The Death of a Games Salesman....

You know, I have just about had enough of being ripped off by video games designers.  I don't understand how you can pay forty quid for a game like Oblivion, then pay exactly the same for a complete pile of pants like Deadly Premonition.  There are a few basic prerequisites I expect when parting with my hard earned cash, and graphics that challenge the consoles I've paid a small fortune for is one of them - not blocky, glitchy stuff that I wouldn't have put up with on the N64.  And the game that's prompted this rant?  Dungeon Siege III.  Thank goodness I only downloaded the demo.  Well...to be fair, this isn't the worst game I've ever played - I think Deadly Premonition holds that accolade - but it was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.  I understand that there are probably reasons for it, but as a consumer, I'm not here to prop up the fragile egos of designers trying to cope with smaller budgets.  If I pay forty quid for something, I expect forty quids worth of product.  But then SquareEnix isn't exactly a small company with small budgets.  Maybe carrying a popular name is all they think they need to pass a so-so game off onto the gaming public who will quite happily pay top-whack for something that they expect to be in the same vein as Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts.  Which Dungeon Siege definitely is not.

Of course, it's not just the video games market that does this.  The publishing market is exactly the same.  A popular name that's sold well in the past will instantly get published, no matter if their latest offering isn't fit to wipe your backside with.  Are editors afraid to point out to a Big Name that they really have lost the plot, so to speak?  Oh, that's okay...it'll sell anyway, because it's got a Big Name.  And of course the British never complain about anything, so they get away with it.  And don't even get me started on the deals made with people like Jordan, who couldn't string a sentence together if her life depended on it.  I'm not sure who's worse - the publishers who encourage them, or the poor saps who buy it.  Drives me insane.

So that's it - no more buying games or books from designers/authors who have lost touch with the reason they  started out on the creative road in the first place as soon as money becomes involved.  Money strangles talent and results in the kind of mass-produced, soulless offerings that are tomorrow's bargain bin fodder.  It's about time a lot of people in the industry started remembering what made them great in the first place, while the public may still be interested.

Glad I'm not the only one to think so, too....  DSIII Review

Wow....

It's been ages since I updated this! I guess a lot of it was down to 'creative frustration' with the whole writing thing. It's definitely something you can only do if you're really in the mood to do it, because otherwise it's like pulling teeth. But no matter how disillusioned I get with it, it still creeps back sooner or later. I think it was Stephen King who said that writers write because they have to. I can understand that. No matter where you run, it follows you about like a faithful little dog, determined to keep nipping at your ankles if you don't give it some attention now and again. I do most of my ranting these days on Facebook, but I've realised that I'm taking up huge amounts of space on my wall that really would be better off in a blog. Then I can keep my wall for such riveting status updates as 'Just had tea' and 'Yay! I've got two weeks off work!'. Keep my social commentaries here, I think...

So there you go...another promise to myself to work harder. Let's see if this one actually lasts....

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be actors

I was very sad to read about the death yesterday of Diff'rent Strokes actor Gary Coleman, who was just 42. I'd had no idea what a troubled life he'd led since the show ended in 1986. But I suppose that I shouldn't have been so surprised. It's a familiar story, after all.

I remember being genuinely upset when I read about Jonathan Brandis' suicide in 2003, not just because he was the same age as me, and not even because I'd had quite the thing for him as a teenager when he'd starred in Stephen King's IT and later in SeaQuest, but because I just couldn't understand how anyone so young, so attractive, so famous could possibly want to kill themselves. Unfortunately, those successes turned out to be the pinnacle of his career which hit the skids after that, spiralling into the usual story of depression and self-loathing that abruptly ended with a young, gifted, attractive man whose best years were still ahead of him feeling as though he had no choice but to take his own life.

And there are so many others like him. A quick trawl through the tragically extensive list of former child actors proves that. Dana Plato, who played Kimberly Drummond in Diff'rent Strokes alongside Gary, died at the age of 35 after struggling with drink and drug addictions for many years. River Pheonix died of a drug overdose at the age of 23. Brad Renfro. Corey Haim. Then there are those who haven't quite reached that stage yet, but undoubtedly have suffered their fair share of problems - Edward Furlong, Lindsay Lohan, Macaulay Culkin, Drew Barrymore, Todd Bridges, the list could go on.

