waspnest

waspnest
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

Continuing the natural history theme, here's a piccy of a wasp's nest from my nan's garden. She told me a pest control bloke had smoked out a massive nest hanging from a tree I had been pruning/attacking the other week. I stood there, saying 'where? where? where?', and then nan said, 'look up', so I did, and it was about an inch from my nose, at which point I said something along the lines of 'yeaargh', leapt three feet backwards and made a sort of windmilling karate move. Don't know why.

Anyway, nan told me that after the nest had been smoked, a number of late-working wasps kept returning to the scene over the following few hours, then buzzing around in a rather puzzled way, which was the saddest thing I've heard for a while. Still, there did seem to be a few of them hanging around the semi-rotten fruit at the base of the apple tree. I shook a few off, and they didn't even sting me, so hopefully they've finally realized their life of toil has been replaced by free booze. What a way to live out one's twilight years. I'm sure I heard some of them giggling.

megasquid

megasquid
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

This is a mega-squid, from 'The Future is Wild', which is currently the best thing on telly. Until Friday, anyway. TFIW is about how evolution could wreak all sorts of strange effects on creatures around us in millions of years time. The mega-squid hangs about in the '200 million years in the future' bit, where things get really weird. I have to say I'm even fonder of the smaller tree squid, which leaps nimbly from bough to bough, but I couldn't find any pictures of that one.

Let's start a fight....

What's Britain's greatest natural resource?

Wizards.

Merlin, Harry Potter, John Constantine, Tim Hunter, Gandalf (on a technicality) and Chrestomanci. Who does America have? Mandrake. Pah. And Dr. Strange, who to be fair, is pretty cool, and should definitely be played by Jeff Goldblum if they ever make a film. But still, Britain truly punches above its weight, wizard-wise.

Just a thought.

sketch house

sketchhouse
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

And then I took a picture of this house. The scaffolding looked slightly surreal in silhouette, as though it was only half-drawn, but I'm not sure how well it came out.

kernow eye

kernoweye
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

This looks way better than the London Eye, which is always full of rubbish celebs being interviewed while trying not to look scared.

Celebs who live in Cornwall: Tori Amos, Roger Taylor, Hugh Scully, Roger Moore and Andrew Ridgley. Decent sorts all, and reckon if I asked them, we could fill that Big(ish) Wheel, and it would look ace. Phillip Schofield (good Cornish lad) could stand at the bottom, gradually cranking up the speed and asking general knowledge questions as they shot past with increasing rapidity. I bet Hugh would be first off, and Tori last, but I'm open to other interpretations.

whippets

whippets
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

Whippet racing on the Lizard Peninsula. My mum has a lurcher, which she takes to agility shows (where said dog regularly disgraces himself). This time she was going to a whippet-only event, so I thought I'd come along. You could put bets on the dogs, with proceeds going to charity. Now my mum knows her dogs, and with her friend Teresa in the running, she also knows the form. Unfortunately, my misunderstanding of the betting process meant I accidentally put the cash on Milo, the world's only fat whippet. I lost obviously. Otherwise, mum stood to win £2.50.

Obviously, Milo is only fat in comparison to other whippets, not say, a pencil, or some wire. I wouldn't want to hurt his feelings. Anyway, I reckon that quid I put on him to win really boosted his confidence, so this way the lifeboats, and a fat whippet came out on top, and that's got to be good.

The 'You with the Sharp Claws' song

This is from Lance Arthur, over at Just Write. Yes, people writing about their cats is the killer cliche of blogging. But get to the chorus before you judge...


"You With The Sharp Claws (The Exclamation Point Song)"

Oh look at you!
Look at your tummy!
It's so fluffy!
Oh look at you!
You're so vulnerable
And small
And cuddly

Fuck! Shit! Ow! Goddammit! Stop! That's it! Okay! Fuck!

Oh listen to you!
Purring like a motor!
That's so sweet!
Oh listen to you!
Gosh, do cats purr that loud?
Let me hold you tight
And hear you purr!

