To NaNoWriMo or not NaNoWriMo

That time of year is almost upon us: November - National Novel Writing Month (or 'NaNoWriMo'). For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.

Anyone who was knocking around here when the place was cluttered with scraps of rusting metal might remember that I attempted the NaNoWriMo challenge last year. I managed to churn out 25,000 words before I ran out of steam. Redundancy induced stress also contributed to aborting the project but I do remember reaching a point where there were so many holes in my various plot strands that I had no idea how to patch them up. Then again, I only decided that I was going to take on the challenge on the morning of 1 November so I had done no planning and hadn't even thought up a storyline. On the evening of the first day of the challenge I sat down at the keyboard with absolutely no idea of what I was going to write.

Curiously enough, the three attempts I have made to write a novel have all faltered at around 25,000 words. Prior to last year's NaNoWriMo attempt, I started two novels, both of which I abandoned because they were shite. My NaNoWriMo novel, although trashy and a complete mess, was not as bad as its two aborted predecessors. It did suffer from lack of planning, though, and the many strands I had made up on the spot as I went along became an incomprehensible mass of stuff that I could no longer fathom. I was not too bothered about writing an entirely coherrent story - the purpose of NaNoWriMo is, after all, to see if can you manage to write a 50K word novel in a month regardless of whether it is any good or not - and I was in the mood to write something weird and dark and strange but I ended up creating too many threads and characters, the CPU of my mind just couldn't take it and my entire cerebral system crashed.

Ironically, the two previous novels I attempted both had lengthy gestation periods in my brain and in handwritten notes but it still took 25,000 words to realise that both stories were fundamentally crap. So even though my NaNoWriMo attempt failed because I had created something ultimately unmanageable, it turned out to be a worthwhile exercise. For almost three weeks I was writing about 1,500 words a night after coming home from work and even more on the weekends. Despite making it all up scene by scene, there was some good ideas and good writing in amongst the mess. People have always told me that I think too much and they may be right... up to a point.

So, the question: should I attempt NaNoWriMo again this year? On the one hand, I am still stressing over my (current lack of) career, money, anything remotely resembling a social life but, on the other, focussing on writing a novel in a month would be a welcome distraction from such concerns.

If I do decide to make the attempt, I have three options:

1. Take the opportunity to bash out a first draft of the novel I have been mulling over for some time.


2. Resurrect the central premise of my last NaNoWriMo novel.


3. Start from scratch and come up with a brand new story not based on any previous ideas.

I doubt I will go for the first option because, although it would be good to finally get an initial rough draft of that story on paper, I wouldn't be able to do justice to all the ideas I want to put into that novel in such a short space of time. I realise that it would need much revising after the first draft but I don't think it would be useful to produce a draft of total garbage.

I have a month to devise a completely new story but I find the second option appealing. I wouldn't use this as an excuse to cheat and recycle chunks of prose I wrote last year to quickly crank up my word count because that would defeat the point of taking part in the challenge. I would merely take the basic conceit and create a tighter, more focussed narrative around it. I still fancy writing something weird and dark and strange but this time I will have the luxury of working out the general trajectory of the thing before I start and avoid writing myself into terminal confusion.

OK, you've convinced me. I'm going to do it.

Fuck me

I have, apparently, really annoyed someone in Warwick, New York. They found my website by entering "fuck steve kane" into Google's search box. Then again, they could have been looking for an entirely different Steve Kane and it just so happens that my site was the first result.

But if you are in Warwick, New York and you do want me to go fuck myself, then fuck you too, whoever you are.

Unhinged

Among the paraphenalia on my 'workstation' at work (the word 'desk' is so mid-20th Century) is a calculator with an infuriating design feature. The LCD display is separated from the buttons by a hinge so that the screen tilts up to a 45° angle. The problem is that there is nothing to lock the hinge in place so, once flipped up, gravity does its job and the screen falls back down. Having thoroughly examined the hinge and the surrounding plastic casing of the calculator, I can find no evidence whatsoever that there was ever any mechanism that may have broken off or been lost that would keep the screen upright. Why? Why take the time and trouble to design and incorporate an utterly useless hinge? Why bother to add a design feature that clearly implies that the product can do something that, in practice, it cannot? Did some cheeky designer include this conundrum into an otherwise unexceptional calculator simply to infuriate people?

