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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Pseudonym" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:13 pm
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Book End
I keep forgetting that I haven't actually announced this, but this past weekend I finished the first draft of my book. As in, the whole thing - Canadian epilogue included.
It feels somewhat anticlimactic.
Perhaps it's because the end snuck up on me. It literally came about halfway through an extended aside, when I realised after going on for more than a paragraph that it fit better to finish the story than to complete the original sentence (the rest of which, for the record, was "and his baseball playing daughter"). It was actually a little liberating not to feel the need to describe the concluding party in any further great detail, although I'm sure that at this point it seems absurdly glossed over - the entirety of the actual party portion of the evening being summed up with the sentence "so we drank to the health of the daughter of a Nairobi diplomat, and I shook the hand of a man who'd been a marine in World War 2". The epilogue is little more than an extra 500 words, and mostly concerned with one particular night out in Canada, a girl, and a bleeding nose. The final words are less snappy than I'd previously imagined, but they will do for now.
I've written a novel. It's 117,607 words long, give or take.
Now I suppose I simply have to make sure it's actually any good.
Current Mood:  satisfied
Current Music: Opposite Day - by Andrew Bird
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10:36 pm
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This Is How I Do It
On Friday I went to a convention for work, a big corporate event where I was paraded past a succession of stalls for various publishers and had each of them treat me like I was an important client they were trying to woo. I received goody bags with wine, DVDs, food and various vouchers, as well as more esoteric goodies like a Time magazine deck of playing cards and New Scientist socks. In one booth I listened to a genial middle-aged man in an army uniform tell me how his bridal magazines were going to be launching a full frontal assault on a traitor magazine that defected to another publisher before handing me a Nerf gun and telling me to go nuts; in another I proved that science is fun and everywhere by mixing various amounts of sugar, acid, alkali and flavouring to make my very own sherbet in a clear plastic ziplock bag (which I very helpfully labeled "Totally Not Drugs"). That evening I went into town dressed in my father's old army uniform - it was the theme, you see - and mingled with increasingly drunk publishers dressed as everything from Roman centurions to hippies.
Now I've just finished listening to an album that the internet informs me is called "Sharktits", while attempting to put the finishing touches on the tale of how I once crashed a family reunion in California.
Every now and again it seems that I do indeed live an interesting life.
Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: This Is How I Do It - by Colugo
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10:20 pm
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Safer Communities Together
Look, I'm sorry, I know everyone in New Zealand has probably seen this by now, but I figured that it was worth posting for the people I know outside NZ. It's a 40-second video of an NZ policeman doing an awesome on-the-spot deadpan while delicately interrogating a suspect.
This line, incidentally, now graces a line of T-shirts. I don't say it often enough, but I really am fond of this country.
Current Mood: amused
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12:01 am
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Creativity Sunday - Nuts
( Hey guys so I sat down to write some things and these came out. They're... certainly things! )
Current Mood:  blank
Current Music: A Butt - by Colugo
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09:25 pm
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I Want To Write, But I Have No Health
In the next room my flatmate is quietly declaring himself The Walrus. Our flat getting both The Beatles Rockband and Guitar Hero 5 have really demolished my free time. But despite this, and the fact that I can't decide if I'm freezing or boiling, I really want to write.
( So, have a frank discussion about parties, sex, and the last days of the Roman Empire )
Current Mood:  ill
Current Music: She's So Heavy - by The Beatles
Tags: creativity sunday
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12:11 am
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A New Tide
I've just returned from seeing the band Gomez live, something that I would thoroughly recommend to all my friends who like Gomez. Unfortunately, it turns out that I don't actually know anyone who likes Gomez, so I was forced to go to the gig alone. Still, it was nice to be able to find a spot in a concert where I wanted to be, as previously I'd generally been accompanying people who absolutely had to be as near to the front as possible - a habit that in one instance left me directly in front of the main speakers with my brain dribbling rhythmically out my ears, all for a group I didn't even particularly like. That said, spending the hour before the show determining exactly how many separate words could be made out of the letters in 'Gomez' (3; or 4 if you are prepared to accept 'emo', which most people generally aren't) might not be the most worthwhile trade off.
The next concert I am likely to see will be Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, where by a delightful irony I will be accompanying a friend. I suppose I could make a lot more words out of that band's name, but fortunately it seems that 'emo' is not among them.
Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Devil May Ride - by Gomez
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09:47 pm
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Creativity Sunday - Chop Wood
I woke up in the morning next to a pretty girl. Her flatmates stirred downstairs while cars rushed past on the motorway outside. The room fronted onto the morning sun, and what curtains there were weren't enough to keep the light from streaming in. Perhaps they simply hadn't been closed last night. I struggled up reluctantly after setting myself a deadline of half an hour ago. I had things I needed to do today.
I'd been busy yesterday. I got to work early and stayed at work late. I'd had things that needed to get done. I was working on them still when my boss had sat against the end of my desk to let me know, just to be sure, that I had noticed that I was alienating my team mates. I was asking too many questions about too many things, and they'd begun to suspect I was being too lazy to look for the answers myself. She hoped I wasn't offended and I hoped not to appear horrified. I was trying hard, putting in extra hours whenever I could, but I was still making mistakes and asking stupid questions. I would have to try harder.
I got to the party late. My family was mingling around the crowded garden; a professional jazz band pattered quietly in the corner. Some time after six my uncle took the microphone and began the speeches. "My wife asked me what it was like getting diagnosed with terminal cancer", he said. "I answered, do you know the proverb of enlightenment? Before enlightenment, you chop wood. After enlightenment, you chop wood. Receiving a death sentence is pretty much the same; at the end of the day, the wood still needs to be chopped."
The Governor-General of New Zealand was there, they'd mentioned. He knew him from school. My nephew ran through the legs of the crowd, chased desperately by my brother. "I've got a flag!" he yelled.
"When I got diagnosed I went and sat in my car. I expected to feel terrified, or numb, but I didn't. I felt relieved. I was relieved because - because all my life I've been trying, trying very hard. Trying to be good, trying to do the right thing, trying to make a positive impact. And I don't have to try anymore." He laughed quietly. "I'd rather be remembered as someone who did things rather than for being determined, but there you go."
The party rolled on. We mingled, the band played, my mother wandered through the party with her humourous shark costume on in the way that she does. My cellphone beeped with a message from the girl at another party. I avoided making eye contact with my uncle by answering her. We were all having a very good time. I went to my brother's house afterwards to watch a movie, because my flatmate had asked for the place to himself. He was trying to go to bed with a pretty girl.
Current Mood: bi-polar
Current Music: This Could've Been Nice - by Renard
Tags: creativity sunday
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11:15 pm
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Creativity Sunday - Written On A Dare
We pulled up across the street from her house. The street here was perilously steep, setting us on an awkward angle as I searched desperately for a topic of conversation.
"So, here we are then" I ventured.
"Yep. Thanks for the lift." She sighed. "Man, I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. I've got a big essay to write for university."
"You mean you're not looking forward to today. Midnight was hours ago."
She made a face. "Hey, it doesn't count as tomorrow until you go to sleep."
I conceded the point. "Fair enough." There was a pause while I thought of something else to say. "So what about Sunday? Why can't you just do it then?"
"Oh, I've got practice with this acrobatics group to go to then, so I won't have time."
"Really?" Shit, I should have said 'Perhaps you'll just have to find something to do to keep you awake' before. It's too late to say it now. Yeah, definitely too late. "You do acrobatics?"
"Oh, yeah, didn't I mention that earlier? I'm like, crazy flexible. See, look." She leaned forward in the seat, reached behind herself and lifted her leg up over her head. "You'd be amazed at the things it comes in handy for sometimes."
It occurred to me that she might possibly be flirting. "Oh" I said. "Gosh."
( Read more... )
Current Music: Living On A Prayer - by Bon Jovi
Tags: creativity sunday
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11:42 pm
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Creativity Monday - What Would You Do?
"Hey! Listen!"
That phrase, in that tone, snapped me out of my reverie. I'd never actually played any Zelda games myself, but even I'd heard the phrase often enough to trigger a startled search of my surroundings. I'm glad I kept it to myself however, rather than simply blurting "rupees!" at the small Indian woman who had confronted me. Geekiness and accidental racism seldom go well together.
"Are you in this line?"
I looked about in vague confusion for several moments before finally answering. "Yes. Yes I suppose I am. Sorry." I'd been looking at all the tickets and prices, trying to figure out if I wanted a super lucky dip or a triple lucky powerball, but after I'd answered a random old lady there was clearly no going back. I was going to buy a Lotto ticket.
