I recently read Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in a single day, firstly because it’s short, and secondly because it was really good. It had a wonderful immediacy that very few novels do, certainly not the long, slow novels I’ve been reading lately, like Crime and Punishment and Night and Day. Particularly surprising was the accessibility of the work, for something that was written two-and-a-half centuries ago, a little after Shakespeare was alive.

What I liked most was that it was nearly all action, with only the most economic descriptions in between. On the third page of the novella, for example, after being briefly appraised of the primary protagonists, the son of the prince of Otranto, upon the day of his arranged wedding, is crushed beneath a giant helmet that appears from apparently nowhere. While the origin of this impossibly large item of head-wear is unaccountable, it is not with this mystery that the prince concerns himself, nor even with the loss of his only son: his concern is that the marriage of his son to a girl named Isabella would have cemented his claim to the throne of Otranto by uniting two families. He is then forced to desperate measures to secure this alliance, as he is aware of an old prophecy warning that his family would eventually lose the castle and the true heir would return.

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Oh, this is cool and creepy. I have only recently been made aware of the existence of ‘The Slender Man’ and it is one of the creepiest things I have seen in ages. I watched all the videos last night in the dark, and even though I was talking with my housemate as I watched them, they still rather unnerved me in a way nothing has done in a while.

An explanation of what The Slender Man is can be found here, but if you can’t be bothered to read that, it’s just an urban myth that was fabricated on the internet. Some guy came up with it on this fake paranormal photos thread and attached a little story to it. The story is that there is this being who stalks and kidnaps children, who has no discernible face, wears a business suit and is able to extend its limbs and even increase their number. On the face of it, it sounds somewhat ridiculous and generic, but some of the fake photos of it are pretty good.

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(This is a story from when I was sixteen or seventeen, and so not very good. A discussion of why it is not very good follows in the comments below the story.)

I sighed. It had been a long day, made longer now by the incessant traffic. I was forced to stop once again behind two red lights and a cloud of grey smoke. Another car was in front of this one, and another, and another.

I put my left elbow on the edge of my car door, uncomfortably pressed against the window, then rested my cheek on my knuckle, feeling the bones of my fingers press against my jaw. With my other hand I twisted the dial on the radio. A pop song played almost indistinguishably behind a wall of static. I tried twisting the tuning dial, but all I got was static, sometimes with a song phasing in, sometimes with nothing but the electric crackle.

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I’m not sure if this is the same for all writers, but I have to really feel what I write. I suppose it probably is the same for all the best writing, otherwise fiction is just churned out soullessly. That’s kind of how I felt reading Truman Capote’s The Grass Harp. It’s well-written, no doubt, but I didn’t really get any feeling from it, like he didn’t feel anything when he wrote it. If I don’t feel anything when I write, my writing becomes lifeless, and lately I haven’t been feeling anything.

You might recall the work I posted recently, An Unfamiliar Girl (extract from my current work). That seems to have halted production at around the twelve-thousand-word mark, and I still feel I’ve barely begun it. I’m quite sure there’s enough material in it for a novel, but it’s just writing the novel that’s the tricky part. And this one seems to have become tricky because it is based so much on feelings, rather than plot.

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Horizon recently did an episode on Growing Old, different theories on why it happens, how it might be slowed or prevented. It wasn’t the most interesting Horizon episode I’ve seen, apart from suggesting that studies had proved, or strongly suggested, that antioxidants have little benefit to slowing the aging process, as many products and adverts proclaim. It inspired a few thoughts within me though, like how I want to have a white beard when I’m old. I’ll probably wear tweed too, so I look like some old professor, and maybe I’ll even be one.

When you’re young, you feel your youth will last forever, you can’t ever imagine being old and achey and not able to do things. When you’re young, summer holidays last forever, at the start at least, six weeks is forever. Often, I feel, people, unless it’s just me, can’t imagine feeling any different to how they feel at a certain time. If you’re in the depths of a dark depression, you can’t imagine ever feeling happy again. When you feel happy, you wonder whatever you were so down about. For a few days before Christmas I was ill, some sort of flu or a strong cold or something. It was only three, maybe four, days, but when I was lying in bed all congested and nauseous, I couldn’t remember what it felt like to not feel like that. Now I’m in my final year of university, Childhood’s End, and yet the days and weeks and months, what’s left of them, stretch out before me and I can’t imagine them ever ending, that there will ever be anything other than the house I live in now, and the people I live with now, and the course I’m on now.

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Satan’s Little Helper is one of the best films I’ve seen in a while, and that’s not bad for a film that cost me £1. It was one of those films I bought from a Poundshop last Halloween, expecting nothing more than some cheap laughs at the terrible scripting and atrocious special FX, but recently I saw it on an IGN feature on the ten most under-appreciated horror films of the noughties. That raised my expectations for the film somewhat, and it didn’t disappoint.

