One day, I’ll set a story in this:

“The reason why the Walled City of Kowloon gets so frequently mentioned as a ruin is, while it was there, it was as if the people who lived in it were living their lives in the guts of some great, monstrous, maze.

“The city was a curiosity for a very long time – a strange bit of legal knotting making it Chinese and not British — but the labyrinth didn’t start to grow appreciably until after the second world war when it became a haven for… well, people without a state: refugees, squatters, thieves, drug-dealers, and much more (and much worse). Neither Great Britain nor China refused to have anything to do with the immense warren of walkways, apartments, workshops, factories, brothels, gambling dens, and opium dens.

Looking at pictures of the city today, it looks like some kind of ramshackle prison, a cyberpunk nightmare of florescent lights, spectrally flickering televisions, and mazes of perpetually damp hallways and trash-strewn alleyways. Yet, for many people living there, it was simply home.”

Link.

With only a few days left until the World Cup, I have to say, I’m starting to look forward to it.

I’m not a huge sports guy, but I live in a country where sport is the dominant form of celebrity. You could be forgiven, for example, for not knowing the JM Coetzee lives in Adeliade, until the Booker Award and Nobel Prize winning author picks up a cricket bat, at which point, not knowing about the elderly cricketer who happens to write a few novels on the side would be considered a national travesty. Of course, at that point, you would be required to dislike the man because the country currently dislikes its international cricket team on the basis that it is far too successful, and the people in it are jerks.

However, it appears that every four years is about what I consider a reasonable amount of time for myself to get involved in a sporting event, and I don’t even mind the fact that the TV is full of commercials for the World Cup, or that when I went to go recharge my phone a few moments ago, that one of the images I saw was of personalities from the Australian team looking very uncomfortable, as they all do in their images. Of course, once this World Cup is over, however, I will return to my other interests. Which may or may not include writing JM Coetzee a letter asking if he’d like to take up cricket, to help the national identity of literature throughout the country.

Link

It was a bad week last week, but this week, I managed to unload one of the five boxes of cigarette flyers from DHL Supply Chain.

Unsurprisingly, BP’s plan to clog up the hole in the ocean that they left did not work. I saw a video about ten minutes ago that showed how the coast guard and BP were stopping news crews from shooting on the beach.

I debated whether or not if I should mention this, but I’ve decided to do so, given that it’s over now. Lately, I have been debating what’s good to talk about on this blog, and what isn’t, and for a lot of the time, I’ve been holding back. I guess, after everything I’ve said and done, I’ve just grown to like the quiet, and I’ve taken to that idea that professionalism means keeping your mouth shut, which is certainly not true. There’s too much silence about a writer’s experiences trying to sell in this industry, and me, while I’m popular on the exam board in Germany, I’m a pretty low rung author, and my experiences match that, so I figure some people will find it interesting to hear the story of last week’s bad week, which included bad news that I already accepted.

The thing about bad news, however, is no matter how much you know it, it still sucks to hear it. Think about the time you’ve been seeing someone, a girl or a guy, either way, and you dig them a little more than they dig you, and you begin to realise it isn’t going to last, and you know one day is going to come and everything will end. You know it, but it still sucks to hear it when it does. Part of my news last week was of that variety. See, around later November of last year, Angry Robot expressed interest in buying Beneath the Red Sun. There were a couple of hoops to jump through, but it looked fairly promising, to the point that I’d hear back within a few weeks with a welcome to the imprint kind of thing. Well, a few weeks passed, a month, queries went unanswered (this is one of the worse traits the publishing industry has) and eventually I took the hint and figured it had fallen through. It sucked, but what else you going to do? Later, like everyone else, I heard about Angry Robot splitting from Harpercollins and joining with Osprey Publishing Group in the UK. Later, like a few other people in my position, no doubt, I got a polite email telling me what I had already figured.

It was sixteen months from submission to almost sold to nothing, and a lot of things happen in that amount of time, most of which is you get older, and you feel the weight of not working how you want work press against you. Personally, I chilled out on writing for a bit, though I wouldn’t really recognise I did it until earlier this year–all of this, plus agents, other publishing sagas, and personalities can leave you feeling a little bit empty at the end of the day, and I felt like I’d had a long day. Longer, with the tales of agents, on some days. There’s a lot of people out there who will do a single deal for you, take some cash, and leave you with nothing afterwards: I may be wrong, but I figure you want to stay away from them. You know, there was even a global financial crisis in that time.

But, at the end of the day, all you can say is that some shit happened and it didn’t go my way. Maybe next time.

I bet you all want to be a writer now.

BP have launched plan number six to stop the awful spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This time, the plan–including live video feeds–involves dumping mud, golf balls, tire parts, and cement into the hole to plug it. It will be twenty four hours before anyone knows if it works or not, but I’m sure we’ll all enjoy a moment of cynicism that is born out of 37 days of failure that it won’t.