( And it goes on like this )
Tags: creativity sunday
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11:51 pm
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Eight Days A Week
I've just come from watching the Gang Show tonight - a sort of singing and variety show put on by a collection of local Scouting groups, otherwise known as "the whitest show on Earth". They had precisely one black guy and they made him play Michael Jackson, but singing a song by Prince, because who can tell those guys apart, right?
The shows promotional literature states that every day, somewhere on Earth a Gang Show is being performed. It was a vaguely unsettling thought; rather like the idea that at any given moment, some grandparents somewhere are having sex. Sure it happens, but you don't exactly want to think about it, and you certainly don't want to watch the jerky, haphazard movements play out in front of you. But eventually you realise that while this would be embarrassing and disturbing if they were professionals, the fact that they are simply doing it because they love it makes you let your guard down and soon you're enjoying yourself too. The Gang Show, that is, not grandparents having sex. I probably should have ended that analogy a little more conclusively.
In any case, the show was good fun - both intentionally and not - and did not actually contain any octogenarian sex. I apologise for the mental image, but in my defense when confronted by a troupe of awkward teens performing as what appear to be the Angry Robot Zombie Beatles almost any other train of thought begins to seem like a good idea.
Current Mood: surprised
Current Music: Pretty much everything from Grease
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10:45 pm
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Men At Work
I have been very busy at work. Today I prepared detailed reports on all of the titles we manage, and yesterday I made a pretty flower out of sheets of coloured paper.
Being in an all-female team is certainly interesting.
Current Mood:  tired, again, as always
Current Music: Final Push to the Sum - by Grandaddy
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10:07 pm
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The Proverbial
Outside the sky is breaking. I drove home to sheets of great white lightning flashing across the night sky, tearing it into brightness for a few stuttering seconds at a time. My bedroom has a small skylight to counter its poor position for the sun, which means that my sleep tonight is likely to be shaken with sudden splashes of white. Apparently they are used to this in Canada, or so at least one of my workmates says. They are most welcome to it.
I caused $20,000 worth of damage at work today. Not today actually, but last week, in the same ball of problems that stemmed from my Mistake - now so monumental as to justify this dolorous capital letter - but crucially, not actually part of the original error. In my first desperate rush to fix this problem I made another, wholly avoidable one, which we only found out about now when the calls started coming into the call centre. You see, all the magazines were issued to the right addresses, but they are all addressed under the name of the wrong person. All 13,956 of them (actually, that's not quite true - 298 people were spared from this haphazard holocaust by virtue of being on their last issue, and so were only added after the previous mass panic on Thursday afternoon, some time after the great identity reshuffling occurred).
If you are going to make a significant corporate mistake, and I recommend that you do not, I would caution that it is especially not a good idea to inflict it through entirely random chance upon the largest subscription magazine in the country. I'm not going to state its name; mostly in case it gets pulled up by a random googling and adds impertinent disclosure to my list of sins, but also out of the nagging fear that by listing its dread syllables I complete whatever horrific conjuration is going on outside and allow some Cthonic monstrosity to tear through my screen and unleash its fell harvest. And, if my work to bring this about is any judge, it will be sure to call everyone by the wrong name while it does so.
Forgive me this entry. In times of crisis I retreat into paranoid sesquipedalia like some sort of hide-bound hermit crab, or possibly just an illegal midget in a library. At work my Scottish co-worker asked me off-handedly how my day was going, and I had to visibly stop myself from replying "invidious, pestiferous, and very nearly hatefully squamous".
Instead I answered "fine", after slightly too long a pause. He looked thoughtfully for a moment, then continued talking about how he had hurt his neck.
Current Mood: oh, fine, fine
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10:20 pm
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A Class Act
Just got back from doing a second standup set. My apologies to those in the area who might have gone for not saying so in advance, but after how the last one went I wanted to keep this one quiet so I could concentrate on improving. Thankfully, it did go considerably better this time.
It appears that the key is to say, shorter, punchier jokes, not rambling so much that the audience doesn't have a chance to laugh and, perhaps, not making quite so much use of the word 'minge'.
Who knew?
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10:44 pm
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I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
On Friday I made a mistake at work. I didn't even realise it at the time. I'd caught and corrected a similar mistake and was still worrying about the earlier problem I'd created that had caused me to work for an extra 2 hours into Friday evening, so my attention was not perhaps as focused as it should have been. In any case, today I discovered that I'd breezily committed an atrocity so vile that the tech support staff - on the line from Australia - described it as "nightmarish" before offering their solution of "well, good luck with that".