Fuck! Shit! Ow! Goddammit! Stop! That's it! Okay! Fuck!

You're not going to fool me again!
You think you always fool me
But you really don't!
I know all your little tricks!
Rolling over like that
Your eyes all sparkly
Your little paws curled under
Goddammit you're so cute!

Fuck! Shit! Ow! Goddammit! Stop! That's it! Okay! Fuck!

Fuck! Shit! Ow! Goddammit! Stop! That's it! Okay! Fuck!


(thanks to Lance Arthur)

I took photos of three slugs in my bathroom last night, just to prove I'm not making up the previous post. But the pics were frankly so disgusting I think the interweb is better off without them. Also, all the slugs got flushed, and looking at the photos taken before their doom, I think they know what's about to happen....

Sluggy Mecca

Slugs are nicer than human beings.

No slug has ever played a practical joke on another slug, then emitted a braying laugh, spraying wet specks of salt and vinegar crisps onto a formica table. Drunken slug couples have never fought over a suitcase outside my window at 3.40 am, or if they have, they kept the noise down. No slug, in the history of ever, has actively chosen to wear a baseball cup.

So, it is empirically provable that slugs are nicer than human beings. Unfortunately, slugs do regularly insinuate themselves into my bathroom, and that is why it is their fate to be picked up in bits of toilet paper and flushed into oblivion.

I am starting to believe that my bathroom is some kind of religious centre for slugs, a holy site that at some point in its life, each religiously-observant slug must visit. (to be fair, there is quite a nice wood-framed mirror with a sort of wave motif, so perhaps that's it). I like to imagine slugs of varying professions banding together for safety, telling each other slow, moist stories as they travel down the hedgerows and across the back gardens to my flat. Where the chosen few (i.e. those slugs unfortunate enough to be at prayer when I'm just about to have my bath), are plucked by a mighty hand and dispatched to a watery doom.

If you're religious, there must be worse times to be killed by a mysterious omnipotent force than when you're praying. At least you're in the right mindset. If it turns out you're right about your chosen deity, I bet you go to the top of the queue.

I used to carefully pick up the slugs in a piece of toilet paper and shake them out of the window, where I always imagined a fat hedgehog sitting with its mouth open. But the only hedgehog in my garden sat outside for the shed for a week until I realized it was dead and let weeds grow over its body until I didn't have to look any more.

There was even a snail in my bathroom the other day. I can understand slugs creeping in through the gaps in the ventilation system, but how did a snail manage it? He/She (snails are all hermaphrodite) must have lowered him/herself down from the ceiling, like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, only with bits of spiderweb.

Flushing the snail down the toilet seemed overly dramatic somehow (and could have have caused a blockage), so I reverted to my older, kinder disposal method and dropped him out of the window instead. Sadly, I heard the small, sad 'crunch' that can only mean fatal shell damage. I considered getting dressed and going outside to put him/her out of his/her hermaphroditic misery, but I had run the bath too hot. A terrible sleepiness crept over and I slid slowly into the steaming water, feeling it rise up above chest, and then my chin, and from then on, the only life I was trying to preserve was my own.

What's cooler than being ice-cold? TWO SUNFLOWERS!

2sunflowers
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

Yes, it is worthy of an exclamation mark. A second sunflower now blazes triumphantly from my garden (nobody tell Summer, she'll have another weird dream and her therapy'll be set back weeks).

I really should be doing some proper work.

Aardman called with the exciting news that the Sketch Show is hopefully just a week or so away from starting properly, but in the meantime they'll be putting together a trail of stuff done so far. I've got some characters in it called the Street Rappers, so I need to polish up one of their sketches to make them fit the trail. Now I just need to think of something funny involving basketballs.

More GW trailers on last night. Nothing of mine so far, but then I tried to make all my scenes at least ten minutes long, for increased residuals. Or possibly they're holding back the good stuff. Patrick at Talkback sent me some promo postcards of cast doing a wacky line-up, so I'll try and scan that in at some point.

