Author: James Aylett

In amongst generally useful advice, mini flashbacks to Buffy episodes, and what she had to lunch, you get occasional gems. Half way through reading her post on refreshing joke forms, I honestly thought I wouldn’t laugh at any of the jokes. They were all so old, or somewhat clunky.

And then she pulled out the last one, and I’m sorry, I laughed out loud. People around me are looking askance (but not very askance; they know me quite well). There’s something very carefully played about the last line, which makes it funnier than the joke itself deserves. Great.

I hope that some of what I write induces similar reactions. The best I’ve come so far to myself was in naming a character in my film Sheffield, on a whim, and then discovering a whole vein of Sheffield jokes that I’d never have thought of otherwise. But maybe that one’s just me.

I accidentally freaked out a co-worker today by, in the middle of a rather complicated discussion about why one of our friends shouldn’t try to date teenagers, saying “good evening sports racers, today is scratch the side of the face off a girl you like day”.

Not enough people watch Ze Frank.

I’m not sure which I’m more angry about: that spammers have found a way round my spam filter, or that the way round is to use chunks of Dan Brown writing. I have now read more Dan Brown accidentally than I managed even while deliberately reading The Da Vinci Code in a moment of stupidity (in my defense, I did skip to the next page whenever I got too annoyed with his poor characterisation, shoddy grasp of mathematics, history and geography, or mutilation of the English language; I think I completed two pages).

I now need to write a bad writing filter.

Blonde at the station
Begging for tigers’ winter.
Has night framed her day?

Assuming I actually make it up to Edinburgh tomorrow, I’m a little concerned that I’ll have to deal with James’ racist past. Are people going to assume I’m racist? Am I going to have to apologise?

This is particularly important because on Monday we’re on Radio Scotland (again, in James’ case), and I can’t help feeling that it will come up. I reckon I have three options:

Claim it only applies to men

The section in question is the rules of The Fit Scotsman Contest, a game that James and some other people who like Scotsmen, or at least men, played while we were performing An Extremely Memorable Emergency. Although the actual sentence talks about ‘Scottish people’, that has to be taken in context.

Not go

I could just not turn up. I missed an interview with Edinburgh Evening News because I’d been up all night fixing stuff for work after what I can only describe as a power girder (in that it was twenty foot long and the width of my leg) blew up. Given the current plot to overthrow the government by refusing to let people take anything on plane journeys that might while away the tedium, I think I could come up with a pretty good excuse for simply not showing.

Lie

“I never saw that. It must have been inserted by the copy editor.”

It’s probably not a good idea to go with the first option, because we’re being interviewed by two men. I assume they’re Scottish, it being the Scottish national radio station. The second option might annoy James as he’s already flat out publicising and performing his own show.

By the way, no matter what Ken Smith of The Herald writes, the description of Scots as irredeemably ugly doesn’t come under “fleeting amorous relationships” – it’s not even in the index as such, although frankly now it’s been pointed out I can’t believe we didn’t put that in. It would fit well next to “Fit Scotsman contest”.

In the book, we say that wherever possible you should see the Macbeth with the naked lesbian witches. We also suggest it’s not a good idea to have a show where the cast is nine-year-old nuns.

Thank heavens we didn’t think of combining the two, although in the 1970s anything was possible:

Frankfurt Opera’s production of Prokoviev’s The Fiery Angel was the talk of the worthies before the 1970 Festival, as its last act included an orgy, with half-naked nuns. Big-wigs, including the Lord Provost, flew to Frankfurt to see this filth before allowing it to be shown. But, having been wined and dined, [at] least two of the panel fell asleep before the offending orgy. The Fiery Angel was given a seal of approval.

Found in The Independent (while searching for evidence of James’ racism). Not actually nine-year-olds; that is beyond even The Independent.

Be careful. (Via Gareth Taylor.)

No obvious progress on the one I’m writing (and a small amount of progress on the one I’m reviewing for James), but I’ve found Ken Levine’s blog, and he has excerpts from a script he wrote years ago, one of which tickled me.

I would have used the start of the last line as the title of this post, because I think it’s bloody brilliant – but that would have given the joke away. So it is.

So at the moment I’m doing research for a film I’m writing. By “research”, what I really mean is that I’m watching lots of other films, some for vibe, some for content similarity, some just because they’re good films I haven’t seen in a while. And while doing this I realised I never watch videos any more.

At least, other than at the moment.

So here’s my proposal: I have two or three hundred videos. If you want one, make me an offer, and you can have it. A tangible offer, of any value. Half a pint of beer is fine. Half a pint of love is not (unless it’s very good love). If the offer is sufficiently ridiculous, you’ll probably have to nag me or come and pick it up yourself.

But why, I hear the more percipient readers asking, do you call this a video game? Surely it’s a video giveaway, with cashback? Well, for two reasons.

Firstly, I’m not telling you which videos I own. Sure, you can figure some of them out by Googling through old diary entries. But it’s more fun if you just guess.

Secondly, some videos I haven’t actually watched. If you guess one of them, and I still want to watch it, you’ll have to wait a bit – so I’ll give you another video that is a bit like it, according to my own skewed criteria, as compensation for having to hold on. You’ll still get the one you asked for as well, eventually.

There are actually a very few videos I’m not going to part with, and if you guess one of them I’ll give you something else at random instead. You can refuse to accept the alternative in this case (but not in the previous case).

Questions you may want answered

• I don’t have a video player. Can I still play?
  Of course! Videos can be used for so much more than televisual entertainment. They make admirable bookends, for instance.
• How often can I play?
  As often as you like, although I reserve the right not to bother replying as quickly as people contact me.
• What counts as a tangible offer?
  Good question. Whatever seems fun to me. Try your luck, but in general for an offer to be tangible it should probably be an offer of something tangible.
• Can I be famous?
  Not really, although I will post the offers I’m given, and the films they were offered for. If you don’t want your name associated with this for the rest of the life of the Internet, let me know in advance.
• Do the videos work?
  Probably. Some may not. Some may catch fire. Your risk, not mine.
• What happens if I offer some excrement?
  You keep it. Anything that I deem to be unfair on me I’ll just refuse. If I’m in a good mood I might give you the video anyway, but I’m not guaranteeing anything. Don’t offer anything unnecessarily biological (unless you have a Hunter preparation: that’d be cool), illegal or otherwise daft. Also, don’t offer me back videos I’ve already given away, or anything by Celine Dion.
• How do I play?
  Just email me, or leave a comment here.

Back in the late nineties, when MP3.com was cool (remember that?), I downloaded a bunch of songs by a group called Abney Park. Some of the recording quality was pretty terrible, some was pretty good, and some of the songs were great, or at least perfectly captured some of my moods at the time.

Then, about a week ago, Warren Ellis pointed out that their singer inspired him, only I skipped through the article (and indeed most of the internet) that day, and missed the band name. Now he’s pointed her out again, and this time I’ve noticed that yes, it’s them, and there are LiveJournals (yuck, but I guess we’ll forgive them) for both her and their writer Robert.

Their own website is beautiful, but almost completely unusable, which I supposed is one step up from LiveJournal. Ho hum, and on with the work…