to be eaten whole. Countless holes stretching out to every side of the gaping maw for as far as Jacob could see. Then he and his captor were swallowed up by the dark.

The darkness was complete; sound expanded to fill Jacob’s blindness. The rushing of wings flapping up and down, the sound of the beast’s breath and Jacob’s own frantic panting echoed all around. His body swung back and forth from the claws and he constantly tensed, expecting to collide with a wall or some other nameless horror in the pitch. In the darkness there was no sense of time; it seemed as if they flew blindly forever. Presumably deeper into the mysterious floating cliffs, far beyond the reach of his friends and captain.

It was warmer in the cavernous blackness, though not so warm that his numbed limbs began to thaw. Rather he was aware of a dank heat all around, kept at bay only by the speed of their passage. Too frightened to cry out he sagged in the gripping talons allowing it to swing him about; he dangled like a rag doll from a delinquent’s fist.

Without warning he was released. Jacob was so surprised that he didn’t even cry out. His stomach lurched up through his body, limbs flailed for an instant and then he slapped down hard on his hip and side. The best he could manage was a faint groan. The creature’s flapping receded. Whether it had flown away or merely perched somewhere, watching over him with malevolent intent, Jacob had no idea. He strained his ears to their limit and faintly detected a regular murmur, as of a vast distant thing breathing in sleep. He could no longer tell if his eyes were open or closed unless he felt as his eyelids with panicky fingertips. He didn’t know if he should move or if stillness would be safer.

He made a decision and gingerly began to feel out the space around him. There was only the ground, a rough crumbly rock everywhere he could reach without moving about. He began to crawl, ever fearful of the precipice that his mind screamed was after the next fingerstep. Instead his hands began to describe a rising slope, which became vertical after just a few feet. Standing, he could feel the beginnings of a ledge above.

It was perhaps an unfortunate time for the continued lack of sight to take its toll upon his deprived mind. In the quiet dark he began to hallucinate wildly. Edged shadows and streamers of blinking lights surrounded him, pressing on and fleeing from him. They harried him; he ducked, flinched and quivered under their assault. Strange ghosts snuck upon him and vanished from the corner of his other eye.

Helpless with visions he flailed at the ledge before him, hoping to drag himself away from his imagined horrors. Something seized his hand, enclosing it in a moistly firm grip. It pulled; Jacob shrieked. He was dragged up the wall, hungry leathery hands or claws or tentacles or tongues wrapping around his arm shoulder chest, neck. Bodily he was hauled onto the ledge and into a close dank breathing embrace. Thinner creeping flesh gripped his head and tugged him forwards. Fully bound his face was tilted back, screaming mouth and all and a thing prised open his eyelids.

Horrid flurries of wet crawling licked and pinched at his eyeballs. Shaking, shuddering Jacob finally went black inside his mind. He slumped unconscious while the thing continued to drool slitheringly into his eyes.

Next Week: Part 6 – The Sweet Night Air

In the same series:

Lego Friends: My Best New Friends

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

My Lego Hunting Spear Is Sharp

Full set

If you read this often you’ll know that I delight in hunting down Lego bargains. Partly that’s because Lego is insanely expensive, especially compared to the US – I frequently see the exact same numbers on price labels, except with sterling instead of dollars. That’s hurtful, although I can’t dispute that there’s huge value in Lego, I’m not convinced that an extra fifth is appropriate. Partly it’s because I genuinely love it when I’ve paid less.

Tesco has been good to me of late. It’s where we usually find the next series of Lego minifigures first, and has been the source of many reduced items. I still haven’t opened the Attack on Weathertop set (or my Jabba’s Palace) which I feel demonstrates awesome self-control; I’m waiting for the perfect building day… So imagine my delight when I checked out a bargain advertised on Hot UK Deals (which despite the frequent arsehole flaming often has good Lego notifications on it) and found they had reduced the £10 Lego Friends sets by 75%, plus the mini set bags and a handful of the weird Lego Chima sets by the same. Joy. Joy. Joy. Well worth the frantic dash between work and going to improv jam on Thursday. I acquired an heap.

Lego Friends Are My Bestest Friends Forever

mini sets

I’ve admired the Lego Friends sets for a while. I did get the mini animal bags a while ago because they’re dinky little sets with a good number of bits. I wish I’d got more at Tesco because they’re packed with lovely blues, golds, greens and mustard yellows. There are a bunch of the light sabre handles / telescope pieces and more greenery is always welcome. Mind you, I don’t know what use I would have for dozens of squirrels and turtles. At 75p they presented superb value for brick and the more I think about it the more I’m kicking myself.

I picked up four of the formerly £10 Friends sets and while I am of course judging the value for money based on the crazy £2.50 per box I got them for, there are a surprising number of bits per box. Check out those gorgeous purple curtains in the magic set – you can almost taste the velvet. The vanishing bunny trick is neatly accomplished.

You Shall Play With Pink Girl Parts

I know the Lego Friends stuff is aimed at girls, which I find a little sad. Are girls really so well instructed in gender bias that they won’t even look at toys without pinks and ponies? Evidently Lego have decided so, as the minifigures that come with these are very different from our usual bricky pals. The overlarge head and curved body are very familiar from the mutant Barbie and all the rip-offs since. They don’t have enormously deformed breasts which is probably a mercy.

