Untitled Writing Project
So in an attempt to get some cool dudes writing together, I, along with fellow awesomes Paul McNamee, Luke O’Neill and Michael Coyle have created this new thing on the internet. We’re not quite sure what it’s going to be yet, but hopefully it’ll be big and bold and fun to read and write for.
It’s tentatively titled The Four Dicks, and should be reached at http://fourdicks.blogspot.co.uk/
Hopefully we’ll be putting out new content daily, covering a wide range of topics that spill out of our collective grey matters. We’d also LOVE more people to write with us, so if you have any ideas or have been itching to have a go at something yourself, drop one of us an e-mail and we’ll get you involved.
As for what this new venture means for this current project, I do not know. I may end up posting whatever I write on both blogs for a while, maybe entirely foregoing this one before long. I hope the new site turns into something a bit bigger which would make me feel OK with that.
Anyway, go to http://fourdicks.blogspot.co.uk/ , have a read at my exclusive live-blogging of 2006’s Mission Impossible 3, and await further instruction.
Many thanks.
Spartacus just hasn’t been the same. Now in its third season, the show has not quite lived up to itself this year - especially when compared to the truly wonderful first outing. Of course the production has had to deal with unforeseen and tragic circumstances, never making the job any easier. So I’m not frustrated at all, in fact, some of the choices made by the producers I applauded loudly and with gusto back in season one. However a few of these choices and story progressions have in one way or another lead to where we are now. Which just isn’t as enjoyable to watch. Explaining in 3…2……1…….:
I take some sort of pride in my musical taste. I do not in any way limit myself to any particular style or type of music, which is not really a conscious decision on my part - rather a result of general open-mindedness and ability to appreciate a whole variety of sounds. I’m fortunate to share in this pride with many of my friends, who themselves have impeccable and varied tastes.
It’s one thing to acknowledge that one appreciates everything under the sun, but explaining why becomes a tad more difficult. I often find myself trying to articulate the various musical tropes(?) and wrinkles(!) that I most enjoy, albeit to a frustrating and incomprehensible end. These things aren’t by any means extraordinary, they may in fact be why EVERYONE likes certain songs - not just this babbling idiot. However I feel the need recently to at least highlight a certain wrinkle (I’m rolling with it) in songs that I’ve been listening to recently. Something which I have no doubt allows and encourages a love for such a diverse enjoyment of genres. The thing is… I don’t really know what it’s called.
I’m not a ‘genre’ person. Don’t care for ‘em being used to pigeon-hole music and films and all that good stuff. I likes what I likes and I can’t likes no more. However over the past month or two I’ve completely fallen in love with the now-best genre; the western.
I believe it started when I purchased a copy of Rockstar’s 2010 epic, Red Dead Redemption. Previously having mostly given up on games, RDD really blew me away, and instantly became probably my favourite game of all time. I’d never seen a spaghetti western at this point, so everything was so fresh and exciting. From the beautiful old western landscapes to the Ennio Morricone-esque soundtrack, everything about that game won me over. Even the story was compelling, something which I rarely give a shit about in games anymore (or ever). Hours upon days I spent roaming the mountains and deserts on horseback, killing banditos, lassoing wanted fugitives, and avoiding the massively scary cougars (legitimately the most scared I’ve been in my adult life, the sounds those mountain cats made while they pounced on my dear horse). Then the game ended. And I was sad.
Every so often I sit listening to some political commentator, African football pundit or film reviewer and all of a sudden I’ll start really listening to what they’re saying. They’ll throw in a sure-as-shit baseball term among their usual garble and I’ll pause and think, “how did this happen?!”. I can’t really explain the latter, but I’ll gladly offer up some of my favourite uses of baseball terms that I’ve heard recently on this side of the ‘pond’.
1. ‘Wheelhouse’ - as in “Yeah, writing about games is sure in his wheelhouse”. The ‘wheelhouse’ in baseball describes the area in which a batter can best hit (with both power and accuracy) the ball. A less obvious transfer to everyday use in English language, ‘wheelhouse’ is a term which is not overtly apparent like ‘knocking it out of the park’ or ‘to throw a curveball’, things which actually HAPPEN in baseball and which can be picked up on by even the most hoighty toighty English gentleman. Definitely my favourite because of this.
Last week I detailed how getting back into reading has helped me realise that I actually miss it, and the intellectual stimulation it offers. As a result, ever since I finished ‘Friday Night Lights’ a couple of weeks ago, I’ve rarely had my nose out of a book. I decided to read the back-catalogue of books that I’ve accumulated in recent years before eventually moving on and perhaps purchasing a shiny Amazon Kindle or some such electronic-reading device. I feel a by-the-way coming on…
BY THE WAY - In recent [insert made-up period of time here] I’ve had a near reversal of my thoughts on collecting. I was never a huge advocate of having massive collections of things until I inexplicably ended up with several dozen TV box sets a couple of years back. It subsequently became a ‘thing’ of mine, for one reason or another - and one that I was proud of to a certain extent. I still am in fact, but it’s less astounding now than it perhaps was 3 years ago (simply because I’ve fallen quite behind in everything, and have spent MUCH less on entertainment in the past year). Anyway, collecting sort of just happened for me - and spread to other forms of media other than TV.
Ah, those heady summer months long ago when things were looking bright, the weather was (somewhat) fine and the year was in it’s prime. I felt good about the state of things in general, my job was as pleasant as it had ever been, and I even started a constructive and stimulating pastime in writing some paragraphs down on the internet to keep boredom at bay while I figured out what else I could do with it.
Those days seem so long ago.
The will to write never left me, I would often become excited at simply thinking of an interesting topic that I could ponder over. Something that I’d always wanted to articulate but never had. I still get excited by this in fact. Unfortunately it just hasn’t translated onto paper (or screen). There is no real satisfactory answer as to why I stopped. Laziness I suppose. If I was to extrapolate, I might say that when I came home from a day or night at work, I was simply too tired to try and be somewhat intelligent. Not so much physically tired, but mentally so. I’m not going to pretend that my job is demanding to the point of mental or physical exhaustion, but at times it requires a helluva lot of strength of will that is incredibly draining of ones desire to carry on in life. I’ll go on.