If, by any chance, the designer of the Texas Instruments' TI-1766+ calculator happens to be reading this, please get in touch and explain what that bloody hinge is for.

The Dating Game... er... Business

Online dating: yes, I have to admit that I am giving this a try. How else is a shy, caustic, socially awkward misanthrope like me supposed to meet gurlz in a town where he has approximately one friend? That's what the interweb is for: a way for social retards like me to pretend that they are attractive, popular and outgoing. But it's a numbers game. I have to accept the fact for every woman subscribed to these services there are about - oooooh - a googol of men who are too busy, too shy, too weird or too detained at Her Majesty's pleasure to find a date out there in the real world. So, basically, you girls can afford to be choosy. Great for you, not so great for the likes of me.

The hardest part is writing a profile. I've spent hours writing, revising, scrapping and re-writing my profile, trying to find a balance between sincerity and attractiveness. It's fucking hard: You want to give some flavour of your personality, your individuality, but don't want to scare people away by being too candid.

The danger is erring on the side of caution and writing something utterly bland and generic. At least, that is what I sometimes feel when reading girls' profiles. The rest of the time I wonder if there are simply lots of really dull women out there.

Common Dating Profile Comments:

• "I like fun nights out and also quiet nights in" (bottle of wine optional) - If one were to make a sweeping universal generalisation extrapolated from dating profiles then every woman alive likes "fun nights out and quiet nights in". I would guess that around 85% of profiles I have read includes this statement; and what a vague and unilluminating phrase it is, a phrase that is designed to appeal to the broadest possible target audience without actually telling you a damn thing. I like doing anything, going out, staying in, don't mind, have no opinion, don't want to scare any potential suitors by showing signs of individuality, must be as blank and non-threatening as possible. It is one of those statements that can be taken as read: Who never goes out with their friends, ever? Who goes out every single night of their life? Are you terrified of expressing a liking for anything that might alienate even one potential date or are you simply not interested in anything at all and had to put something?


• "My interests include socialising" - Can 'socialising' really qualify as an 'interest'? Who joins a dating agency if not to meet people, ergo, to sociialise? Your mere presence on a dating website indicates that you wish to socialise. And who doesn't socialise? If you have even one solitary friend with whom you have contact, no matter how sporadically, then you socialise. To socialise is to be human. How can being human be a hobby? You might as well say "my interests include sitting down and breathing". 'Socialising' is not an interest, it is something everybody does by virtue of being alive.


• "I'd like to meet someone with similar interests to me" - A fair enough statement but not entirely helpful when you haven't actually stated what your interests are (unless stated interests are "nights out, nights in, socialising", in which case you are seeking a man whose interests include not being dead).


• "I have a good social life and lots of friends but have yet to meet that special someone" - I'm not a sad, lonely, freakish Billy-No-Mates, honest! It is understandable why people feel the need to say something like this but it's not really necessary. Believe it or not, many people who use online dating aren't freaks or weirdos or social retards, they're just too busy with trying to survive in today's demanding world. Besides, where does one go to meet people? Bars? Nightclubs? That's fine for certain types of people but not ideal for many. Having said that, there are plenty of freaks, weirdos and social retards using online dating services so you can't be too careful. But in an increasingly alienating, dispassionate, fast-paced world that simply isn't conducive to forming meaningful long term relationships of any kind, least of all in the workplace where many of us spend most of our lives, then what better options are there?


• "I'm a bit mad!" - trans. I'm loud and annoying.


• "I'm married so I'm not looking for a date - just want to meet some new people and chat" - This is curious. The web is a big old beast. There are online communities covering just about every possible interest and subject anyone could possibly think of and quite a few no-one would think of. So, if you want to meet and chat to some new people but are in a relationship and do not wish to find a date, why sign up to a dating service? Am I the only one who thinks that is a bit strange? What are these people really after? I dunno'... there's something odd about that.