You could blame the Hollywood studios for putting money ahead of the welfare of these kids. You could blame the media for their supercilious chortling and zoom-lens voyeurism when careers nosedive and former child stars are "reduced" to "normal jobs". You could blame the parents for encouraging them to go down this route and then resorting to squabbling over the cash. You could blame society in general for creating the conditions which encourage kids to think that public exposure, no matter what the source, is the Golden Ticket to untold wealth and fame.

Whoever is to blame, perhaps the greatest tragedy is that this won't be the last time we'll be hearing a story like this.

A Beautiful Mind?

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about an article I've just read on the BBC's website entitled, "Creative Minds Mimic Schizophrenia". Whilst not professing to be akin to the likes of Virginia Woolf or John Nash, nonetheless I would like to consider myself a fairly creative individual, and to have something that I had always considered to be a positive trait compared to a mental illness is just a little bit...confusing. Still, I'd also consider myself a scientist, and it's rather hard to argue with the facts. That is, after all, as Thomas Huxley observed, "The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis with an ugly fact."

Psychologist Gary Fitzgibbon states in the article, "Creativity is certainly about not being constrained by rules or accepting the restrictions that society places on us. Of course, the more people break the rules, the more likely they are to be perceived as 'mentally ill'."

Mmm. So what does that say about the more creative thinkers such as Stephen King, H.P Lovecraft, Jules Verne, James Herbert, and the hundreds of other literary geniuses who have had such a huge impact and influence on society to the extent where their ideas have almost been ingrained into the social conscience? Writing is all about making things up for a living, and the wilder and wackier the ideas, the more one would be thought of as 'mentally ill', I suppose. Slightly worrying.

Writing inherently involves having an active fantasy life, after all, which may result from a tendency toward inner reflection rather than outward stimulation, but the defining difference between a writer and a schizophrenic is that the writer, hopefully, has developed a slightly more healthy approach to dealing with their "lack of D2 receptors". Surely that's not such a bad thing? Even if it is a form of escapism from reality that the writer, consciously or unconsciously, is seeking.

It's certainly something to ponder on the next time I get a creative urge. Perhaps I should get one of those plaques to put above my desk: "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps."

No So Broken Britain?

Usually, I'm not one to sit and watch party political broadcasts, preferring any number of other engaging activities from having a tooth removed to a colonoscopy, but as it was by the Labour party and presented by Eddie Izzard, I thought I'd give it a whirl. I really wish I hadn't bothered.

Britain isn't broken, Eddie? Well, I'd love to live in your little section of the world. I wonder if the skies are always blue, the fields filled with flowers and fairies, the roads clear and cone-free and the streets filled with smiling faces and encouraging words?

Perhaps he might be interested to know that I had to call the police last week to report a gang of products of New Labour's educational policy who were drinking, smoking, swearing, yelling at passers-by, dodging traffic, the usual things that they get up to when they're bored and have nothing else to do other than to piss other people off. Okay, it wasn't an emergency, so I called the dedicated line set up specifically to report anti-social behaviour. Someone would be along in a while, I was assured. My civic duty fulfilled, I sat down to watch some TV and tried to ignore the sounds of breaking glass, demented giggling and screeching tyres as the kids wandered into the traffic.

The following day, more out of curiosity than anything else, I rang the police to see what the outcome of the incident was and was told by the controller that officers had attended the scene just five minutes after our call had been placed, that they found that the crowd had dispersed, and thus the report had been closed. Erm...unless I'd slipped into a parallel dimension sometime during the night and imagined the screeching and the breaking glass, someone was being a little...creative with the truth. I requested a call back from the officer, who had supposedly attended, to discuss this little oversight. He did call back the following day, to his credit, and tried to explain that there had been a 'miscommunication' - that the attending officers had been on their way to respond when they had been called away to another more serious incident and thus had not attended the scene at all. So where exactly had this story written into the report about the children 'last being seen in the vicinity of such-and-such a street' come from?

Ah, I thought. Suddenly everything becomes clear.

I don't blame the police at all in this. It's not their fault that they have been forced to close off less-serious incidents by being more colourful in their reports than the average six year old with a pack of Crayolas, and just as truthful. They're stretched to breaking point already, and clearly some incidents are far more important than others and they have to prioritise. That, I understand. What I don't understand is the system that has resulted in them being forced to meet unrealistic targets set for them by the government who simply don't look favourably on a force whose ratio between reported crimes and closed incidents is wide enough to sail the Titanic through. How many other crimes are closed off like this, making it appear as though the police are doing such a sterling job so that the politicians can spout rhetoric about how wonderfully they are doing in their efforts to reduce crime and get more police on the streets? Don't these idiots realize that people's experiences are so far and gone from this Utopian vision of Britain in which Eddie Izzard seems to reside that they are little more than a smudge of volcanic ash on the horizon?

