FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS-MEGA DELUXE

So!
The kindly chump who I've been leaching broadband off of for the past month finally discovered how to lock his network. Thus, here I am back at the internet cafe, waiting until February 1st when British Telecom will hook me up to my own connection - which I can thankfully afford, after getting a few weeks of solid work under my belt. After doing a little budget, I figure I could even rebuild my shattered (LAPTOP/MOVIE/MOVING - THREE HIT COMBO TO WALLET) savings by the end of April. Financial security you say?

Meanwhile I've met up with my cousin Dan and seen the Tate Modern, finally. After that it was a few drinks at an equally few Thameside bars - beware the beer named "St.Fillelens"...or something like that.

The Archbrook treatment inches ever close to completion, with the second act basically wrapped up I just have to tie together all the loose bits I've written down for the third. I am super excited to start on the script proper as it feels like it shall be naught but gravy with the actual story worked out in advance. But we shall see!

Anyways, when my home connection is hooked up next Thursday y'all can expect more posts and a return of both pictures and new Dirk clips. I've redone episode 4 and will send it off to Joey T for a soundtrack as soon as I can.

Take care for now!

Self-taught watercolour painting...

...ain't easy! But then, did I expect it to be?

Meanwhile a hideous beast named Computer Errors made me lose over an hours work on the redo of Dirk Hardwood episode 4.

I am going to paint Computer Errors in all his foul glory.

Then I shall own Computer Errors miserable little soul.

I'm okay!

I'm....I'm pretty okay!

But enough about me as a person, I'm also in full health. A couple of people have written or called me in the past 24 hours to ask if I suffered any hardships or injury as a result of a rogue weather pattern which hit London last night.

Apparently this isn't even the first time such a thing has happened recently.

Meanwhile, during a boring moment at work on my lunch hour, I went to wikipedia and hit "Random Article" for the first time. Though I usually leave "strange internet stuff" to the professionals, I think I will just this once share what I came up with. A book written by H.P. Lovecraft and illustrated by H.R. Geiger would have hard time coming up with something so foul.

I have't clicked it a second time, nor do I plan to - I think I shall quit while I am ahead.

In the realm of the pseudo-mundane, I picked up a half price watercolour painting kit today. I have had some ideas floating around and since I can do a decent impersonation of an artist, I reckon I'll make some of my own wall decorations for my room.

A lil' update

For a lil' link provided by a special lil' guy

The turning of a climate change skeptic

Whoooooo likes pictures?

Carnaby Street - the cafe where I was writing/eating is on the right side.
Onto Regent Street now.

Now into Picadilly Square.

There were plenty of angles I could have taken this one from and I think I made a good choice.
Now into a smaller area called Swiss Court Square. It's filled with movie theaters, including my destination - The Prince Charles Cinema.
SWEET price! Totally worth it for the film I saw.

We'll see what comes of this...

...but I really do hope that what comes is, you know, something.

To balance this, here is a nice picture from Regent Street which leads from Oxford Circus down into the Soho area. More to come.

Is this little guy a mole, an offensive depiction of a fellow from the Indian sub-continent or what exactly?

Script Writin' Fancy Like - Part 4
Right then, a breakdown of my new approach to writing vs my old one. The method for "Tonight...." is easy to sum up: Sit in front of computer, pound at keyboard until something decent arrives. Repeat.

I might have made some notes on loose paper which have since been lost, but that was essentially it. Even if I thought of an idea while away from the compu-tron, I'd just repeat it in my head until I was sure I could remember until I was at my computer. With the clutter of University and daily life in general, this wasn't the best method. I still have a ghost of a scene, which I know was good but melted away during an exam, wandering the memory halls and rattling its chains.

Realizing what a pile of shit that approach was I bought myself a tiny notebook, which I could fit in most pockets, the November before last. I tried to use it as a catch basin for whatever may pop into my noggin' while I am on the bus, (was) in class, at work or anywhere else. Despite the metaphor, I recommend making very sure that this book is tiny as the smaller it is the more likely you are to take it with you and capture something worthwhile (like cameras, in a fashion). Sure some pages have been hijacked by shopping lists and the like, but you can tear those out! In the end the booklet will be thinner than when you bought it, but what remains should be a nice reserve of story ideas, settings, snappy lines and whatever useful mnemonic devices you may have designed for your later-self.

This improved things, but when at home I often found that I didn't want to boot up the computer just to get down some notion that had hit me and risk being sucked into hours of distraction. But my tiny notebook was too tiny to get down more than a couple of paragraphs without using up gobs of pages. Then I spotted my pal Joey T with a wonderful, hardcover notebook of a rather good size. Larger than the little pocketbook, but not as cumbersome as a standard legal-sized notebook...'twas perfect!

He kindly helped me acquire one and ta-da, bigger idea catch-basin. There is, of course, more room on the larger pages and it's helpful to be able to literally keep more of any one idea in front of your eyes. Plus it's not so cumbersome that I can't stuff it in my regular black carry bag. I love it and it, along with das pocketbook, kept me pretty well sustained for months on end. I initially tried to colour code the pages for quicker reference, something I'd done to great effect in my pocketbook (Ex. Gold line along the top indicates collections of Lines, Silver Line a collection of story ideas and so on). Damned if I know why, but this just didn't stick with the larger notebook.