There's something rather depressing about online dating. It is yet one more example of life being reduced to a marketing exercise, humans reduced to product. Sending a message to a woman via a dating website is like sending out a job application. In most cases, a woman can probably sign up, sit back, wait for eager messages from single men to arrive in their inboxes and then take their pick at their leisure. We blokes have to sell ourselves, pique your interest, draw you in... and that is only to get an initial response. How many times have my carefully worded opening gambits been totally ignored? Too many to mention.

Or am I making an unjustified assumption? Is the whole process just as daunting for women as it is for men? Or rather, for me? Perhaps some guys have absolutely no problems whatsoever and have a high success rate.

Either way, the slightest mistake, a single ill chosen phrase can result in severance of all communications no matter how well it was going up until that point. We are all so suspicious of everybody that even the merest hint that something is amiss is enough to send us running. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles, child pornographers, rabid religious fundamentalists, terrorists, reality TV contestants... the nutters are everywhere and probably looking for a date.

Mad Hatters' Review #3 - now online

The headline says it all - Mad Hatters' Review Issue 3 is now online and features lots of cool and strange words, pictures and noise, some of which were by me (you can check the about page for information about my contributions).

Motivation: not something I possess in abundance. My average output for music used to be - oooooh - maybe one track every six months. I'd regularly faff about with some beats or riffs but actually finishing a track? A rare occurrence indeed. So agreeing to compose stuff for Mad Hatters' Review was a good move in terms of getting off my fat arse and actually composing. Since starting work on the first issue at the beginning of the year, I have now written 15 pieces of music. Fifteen! I think that may be more tunes composed in the last nine months than I had written in the preceding five years.

It is definitely good to have put myself in the position of working to deadlines. Plus, I'd be letting a lot of people down if I didn't deliver: the shame of that would devastate me.

So, thank you Carol Novack, MHR's illustrious founder and editor, for convincing me to do it.

Now, go read the fucking thing.

Welcome to ORG

My mate Suw Charman talked to the BBC about the new digital rights organisation, the Open Rights Group (ORG), of which she is a co-founder. In the article, Suw talks about what the aims of ORG are and what their first campaign will focus on:

"We will initially be concentrating our efforts on Home Secretary Charles Clarke's proposed draft EU framework on data retention for ISPs and telecommunications companies," said Ms Charman.

"We believe that the proposal is not only both unnecessary and unworkable, but that it may also contravene the European Convention on Human Rights."

You can read the whole article at BBC News Online.

You can also visit the new Open Rights Group website for more information on what they are about.

Hey there, little lady

There is nothing quite so funny as a bunch of men in the workplace clamoring to facilitate the needs of an attractive woman.

I currently work for a bunch of middle-aged, slightly balding, chubby building surveyors who are all nice enough but with whom I have nothing in common; typical 'blokes'. Their leader is an especially clueless little man who ended up as the manager of a project about which he knows nothing because he happened to be passing the water cooler when the directors were discussing who should run it: "What about that guy? Fuck it, he'll do." He can often be found wandering aimlessly from office to office, along corridors and up and down staircases pretending to be on his way somewhere to do something important.

Yesterday he was lurking without purpose around my desk when the new, young, attractive female Customer Liaison Officer came in with a council tenant's query. Clueless Manager immediately adopted that weird approximation of charm and wit that only charmless and witless men can achieve. He took the attractive Liaison Officer into the building surveyors' office next door to mine. Although I could see them through the large partition window, I could not hear them. I didn't need to: Clueless Manager's body language spoke volumes. He perused the shelves of files trying to exude an air of great knowledge and wisdom whilst clearly having no idea what he was looking for. And then the other building surveyors drifted into the conversation, rising from their desks for no apparent reason and moving to surround the girl with as much nonchalance as they could muster. They smiled, they nodded and they spoke with feigned authority to impress the her. Oh yes, they were happy to do anything, anything at all to help, their door is always open, anytime she needs anything she has only to ask, hey.

It is hilarious but also strangely poignant to watch these unremarkable, uncomplicated little men trying in vain to appear suave, sophisticated, witty and impressive and then, once the object of the desire has left, reverting back to their simple schoolboy nudging and smirking.