There is a limit to the level of expletives you can use in a workplace environment. I view swearing as a creative exercise, a chance to work out my frustrations by creating the most uniquely offensive words possible, but when decency demands some form of restraint my brain apparently throws itself wholesale into a dangerously bizarre tangent. Today's topic of choice, it seemed, was UK football teams.
"Arsenal!" I yelled, hanging up the phone. "Arsenal arsenal SCUNTHORPE!"
Across the office work ground to a halt. Someone coughed. From around the corner a confused Scottish voice answered "go Aberdeen!"
So I know I joked about this earlier, but it appears that I really may have prevented people you know from getting a magazine they have subscribed to. At least this time my boss and team are all wonderfully understanding and supportive, and that certainly helps. Otherwise it is fair to say that that I would be completely Manchester U'd.
Current Mood:  yayfail!
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02:08 am
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Creativity Sunday - Grammar Rodeo 3: The Bold And The Imperative
I meant to go to bed, but instead I apparently decided that I had to sit down and do this right now.
( It's too much... I can't handle this any longer! Can't you see that you're reducing me to ellipses? )
Current Mood: irascible
Current Music: Kyle Ward The Space Pumpkin - by Renard
Tags: creativity sunday
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10:57 pm
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Cooking With Sass
I had my first monthly performance review today. That's a bizarre sentence to type; to just have sitting there on the screen like that collection of words has any business being applied in relation to me. My performance in a corporate environment has been reviewed. You might as well say that my melons were just hydrated for for as odd as that concept feels.
Mind you, the main thing that I took away from that review was that I very nearly didn't get this job due to a meal of spaghetti bolognese. I was in the middle of cooking it when my boss contacted me for the first phone interview you see; and I took advantage of the rhetorical "is now a good time?" to say that I needed to concentrate on cooking right now, so I'd get back to her later. Apparently she had been ready to shrug and move on, but the person I replaced convinced her to actually call me back later because my CV was so good. I had never realised that my sheer blithering lack of cooking ability was momentous enough to actually start costing me employment, but there you go.
Still, it was a nice meal of spaghetti. Not necessarily worth losing a job over, but if you are going to lose a job it's probably better to do so deliciously at least.
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Golden Retriever - by the Super Furry Animals
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11:04 pm
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Ok, So
That went about as badly as I have ever gone. Turns out I made the significant mistake in thinking that what's funny in writing is funny on stage; but while something might make for a hilarious story or anecdote it doesn't really work when people are expecting actual jokes. In short, too much buildup, not enough punchlines; particularly if when you get to the punchline people just go "heh", and you're left floundering about to justify all the time you spent getting there. So I started going faster, but that just made everything worse, until finally I finished up and left to the announcer saying "Raw Night, ladies and gentlemen!"
You know, it's just struck me that that part is equally applicable to bad sex. Ironically, that would probably have gone down better than what I was actually saying.
My sister, who was in the audience, and when another comedian pulled out managed to pull out a better set in 15 minutes than I did in 2 weeks, suggested that I should watch out for my facial expressions more so that I can avoid looking quite so much like I am going to do a poo on stage. Apparently I make that face whenever I tell a joke, so chances are that's advice I should try to bring into my everyday life. On the whole I would prefer people not have the spectre of abrupt defecation brought to mind whenever I try to make a funny.
Still, you've got to laugh. Someone might as well be doing so.
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07:21 am
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Now It's On
Today is the first day that I'm flying solo at work, taking over completely now that the person who was training me has finally left to concentrate on being pregnant. More importantly though, tonight I'm going back to doing stand up comedy for the first time in about a year. I've been meaning to do it for some time; because I didn't want to just let it drop. It's a nice, unique thing to do; something that sets me apart and gets the reaction "wow, I can't believe you actually do that! I totally never could", as well as being quite good for providing instant feedback on how I'm doing which, let's face it, spending ages writing a book and then maybe getting one person to look at a part of it every few months doesn't quite do.
So! Wish me luck. I'm doing it again in two weeks, so all going well I'll try to pull together a bigger crowd then, but for the moment I just want to see if what I've got to say is actually funny.
