Staggering Technological Advances

This week the Millar household has seen great technological progress. (as I've mentioned before, I am always very far behind with technology.) Firstly, I upgraded my internet connection to 20Mb, and second, I got a wireless connection.

I notice - because I've been obsessively checking - that the speed varies a lot. The fastest it's been is 18Mb but sometimes it's only 10Mb. That seems OK anyway.

It does strike me that I probably have no real use for this. My previous connection was 2Mb. That didn't cause me any problems. It was fast enough for everything I did. What do I need this extra speed for? Nothing, as far as I can see. But perhaps it will be useful in the future. Maybe for downloading my robot-cyber-fantasy-bride, or something like that, when technology has advanced some more.

Though the speeded up connection didn't cause any problems, the wireless connection wasn't so easy. I told my internet provider I was a Mac user. They said they'd sent me their router, but don't come complaining to them if it didn't work. Fine. I appreciate your terrific customer service.

But it wasn't too hard to connect. There was a tricky moment, where things hovered in the balance, and my computer seemed to be about to give up the attempt, but the Mac airport assistant rode to the rescue. Now I have this wireless connection, I can move around. But I expect I'll never move anywhere, and will remain sitting at the desk in the exact same spot I always sit in.

I was pleased of having some new technology to play with just two nights ago, when I was woken by an extremely troubling dream. It was so troubling I had to get out of bed. This very rarely happens. I'm not prone to bad dreams. But this was so bad I got up and sat at my desk, feeling tired, but not really wanting to go back to sleep in case I got the dream again. I wonder why that happened? I don't remember being quite so troubled by a dream before.

I don't often remember my dreams. Although only a few weeks ago I did have an had a erotic dream so vivid that I woke up quite astonished, thinking, wow, I wish I could dream like that more often.

This graphic sex dream involved a woman I know, but have never had any romantic involvement with. Later I was sort of tempted to mention it to her, but decided against it. Mentioning it might seem creepy. Or is that a mistake? Might it be a compliment? Is there any sort of established etiquette? I might be having an autistic moment here. It's probably the most obvious thing in the world that you shouldn't mention things like that. But I sort of wanted to.

Probably I just shouldn't mention it. If you are socially incompetent - and I'm fairly socially incompetent - it's best to err on the side of caution. Probably friends don't want to hear you've been dreaming about them. But these tricky social problems will melt away when the robot-cyber-fantasy-brides get here.

Shot Full of Holes

I saw my doctor last week and while I was there I asked him about flu vaccination. I'm still worried about being carried off by swine flu. Unfortunately, while supplies of the swine flu vaccine have started arriving, so far they're only being given to 'priority cases.' Like pregnant women, and infants, and people with health problems. (But I'm an author. Shouldn't I be ahead of these people?)

However, the doctor did tell me that anyone could get a seasonal flu shot, protecting you against other sorts of flu. I sort of grunted, and this grunt meant - 'OK I'll think about it for a few weeks and probably not do anything about it.'

I thought I was being quite clear but strangely the doctor misinterpreted this grunt and immediately pulled out a syringe, and told me to roll up my sleeve. Before I knew what was happening I was inoculated against other forms of flu.

I was perturbed. I don't like medical surprises. I like a long time to think about things. I don't like to take rash actions, like for instance, getting vaccinated when I wasn't expecting it. Afterwards I trudged round the shops wondering what dreadful symptoms the flu shot might cause, and counted myself lucky to make it home before being completely incapacitated by harmful side effects.

But I survived the experience. So I suppose that's something anyway. While I'm still susceptible to swine flu, I am at least protected against various other forms. I've only had flu twice in my life. Readers of my blog may remember that the second time was just last year, and it involved suffering on a scale rarely seen in this world. I endured a terrible period of illness when I was unable to do anything except lie on the couch and watch SpongeBob SquarePants.