I don’t know if they’ve released any male figures yet, which might be cool. It’s odd, especially because of late Lego has released far more clearly female characters, although the bias is still very much for male figures. I think it’s disappointing that Lego have had to market to boys and girls separately. From a brief review of some literature available about gender interests at early ages it’s very unclear what kids are naturally drawn to, or where their parents’ biases are already interfering in their choices. Maybe I just want my nieces to be into robots and monsters.

The Lego Friends sets feel quite different to other Lego sets and have lots of accessories, as well as the aforementioned awesome new colours. It seems closer to fulfilling Playmobil’s intention of having toys for almost every human endeavour. And that’s the bit that pisses me off I think – that the activities in Lego Friends (ponies, holiday camp, cafe/restaurant) are female aspirations whereas police, aliens and franchises are for boys. Grumble grumble.

Put The Gender Down And Step Away

lego frendz

I’m really looking forwards to using the colours as highlights in other designs. I’ve also seen the new Friends heads used in exoskeleton / space suit / EVA builds, adding a more human face into the construction – very cool. So these are the sets I got – pony worship, magician, Kendo practice (girly? I’m confused by the gender roles Lego promotes) and dog training.

Lego Friends is clearly awesome and not just for girls, just like all Lego is clearly brilliant and all should play. I think the designs, and the different box shape (smaller, more efficient with more sides) probably deter young boys. Certainly the incredible look of scorn I got from a six year old when I was buying them suggested that. My also buying Chima stuff seemed to mollify the brat however. More on Chima another time…

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Shanktimonious: Self-Righteous Angry Poetry

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Shankanalia12

Human to Humour Interface

Much of my emotional distress is, I believe, the result of a mismatched interface between me and the outside world. For example, I consider the ability to be asked a question, understand it and provide a suitable answer to be a pretty basic, core requirement of communicating with others. This is less normal than I had once suspected.
I spend much of my day, especially at the moment, talking to other people. They have a lamentable inability to comprehend information, no matter how simple the presentation and content. It is painful to listen to and observe. How the fuck can these (apparent) humans interact? Are they fucking psychic and so find my primitive scrapings of crude symbols to be so far beneath their telepathic intellects that they cannot comprehend written language? Or are they just utterly incompetent?
I’m regularly assured that while many people are lacking in certain skill areas (like communication, memory, reason…) they have been employed because of their amazing skills in other areas (like talking to other people – sure they can talk, it’s unfortunate the content is meaningless repetitive babble). But I doubt it. If you can’t communicate then there ain’t much else you can do either. I suppose they must just be the drones of a psychic hive mind.

Follow @shankanalia on Twitter to experience anger in real time.

Shanktimonious: Self-Righteous Angry Poetry

Your Call Is Important To Us
Whaddup fucknut,
Thanks for your call.
I’m hanging up now
So I can hang myself.
Did you think,
When you rang
To withhold your shartbrain query?
*Chokesigh*.

Ventriloquicidal
Sometimes I feel like putting
My fist into your face,
You know I can puppet you;
Make your face flap
When you’re talking like a twat.

Downtown Fo Shizzle
Put yo hands in the air!
Put yo hands in the air!
No, your other hands.
Bla-blam.
I don’t accept surrender from imbeciles.

Blubber Spear
The only tears I’ll ever shed again
Are other people’s blood.

Soft-Hearted Smiler
You know I’d beat you with a stick
Just for looking at me slanty:
your judging eyes.
Maybe I’m over-sensitive,
Let’s see how your screams affect me.

All My Wheels Are Round
I can only assume
That you’ve got a plan
That I can’t understand.
Inscrutable,
Ineffable,
Miracle brain sparks,
Random ideas.
Incomprehensible.

Thousand Yard Glare
Fuck you and fuck your stupid face,
Stick to chewing and spitting.
Slack-jawed boggle-eyed
Blandly hateful faces
Gazing with malevolent vacancy.

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This week, Monday 22nd April 2013

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Captainface2

Blah Blah Words


Life without alcohol… it’s okay. That said I have been waking up with crippling headaches for most of the last week, so either my tolerance for the magic dop has reduced to the point that a bottle of 0.05% beer is giving me a hangover, or I’m broken in a different way. Either way, it’s a super start to the day… Once I’ve recovered from that and blundered to work everything seems to be alright. I don’t feel any different, but I imagine the health benefits will be invisible and detectable only in about thirty years time when I fail to die a year early.
I have had a week of being highly vexed by people’s inability to undertake basic comprehension tasks, or example reading a question and then answering it. You know what, it’s a reading problem. A terrifying proportion of the supposed humans I have to deal with work are unable to make themselves understood or to receive information via language. Maybe they are all psychic and simply acquire their information directly from other telepaths. That would explain why my primitive arrangement of symbols so befuddles them. Yeah, that must be it.

This 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.