Of course, if I was keeping a tatty scrapbook of all events in my life, small and smaller, that would be a bit sad. But as this is a cyberneuroweblog, that's much cooler.

blog (drum) roll

Thanks to the lovely Summer taking time out of her lunch break, I now have a blog roll, right there in the sidebar. This must be what it feels like when a boy racer puts a new spoiler on his Honda Civic. I have an unearthly urge to drive my ibook around town with the windows down playing stuff by the Magnetic Fields really loudly. But I won't.

Obviously it's only got two blogs on there at the moment, but it will grow. Oh yes, my friends, it will grow...

Mention to anyone that you live in cornwall, and currently the response is 'oh my god, are you all right?'. This is because after weeks of torrential rain, the small village of Boscastle pretty much just washed into the sea. Fortunately no-one seems to have been hurt, but this really isn't the kind of thing one expects living down here.

Grosse Point Blank + Oddio Overplay

This is one of those things where you're trying to justify something as 'research', when you know full well it's really 'avoidance' but googling about in search of scripts brought up Tom Jankiewicz's first draft of Grosse Point Blank.

The first thing you notice about Jankiewicz's script is, most of the opening aside, just how much made it through to the screen. Also, just how much confidence he has in his characters. No wise-cracking, just funny, realistic characters who always act for their own reasons rather than just to further the plot. GPB has to be my favourite film of all time. It's one of those pieces of work like 'Spaced', where not only are all the music/film references spot on, but also where each character is allowed their own moment in the sun, something shockingly rare in contemporary tv/film.

The golf club opening is really interesting too, as is the conversation in the cab, Classic case for 'I really want a sequel, but at the same time, it would have to be mind-boggling good to be anything other than a crushing disappointment.'

I'm currently struggling with Final Draft 7 - latest update of pro-screenwriting software. Here's a thought though... why not wait until the software is actually ready before releasing it? That way I wouldn't have to waste an hour finishing the second act of my screenplay only to watch it evaporate when I try and cut and paste a sentence from one scene to another. Gaaah!

Also, have just added Oddio Overplay to my list of top mp3 blogs, as this one is really rather special. It's new to me, but I get the picture it's been around for a bit and has just had a spanky new visual overhaul. Lots of lovely/strange music, arranged in compilations (with playlists and covers to print out) and with cute graphics of robots playing different instruments on the homepage. Awwww.

Winnie the Pooh/Microserfs crossover

Not sure that's exactly what this should be described as, but it made me laugh.

Sunflower? OR MONSTER?

Here's Summer's terrifying sunflower story. I was going to include a link to it, but it all got a bit fiddly, so as it's quite short, I thought I'd include it in its entirety instead. Try to imagine it being whispered by Vincent Price...

"One day, on my way to high school, I glimpsed a potted sunflower on the side of the road. It was about six feet tall with a seed pod width of about a foot. The stem was a hardy green, and the tangled mass of organic matter behind its face was deep and dense. The sight gave me an immediate, visceral reaction: fear.

I didn't know why I felt that way, but over the next couple of days, bits of a dream I'd had as a child came drifting back into my consciousness. (Feel free to go as Freud-tastic you wish here.) I was walking in a field of tall sunflowers. Instead of doing the heliotrope thing and following the sun, the flower faces were following me. They moved, in a creepy stop-motion-photography rustle, watching me with their seedy eyes. I walked, deliberately, to the center of the field, where the largest sunflower grew. (I think of her still as the Queen.)

She leaned in toward me, her seed pod an easy three feet in diameter, and -- I woke up the instant before she ate me."

- Summer Smith, 10:22 PM



I can honestly say it is the most frightening sunflower-based narrative I have ever heard, and that I doubt that ever again shall I hear a spinechiller, specificallly involving a sunflower, quite as scary as that one. Thanks, Summer.

On an equally valid writing tip, I've just heard that a children's tv series I've been writing for is finally about to start shooting. I signed a big confidentiality thing, so if I say anything other than that it's called Planet Cook, BBC executives will smash through my windows and do terrible things to me, possible involving a sunflower. But anyway, it's called Planet Cook, and I have quite a good joke in it, in I think episode 89, about raspberries.

