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“I’ll let others off first… because I’m balding and insecure.”

“And I won’t push to get on… because as the hearts in my hair indicate, I can’t cope with being a grown-up. Also I can’t really see properly because of the fringe.”

…I’m just filing away some old receipts for tax purposes and I notice I’ve scribbled a possible exchange for two of our characters on the back of one of them. It goes like this:

Barry: Do unto others what you would have done to yourself.
Horny_teen: (sadly) I can’t give everyone a blow job.

This is going to be embarrassing if I get investigated by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

Sometime around 5pm I started upgrading the computer we edit Talk To Rex films on so that we can get stuck into post-production our new project. It is, as I write this, almost 1am, and I’m waiting for the final task to complete.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

In fact, it doesn’t have to be this hard, and I’m beginning to regret not just throwing this computer away and buying a shiny new one. Like the one Bing edited the video diaries on (the third part is up now). That was nice. And portable. And didn’t take eight hours to prepare before you used it.

Or for that matter we could have shot the entire thing on Super 16, and edited it as film instead of all this pissing around in non-linear editing software. Even taking into account finding my old notes and screwing up a couple of test rolls of film and cleaning the damned thing, I’m pretty sure we’d be editing by now on a Steenbeck. Although admittedly we’d be a bit stuck when it comes to compositing.

As it is I’m waiting for a hard drive to format. Witness the romance of film-making.

A couple of days ago I drove past a handmade sign by the side of the road that said ‘Pallets wanted’. In my state of near exhaustion, however, I initially thought it said ‘Wallets painted’.

Neither of them makes a lot of sense, but what my brain saw comes from a much nicer world than the truth; even now I’m a little sad that we don’t live in a reality where I might visit a roadside craftsman on a whim to have my wallet painted a different colour.

This guy explains why.

And he explains a bit more here.

Further explanations to follow, I expect.

The press have been making it tediously apparent that the world and his Stephen Fry have become obsessed with Twitter, and as I like to keep abreast of what’s down with the kids (or indeed the artist formerly known as Lord Melchett) I have given it a go.

And I have to say, so far I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s like the “status update” part of facebook has been removed to its own website, so you get a running stream of sentences telling you what people are up to.

The problem is, it’s that mundane. If people used their allotted 140 characters to make witty comments or insightful observations then it might be an interesting website to pop onto, but what it actually boils down to is a lot of people saying what they had for dinner, a handful of technogeeks posting their latest observations about the failings of the internet, and Stephen Fry admiring his fans admiring him.

I’ve tried to make my own updates – sorry, tweets (sigh) – like tiny Dickensian bon mots, but I fear I’m ploughing a lonely furrow. Even Stephen Fry hasn’t mastered the art of fitting his usual wit and sagacity into 140 letters.

That such a master of verbosity has championed this website above any other is really quite surprising; you’d have thought blogging would be more up his street. But clearly he likes the ability to make a sneaky update on what he had for dinner in between takes of whatever TV programme he’s guesting on, and I can see why that would be appealing. I’ve taken to doing it myself.

It’s just not very interesting for the people reading it.

Neither is it a useful photo-sharing or staying-in-touch tool like Facebook or any of the other ones I haven’t taken to using. It’s just plain stalking. But not the interesting stalking that makes you feel aroused if you’re into that kind of thing: this is the most moribund stalking you can possibly imagine.

So, sorry to those of you I’ve been “following” (see, even the terminology is sinister) – I don’t care that you won’t be in London for all those dates, Mr Fry; I don’t care that you’re warming to the snow, Mr Carr; Mr Aylett I don’t even understand what all those internet terms mean; and all of the rest of you, your dinner is of no interest to me unless I am invited to join you for it.

If blogging is old fashioned then I’ve got two words for you: dumbing down.

Just finished school, heading home for pork chops.

One of the things I get annoyed by is improvisation groups thinking they’re the first. The first whatever; first group doing student improv in their town, first group doing an improvised musical, first group improvising a play entirely in gibberish. It’s never the first.

In particular, one thing that happens is that a group of actors and comedians start doing some improv games (in a Whose Line Is It Anyway? style), then go to Chicago, or LA, and come back full of ideas about doing long-form improvisation, saying things like “this kind of improvisation is fairly new to this country”. (Yes, there’s a specific group that’s sparked this rant, but since I haven’t seen them perform I can’t pass judgement so I won’t bother linking to them.)