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

Last week was good! I’d written the Goldfur McRoo story quite a while ago, in reponse to my sister complaining that my pirate stories aren’t suitable for children. I’m fine with that, but there does seem to be a general expectation that pirates are for kids. It’s perplexing since there’s nothing about pirate life (still less the adventures of Captain Pigheart) that are mite-friendly. I have read pirate stories for young adult fiction and enjoyed them, but I have no desire to write a story from a child’s point of view. Anyway, Goldfur is my solution. Apparently the language awkwardly straddles reading skills for ages 6-14 (which is a little depressing), but I think it’s quite sweet.
I’m really getting into The Desert Crystals now. It’s a satisfying challenge to do 800-1000 words of a story in its own right and continue the series. We have diverged enormously from the direction I had in mind, which I find amusing and intriguing. Since I started with the end (or almost) in chapter one, then I somehow have to wrangle it. Hopefully the story now has a life of its own, and picking it up each week gives an opportunity for tangents and new characters. We’ll see how long it lasts for!
My beer review last week got a lot of hits, which is gratifying and some nice feedback – thank you humans! I feel I can be as honest, brutal and playful as I like when reviewing a mass-produced product. I very much hope the makers of Beck’s Blue read and are annoyed by my mockery. I’ve had one other zero-alc beer since, but once I’ve got a bunch in my belly I’ll do another review.

Last week’s scribbles

The Desert CrystalsGoldfur - MontyTuesday Goldfur McRoo: Terror of The Subterranean Tunnels A pirate story for children, featuring a tiny fuzzy pirate beast.

Wednesday Pulp Pirate 18 Back on ye olde Flashe Pulpe podcast with another piratical tale.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Four: The Frothing Horror The search for the missing crewman begins.

Friday Beer Review: Four Zero Alcohol Beers  Three good, one very very bad beer.

Lego

I have once again expressed my terminal indecision and dismantled the house I’m building in order to reconstruct the upper floor again. I am happier with it now! It’s not finished though. The upper floor requires walls and I need to figure out some kind of removable roof. I also need to include some kind of washing facilities.
My dear friend Tesco has been kind this week, slashing a load of Lego Chima and Lego Friends with 75% reductions. So I got 7 sets and 3 mini bags (which I already had but they have such pretty colours). More of that on Wednesday!

Improv Comedy

I missed Fisticuff’s last week so I could go to a meeting about the Furthest Point From The Sea Festival on 29th June. I’m sort of involved as an organiser, but really I’m just moral support. When that comes round we’ll be having an improv slot in the comedy tent (plus a Captain Pigheart slot) and we’ll have improv workshop space during the day.
Parky ran this week’s jam where we had a good mix of old and new improvisers which resulted in surprising and funny scenes. I felt pretty relaxed and on the ball for the couple of scenes I did. That bodes well for the show at the end of this week. I suppose one result of being so busy at work is that I’d barely noticed we’re at the end of the month already.

Media Intake

Books

I’m still staving off The Air War with random books. I found The Stone Man by Luke Smithers in the Kindle store and tore through that last week. It’s an intriguing story about a (you’ll never guess) Stone Man who appears in Coventry and then walks across the country destroying everything in its path. I enjoyed the story telling, which is almost all from one perspective, that of a reporter who turns out to be sensitive to the Stone Man’s presence. Good book! I did find the main character rather unlikeable and the repeated notes about his Asperger’s just seemed odd. It’s quite possible to be focussed on a goal and not really care about people without having to put the character somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Strange.
I’ve now moved on to The Valley of Heroes by Jonathan Stroud (author of the magnificently entertaining Bartimaeus trilogy). I’m near the beginning and waiting eagerly for the exciting stuff to kick in. I suspect I’m just being impatient, but the Norse-like medieval set up is something I’ve grown tired of in books. I wanna see the monsters.

Events and Excitement

MissImp in Action – Friday 26th April

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

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Beer Review: Four Zero Alcohol Beers

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Sulking

I admit that I approached the business of low (less than 0.5%) or no alcohol beers from a bad place. It’s not my choice, but the doc, in his infinite wisdom has decreed/proposed/suggested a month of not drinking. It sounded horrific. It is proving (at a week and a half in) to be… not so horrific. That said, last night I was at the most excellent The Exeter Arms in Derby. It’s a Dancing Duck Brewery pub and they have just won two CAMRA awards – best pub in Derby and something else; I forget. They were handing out free half pint of beer tokens in celebration. I gritted my teeth and enjoyed my Fentiman’s Victorian Lemonade. It’s a great lemonade – but free beer? FREE BEER? I am strong in my resolution.

Zero Alc
I immediately smashed the bottle rather than ruin the camera with Beck’s Blue.

Finding and Trying

Few pubs seem to stock a low/no alc beer, and generally I’m completely with them – what’s the point? Why not just have a soft drink than some emasculated ale? There’s a texture and taste to beer that I actually like. I don’t drink to get drunk (although I do like that too); I find it a refreshing and pleasant mild narcotic. It’s a low drug dose (usually) and quite manageable without trashing one’s faculties.

I realised that fruit juice or tea just don’t have the same quality for drinking of an evening and I don’t want something with half a pound of sugar in it (you can shove your diet sodas where the sun don’t shine pal, they’re unilaterally vile).