Lately, I’ve been watching news programs about the event, and other big business stories. For example, in Australia, a large mining tax is being proposed by the government, to basically grab some of the cash that is there. Whether it’s a good plan or not, I can’t say, since I have a limited knowledge of that kind of thing, but it’s no real surprise that the mining industry has gone, ‘No thanks,’ just as BP has said, time and time again, that they’re on the job, don’t stress it, there’s no problem here. Of course, thousands and thousands of living things are dying, the livelihoods of people are being destroyed, and the US government looks relatively dumbfounded. Hardly surprising considering how many of the people in politics come from big business, get funding from it, and go to bed with big business undies on. I doubt that there will be any real consequences for BP, though of course, there should be.

Occasionally, I am struck, while reading and hearing all this stuff, just how powerless the average person is. Outside direct violence–which lets face it, isn’t going to happen–there’s no real outlet for people to voice their frustration. Politics is essentially the same hand puppet of companies, with the Left and Right being only slight shades of each other. Not that voting would help here. But, struggling to pay bills, working grey jobs, families, weekends that last barely enough time, and the rest of the endless things that average people have to concern themselves with getting by… how would they change it if they wanted? A lot of the options that exist–by different, abstain, etc.–strike me as just being the same as the politics I find so disillusioning. You get shades. There’s no real change.

Yet, you know, there are people around the world much, much worse off than even the worse of us reading this right now (well, unless you happen to be kidnapped, have had your legs amputated, and are being forced to read this by your captives–I feel for you if it is the case). Whenever I start thinking how powerless that I am as an individual in this society I live in, I think of people who can’t get medicine, running water, and whose leaders break into their homes when they show some kind of dislike.

I guess some days are just more cynical than others, huh?

Occasionally, I get addicted to some piece of trash TV that is vaguely appalling. Once, I got addicted to Rockstar, and I told myself it was okay, because I wasn’t recording it when I couldn’t catch an episode, unlike others I knew.

This time, however, it’s the cooking show, Master Chef. I got caught up in it at the end of the previous season, when the Cute Girl went up against the House Mum in the finals. This season, I got in early, so I could watch the judges, George, Gary, and Matt work there way through twenty odd contestants. I also hoped that I would be offered such moments as a rather large man in bright pink pants standing in an alleyway of Melbourne, telling a young woman that she had the opportunity of a lifetime.

Outside that, however, there’s a similar kind of format between Rockstar and Master Chef, in that the contestants actually have to do something. Of course, fans of shows such as I’m Fat But My Instructors Are Not (also known as The Biggest Loser) will probably say the same thing, but I’ve never been able to get into that show. There’s something so defeated about the people in that show, as if they’ve hit rock bottom, and the only way to fix their life is with the cultural cure of reality TV, which will mostly leave them in an emotional wreck worse than what they began. How else to describe forever being known as, “That fat shit who failed the Biggest Loser.” But perhaps I’m being unduly fair to the people who show up on it, and the vacuous, dim witted sort who were on Big Brother and Whatever Country You’re In Idol. Some guy pulled his car out in traffic while I was driving home today. Without looking, in the wet and the raid, he pulled out on the freeway and I had a loud, spinning break inches from his car.

I can only hope he was one of those fat rejects from the Biggest Loser.

Fuck you, DHL Excel Supply Chain.

Fuck you.

Sylvain White’s The Losers is a stylish film that has almost no substance to it whatsoever.

Based off the comic series by Andy Diggle and Jock, the film tells the story of five soldiers who, for reasons that are somewhat poorly constructed, are betrayed when they refuse to kill a drug lord, and instead rescue 25 children (while still killing the drug lord, mind). In the film’s strongest scene, the group elect to put the children on the helicopter to save them first, and watch dismayed as it is blown out of the sky, killing all. Presumed dead, the five are out for revenge. The first issue of the comic, if you’re curious, is here. It’s a lot more talky than the film, and the first issue does compromise a chunk of the film, so spoilers and the such. I never read the series, so my exposure of it is limited to this first issue, none of which appealed to me in fairness.

White’s film, however, is drawn fro the school of slow motion, character cool moment of film making. Throughout the entire of the film, characters will appear in a really sweet looking pose, which will cause you to say, “Really? Shouldn’t he, be, like, ducking?” Quite often this moment includes guns, bullets, and some decent music. White’s name has been made making music videos and working for people such as Spike Jonze, and it shows, though he lacks Jonze’s ability to add substance to his films. The characters are, without any exception, described by their look and their job. The Cool Sniper. The Good Looking But Geeky Tech Guy. The Family Man Driver. The Fem Fatale. The Boss’s Buddy. The Colonel. The Bad Guy. The Bad Guy’s Bad Guy Who Shoots People. The names pretty much describe who they are and what they do, and it pretty much also describes where the film’s problems lay, in that the characters are, by and large, cliches of the action humour genre that is so popular these days.