* That's what you do all the time anyway. *

Well yes, but this time I was feeling a lot worse than normal. I was sore, feverish, and I felt very sorry for myself, and this feeling sorry for myself continued long after the other symptoms departed.

Here, for no real reason except I like Japanese electronic music with female singers, are Hangry and Angry. They just made a good album, Sadistic Dance.



Really, I’d like to walk around looking like that. For a day or two anyway. It would certainly make life interesting.

Wikipedia tells me that 'Hangry & Angry is a Japanese pop duo ….the group is a collaboration with a Harajuku fashion store, and serves to promote various products, including stuffed toys fashioned after the members.'

OK, nothing artistically dubious about that. It's credible enough for me. I wonder where I can get the stuffed toys?

Mac Problems / Dolltopia

My new Macbook broke down! I count this as among my most traumatic experiences. It started running slowly, and generally not working very well. Several long calls to the Apple helpline failed to rectify the situation. Eventually I was forced to take it to the Apple Store in Regent Street, where they diagnosed a faulty hard drive. They had to fit a new one. I had to leave it there and then pick it up the next day.

Well, my computer is now working fine again, but the whole experience has shaken my faith in Apple somewhat. Their support was good, and and they did repair it very quickly - it was still under warranty - but even so, you don’t want your new computer dying after only two months. I am somehow not expecting this new Macbook to last as well as my old iBook, which marched on unstoppably for 6 years, before unfortunately becoming too out of date to keep using

After leaving my laptop for repair, I trudged mournfully down Regent Street, feeling like the world was against me. In fact, I was crushed by the whole experience. There was a man in some sort of costume outside Hamleys Toy Shop, calling out friendly greetings to everyone that passed. I scowled at him in a hostile manner, and felt annoyed that ‘Hamleys’ doesn’t have an apostrophe, which it surely should have.

Fortunately, I had copies of all my computer files, so I didn’t lose anything, apart from some recent email. Perhaps that’s not so bad. I can use it as an excuse for my long, long backlog of unanswered email, about which I have a permanent feeling of guilt.

Later I was cheered by the arrival of Dolltopia, by Abby Denson. I really enjoyed this graphic novel. I contributed a few sentences to the blurb on the back cover, saying how much I liked it. Which is something I very rarely do, due to my pathological laziness, and general misanthropy.

Right now there’s a big rainstorm here. I like that. The gutters in the road outside always get clogged, and water pours down the hill in a big river. It's entertaining.

Never Mind the Bollocks

I started to write a blog a while ago - 'On this day in 1977, the 28th October, Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols was released.' But then I became distracted and didn't get round to it. But I'm still sort of thinking about the Sex Pistols anyway, because they were such a big influence on me.

I don't think I'd have ever got up the confidence to write novels if it hadn't been for the Sex Pistols. My school, a Glasgow comprehensive, was reasonably good at teaching grammar, spelling, sentence construction, and so on. Which is a good thing. If you want to write, it helps if you can put a sentence together properly. But my school was very bad at giving working class kids the confidence to do anything with it. I can safely say that I was never encouraged by anyone at school to be creative in any way. At the time, authors, like proper rock musicians, seemed like a different class of people.

It might not ever have occurred to me to try writing books myself, if the Sex Pistols hadn't come along. The punk rock spirit of do-it-yourself, and having confidence in your own abilities, which they brought with them, were very influential. Life-changing, in fact. I started writing immediately, and this spirit of punk rock lingered in Britain for a long time afterwards. Long enough for me to still be thinking about it in 1984, when I wrote Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation.

I bought Never Mind The Bollocks on the day it was released. I already had the four singles it contained, also bought when they were first released. I still have them, apart from my original copy of Anarchy in the UK, from November 1976, which was unfortunately stolen a long time ago, in one of the many squats I lived in in Brixton at the end of the 70s.