The four beers below are the only ones I’ve found and tried so far. It’s a start right? Read on for Nanny State, Czech Pilsner Lager, Erdinger Alcohol Free and Beck’s Blue. I’m using an animal rating solely because it amuses me – and I’m rating them against each other, not against ‘normal’ ABV beers. Just in case you care. I think you’ll be able to figure out which ones I liked.

BrewDog Nanny State

My sympathetic friend David acquired these for me at the Nottingham BrewDog. They are pricey – £3 for 330ml. Amusingly, the seriously strong punk brewers only produced Nanny State to mock the media response to their irresponsibly strong beers a few years ago. As ever, the media were being twats.

They describe it as an “insanely hopped imperial mild“, which I find appealing as a description. It certainly is hoppy, and I find that many of BrewDog’s lighter coloured beers are intensely hoppy, which is great if you like that sort of thing. Personally I prefer their darker 5am Saint, but I’m generally a fan of IPA-type beers. Nanny State has very tasty dry, fruity flavour and went down very smoothly. Pretty damn good.

Rating: Armadillo

Sainsbury’s Czech Low Alcohol Pilsner Lager

Sainsbury’s had half a dozen different low/no alc beers – most of them are awful miniature bottles of French biere pisswaters so I ignored those. I’ve always like the cleanness of Czech and Polish lagers; they’re a world away from the inconceivably awful Fosters and Carling that sports fans use to deaden their senses.

This is actually brewed in the Staropramen brewery (and bottled by Marstons) and is the low-alc version of the already quite acceptable standard strength lager Sainsbury’s sell. I like it. It’s smooth, clean-tasting and very refreshing. For £1.20 for 500ml I felt very happy with it.

While it certainly doesn’t have the richness (I don’t know, a folded silver and gold flavour!) of Staropramen, or Zywiec I shall certainly drink it again. I mean, I’ve got two and a half weeks to go.

Rating: Albino crow

Erdinger Weissbrau Alcohol Free

Apparently our German pals have been brewing splendid low alcohol wheat beers for ages and tout their isotonic and vitamin-rich health benefits. At least that’s what it says on the label. I do like their regular versions, especially the darker Erdinger, and was pleased to find it in Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

Without question this is the best of the bunch – it’s texture is delightful: rich and just the right kind of cloudy on the tongue. It goes down a treat and, y’know what, I feel isonicised by it. It really gives the qualitative feel of drinking beer, and since it’s low calorie as well as isotonisch and vitaminhaltig I do believe I’ll have another.

I’m seriously considering having Erdinger Alcohol Free as a regular drink even when I’m back on the booze – I could drink it at work in the Summer! YES. It does seem like the ideal chilled after-sport drink. So much tastier than Lucozade. £1.59 for a 500ml bottle (Lucozade’s new ‘Dual Fuel’ is £1.50 for 500ml! I guess that ain’t bad for gas and electric).

Rating: Archaeopterix

Beck’s Blue Alcohol Free Corpse Juice

I’m only including this one in the interests of balance. The supermarket had this next to Skol which probably says it all. Dismayingly this is the only low/no alc beer I’ve found in pubs yet. Presumably the manufacturers have tested the beverage on customers and correctly settled on 275ml, which is a just barely tolerable volume to suffer through. It’s sold for between £3-4 for six bottles, or about £3 a bottle in the pub (it does take up three quid’s worth of space).

This is a relentlessly foul shaken-donkey-jizzing in your mouth experience. Incredibly they have made a drink which makes regular Beck’s (already a worthless stain on a bar) into a drink you might consume if you found yourself prostrate in a desert, but if possible I’d hack open a camel with my teeth and suckle its hump butter instead. I would rather drink salt water until I vomit than drink Becks Blue again. The very touch of this bilious carbonated poison almost broke my doctor’s prohibition.

Becks Blue is awful. Presumably if you already consider Beck’s lager to be drinkable you are so lost that you might be able to drink this.

Rating: Sea Slug Choking A Mudskipper

The Desert Crystals: part 4 The Frothing Horror

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Part 4 – The The Frothing Horror

The Desert Crystals

The Dove’s Eye was in pursuit. With Lord Emmaline Corshorn at the helm the airship’s upward drift was adjusted, and though the frost did not slacken its grip on the balloon or on the chilled flesh of the crew and passengers it gleamed brightly as they turned their course towards the moon.

“We’re not actually going to the moon, are we?” enquired Maxwell, from deep inside Rosenhatch Traverstorm’s coat.

“Of course not, doubtless the creature responsible for this hooliganism dwells in some cave within the Razored Ridge,” replied a shivering Rosenhatch.

“You might wish to remind the captain of that, for we are about to veer sharply from our destination in pursuit of the dangling boy,” commented Harvey, the huge centipede from within his voluminous scarves. And indeed they were heading out into the deep desert, leaving the ridge behind.

“I can hardly ask him to to call off the hunt for the poor boy when we’ve only just begun looking.”