But whatever, it's invaluable to have and I think one of the biggest things it has over a computer is that you can easily bring it anywhere that you feel might put you in a good mood and therefore be more prone to inspiration. Yes I have a laptop and others with laptops can do it - but when I have an idea these days I want instant accesibility to a method of spitting it out and no distractions. A laptop has to power up, be placed somewhere smart so it doesn't burn your lap, can't really be used in a lot of public spaces at all hours for fear of attracting thieves, is slower to pack up if rain starts and so on. Plus, you know, the million other things than Word which you have at your fingertips which offer temptation and distraction.

Now I am probably getting more anti-computer (in the context of writing) lately because I spend my weekdays sitting front in of one of the damn things inputting data for National Rail - but even before this I was finding myself more and more reluctact to write on the computer, almost to the point of resenting the machine. True, I pour ideas out faster through typing than writing but I am finding the difference to be negligable and also when I have to que up notions in my head while waiting for my pen to catch up....I find that this sometimes leads to a bit of refinement before I lay down the words, whereas with typing I'll just spew and spew with little on the spot management - leaving a bigger job for me to do later in my revising.

Anywho, as my two basins have filled up with bits and bobs for Archbrook as well as other ideas which may or may not grow into something...I found it kind of annoying when I tried to refresh mysef on Archbrook. You see, something I make myself do each time I sit down for a serious go at Archbrook is that I review all the loose notes which came before. But as it became obvious that Archbrook was winning the battle with my other script ideas to win the right to further development, I found it very tedious to have to keep flicking about over the other story notes to get to the next chunk of Archbrook.

On top of this, I knew that Archbrook would be more challanging than "Tonight..." and I wanted to be better prepared when I sat down to write the proper script pages. So I decided I would write the basic story out, from beginning to end in a loose narrative, before I wrote page one of the script - this is the treatment I've been mentioning lately. But something that long and ordered would block up my notebook catch basins like all get out - with those it is important to keep them in a state that I can just jot down whatever, whenever and not worry about where in the book it is.

So I nabbed a cheap booklet of 60 pages with a soft black cover and have given it a similar role to the hardcover, but exclusive to Archbrook. I have mostly been writing the treatment
(which is at a nebulous 50-60% done point, depending on how long I decide to make the story) but whenever I get to a point where I think a scene could be done one of two or more ways, I write the scene that feels strongest first. Then in square parantheses I write out the other two options. Thus they are placed where they would be in the story, helping me keep everything in order in my head, which I think is better than placing them at the back of the book in an appendix.

In anticipation of when I write my first draft of the script, which I also think I'll try out on paper first, I bought a cheap notebook of similar make and page count, but this time a bit larger than legal size paper. We'll see where things go from here!
For the actual generating and laying down of ideas, I don't know that there is a whole lot I can say about this at the moment. I mean, where do you get your ideas? I think that is fairly unique to each person and as I've hinted at, it can fluctuate from day to day. Sometimes I write better in a good mood and other times in a bad one, sometimes better in a quiet library and other times in a noisy public space. The only consistent thing which springs to mind is the binary tug of war between content and structure. You need content or you have nothing to structure (nothing at all, really) but structure is handy for keeping your ideas from simply being a deluge of colorful ejaculations which can ignite the imagination of the reader but not sustain that flame. It's easy to get lost in either side of things, doing too much content without wanting to orangize things because "it's up to the damn stupid reader/viewer to interpret my genius" or to toddle about putting things in pretty spreadsheets when all you are really doing is building sandcastles instead of writing. I'd love to say how to master the balance, but it isn't something easily measured in quantifiable chunks. Managing this balance is, as Chris Onstad might say, the slick dirtle.

Anyways, I really enjoyed writing these. If anybody wants to ask any questions about this or the small amount of production experience I have....go for it, I'd be happy to blather on. Tune in next time for some pictures from my Saturday evening in the Oxford Circus, Carnaby Street, Picadilly square area.

More later, after an exciting trip to the Laundromat!

Iron Bitters

Scriptin' Fancy-Like - Part 3
Right then, as I have not finished writing Archbrook we are now moving from a sort of guide into an exposition on what I am currently trying.

As I started to go on about last time, I simplified a lot of aspects of "Tonight..." because I knew darn well that I was still something of a beginner at script writing and that if I tried to overcomplicate things then I was likely to make more mistakes as well as probably lose focus of the main idea I was trying to explore in the first place.

With that experience behind me, as well as a few multi-page forays into a half dozen ideas I've tried to develop between "Tonight..." and my starting "Archbrook", I feel that I can get away with ratcheting the difficulty up a few notches. This includes...