Another memory of Never Mind the Bollocks - when it was released, there was actually a court case. Some retailers in Nottingham were prosecuted for obscenity, for displaying the album cover, because it said 'bollocks' Even at the time, everyone knew this was ridiculous. Why the police and public prosecution service ever got involved in it remains a mystery to me. When the case was thrown out of court, as it inevitably was, they'd succeeded only in making themselves look stupid. Though they did give the Sex Pistols a huge amount of free publicity.

The word bollocks has never really been an obscenity, being only quite a minor expletive, though it does remain quite popular in the Millar household. It is, for instance, often uttered during the course of my many household accidents, like smashing plates, or kicking over the teapot which I've carelessly left on the floor. It was said repeatedly - with some harsher words thrown in - in the aftermath of the recent 'getting out of the bath' disaster, an incident too distressing for me to give a full account. (But how, after a life-time of carefully protecting my groin, can I suddenly whack myself in the balls? It defies belief.)

On these occasions, there is nothing to do but retire to the couch, and play on my PlayStation. I've been doing this a lot recently, having discovered that there were two sequels to Prince of Persia. Am currently swashbuckling my way through Warrior Within, though I've come to something of a standstill, due to repeatedly being slaughtered in single combat by the Empress of Time. But this is not really a fair fight. I mean, the Empress of Time looks like this -



And it's quite distracting. The Empress's underhand tactics of revealing huge cleavage are very off-putting. I'm sure this is the reason she keeps defeating me. I may be stuck on this level for some time. And when you consider that the Prince of Persia, earlier in the game, also has to fight Shahdee, who looks like this -



- then you can see that the whole thing is very difficult. But perhaps the Prince is going about things in the wrong way? Surely he should not be engaging in combat with these women? Were it me, I'd try and reach some sort of understanding, and would not be waving a sword at them.

Menstruation ( hooray! )

I notice a prominent advert for tampax on my Myspace page. 'Discover the Latest Tampax Pearl with the New Pearl Protect System.' I have no idea what this is. But I hope it makes the world a happier place.

It reminds me of something I was thinking about recently, whilst slumped on my couch. I do my finest thinking there. No, that's not true at all. I just lie semi-comatose, watching TV. Often I watch American sit-coms, which I generally like. Or dislike them less than British sitcoms, maybe.

I notice that anytime menstruation is mentioned in an American sitcom, all the men panic. They cover their ears, or even run out the room. It's weird. I've seen this repeated in various programmes. Some woman mentions her period, and the men start panicking, completely unable to cope.

Do men ever really do this? Do any of them really get that upset? Not in my experience. It's difficult to see why anyone would get so upset.

I wonder why this scene is so often repeated? I've never seen it in a British sitcom (On the other hand, I haven't seen anything funny in one either, for about the past twenty years)

I suppose it's just done for comic effect. It seems like a fairly lazy way of raising a laugh, really. And not really liable to make women feel good about themselves if it's implied that something they experience every month is deeply repulsive to the other half of the population. So I was on the brink of becoming self-righteous about this, when I realised that... hmm... that actually, I wrote a scene like that once too. In a Thraxas book.

In Thraxas and the Elvish Isles, at the vital moment in an all-male card game, Makri, female barbarian and waitress, starts talking about her period. The men all become uncomfortable, and indeed, some of them panic completely. Which did lead to a funny scene. My thinking at the time, I suppose, was that in the mediaeval, and quite religious society, in which Thraxas lives, menstruation was a taboo subject, and when the female barbarian blithely starts talking about it, the men can't cope.

It seemed funny at the time. But maybe I shouldn't have written it. I didn't realise I'd be joining in with some global campaign to make menstruation seem like a bad subject. If I had realised, I'd probably have written something different. (It's time for the National Menstruation Festival! Bring party hats!)

Hum. Oh well, in Queen Vex, sequel to Lonely Werewolf Girl, Daniel buys the contents of a shopping list, including tampons, for his female friend Moonglow, and he manages not to panic, or even comment adversely.

I'm currently editing this book. And also trying to think of a new title. It's still on course to come out next year.