Rosenhatch had studied the scene of the kidnapping as best he could, which was not well, considering that Lord Emmaline was currently stamping around inside it, his hands at the controls with crewmen bobbing in and out for instructions and course corrections. By ducking and weaving around that stream of activity Rosenhatch noted the splintered glass, and the inward bend of the pane that remained. His investigation revealed a number of facts, which in turn offered certain conclusions to his curious mind. And it is here that the ambiguity of the available evidence aided the travellers not in the least.

“Lord Emmaline,” cried Rosenhatch, above the gale that blew in to the tiny cabin as they fiercely pursued the departing creature, “I have drawn a number of conclusions regarding the beast-” he was interrupted by Harvey who thrust his forward segments and mouthparts to offer his own contribution.

“-for the thing, due to the residue left upon the fragments of glass is almost certainly neither vegetable nor mineral, although it could be construed as some form of sap or pulped cellulose – but no, for the accounts of Cloud Beans are at best apocryphal-”

Rosenhatch interrupted in turn, fearful that the centipede would mire them in academia, “I believe the beast to be large – though not so large as to require the entire window to get inside,” he reflected on the glass for a moment, “or, that the beast’s arm, or claw or writhing proboscis alone was not so large as to destroy the whole window to gain access to the poor boy. Well. If the latter, then the brute would likely be huge.”

“My thanks Traverstorm,” the Lord replied in his typical sanguine fashion, “for bringing to my attention the precisely unknown nature of our quarry.”

Harvey chipped in, “we believe it to be dangerous – most likely carnivorous and possibly female,”

“Though that presumes gender, of which we have little evidence, save noting that the boy was not torn to shreds and immediately consumed.”

“Indeed,” clicked Harvey, animatedly, “suggesting a gathering behaviour, perhaps a period of nesting or for the feeding of the young. Recall the Greater-Toothed Grundle Bear and its collecting of live amphibians into a stockpile to feed their ravenous triplets once they have burst from its wombing limb?”

“Ah! Or the Chiverley Hermit Beetle, which takes live prey in order to wear the still-breathing skin and pass amongst the tribesmen of the western plain…”

“While these deliberations are doubtless fascinating and of great worth within your hallowed college halls,” remarked their captain snidely, “perhaps you could turn your scholarly eyes towards that.”

His harsh tone cut through the bubbling rush of ideas and he gestured forward, beyond the overhanging balloon at what awaited them. As Rosenhatch peered into the night ahead he caught a last glimpse of the flying creature as it vanished into a greater shadow. The clouds drew back from the moon and its sterile glare etched out the shape of a cliff hanging in the sky. It extended upwards beyond Rosenhatch’s view, even as he leaned over the railing to follow its rise. The cliff face appeared to be slowly turning, for the moonlight spread across its face revealing countless crags and crannies, from holes large enough to house The Dove’s Eye to gaps Maxwell would struggle to squeeze inside. The caves were blacker than the night from which the cliff hung.

“It has no bottom – look, it’s just hanging in the air!” exclaimed Rosenhatch, his analytic brain stalled with gawping. The crew appeared on deck, as crew will, without summons or orders- they just knew, drawn by the sense of wonder, and not yet tainted by fear, that their place was on deck. Lord Emmaline, being possessed of a good deal more common sense than the average commoner, reduced their speed until they reached a drifting stop.

“Sky Mountain,” gasped one of the more nimble crew.

“Bollocks,” retorted a rigger, “no such thing as Sky Mountain.”

“Well what’s that then?” demanded the crewman.

“Well, that’s just a lot of caves stuck together.”

“Gentlemen, I think we can afford to name the Aerial Monolith later,” intruded Harvey (a round of murmurs went up as he continued: “Sky Mountain’s a better name”), “I myself have a more immediate concern.”

The centipede shook off the smaller of his scarves to gesture with more legs at the cliff side. The edges of the caves, those ovaline shapes so neatly outlined by the waxy yellow lunar glow, were changing, rippling, extending outwards in a frothy spume like a brutally whisked hot chocolate, bubbling onto a coaster. Here Traverstorm’s imagery broke down because the coaster was the night air itself and the over-excited beverage was a vast cloud of winged monsters.

“Man the artillery!” cried Lord Emmaline and the crew scattered, leaving Traverstorm and Harvey at the bow. Maxwell hopped out of Rosenhatch’s coat and ran back to their cabin.

Next Week: Part 5 – The Obsidian Eyrie

In the same series:

Pulp Pirate 18

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Flash Cast 84 – Tainted Kidney

The conversations in Flash Pulp’s Flash Cast world get darker and funnier each week.  This one hops and skips between organ transplants, Star Trek TNG geekery (honestly one of the geekiest conversations about Lesley Crusher I have ever heard), and contributions from the faithful pulpists out there. Featuring my very own pirate tale The Paternal Adventure.

Listen to it now: 

FC84-tainted kidney

http://flashpulp.com/
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http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/flash-pulp/id367726315

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Goldfur McRoo: Terror of The Subterranean Tunnels

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Goldfur McRoo skipped fearsomely down his tunnel. He had a spring in his scamper because he had just been named the most fearsome of all subterranean pirates by a committee of forest dwellers. He was so happy that he wasn’t really paying attention to where he was going and before he knew it he was in a tunnel he didn’t recognise at all. It was very cold and made his fur stand up on end to keep him warm. It also smelled like no one had been here for a very long time.