• Sets: Instead of "The Lounge", "The Bar", "Paul's Apartment" etc. I am now trying to fully imagine sets which do more than provide a background to dialogue - or are at least more integral to the mood of the scenes which take place in them.
• Setting: Inspired during a trip to Broadstairs, yes, but I am not just mentally setting this there. I have actually done a couple of simple sketches of the fictional town ("Bethwick") to order things in my mind. I'd like to think this will lead to more consistency, particularly when it comes to lengths of time between happenings and when characters can "realistically" arrive in one place after being at another. Aside from Bethwick there will definitely be at least mention of London as well as the possabilty of the opening scene taking place in Wales.
  
• Characters: For reasons I'll expand upon later, I'm making the entire main cast between the age of 40 and 60. Guess what? I'm not that old. But maybe I can draw upon what life experience I have (particularly my interaction with the middle-aged set) as well as common sense and thoughtful extrapolation?. Also, the characters are mostly English and I am dabbling with one being of Armenian heritage. This might not be relevant past the names, but we'll have to see what is useful to the story and what isn't.
• History: As I am having a millenia-old cult/religion in this script, I have had to do some research. Though I'm not worried about achieving a remarkably high level of accuracy, I don't want to come off as some fool who is just spouting off whatever comes to mind.
• Inventing a religion: This is both easy and hard. Yes I can make up whatever I feel like, but not so much if I want it to be believable (within the context of the story!). Believablity isn't enough as I have to make sure that the religion also allows the story to function as I want it to while not feeling too convenient or forced.

These are the new challenges. Next time I'll expand upon how I am trying to meet them as well as some thoughts upon the handful of binary oppositions which need to be perpetually managed in the (my) writing process.

In other news, life is pretty okay! A tad lonely, but then that is to be expected when you go to a big city and have to build an entirely new social life. However I am investigating more interesting places to go to - I've found Time Out magazine to be very helpful and I recommend it to anybody even passing through London, let alone moving here. Work is still pleasantly free of stress, but damn I want to try and find something where I don't just try to hurry up the day. I guess we'll see where I land when the contract ends in April. Finally, here are two pictures I took of a great rooftop reading area at The British Library.

We all live inside "the environment"

This is a good thing to remember! I think that an awful lot of people forget that, somehow.

This is a brilliant idea on how to spread an incredibly important and timely film. If you haven't seen the film or want to show it to someone you know, you can have a copy of it sent to your home for free with no strings attached, again thanks to this goddamn magnificent website. This is absolutely necessary because we still live in a world where people come out with shit like...

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

Meanwhile, as Rome (and everywhere else) continues to get closer to burning...let's have a jolly old laugh at Hitler, that wacky bastard.

But seriously? SERIOUSLY take your hand out of your pants and go to http://sharethetruth.us/

Then and only then, treat yourself to Posterchild's great lil' short "The Departed Astronaut".

Racist outbursts are basically not a good career move...

...but it at least gives some clever editors the chance to put together a great lampoon.

SCRIPTIN' FANCY LIKE - PART 2
When last we left off, I had just gotten the ball seriously rolling with "Tonight...". From there to the tenous finish is easily summed up. Whenever I could, I would just sort of will myself to write more. Seriously, that is it - willpower. If I had it in me that day, then I would write...otherewise...

This is by no means what I advise, it's just what happened!

I definitely didn't write it in chronological order and if I had tried to I'd probably still be writing it. I just had to throw down whatever was flowing freely out of me, before I forgot it. Eventually my writing sessions were one part writing to one part joining up the jigsaw pieces. Two parts Hennessey.

The reason I describe the finish as "tenous" is because I feel that I could keep coming back to expand upon and refine that script until kingdom come. I don't claim to be the first to point this out, but I think it is worth saying you can go back to a script almost an infinite amount of times. Eventually you have to say "It's DONE" even if adding an ominous "for now..." at the end of that exclamation. Though I have half an additional scene for "Tonight..." which I sometimes tweak and add to, I feel fine in saying that script is done because:

1. I've done enough proofreads to feel that the spelling, grammar and continuity are tight enough to give the impression that I am a fellow who is capable of being capable.
   
2. The story feels complete and the characters more like people than a collection of cute lines. Though I have an urge to flesh out somebits here and there, I wouldn't say there are any outright gaping holes which would lend a viewer/reader to ask questions such as "But wait? Isn't that dude a secret abortionist? Wouldn't he, of all people, know not to have unprotected sex with that pilot's wife in the apple orchard?" or "Didn't the humans think in the long term about their decision to block out the sun to stop the 100% solar powered robots?".

This being said, I have periodically given it another proofread when posessed of ample spare time (like my recent unemployment in Reading). Just because the car is built and working doesn't mean you never clean it or check for rust!

Being my first attempt at writing a feature-length script, "Tonight..." was a lot of fun and a lot of messy forcing it out onto the page. I paid for this at least twice with continuity problems that cost me a lot of aggro in going back over the script to resolve them. The upside of my full steam ahead approach was that it was easier for me to stay focused on the main idea of the script and so I'm pleased to say that despite featuring a wide variety of conversational topics in the dialogue, the story itself stays on track from beginning to end.