And me? Whenever I am in the vicinity of an attractive woman at work I usually adopt a deadpan, mildly sarcastic and indifferent aura or I simply smile politely, shut the fuck up and get on with what I am doing because, honestly, if I try to be charming I only ever succeed in being foolish.

And the final nominees are...

And so the final shortlist for the 2005 Man Booker Prize are:

The Sea by John Banville
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Accidental by Ali Smith
On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Rushdie's out, Coetzee's out and - shock! - McEwan is out on his ear. I thought it was law that every McEwan novel makes the shortlist. Then again, it's not as if the shortlist is lacking in literary heavyweights. Barnes is the bookies' favourite: Ladbrokes have him at 6-4, William Hill at 5-4.

Answer me!

I hate telephones. I despise telephones from the very core of my being. Loud, harsh, intrusive things are telephones. I hate talking to people on the telephone. I'm awkward and inarticulate on the telephone even when talking to good friends. There are about three people on the entire planet to whom I can actually talk comfortably on the telephone; otherwise, I avoid talking on the phone at all costs.

The sound of a telephone ringing is like a dagger through my brain. Whenever the phone rings, be it at work or at home, I scream (or at least think), "Fuck off!" There is no such thing as an aurally pleasing ringtone; they are all persistently grating, designed to resonate a special brain frequency that causes maximum aggravation. A telephone ringtone barges its way into you consciousness and demands to be heeded. Drop everything, motherfucker! Someone is calling you. Pay attention to me! I don't care what you are doing: this is far more important and I am going to nag, nag, nag at you until you pick me up. And once you have dropped everything, scrambled to the phone and picked up the receiver, it turns out to be some sales cunt trying to sell you shit you neither want or need.

Email. I like emails because you can decide when to read them and respond. When it arrives you know it is there but you can finish up whatever it is you are currently doing before reading it. And you can reply at your leisure, take a little time to formulate a proper response. I am generally more comfortable communicating via the written word than in spoken conversation but if I have to talk to somebody I'd rather do it in person than on the bloody telephone.

The reason that I mention this now is because the phone is constantly ringing at work. I am doing a poky little temp administration job for the City Council's housing renovations department. People are always calling the building surveyors for whom I am working and if they are not around the call diverts to my phone before the voicemail kicks in. There isn't much point in my answering the phone for them - I don't know anything and can't answer any queries. I file stuff and photocopy stuff and update spreadsheets; I have only a cursory knowledge of the specific procedures and duties of the people I work for. The point is that the callers might as well leave a voicemail as talk to me. But no, the fucking phone rings and rings and rings as I try to get on with my work and every time I have to say, "Such-and-such is not here. Can I take a message? No, I don't know that, I'm affraid. If I could take your details... No, I'm sorry, I know nothing... No, I don't know who can answer that... If I could just take your details... No, sorry, I don't know... Really, there's no point in explaining... I can't answer that... please, you details...," and so on. All fucking day. I share an office with four other people. Somehow, callers always, always, always manage to call one of them seconds after they have left their desk for a few minutes. "Uh, he's just stepped away from his desk... No, I don't know how long he'll be... No, I don't know where he went... No, I won't be able to answer that... Can I get your details... No, sorry, I really don't know..."

Telephones: obnoxious, obtrusive, relentless fucking machines. I hate them. I probably hate telephones as much as I hate anything. And don't even get me started on mobiles and that fucking Crazy Frog.

The Pixies - 31 Aug 2005 - Alexandra Palace, London

Alexandra Palace: A curious venue for a rock gig; a grand old arena in which you could easily picture great exhibitions showing technological wonders of the Victorian age being held there. This architectural landmark is all the more conspicuous as it is located in a not entirely pleasant North London suburb. Apologies to anyone who lives in Wood Green but it is a shit-hole: streets of shabby Edwardian terraced houses radiating from a tacky, generic modern shopping mall. My friend and I grumbled about resorting to stepping foot in a Yates pub in order to get a drink. (Chances of a pint of real ale? You're havin' a larf, ain't ya?). Then again, if we had dared to enter any of the traditional pubs in the area, judging by the clientele, we probably would have had our testicles ripped from our scrotums and fed back to us.