 It was a little bit scary, but since Goldfur McRoo was a very fearsome pirate he just puffed up his lovely golden fur and with a good deal of noise he confidently explored further. Around the next corner was a huge icicle hanging from the ceiling all the way down to the ground. Goldfur edged around it and peered into the gloom behind it. As his big wide eyes adjusted to the dark he suddenly let out a cry and bounced backwards into the icicle. Its sudden coldness on his ears made him cry out again and leap forwards where he was once again startled by the thing that had startled him to begin with.

 This went on for a little while, until Goldfur’s ears got used to the chilliness and he rested against icicle to catch his breath. He was rather tired from all the surprised squeaking and was all squeaked out. Now that he was a bit calmer he could have a look again at what had frightened him.

 In the tunnel ahead was a huge pair of tusks pointing right at him, and in between them a great hairy trunk pointing at the roof. It was certainly an alarming sight, and much bigger than the little marsupial pirate, even with all of his fur puffed up. However, even with all his brave battlecries and the bouncing back and forth it had neither run away (which is what normally happens when Goldfur McRoo was fierce at things), nor had it charged at him (which is what happens the rest of the time when Goldfur McRoo was not fierce enough).

 Feeling brave, Goldfur got even closer and discovered that the whole beastie was encased thickly in ice. No wonder it hadn’t run away! The big beastie wasn’t as scary as Goldfur had first thought – even though it was very big indeed, it was also rather furry and to Goldfur’s eye, it looked quite lonely as well as cold. Just looking at the big fellow was making him feel cold. He determined to warm the beastie up and make friends.

 First he tried cuddling at the tusked thing, but that just made his fur cold. Then he tried wrapping a blanket round it, but that just got stuck to the beastie’s leg. He realised that what was needed was an heroic act of digging and decided to excavate the whole burrow, right up to the surface and let the sun warm his (hopefully) new friend up properly. This was not a little operation.

 It took many days to dig away the earth above the frozen creature, but at last Goldfur was done. The icy head and mighty shoulders of the thing stuck up out of the ground for the sun’s rays to do their stuff. With such a big piratical digging project, all of Goldfur’s crewmates and friends had come to see what was going on.

 Pomfrey the Owl was sitting in a tree watching the melting when the big beast’s ears first started to twitch. With loud hoots he woke up Goldfur, who was very tired from all the digging and had fallen asleep in a little pothole he’d dug for himself. The ice was melting faster and faster, and the big hairy creature was soon surrounded by a pond of cold water.

 Goldfur made a raft out of his friend, Alas the Terrapin and rowed over to the furry island. He climbed up the still chilly trunk and gave the big beast a big pirate kiss right between its eyes. There was a pause in which Goldfur prepared to either hug or run away.

 With a huge groan the trunk lifted into the air and blew out a fountain of water, nearly knocking Pomfrey off his perch. Goldfur clung to the trunk as if it were a mast in the middle of a storm. The eyes opened on either side and looked at the golden pirate clinging to its nose.

 “Hello there,” it boomed.

“Ahoy!” cried Goldfur McRoo, “I, Goldfur McRoo, terror of the subterranean tunnels have defrosted you!”

“Oh thank you, I’ve been terribly cold,” said the beast underneath Goldfur’s feet, “I’m Monty by the way. Monty the Mammoth.”

 Goldfur helped Monty out of the deep hole and they became great friends.

This week, Monday 15th April 2013

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Blissful Mind Peace

Captain Pigheart dirtyWow, a horrifying week of no beer, no whiskey. Apparently this is healthy. I am unimpressed. Not least with the alternatives to drinking beer. There’s a substance in flavour and texture to beer (never mind whiskey) that pomegranate juice and milk (not mixed together) really don’t approach. Every pub I’ve been in this week only has Becks Blue zero-alcohol beer, which is revolting – mainly because it tastes exactly the same as normal Becks lager.

Honestly it hasn’t been that bad (sobbing uncontrollably) and I’ve only got three more weeks to go. My dear fellow David has acquired for me a couple of bottles of BrewDog’s Nanny State 0.5% ale to ease my suffering,  which should taste a damn sight better than water.

This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Goldfur McRoo: Terror of The Subterranean Tunnels

A pirate story for children, featuring a tiny fuzzy pirate beast.

Wednesday Pulp Pirate 18

Back on ye olde Flashe Pulpe podcast with another piratical tale.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Four: The Frothing Horror

The search for the missing crewman begins.

Friday Beer Review:  Nanny State by Brewdog

This may become a theme…

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

Well at least I’m consistently behind on everything I’m supposed to be doing. Or at least I think I am… Just in time is more like it. I finally finished my double film review five minutes before the scheduled publish time during Friday lunchtime. Eek. I do need to catch up in case other bits of life get busier and overtake again. The serial nature of The Desert Crystals is intriguing and exciting and even though I leave it till the last minute I do find myself thinking about it often.