Something else that definitely eased the process for this script was that it was set in "A Metropolitan City" around about "Modern Times". Not to mention that the cast was composed entirely of North Americans in their early to mid-twenties, so I certainly could not be accused of writing what I didn't know. Not that I'm being down on myself, I think it's important to mention these things because I have met so many people who feel too intimidated to start writing. Well let me tell you folk in particular, it's only as terrifying and challenging as you make it. With "Tonight..." I felt that I was up to the task of conveying the themes and ideas I wanted to explore, but not on top of an exotic setting, characters which were outside my realm of personal experience or some ambitious high concept.

I think it is also important to point out that there is no shame in taking the simple approach - particularly in concept. I mean, a lot of classic movies can wind up sounding either daft or boring (or both) when summed up in the original notion. Just becuase hearing your idea in a single sentence doesn't immediately moisten the genitals of every human being within a city block doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing.

I've also had to devote very little brainpower to coming up with the exactitudes of how the society of "Tonight..." worked or any other abstract systems as one would encounter in, say, a horror story which takes place in a fictional English town and involves a fictional religion. Like, say, the script I am trying to write now - Archbrook. For this I have definitely set the bar higher than what I have tried to write before and so I'm trying to take a more organized, less just do it, just write something so you ain't some chump who says he is a writer but he ain't written nothin' no good approach. We'll get into that next time!

Please note, your server has full creative control of your cocktail pleasure

Hello all you guys and dolls out there in internet land. This humble reporter needs a good nights rest and so this shall be a short one. These last two evenings have been mostly spent attending to a deal of the mundane...lord but it takes time to acquire all the little things that let you focus on activities other than acquiring all the little things! Like lamps.

But you can expect, maybe even dare to look forward to, the second installment of "Scriptin' Fancy-Like" tomorrow night. Between now and then, may I suggest that you make for yourself the following. Also, be sure to enjoy it!

Mercury (Martini)
2 1/2 oz
-Absolut Vodka
-Apple Liquer
-Strawberry Juice

Literacy huh? How 'bout it?

Yowza, today has been a real classic English day (re: grey skies and unrelenting rain). Between that and some other factors, I've ended up staying in today to try and finish the presentation treatment for my Archbrook script.

So, as to take a break from writing this durn treatment, I'm going to try my hand at a little "From the Writers Den" thing. Time for a peak in the, assuredly, exciting mind of somebody who usually gets away with calling himself a writer!

SCRIPTIN' FANCY-LIKE: Part 1
Now, I've taken a couple of courses with the CSTC, nabbed myself one of those fancy shmancy degrees (English w/Honors, minor in Film Studies) and have generally been writing fiction in one form or another since I was able to speak (at which point I apparently dictated a strange tale to my mom about numerous technicoloured peoples, God and lots of nuclear explosions. Also, China?). Though all these things have definitely contributed to whatever level of skill I have, I wouldn't think of them first.

Then we have the time-worn "You learn by doing!" maxim to consider. It is certainly true and I do place this high on my list of Sayings With Something To Them. If all you do is talk about what you'd like to write, then that is all you are - a talker. But just squeezing out shit after shit after shit won't make you a good writer either. There is more to quality, I'd like to think, then quantity!

My current theory as to the necessary "third component" is the willingness to experiment with your writing process and to challenge what you do without mercy (this is not to be confused with being really disparaging about what you do, because you have low self-esteem?). Whatever your exact method, it has to be flexible because you yourself are always subject to change - even if it is just your general mood as it fluctuates throughout the day.

For the sake of brevity and focus, I am going to look at how I wrote my last script (Tonight We Fall In Love) versus how I am writing my current script (Archbrook).

With "Tonight..." I didn't start with a big concept, theme or historical era that I wanted to explore. Simply enough, I had noticed how much the sense of humor that myself and a handful of friends shared in high school seemed to stand out and really enterain people of all shapes and sizes. I thought that if I could try to capture that in a story, then I might be able to do something others could really enjoy.

So I tried to write an engaging dialogue between two characters having an evening drink somewhere. At first my mind was flooded with questions about "What do they look like? Where are they? What are the camera movements?" etc etc. Though I do not discourage multi-tasking, trying to take on everything at once can often lead to serious writers block - particularly in your very early days.

So I shamelessly set it somewhere in real life that I regularly went to, made one character look like me and the other like my oldest friend, let whatever pictures popped into my head dictate what the camera was doing and then got the fuck on with it. But you cannot just have people make jokes back and forth, so I decided to give them a topic. How novel!

But man there are sure a lot of things for people to talk about. I tried picking something at random (Dogs, due to one going past my apartment at the time) and that bombed pretty bad. Looking back, I know what I probably should have tried to think of a topic which I could work a lot of jokes out of - particularly since, at that point, I was just trying to write a scene and not a feature length script. The problem at the time was, frankly, that I didn't give a shit about what the characters were talking about. I got fed up and may have even been heard to say 'The hell with dogs!". That's just the kind of monster I am.