Yet, for a good portion of it, The Losers speeds along nicely. The actors play of each other well, with Chris Evans as the Tech Guy perhaps the most lively of the lot, though Oscar Jaenada as the hat wearing sniper occupies his position in the film as the cool, mostly silent guy pretty well. Certainly, the scenes where he flips the tip of his hat after shooting someone are amusing enough. Either way, the actors deliver their lines quickly, and the dialogue is quick and snappy, and Zoe Saldana as the Fem Fatale Aisha seems not to mind that she’s primarily their for transparent reasons. Even Jason Patric appears to be amusing himself as the Bad Guy With No Sane Plan who appears to be in charge of a lot of powerful organisations (another flaw in the film that megalomaniac villains are in charge of all the American security forces, and no one seems to notice). His one gloved hand does remind you of Michael Jackson, and you do wonder if he will begin touching young boys inappropriately during the film, but mostly, he’s just funny as he shoots employees and, later, is mugged on a bus.

It’s only at the end that the film falls apart, due entirely to its lack of characterisation. There’s betrayal that has no real foundation and, most unfortunately, the film ends with what can only be said as, “Jason Patric, we like you, so we’ll employ you in the sequel.”

Truthfully, if you want to see the cool bits, watch the trailer, and wait for it to come out on DVD or the television. If you got a burning desire, it’s not a bad way to spend a few hours, though there are better ones, too.

The Flaming Lips have done a cover of Pink Floyd’s the Dark Side of the Moon.

I was never a big Pink Floyd fan, but you know, I kinda dug this version of it, even if it did have Henry Rollins in it.

On my doorstep are five boxes of flyers.

They were there when I arrived home last night, and I thought, for a moment, that they had been sent by J., who has moved to Melbourne and called me earlier, asking if he could stash some books here. Which was fine, though I was sure, as I was looking at the boxes, that he said he’d be up next weekend. In the dark, I could even see his last name, typed clearly. Figuring I misunderstood, I picked them on, bought them in, and tossed him a message. They all weighed the same, a fact that hit me as I was off doing something else, so I returned, had another look at the label and saw they were from someone else entirely, but with the same last name as J. What are the odds, huh? Curious, I cut open one of the boxes, and found that it was filled with flyers for the British and American Tobacco Industry.

I am not, as may surprise you, the British and American Tobacco Industry.

Whatever, I thought, I’ll give this number a call in the morning and have them picked up. There was easily a thousand or so dollars in the shiny flyers that had been made, and even though the address on the boxes were not mine, I figured someone would be grateful. Hell, perhaps they’d give me a cartoon of cigarettes that I could sell to some children for the random act of kindness that was part of our cold and callous world.

With that in mind, I called the company in the morning, and asked to be transferred the man with the same name as my friend. His line rang out, ended on an answering machine. I hung up, rang back, got the secretary again.

“Hey, I just called a moment ago,” I said. “The line rang out, so I’m wondering if you could help me–I have these five boxes that are meant to be delivered to you sitting in my place.”

She sympathised with me, and we swapped a few jokes, and I was transferred to the freight and delivery department. The woman who answered the phone this time did not sound as polite, and indeed, was going to prove not to be.

“Is there a freight number on it?”

I looked it over. “No, doesn’t appear so.”

“It’s really hard for me to help you without a freight number.”

“It’s addressed to someone in your company.”

“Not you.”

I looked at the boxes. For a moment, I considered what possible uses there would be for five boxes of flyers that listed the pricing of cigarettes.

“No,” I said. “Why do I want five boxes of flyers?”

“You’re not a company?”

Do you think she gets many phone calls from other companies trying to unload unwanted boxes of flyers?

“No,” I said.

“So you’re a residential property?”

I’m a hobo, but I’m one of those hobos with fucking standards and don’t want to wrap myself in your death merchandise. Instead, I said, “Yeah,” because really, I don’t care either way about smoking.

“You sure there’s no freight number there?”

“No, it’s just addressed to your man here.”

“Can you hold for a moment.”

I thought, as I looked down at these boxes, that I was kind of having to go through a lot just to let someone know that their delivery had gone astray and they could come and pick it up. Also, I don’t know, but the vague insult that maybe I was trying to rip someone off by giving something back, it just sat a little poorly with me. This must be, I realised in that moment, why I didn’t really go in for good deeds. If Superman was real, this would probably be his lot in life. He’d fly down, stop a plane from ploughing into the ground, rescuing hundreds of people, depositing them with gentle strength on the ground, only for the pilot to open the window and say, “Hey, mate, I don’t suppose you could have made that rougher? I swear to God, if I had crashed into the ground, I think I would have shaken us less.”

The woman appeared back on the phone, taking responsibility for the boxes. “I’ll just grab your address and we’ll send a courier out,” she said.

“Yeah, okay. Look, I got to work in a bit. You alright if I leave them on the porch for you guys to pick up?”

“Sure, I’ll just make a note for it.”

It won’t surprise you to learn that, when I returned home tonight, the five boxes were still there, untouched.