Very excitingly Mr Neal Asher was kind enough to read the review of The Departure I wrote a couple of weeks ago and retweet it to his legions of fans. He also left a comment on the review. Brave stuff – I don’t think I’d ever want to read reviews of anything I do, but from the briefest of contact I’ve had with him he seems like a thoroughly nice chap, and his blog is appealing and self-deprecating. I must confess that it had never occurred to me that anyone would read my rambling commentary of their work (even though I tweet it to the author as a matter of courtesy). I think I care a good deal more about authors of books I’ve read than the makers of films I watch. I’m not sure why, but books seem a more personal endeavour (plus I dabble in scribbles myself) than films. Hmm. It gives me pause for thought. I think I’m fair in expressing my opinion; even if occasionally harsh, it’s still what I feel.

Last week’s scribbles

The Desert CrystalsWar Alone - Call CentreTuesday The War Alone: Day One – Call Centre A one-shot story set in the chaos and confusion of The War Alone).

Wednesday Shankbuddy – Convenient Hate Poems A tiny reminder in poetry form of why I needed a week off.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Three The Edge of Night It’s time to leave the safety of the air behind.

Friday Film Review Double Bill: The Host & GI Joe: Retaliation One really awful film and one enjoyable, but awful film.

Lego

I am still dismantling and rebuilding my Lego Boba Fett’s house. Unfortunately we were out almost every night last week, and have been with children at the weekend. So I have had precious little time for play, other than in expanding the top floor. My indecisiveness will be the death of me.

On the other hand I did get to spend an hour on Sunday showing off our mini figure collections and assorted models to my enthralled niece. That was nice. She demanded to know where all the figures came from – Cavalier from France, Poseidon from the sea, alien cyborg from um, space…

Improv Comedy

I compered our Gorilla Burger show this week in our current weekly home in The Corner, 8 Stoney St. Since the space was being set up for an art exhibition we were nicely confined in a miniature theatre that made the room much warmer than usual. We had a bunch of new folk and some of those we’ve only seen occasionally and a good time was had by all. I particularly enjoyed shrieking (in a game of Dubbing) as Becky’s voice whenever giant hands approached. I know… it only makes sense when you can see it.

On Friday night Martin, Geoff and I supported some friends of mine in their Angry Folk LP launch at The Guildhall Theatre in Derby. It’s a lovely venue (I’d like very much to do improv there) and an ideal setting for their socialist folk band Karl & The Marx Brothers. The support we provided was an improvised protest in the foyer as audience were arriving. We yelled at people, set up mutating chants, ranted about the government doing nothing about black holes and many other silly things. We were very popular! I had feared we’d be merely annoying but we got quite a lot of attention from chatting people in the interval. How nice! There will be videos and photos at some point.

https://soundcloud.com/furthestfromthesearecords

Media Intake

Books

I have managed to avoid going straight into Adrian Tchaikovsky’s next Shadows of The Apt tome, The Air War (book eight of ten). I’m saving that for a rainy day, or something. I went for something different instead – The Third Pig Detective Agency. It’s a delightfully bound little hardcover in the style of real pulp detective fiction. I quite enjoyed it, but I’ve read a lot of stories set in the fairy tale world already and I’m not sure there’s much more to be done with it. I then picked a book my other half got me for Christmas: The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson. I’ve never read anything by him before, but this is grim surreal fantasy is extremely poetic, violent and fantastic. I’m loving it. I can’t usually abide the tedious repetition in fantasy but this guy’s nailed it with an intriguing new perspective on the genre; I may read more.

Films

I entirely forgot to mention that the week before last we saw two other films – Finding Nemo in its 3D release and Trance. We saw Finding Nemo for my other half’s birthday. There was a funny new Toy Story short with Rex (one of my favourite characters) as a party animal pumping it up to 11 in the bathtub rave scene, although I was disappointed not to get the brilliant original Pixar short (Knick Knack – about a snowman in a snowglobe). While I still think 3D is utterly worthless technology for films the depths of the ocean always had the glorious illusion of depth and it plays out well in 3D. We had a good time.

Trance was a far odder fish (mwhah ha ha) detailing an art heist that goes awry with an amnesiac and hypnotherapist as complicating factors in its recovery (by the criminals). I’m not sure I have too much to say about it other than that I enjoyed it very much – it’s funny, tense, slickly made and has a twist you aren’t given enough information to guess at. It wrapped up very satisfyingly, although there is an odd and rather unnecessary beaver shot.

Events and Excitement

MissImp in Action – Friday 26th April

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

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Film Review Double Bill: The Host & G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

The Host

The HostJeez, what a mess. Obviously anything from the author of Twilight is likely to be pretty poor: derivative, badly written, tedious… This one hits all of those low standards for excellence. The essential concept, that of an alien invasion where the aliens occupy our bodies is standard sci-fi fare and offers enormous opportunity for excitement. That promise is totally ruined by the sheer quantity of stupid injected into the shoddy screenplay.