After a few minutes of twiddling my thumbs and being fed up, I did what I usually do when I'm fed up with anything. I turned it around and challenged myself, my fed-uppedness, by asking "So okay, what do you care about? What are you passionate enough about to stay interested in and what these two characters might say about it?". At the time, for reasons I won't expand upon 'less I turn this website into precisely the reason I viciously mocked blogs for so many years, I was pretty uppity about (in)authenticity in people's romantic dealings - particularly as it related to expectations and reactions that clearly were common tropes from film and television...

Next thing I knew, I had twelve pages of chatter and a burning desire to expand it into a feature length script. I eventually broke those pages up into pieces which I plugged into later parts of the full story, keeping only what I wanted to use to establish the main characters and the premise so that this conversation at "the Mercury" could be the opening scene.

Looking at how much I've written and how much more I could write, I think I'm going to stop here and do another installment sometime in the near future. Plus, I am hungry. *Plus* I should get back to my treatment.

Anywho, I hope this was of some interest and/or use!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to cook some delicious dinner.

...

Yeah I guess climate change is a load of baloney to fool us into paying higher green taxes or some such shit. It's not like anything remarkable is happening as a result or nothing, no sir, hey did you hear what Tits #4 did lately?

Not all streets are paved with gold.

It's something of an adventure for me to go diving through my hard drive, seeing as how I've kept transfering all my files from drive to drive since I was about fourteen.

I was a witty, witty guy when I was turning 19. SOOO damn witty.


Gonna try and get some more night time pictures of London tomororow. Let's see what comes of that. ALSO I thought maybe I would do an entry on scriptwriting, seeing as how...

1. The whole thrust of my coming here had to do with film work.
2. I have basically been re-inventing the way I write scripts over the past two weeks.

For now, here is a reminder that not everything in England is purty. Don't worry folks, I haven't lost perspective! Sometimes England is all gorgeous monuments to mans potential for creating beauty. Other times it is a pile of rotting tires I saw outside of Blackhorse Road station.

Seeing...

....things like this remind me of better times, when America had a good leader.

Given that America has recently taken one big leap towards greater resembling Imperial Rome (I doubt I need to expand upon the disgusting event that I am referring to), I would like to use my tiny soapbox to encourage them to go whole hog.

Split in two already! Clinton could lead the more stable, civilized half into a progressive age.

Bush jr. can lead the proud, gold-plated opulent half which will rot out from the inside thanks to an unsustainable economy.

Then be overun by barbarians from the north!

Addendum: I finally wrote the last tenth of a text installment of Dirk Hardwood. I wholeheartedly invite you to enjoy Dirk Hardwood in....THE FOURTH WALL MUST NOT BE BROKEN.

Now please excuse me while I furiously try to write the proper context for me to get away with having a character say that "she broke my heart like it was the fourth wall".

New Dirk!

NEW DIRK!

Also: A very short addendum to the new Dirk Serial! (Make sure to watch this second). I thought I'd fiddle with added dialogue, now that I have my sexy belkin voice recorder.

Optimism?

I grabbed this from here, if you'd like to explore further.
------------------------
WILLIAM CALVIN
Professor, The University of Washington School of Medicine; Author, A Brain For All Seasons

The Climate Optimist

Mention global warming at a seasonal social gathering and see what happens, now that skepticism has turned into concern and sorrow. They will assume that you're a pessimist about our prospects. "Not really," I protest. That earns me a quizzical look.

"Wait a minute," she says. "If you're an optimist, why do you look so worried?"

"So you think it's easy, being an optimist?"

Many scientists look worried these days. We've had a steady diet of bad news coming from climate scientists and biologists. To become even a guarded optimist, you have to think hard.

First, I reflected, the history of science and medicine shows that, once you mechanistically understand what's what, you can approach all sorts of seemingly unsolvable problems. I'm optimistic that we will learn how to stabilize climate.

Unfortunately the window of opportunity is closing. Fifty years have now passed since the first unequivocal scientific warnings of an insulating blanket of CO2 forming around the planet. Politicians apparently decided to wait until something big went wrong.

It has. We have already entered the period of consequences. Climate scientists have long been worried about their children's future. Now they are also worried about their own.

Our Faustian bargain over fossil fuels has come due. Dr. Faustus had 24 years of party-now, pay-later—and indeed, it's exactly 24 years since Ronald Reagan axed the U.S. budget for exploring alternative fuels. This led to doubling our use of cheap coal, the worst of the fossil fuels. They're planning, under business as usual, to re-double coal burning by 2030—even though we can now see the high cost of low price.

The devil's helpers may not have come to take us away, but killer heat waves have started, along with some major complications from global warming. We're already seeing droughts that just won't quit. Deserts keep expanding. Oceans keep acidifying. Greenland keeps melting. Dwindling resources keep triggering genocidal wars with neighbors (think Darfur). Extreme weather keeps trashing the place.

All of them will get worse before they get better.

Worse, tipping points can lead to irreversible demolition derbies. Should another big El Niño occur and last twice as long as in 1983 or 1998, the profound drought could burn down the rain forests in Southeast Asia and the Amazon—and half of all species could go extinct, just within a year or two.

Time has become so short that we must turn around the CO2 situation within a decade to avoid saddling our children with the irreversible consequences of a runaway warming. That means not waiting for a better deal on some post-Kyoto treaty. It means immediately scaling up technologies that we know will work, not waiting for something better that could take decades to debug.