Clive James and two types of agog

In the new WORD magazine (which is starting to become the paramilitary wing of the ipod marketing department, but never mind), Clive James says some very nice things about Smack the Pony. Good lad.

If you're remotely into comics/SF, have a look at this trailer for a Japanese film called Casshern. It truly is the most bonkers thing I've ever seen, as though someone saw the Fifth Element and said to themselves 'Hmm.... yes.... but how about something louder that seems to make even less sense?'.

It seems the further outside Hollywood the technology goes, the better incorporated into the story the SFX gets. Brotherhood of the Wolf over Van Helsing? No contest at all.

What I really can't wait for is for some of the huge Hindi epics to get made with SFX comparable to the Lord of the Rings films. Blue, six-armed creatures battling multi-headed demons? Can't wait.

Directed to the trailer by Summer over at iridescent by the way, who has promised me a terrifying story about sunflowers, but has yet to deliver. Summer,I am agog. Literally agog, and I cannot remain agog forever. Please ungog me soon.

magnolias and sunflowers

sunflower
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

The bank has just repaid the money taken off my cloned card, with startling speed. Now if only the ghastly chav who had it away with my cash can be hung drawn and quartered with the same efficiency, I will be a happy comedy writer indeed.

I need to get back to my screenplay now. For months now, I've had the broadcast date of GW as a kind of D-Day - if it goes well I need plenty of other scripts to show people - if it goes badly - well, at least I'll have written loads of stuff. I need a deadline basically. So I've been working on a kid's action film, the original idea behind which was to try and suggest scary things as much as possible, but restrict myself to three or four actual effects shots, to keep the budget reasonable. However now I'm two thirds of the way through, there's about three or four shots which don't require SFX. Hey-ho. In the end I decided to go where the story led me. And the story led me towards the words 'thousands of' and 'computer-generated monsters'.

I watched some of the 'Making of' doc on the MAGNOLIA DVD last night, which had a rather inspiring bit about the screenwriting process being comparable to ironing a shirt.

Bear with me.

Paul Thomas Anderson (writer and director) said he had once heard screenwriting being compared to ironing because you constantly smooth over the bit you've done, go forwards a bit, go back and smooth over the bit you've done... and so on. It does seem to be one step backwards, two steps forwards, but at least I'm getting there gradually. Once I'd rewritten the bit where one of the characters gets herself out of trouble by er... casting a spell. Which would be fine except later in the film you'd find out the how and why of the spellcasting, and I decided not to do that, so you're left with a character who casts a spell in one bit, then never casts another spell, or refers to it ever again. Apparently they get this on Eastenders all the time.

bearded ladies

While I'm banging on about GW, I should point out that the beautiful and talented Messina and Rusling, who make up 50% of the BEARDED LADIES are appearing now at the Edinburgh Festival. Go and see them now, and be edified, amused and entertained.

I didn't realise they wrote the Diet Coke ad where Tamsin Grieg scrawls her contact details on every available surface. Which made me laugh. Bless 'em.

toy-fu

toy-fu
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

Quick teaser for my new webcomic

GW and evil weevils

Trailers have started for GW, and someone ripped off my Switch card for £650. I wasn't going to start blogging properly until something interesting happened, but I wasn't expecting it all at once.

I'm sitting at home waiting for phone calls from a) Falmouth constabulary and b) Natwest. Just hope whoever ordered a load of stuff off autotrader.co.uk at my expense was stupid enough to get it sent to their home address. You never know.

Still, the GW thing is much more fun. For the unitiated (and as it doesn't start till Sept 3rd, that's pretty much everyone) it's a comedy/drama/soap/don't know what it is really, going out Friday nights, C4, 9.30pm, and I wrote any scenes involving radio control cars, crossbows and conversations about adamantium. More details here

Right, back to waiting for the phone to ring. It's half nine in the morning, and I'm already fed up with waiting.