The aliens are travellers across the universe – they invade (in a friendly, personality destroying way) the hosts of a civilisation and then proceed to occupy the exact same roles those hosts had in their natural existence, but do it better. So pan-galactic aliens (who travel as a bundle of fibreoptic shit FX) invade people to live their tedious lives. All except for the badly-trousered guardians, or security police or whatever they call them – ah, yes Seekers, who hunt down the remaining unhosted humans and make sure they get possessed. They wear white clothes and use only the shiniest of vehicles. It’s how you know they’re the bad guys. They hunt you down with tasers in violent love.

The story is that of a girl who tries to take her own life to avoid capture and hosting and to protect her brother. She fails to kill herself and is repaired by the aliens (with their spray-on medical tools labelled “Heal”, “Clean” and other moronically simple things). They give her the lovely shiny contact lenses to denote her new alienhood – which is handy as otherwise the 1,000 year old alien behaves in exactly the same way as its irritating host. I just wanted the original character to be expunged. Oh, but she’s a really spunky tyke and fights against her evil (symbiotic and friendly) Host.

Yaaaawn, after a minor excitement she goes to find her family of natural humans. Then we get some more beating up girls (strong theme), and then everyone distrusts her, gets to like her alien pal, try to kill her, like her again, fall in love with her. Oh, and the main Seeker goes nuts and tries to kill them. The other Hosts don’t like that, but you won’t care. Eventually it ends.

The Host is almost unimaginably tedious and stupid at every step. There’s a decent cast, but they are wasted on irritating hushed voices, ludicrous script (oh I’d forgotten the dreadful voice over from the ‘trapped inside human’ – which makes half the film just the lead talking to herself) and being in a film in which nothing of note occurs. I just wanted to note how amusing the pastoral life in a volcano is: the survivors hide in a volcano, with a huge mirror array to grow crops (“you may have seen amazing sights across the universe, but nothing like this” – true, it looks stupid) which cues shots of them reaping in more or less Amish dress as if it’s a magical perfect place… ah if only we could all be farmers.

I’ve genuinely lost count of all the dumb things in this film and in truth I’d like to stop thinking about it now. Except I can’t because most of the film is a mind-numbingly dreary chaste romance between the girl, her pre-Hosted boyfriend and the Host and a guy who tried to kill her. Avoid.

G.I.Joe: Retaliation

GIJoeRetaliationOn to something still bad, but tonnes more fun. The first film was plagued by bad decisions – the Joes had super suits which turned them into CGI cartoons and they ended up fighting in an undersea city in the arctic. Very odd, oh and Paris got trashed as well. All of the adverts leading up to the new are painfully apologetic, promising that the new film will be much better. And you know what? It is. Sort of. There’s no real need to go into the story as there isn’t much of one – it just serves t link highly entertaining action sequences together (that’s not a complaint – what did you think you’d get, socio-politics and gender equality?)

The Joes, who appear to be the worst soldiers in the world get wiped out, including Channing Tatum (Duke) which is mildly surprising. So that we care about his loss the film makers included two vaguely comic scenes of him being bullied by The Rock (Roadblock). You won’t think about him again.

Once that’s out of the way you can enjoy Jonathan Pryce gorging himself on pigmeat to play the president and Zartan disguised as the president (CGI and using the same actor is slightly disappointing – it would have been far cooler to have Arnold Vosloo dressed up as Pryce). Yay, Cobra take over the American presidency – it’s almost exactly like a Republican government. The Joes need to resolve their massacre and fix the America. To do this they need ninjas, Bruce Willis and guns.
It’s really silly and I laughed all the way through with my friend Martin; I’ll admit that we were often the only people laughing. Some of it is hysterically daft.
Highlights for me include RZA’s terrible turn as a ninja master – some kind of black white-eyebrows. I’ve no idea what accent he is using when presiding over training scenes between Snake Eyes and Jinx. You remember how it’s best to fight with your eyes closed right? They’re engaged in a baffling plot to kidnap Storm Shadow and provide cliched martial arts movie references. They succeed on both counts. The huge rock-climbing, swinging through the air mountain battle is fun, with a high casualty rate and ninjas plummeting to their doom.
Storm Shadow breaking Cobra Commander (but not sad Destro) out of an underground super-secret prison is a great action scene. Never mind that it’s rather easy to get into if you have a motorbike that explodes into rocket projectiles (why?), the prison itself is appalling: inmates are kept in a permanent state of REM sleep, so they’re paralysed but conscious (I know, it doesn’t make sense) which seems really cruel. And their mocking egotistical jailer (one of my favourite actors in Justified) gets what he deserves.
Perhaps best of all is the global showdown between the Cobra president and other world leaders where they all whip out their identical nuclear suitcases and attempt to blow each other to bits. All the actors they’ve chosen to play European premiers are as warty and snaggle toothed as you could wish for. I don’t know why Bruce Willis is in this film, but he keeps hand grenades in his fruit bowl.
GI Joe: Retaliation is enormous fun (enjoy the Top Trumps tech specs in the intro credits which catch you up on the previous film) and the cast play it out with confidence and humour. I’d love to have seen more of Arnold Vosloo (the guy who played the mummy in The Mummy and Shakespearean actor of note in his home country), and a few more Joes would have been nice. The girls are in it mainly to look at but Jinx and Scarlett do also kick the crap out of quite a few people, which is satisfying. Watch it!
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