This isn't optional. It is something that we simply have to do. The time for talk is past.

"I see why you're worried," she says. "But what's your optimistic scenario for dealing with this fossil fuel fiasco?"

For starters, I think it likely that the leaders of the major religious groups will soon come to see climate change as a serious failure of stewardship. And once they see our present fossil fuel use as a deeply immoral imposition on other people and unborn generations, their arguments will trump the talk-endlessly-to-buy-time business objections— just as such moral arguments did when ending slavery in the 19th century.

Second, the developed nations are fully capable of kick-starting our response to global warming with present technology—enough to achieve, within ten years, a substantial reduction in their own fossil fuel uses. How?

Wind farmers will prosper as pastures grow modern windmills to keep the cows company.

Giant parking lots, already denuded of trees, are perfect places for acres of solar paneling. Drivers will love the shaded parking spaces they create.

The Carbon Tax will replace most of those deducted from paychecks and create a big wave of retrofitting homes and businesses.

Big brightly lit grocery stores with giant parking lots will compete poorly with warehouses that deliver web and phone orders within the hour, like pizza. Smaller neighborhood grocery stores will once again do a big walk-in business and they will compete with the warehouses by offering "green bicycle" delivery.

High-speed toll gates will become the norm on commuter highways. (Yes, I know, but remember that the paycheck was just enriched by eliminating withholding for income tax.)

Speed limits will be lowered to 50 mph (80 kmh) for fuel efficiency and, as in 1973, drivers will marvel at how smoothly the traffic flows. Double taxes will apply to vehicles with worse-than-average fossil fuel consumption, reducing the number of oversized vehicles with poor streamlining. Hybrids and all-electric cars will begin to dominate new car sales.

A firm, fast schedule will be established for retiring or retrofitting existing coal plants. My bet is that adding nuclear power plants—France gets 78% of its electricity that way, New Jersey 52%—will prove safer, cheaper, and faster than fixing coal.

On the quarter-century time scale, let us assume that the new rapid transit systems will reduce car commuting by half. The transition to electric and hydrogen vehicles will shift transportation's energy demands to greener sources, including biofuels, geothermal, tidal, and wave generation.

The highly efficient binding energy extractors (BEEs, the fourth-generation nuclear power plants) will be running on the spent fuel of the earlier generations.

The low-loss DC transmission lines will allow, via cables under the Bering Strait, solar-generated electricity to flow from the bright side to the dark side of the earth.

And in this 25-year time frame, we ought to see some important new technology making a difference, not just improvements in what we already use. For example, we might encourage rapid adaptation of the whale's favorite food, the tiny phytoplankton which provide half of the oxygen we breathe as they separate the C from the CO2.

Since the shell-forming plankton sink to the ocean bottom when they die, their carbon is taken out of circulation for millions of years. Forests can burn down, releasing their stored carbon in a week, but limestone is forever. If shell-forming plankton could thrive in warmer waters with some selective breeding or a genetic tweak, their numbers might double and start taking our excess CO2 out of circulation.

But even if we invent—and debug—such things tomorrow, it can take several decades before an invention makes a dent in our urgent problem. And all this assumes no bad surprises, such as the next supersized El Niño killing off the Amazon and, once we lack all those trees, increasing the rate of warming by half.

By mid-century, let us suppose that we have begun extracting more CO2 from the atmosphere than we add.

This will only happen if the technology of the developed world has become good enough to compensate for what's still going on in the overstressed nations that are too disorganized to get their energy act together.

When CO2 levels fall enough to counter the delayed warming from past excesses, we will begin to see a reversal of droughts and violent weather— though the rise in sea level will likely continue, a reminder to future generations of our 20th-century Faustian bargain.

As Samuel Johnson said in 1777, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

We need to turn on a dime—by which I mean, close to what we saw in the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

From a standing start in late 1941, the automakers converted—in a matter of months, not years—more than 1,000 automobile plants across thirty-one states... In one year, General Motors developed, tooled, and completely built from scratch 1,000 Avenger and 1,000 Wildcat aircraft... GM also produced the amphibious 'duck'—a watertight steel hull enclosing a GM six-wheel, 2.5 ton truck that was adaptable to land or water. GM's duck `was designed, tested, built, and off the line in ninety days'... Ford turned out one B-24 [a bomber] every 63 minutes....
— Jack Doyle, Taken for a Ride, 2000

Now there's a source of optimism: we did it before. Indeed, GM currently needs a new purpose in life (and I'd suggest repurposing the manned space program as well). All of that talent is badly needed.

With great challenges come great opportunities and I'm an optimist about our ability to respond with innovation. Countries that innovate early will have an economic edge over the laggards.

Our present civilization is like a magnificent cathedral, back before flying buttresses were retrofitted to stabilize the walls. Civilization now needs a retrofit for stabilizing its foundations. It will be a large undertaking, not unlike those that once went into building pyramids and cathedrals. I'm optimistic that the younger generation can create a better civilization during the major makeover—provided that those currently in the leadership can stop this runaway coal train, real fast.