Onwards to Alexandra Palace which sits atop a big hill (one that doesn't look so steep until you foolishly decide to walk up it). My friend and I had a swift pint of Bud at the bar. (Chances of a pint of real ale? You're havin' a larf, ain't ya?). As we looked out from the balcony we saw a lithe young woman performing what looked like ballet exercises to an indifferent, balding, middle-aged bloke on the grass.

I have to admit that I missed The Pixies the first time around but I am always late to catch on to the latest music trends. I only started to "get" techno about five years after everybody else (although I never liked the cheesy party stuff) so I only became aware of The Pixies as a result of the grunge bands of the nineties that they inspired - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and suchlike. I kept meaning to buy some of their records but I never got around to it. It wasn't until I heard “Where Is My Mind?” at the end of Fight Club that I suddenly remembered that I really ought to buy some Pixies.

The Pixies are back, older, wiser, a bit flabbier and perhaps slightly amazed that anyone is still interested. And they look like your parents. Bassist Kim Deal, whose drug addiction was instrumental in the band's original demise, dressed in sensible white blouse, black trousers and sweater, looks as if she'll be going to pick up the kids after the gig and maybe attend a PTA meeting. She grinned throughout the whole show as if incredulous that all these kids had come to see them play. In fact, they all exuded a slightly meek if not apologetic quality as if to say, "Um, we're going to play some songs for you now if that's OK?" It was quite endearing.

There was nothing meek about their performance: they ploughed through their back catalogue with gusto, creating an awesome racket, much to the crowd's approval. The crowd exhibited an interesting cross section of thirty/forty-something fans who had been there since the beginning and revelled in the band's reformation and new, younger fans who had only recently discovered them.

All in all, a blinding show.

I should also mention the excellent support band, The Futureheads, an art school punk outfit who make an impressive noise in a Jam/Clash style. They are a bit of a one trick pony but it's a bloody good trick. I wonder about their longevity; there are, after all, only so many songs you can write with spiky guitar stabs and every member of the band singing, "Eh... oh... uh-oh-eh-oh." But still, their cover of Kate Bush's "The Hounds of Love" kicks arse.

Job satisfaction

I'm temping for the branch of the city council that renovates council houses. I've spent the last six weeks filing, photocopying, mail merging, folding letters and putting them in envelopes and updating numbers on spreadsheets.

"We're advertising this job as a full time position," they told me. "Would you like to apply?"

"I'd rather chew my face off," I replied.

Planes, trains and automobiles... and buses

I have vowed never again to travel from Oxford to London by train. Due to a tunnel collapse at Gerrard's Cross (Tesco's began building a new store on it without anybody checking if the tunnel could take the weight - it couldn't) all trains between Banbury (a town about 15 miles north of Oxford) and London have to be diverted - the result being that a one hour journey has become a two hour journey. Even though the Banbury to London train takes a different line, it has affected the Oxford to London trains as well; i.e. made a crap service even worse.

A few weeks ago, having been out on the town to celebrate some friends' birthdays, my sister and I get to London Paddington station at about 11.00pm, safe in the knowledge that there will be a few more trains back to Oxford and Banbury before the last one at half past midnight. Except there were no trains. The best we could do was get a train to a little place called Didcot Parkway and then get a bus the rest of the way back to Oxford. Upshot is that a one-hour journey took over three hours and my sister and I didn't get back to my place until 3.00am.

So, last Wednesday I got the bus, the confusingly named Oxford Tube that, despite the allusion to London's underground train network, is not a train and does not go underground. It has much in its favour over the train services between Oxford and the capital:

• return tickets are half the price
• departures are about every fifteen minutes - the longest you'll ever have to wait for the next one is an hour between 3.00 and 4.00 in the morning so that's hardly a problem
• the seats are more comfortable
• everything is cleaner
  

The only drawback is that your journey will take between half an hour to forty-five minutes longer, depending on the traffic... and that is comparing travel time with a train that is not delayed, a rare thing indeed.

Screw the rail network.

Katrina's wake

What is there that someone like me can say from 6,000 miles away from what remians of New Orleans that wouldn't be anything but trite?

Besides, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says everything that needs to be said.

Ray Nagin speaks on local radio station WWL-AM