Spell-check fact - On spell-checking this blog, I found I spelled 'menstruation' wrongly every time. Ha. Well, it's quite a tricky word.

Athens / SpongeBob

I've been reading this, The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia, by Peter Wilson, both for interest and research. It has a vast amount of information about ancient Athenian theatre, presented in such detail I'd have difficulty finding it anywhere else. I'm now stuffed full of facts about Sophocles and Aristophanes. It's an excellent historical work. But it is a little dry. I can only manage so much at a time.

When my head starts to hurt from Athenian theatre research, I slump on the couch and watch SpongeBob. I just saw an episode called Wigstruck. (I can't believe I actually know the title of an episode) It made me laugh, quite a lot. SpongeBob is on Nickelodeon, but I think it may be wasted on the young. Possibly you have to be advancing in years, defeated by life, wearied by toil, to fully appreciate Spongebob.

About 2 a.m., still suffering from complicated ancient Greek theatre research, I'm reading some online newspapers. I look at some reports from fashion shows. I generally like pictures of fashion, despite being the scruffy sort of person who gets followed round supermarkets by suspicious security guards. Unfortunately I'm useless at writing about clothes. I find writing a description of any item of clothing completely impossible. I regret this. I'd like to be able to give a neat little description of a dress, but it's not one of my strong points.

In amongst a lot of interesting and elegant apparel I notice this, from Milan, by Dsquared2. Nice transparent coat. Though it's possible - there is a slight chance - that I'm more impressed by the model than the coat. Well, it is 2 a.m. Actually, with her yellow bikini and brown hair, she's not a bad match for SpongeBob. She'd cheer me up at two in the morning, no doubt, were she knock on my door, maybe looking for directions, having taken the wrong turn on her way to a fashion show.

"Welcome to my shabby part of South London. Would you like some tea? Nice coat. Nice shoes too."

But this is not really likely to happen. I return to my Athenian research. Hmm. I must get out more.

Flash Drive

Here is a picture of me holding my complete works, loaded on to a flash drive. It's the first one I've owned. I'm always a long way behind with technology.

These are so ubiquitous now that I didn't even have to go to a computer shop to buy it. I got it in the local 'We-Sell-Everything' shop, where it was sandwiched between alarm clocks, novelty mugs and plastic food containers. Last month I bought a cheap kettle from the same shop.

I put everything I've ever written on the flash drive. That's a lot of books, including Thraxas. Then I attached it to my key-ring, and walked around feeling pleased with myself. I have my complete works on my key-ring. I wasn't expecting that to happen in 1984, when I was writing Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation on an old typewriter.

Later I became worried about literary spies stealing my works in progress, also copied onto the drive. So I downloaded encryption software, learned how to use it, and encrypted it all. Then I walked around feeling even more pleased with myself. Whilst I may always be behind with technology, I refuse to give up the struggle, not wanting to fall out of touch with the modern world. Next target, film myself reading and put it on Youtube. That sounds difficult, but it's time the world was exposed to my impenetrable Scottish accent.

What? £42 for a book?

Last week I was staggered - appalled - to find myself paying £42 for a book I needed for research. I mean, £42 for a book? $68? €48? What's the world coming to? Is it normal for academic books to cost that much? It came as quite a shock, and led to me shuffling round the kitchen muttering about greedy publishers, my impending financial ruin, and the imminent collapse of society. £42 for a book. It's not right.

( I'm not going to say what this book was, fearing that international literary spies may be trying to steal my ideas. Hmm. Must check the phone again for bugging devices. )

Scotland surprised me by winning against Macedonia, thereby reviving our hopes of qualifying for the World Cup in South Africa. Unfortunately, despite a plucky performance against Holland, Scotland lost the next game, and have therefore failed to qualify. Sigh. Scotland used to have such good football players, but we don't any more. Well, I suppose it will give me more time to read my £42 book.