Climate change is a challenge to the scientists but I suspect that the political leadership has the harder task, given how difficult it is to make people aware of what must be done and get them moving in time. It's going to be like herding stray cats, and the political leaders who can do it will be remembered as the same kind of geniuses who pulled off the American Revolution.

A picture I realllly like but couldn't find any context for.

I would love to live in the rounded corner of this building, particularly since I'd then be looking out on the Thames each morning. Maybe when I'm finally fat, coke-addled and making millions by producing terrible vehicles for comedians who cannot hack it anymore but are somehow still popular.

Sometimes I like to pronounce the word "Bitch" as "Bee-Itch"

It makes me feel more "street", you know? It works best when said very slowly, being careful to rub ones tongue over the two syllables with a thoroughness that is almost amorous in it's moistosity.

Such are the factoids which spill from me after a satisfying meal and a day of adventurin' in central London. Good luck with the rest of this entry!
Anyways, time to catch up on pictures.

First, on the same day in Reading where I took a picture of that war monument....I visited the remains of a monastery and the nice little bit of river beside. It was a fun enough thing to romp through and I appreciated the little monk ditty they put up for all to read.Though I wasn't in Bristol long and even then not in a very exciting bit, I took two pictures. One of the church right outside my hotel window and another of the train station. It occurs to me that the train station looks as if it could be an adjunct to the Canadian houses of parliament. I swear, even the hot dog stands in England have at least a few Gothic arches.

Right then, on to Christmas in Broadstairs. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, my Aunt Liz and Uncle Phil are down that way (along with cousins Carla and Andrew as well as many others!) and they never fail to be wonderful hosts. I arrived for a highly enjoyable carnival of people coming by the former hotel which they call home, with myself tightly hooked into a pair of IV's (one labelled "Brandy" and the other "Mince Pies"). I also won ten quid on a pub gambling machine, played with the twin boxer dogs who always give me joy (Webster and Harvey), took a few seaside pictures and generally enjoyed myself so well that I was paying for it until yesterday. Could one ask for anything more?
Two days of slightly surreal work (rendered as such by my being the only person in the whole National Rail Technical Block who wasn't on vacation) and two evenings of exploratory walks finished off the week. Tomorrow I head to Reading for New Years and also to get the rest of my junk which I was unable to carry with me when I moved.

When I woke up this morning, it occurred to me that I had some fliers for places in London which I hadn't the time to explore yet. I made myself an itinerary over breakfast and set off to fulfill it. I made the first item on my list, The British Library near Kings Cross, and even took a photo of the rather impressive Kings Library (this column of ancient texts went straight through the whole building), but after I left there...something came over me.Though I have visited England many times in my life and I have visited central London every chance I've had since my arrival in October...I guess you could say there is still some tourist in me or perhaps some "little boy who grew up in Carp". My eyes widened slightly and the plan I'd drawn up in my mind became covered over by a myriad of overriding messages which said things like "Wow gee this sure is a neat city" and "Oh wow look at that thing over there! Let's go look at, listen to and maybe smell it".

So I took a good walk past all sorts of wonderful buildings until I, seemingly inevitably, found myself in the Embankment area.After a little more aimless gawping at things such as a sandwich chain which has a rather clear message, I found myself the highly engaging South Bank Book Market. In it I found a lot of what you might expect, but also some wonderful authentic prints from the past 150 years which I would have bought if I was at the point where I could justify spending twenty-five quid on original fashion art of 1920's flapper girls or sections from children's educational picture books of the Victorian Era. I came eerily close to spending ten quid on a 148 year old newspaper!. I realize that may not be soooo incredible, but it's the fact that I found it in the kind of venue where I'm used to only finding Hardy Boy books and puzzle books with all the crosswords and mazes already done that blew my mind.

The book market takes place directly in front of the National Film Theatre building. I'd seen it before but never gone in and so, prompted by some heavy rain that sprang into being, I investigated. I actually ended up seeing a flick and I really enjoyed the high quality of the theatre. I just might look into a membership, since they show such a great variety of works. Plus my money wouldn't just be supporting the building and the employees, it would help towards the restoration of old and obscure film prints - something I don't exactly have much trouble getting behind.
When I came out it was dark and I was greeted by slightly recontextualized sights which sent me straight back into gawp mode. Yes I'd seen them before, but to see them at night as well as to think that I could now visit these sites and sights on damn near any time that I fancy...well.

I just wrote "What can I say?" then deleted it as that is a question I almost never have trouble answering. I can say that as 2006 comes to a close that I think it has been a pretty damn good year. It started with my hitting the brick wall that comes from finishing your degree and having to decide what comes next, but then went into a turbulent stretch where I made a film, met several interesting people whose company I enjoyed and abilities I respected, took several hits straight to the chin and kept on going until I achieved a dream I've dreamt since my early teens. All this and without ever sacrificing my beliefs, acquiring stupid debts or hurting anyone to get what I wanted.

It's been a good year.
I hope you all can say the same.
Now let's see where we wind up next.

Just thought I'd share...