Current Music: Screwball - by Renard
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01:41 am
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Mature IT
My job is going a lot better now; so while I still fail just as often at least now I'm a lot more inventive about it. I recently attended my first office party; a mid-Winter Christmas (which is apparently some sort of thing down here in the southern hemisphere) which went quite well. I inherited a tie from the decorations and won large amounts of fake money in the fake gambling, although unfortunately there were no fake strippers around to blow it all on immediately afterwards. It also turned out to be an excellent opportunity to see one of your distant superiors get absolutely wankered on free alcohol and then have to pretend that you can still actually take them seriously the next day, which was fun. I was driving so it wasn't a problem I had to deal with personally, but then again apparently I exceeded expectations simply by showing up as the team I work in has a habit of not mingling much. When I'm the most actively sociable and partygoing member of a group you know it's not a good sign. To be fair, this is due to the fact that they all either have husbands or husbands and small children, so extra-curricular mingling isn't high on their list of priorities. Still, it's nice to know that I stand out in ways beyond simply being the only male. When I started my boss mentioned that they'd never had a guy working in the team with them before (goodness knows why, it's not like a uterus is a job requirement for anything any of us is doing), and I only just managed to stop myself from saying "well, I'll try to make sure I don't get penis all over everything then". I think I'm slipping though - today I went to the nearby supermarket for lunch at the same time as my boss and laughed unexpectedly at the gumball dispenser. When my boss asked why I replied, "The middle bit of the 'G' there is worn away, see? So for a few moments I thought this was dispensing... something else." She walked away rather quickly.
Then again, yesterday one of my flatmates came home with two tubs of icecream and instructions that we needed to eat it all by Sunday morning so he could use the containers; and when you're declaring Icecream Fridays there's a limit to how mature you can pretend to be. I think at this point that's probably for the best. If nothing else I've finally booked myself in for another session of standup comedy in a few weeks time, and developing the habit of opening doors with nothing but an efficient pelvic thrust makes for much better comedy than the alternative.
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Thank You - by The Whitlams
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10:54 pm
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Creativity Suddenly - Terminal
We laughed. For a long goodbye, it was going well. She'd taken me for tapas and I'd felt comfortable enough with her to ask quietly before we started just what exactly 'tapas' were, instead of simply nodding and hoping to bluff my way through. We talked; I congratulated her on getting accepted with scholarship to the overseas university, we congratulated ourselves on knowing each other so long and somehow managing to wind up such strong friends, and my phone rang. I answered it eventually, mistaking it for a text message at first until I realised that the vibration wasn't stopping. It was my mother.
"I've got some bad news". I could barely hear her. Her tone was hard to read.
"Oh, is it about the TV show I asked you to record?"
"No. Uncle Gerard has cancer. It's in secondary stages, all over his body; they can't find the source. He doesn't have long."
"Oh my." My friend waited silently, smiling politely into the middle distance. "Oh. My."
That conversation didn't take much longer, because I couldn't hear her too well and I didn't have much to say. My cousins were shocked; the one who'd served as my best friend during school hadn't stopped crying. He wasn't sure if he could make it back to New Zealand - the death clashed with his wedding. He'd try, of course. I told my friend.
"It's alright, we weren't close. And he already had Parkinson's, so he was going downhill anyway. Possibly Alzheimer's too. Don't worry though, he's not a blood relative of mine, so I'm fine at least."
She laughed with a start. "Is that Irish humour?"
I shrugged. "I dunno. It's something."
We talked, the conversation moved on. We were always great for that. She said she'd miss me, genuinely, which I was grateful for and repeated in earnest. When my face went red after an intended rhetorical question she found out that she had been my first kiss, seemingly so long ago now, and we laughed about that too.
Shit, I'm going to have to say goodbye to him, aren't I? I'm going to have to come in and see him when he's hooked up to machines and try to think of something to say beyond goodbye. He worked - works, as far as I know - in the publishing industry; I'd intended to use him as a springboard for my book. He's the only uncle my family really has. Actually that's not true, I still have my other uncle; the eternal lonely bachelor, quietly living himself to death. There's more, but we don't ever see them. Coming from Irish Catholic grandparents is great for that.
We talked, I laughed, she refused to let me buy her goodbye cake. I made jokes about everything and meant them too, feeling content and excellent and fully at ease, like I always do in those conversations. On the night I found out my uncle was dying of cancer I had a very good time. She was always great for that.
Current Mood: great
Current Music: The House That Dripped Blood - by The Mountain Goats
Tags: creativity sunday
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