One of the reasons the film is so good, despite being obviously low-budget, is that it works with its budget-constraints rather than against them. Most budget horrors over-reach, trying to create scary, supernatural monsters, and falling into the traps of cliche. There were only a couple of times in Satan’s Little Helper where the effects let it down, but these were minor and brief. Mostly the film avoids gore, making its sudden appearances all the more shocking, not that the film relies on jump-scares.

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I have been terrible at updating this site, and in being creatively generally, not only since the start of this year, this new decade, but a little while before. I’m not sure I believe in writer’s block exactly, it sounds like an excuse, but I’ve certainly had a dearth of creative output. Well, I’ve been writing my dissertation, but that’s only been here and there. No, I just haven’t been inspired for a while, and I’ve been busy, well, busyish. What have I been doing? I’m currently addicted to two games for a start: Forza Motorsport 3 and Dragon Age: Origins. The first is, as the name implies, a car game. I’m not even that into cars, a few months ago I couldn’t tell an R8 from a Veyron, a Dino from a Testarossa, but somehow I’ve been addicting to driving around in virtual sports cars, and it’s time-consuming. The second of those games is an epic fantasy game of the really geeky sort, with elves and dwarves and mages and such. I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of that sort of thing, though I like the Lord of the Rings movies, but it’s such a well-made game that can’t help but love it. Girlfriends take up time too, but I can hardly complain about that.

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Sat now, alone at the party, my can empty in my hand, dented in several places where I had absently crushed my thumb and fingers into it, I considered getting another one, scanning the crowd for either an opening I could push through, or someone worth talking to, and was just about to stand when an unfamiliar girl threw herself down onto the sofa next to me.

“Hi,” she said.

Her face was thin and sharp, with a narrow nose and green eyes that looked away as I met them; cheeks rose-tinted, vasodilated; hair the colour of dry leaves, or of beer held to the sun, sticking out like straw, jagged and uneven because she cut it herself. In her hands, which rested on the patchwork fabric lap of her dress, she held two slim bottles. I did not think she was pretty.

“Hey,” I said, smiling, pressing the lager can between my fingers until it clicked and crinkled.

“I’m Remi,” she said, laughing nervously. Her laugh was not musical. “My name’s kind of a joke.” She looked down at her hands, tapped her fingers on the glass of one of the bottles.

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I’m not sure there’s been enough quite enough discussion of Modern Warfare 2 on the internet these past few weeks, so I think I’ll add my opinion to the mix, at least on certain aspects of the game and its predecessor. Firstly, I should say that I wasn’t that bothered about playing this game, though I enjoyed Modern Warfare 1, and only bought it because it was cheap. I’m not a huge fan of first-person-shooter games (I’ve never gotten on with Halo for example), but as a videogame narrative, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) was one of the best games I’ve played. I’d rank its story-telling up there with Silent Hill 2. Modern Warfare 2 though, even as I played it, never really sucked me in. It had cool moments, but is missing the certain feeling of the first game. Going back to Modern Warfare 1 now highlights the difference, the tenor that has altered for the sequel.

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I really like Christmas, or Annual Family Gift Day as I atheistically and frequently refer to it. A lot of people don’t, my mother included, which always surprises me, but I really do. This year I think I’ve spent already more than I have ever before, and I’ve still got a few people to buy for. It gives me a vague pain, being someone who’s usually so careful (stingy) with money, but then it makes me feel good. I’m almost certain everyone will really like their gifts, and I can justify the expense to myself not only with that, but that I might get a taste of such and such, or ‘try out’ this game to make sure it’s good enough, or watch this film with the giftee etc. I’m looking forward to wrapping them too. I bought some ribbon today, so they’re all going to look good.

But yes, I am being uncharacteristically frivolous for this one time of year: I spent £60 today alone, without really meaning too. That was more selfish though: I’ve essentially bought two of my presents, both because they were on special offer, and so cheaper than my parents would have found them for (both videogames too of course). Now I find out that this one game I asked for, and bought today after failing to contact my father because the deal was amazing and ended today, has already been purchased for me. Usually my father doesn’t get around to Christmas shopping until at least the 15th, sometimes the 20th or later. Who’d have thought he’d get his act together this year? Still, I’m sure it can be easily sorted. What I’m more worried about is lugging all these gifts home, since I’ve elected to go on a train rather than get picked up a day later.

Aside from being uncharacteristically frivolous, I’ve also been uncharacteristically happy of late. Read the rest of this entry »