...a good bit of fun for the holidays.

Meanwhile, I'm back from Broadstairs and it was lovely. More words and pictures when I've shaken off the 32 year old Brandy my cousin Carla's husband brought back from France.

A Christmas Miracle!

I suppose I should say "A Christmas Fortuitous Development!", seeing as how I don't believe in the supernatural, but it just doesn't have the same ring to it.

You see, I thought I had to work on Boxing Day because the recruitment agency stressed that it was important for me to be able to work then - they almost made it sound like a deciding factor in getting the job. But when I asked my boss at National Rail, a really nice guy by the name of Andre, when I should show up on the 26th....he just looked at me kind of goggle-eyed before saying "What are you talking about? That's a bloody Bank Holiday, none of us are working that day, let me tell you".

So huzzah! It seems that I shall be off to Broadstairs for Christmas after all. I shall do my damndest to remember my camera this time.

My first day at National Rail was pleasant enough. I met all but one of the people who work there and they all seem like pretty relaxed and kind people. Everyone seems to start work around when they are scheduled, leave for lunch whenev's and you get a whole hour (from an eight hour work day this is a decent chunk!). This is great because it gives me time to explore and thus I found a good sized library nearby, so I can feed my book habit and leave my wallet more intact than it would be otherwise.

The training in Bristol was dead easy and I have to say it was pretty cool to be able to charge my food expenses to National Rail. My instructor told me that NR is really good about taking care of their employees and so far I'd have to agree, especially since I'm only a frigging temp!

After the terrible stress/pay ratio of all my jobs in Canada, all this is a huge breath of fresh air. I guess these must seem like pretty mundane details to get excited about, but let's face it - it's the little day to day things which can either keep you feeling good about your dayjob or drive you crazy in short order.

I reckon I'll wrap up with this nice picture of me that Mark took during the second day of shooting for "Tonight We Fall In Love". All jokes about narcissism aside, I think that it is a really nice shot - which just goes a ways towards explaining why I respect the guys abilities as I do and would work with him again in a second.
Have yourselves some wonderful holidays everyone!

BONUS LINKS WHICH MIGHT DEFLATE THE SENTIMENT EXPRESSED IN THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE

Want to help the environment while getting yourself off of annoying mailing lists?

It may say "The New American Dream" but this is something for people of all nationalities who want to help save the planet.

This is a bit dry, but an important development in helping to get us off our asses and try to stop shitty things like all the dang polar bears drowning and the regular bears ceasing to hibernate.

Tenous but...

...an Internet connection nonetheless! I seem to have wirelessly latched the remora of my laptop to the soft, white underbelly of some other gentlemen or ladies wireless network.

Well, it seems that Manuela and I will have to meet later in the week due to shceduling cafuffles, but at least I heard back from her. Since my last post I also got a reply from an Italian fellow about working on a film noir script, but never got a call back as I was supposed to. Such is this business, hell - such are many businesses in which you have to deal with the meandering shitminds of the human species.

Tomorrow is day one of the new job and also when I shall head off to Bristol for a couple of days training. I shall take many a pretty picture, to be sure. I'm a bit surprised that I have to head all the way out to the West Coast for training on a database program but I'm not really complaining. It will be nice to have a private washroom (in the hotel) a few days prior to when I move across the compound and into my actual room, with it's precious private washroom, additional space, inset wardrobe and fewer house mates (the slice o' compound I'm in now has something like five and I heard the distinct, piercing cries of someones filth-oozing crotchling earlier...).

One unfortunate development is that I have discovered that all train, tube and coach services are suspended on Christmas Day. In a broad sense I can truly respect this way of ensuring that a larger portion of the population gets to enjoy a day off with their family. In a personal sense this is a bit sad, because it means I won't be able to visit anyone for Christmas that is outside of walking distance because I'd need to get back to work at 9am on the 26th. So yes, I shall be spending Christmas day awwwwww awooooone.

But shucks howdy, I think the heart shall continute to beat, yes? Plus I can still eke out some silver by going to the Hyde Park Fair on the 24th and on the 25th I think I'll just set aside the day to satisfaction - cooking myself a meal I can truly enjoy or perhaps treating myself to eating out some where nicer than the chicken hut I foolishly allowed to lure me inside today with the promise of a two quid chicken lunch that was so greasy, a drumstick leaped out of the box and tried to sell me a bunch of pre-release DVD's stored in a fruit crate.

Holy run on sentence....

Anywho, to finish for the day I thought I'd attach this picture I took during my last days in Reading. This is one of the many, many war monuments in England which are generally attributed to a regiment/division/battalion which was recruited from the neighborhood. What made this one interest me was that it was so new - the base underneath this particular lion was inscribed with dedications to men and women who had died in Kandahar and other such places in the last five years. The sense of continuity stretching back from this lion to ones I saw in central London that were dedicated to men who had died forging the British empire was a strong one which held me in awe for a few silent moments. Time may only be something we've all agreed to believe in so as to structure our existence, but given that it is grounded in so many people and places who genuinely existed I cannot help being sent into a state of awe when I allow myself to really think it over.