Usually, by “fairly new”, they mean in the last five years, which isn’t true. (The latest wave of improvisation started 5-10 years ago in this country, and there were various people doing full-length improvised shows, one way or another, around in the first half of that, and indeed before it, bucking the trend.)

Sometimes, by “fairly new”, they mean in the last twenty years, which isn’t true. Keith Johnstone was playing with this stuff in the 60s, for instance. (Although he’s often better known for things like Micetro these days, which is a shame.)

Rarely, by “fairly new”, they mean “after Palestrina”, which is possibly true but still seems unlikely (think: bards). Certainly people were improvising narratives back in the Middle Ages quite happily in the UK. If you look farther afield, semi-structured narrative improvisation (where aspects of the story are familiar to the audiences, either using tropes and archetypes, or by using base stories) have been around since before the Romans. Long, long before the Romans.

So stop trying to claim you’re new; just be interesting, and exult in that.

(While we’re here, can lazy reviewers stop comparing every impro group with Paul Merton? KTHXBAI.)

“Hee hee hee! This young man thinks he’s getting an excellent deal in return for relinquishing his desire to put his feet on the seat – little does he know that I never have a bag because I don’t have any arms!“

You may have noticed that Talk To Rex is not carrying the DEC spot asking for donations to help the people of Gaza affected by the recent Israeli military action. We believe to do so would undermine our impartiality, not only with Britons thousands of miles away from the Middle East, but with our international audience. We cannot throw away the reputation we have carefully built up across the years as the world’s premier source of unbiased sarcasm and sniping at Russell T Davies. While the plight of those in Gaza is not to be underestimated, we feel that not carrying the advert is important in underlining our commitment to mindlessly preserving our ante-bellum reputation in the changing world of the 21st century. Bring us an appeal for everyone affected by the ongoing events, be they Arab, Israeli or Western observer and we can talk.

We will sleep soundly tonight, secure in the knowledge that more people are aware of the campaign due to our action than would have bothered to watch another film about deserving others voiced by bloody Jeremy Vine.

Following my previous post:

Dear Mr Aylett

Thank you for your email to Nick Raynsford MP, I am responding on his
behalf.

Nick has always supported much more transparency and less scope for
abuse, and indeed has claimed lower expenses than most other MPs for
many years. Nick does not claim any expenses other than the employment
of staff and communicating directly with constituents.

Most of the media coverage on this issue has focused on the ability of
MPs to claim expenses on the cost of maintaining and furnishing a second
home. This element in the allowances does not apply in Nick’s case, as
an Inner London MP, he does not need a second home and does not qualify
for the allowance.

Nick has not signed EDM’s, regardless of the merits of the case, for
some time as he feels they have been devalued by trivial and excessive
use.

Yours sincerely

[redacted]
Senior Caseworker & Research Assistant

Note that the claim about transparency doesn’t really sit with his voting record on transparency, although I’m prepared to concede a point here as he has generally abstained and so hasn’t really shown his colours, and in any case publicwhip.org.uk has a tricky job actually gluing this stuff together helpfully.

Note, more worryingly, that this is a form response that fails to give any indication what he’s going to do. (Although to be fair, with talk earlier today about a three line whip, he might have simply been hoping the issue would go away rather than have to face expulsion from his party over doing the right thing.) At least, though, it is a form response that talks about him specifically, talking about why I as his constituent should be happy with his attitude towards expenses. And I am, but that’s not what I was worried about in the first place, because I already knew that he is a low claimant; nor am I interested specifically in the second home issue. My letter actually talked about the need for transparency to foster trust in government (not dissimilar to what President Obama said yesterday) — this part has not been addressed in the response.

Nick last signed an EDM on 17th December 2008 (calling for a vote on the third Heathrow runway over environmental impact), suggesting that either he or his office has a very short memory, or a different definition of ‘some time’ than I have. (He hasn’t signed any other EDMs this Parliamentary session, so he’s probably against them in general, but the above claim is a lie.)

It now looks like this won’t go to a vote, and certainly won’t in its current form. This is what we wanted, really; however I’m still left with the bad feeling that Nick Raynsford is another bloody weasel.