This country is in a far worse state now than it has ever been: Unemployment is sky-rocketing as more manufacturing is being moved abroad; businesses are being crippled by ridiculous laws being set by European politicians who are clearly so out of touch with reality that they genuinely believe Elvis lives on the moon; young people are coming out of universities with qualifications coming out of their assholes but who can't use a pipette or multiply without a calculator; illegal immigration is more out of control than ever, and now the police are being forced to make up reports for the sake of statistical performance.

I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm of the opinion that all politicians of all parties are pretty much the same - all little more than liars and manipulators out to secure their second home allowances, the funding for their duck ponds and the nepotistic appointments of their staff so that their own families, at least, remain safe from the recession that is crippling the rest of the country.

Maybe we should just all stay at home on May 6th. Perhaps that would be the clearest message any of us could send. Poor Emily Pankhurst must be spinning in her grave. If only any of those people coming out of university actually knew who she was.

I Guess That's Why They Call it Faith...

It's been a while since I last updated...a while since I've felt like updating would probably be more accurate. It's not been an easy few months for several reasons, but I'm hoping that the worst of it is behind me now. Famous last words if I ever I heard them, but never let it be said that I'm a total stranger to optimism...

Anyway, while I was off trying to find some order in my little chaotic corner of the universe, I managed to find some time to sort through the mountain of paperwork that I have stored beneath my bed. I'm a terrible hoarder, or at least I used to be, and I found it a strange, bittersweet experience to sift through the detritis that can accumulate in a person's lifetime. Darkly comic though it may be to imagine my relatives swearing and cursing at the rubbish I've held onto over the years when my number is finally called (which hopefully will not be for a very long time yet, because there is still plenty of internet to litter up with my scribblings), I do think that there are certain corners of a person's soul stored in such collections that would mean very little to anyone else. So, I came to the conclusion that it was time for a clearout, if for no other reason than to have more space to store more rubbish.

There were a lot of memories stored beneath that bed. A lot of my early manuscripts, in various states of completion, were the most entertaining. Some were just so cringingly awful that they went into the shredder straight away; others I deemed salvageable were tucked back into their folders so that I could work on them again in the future. But there was only one that really blew me away. It was an essay I wrote about ten years ago on the search for extraterrestrial life for a college course, when I was going through a thankfully short phase of watching 'Most Haunted' and believing that it wasn't a pile of sweaty pants. Which, of course, it is. Too many nights spent watching The X-Files, no doubt, had its influence in that, but conspiracies and paranormal phenonmenon were such a huge thing for me back then. I've always loved ghost stories, but the idea that we may be able to commune with the dead, that there are angels, miracles, truths in Tarot cards or that little green men are flying around in triangular shaped crafts are ideas that were relegated to the pre-millenium, end-of-the-world hysteria a long time ago. (No doubt to resurface again in 2012, but I digress...)

The sad thing is that I don't feel any wiser or soul-enriched for my more scientific way of looking at the world. If I think about it, I actually believe that I'm poorer for my lack of faith in all things mystical, and I feel quite nostalgic for the days when I did believe that there was more to the universe than rising petrol prices, recession, over-paid bankers and hypocritical, criminal politicians. Maybe because there was a certain peace to be found in thinking that there was something greater than all of us going on out there; an antidote to the poison of living in a country that's about to destroy everything that once made it great. A cynic's lot certainly is not a happy one, and reading through that essay, I couldn't help but wonder at the changes that have affected me since I wrote it that caused me to so radically alter my point of view to one so completely lacking in the imagination and whimsy that makes life worth living.

With so much visible change in a person's life from home decor to fashion to cars, I can't help but wonder at how much is going on that we don't even stop to notice. But I've noticed it now. Hopefully it's not too late to do something about it.

Crime or Justice?

Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms. They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice. ~Charles T. Sprading, Freedom and its Fundamentals

Dashing young thieves, a daring robbery, £40m in stolen jewellery, a clean getaway and no-one seriously injured - it is a scenario that has all the hallmarks of a Hollywood blockbuster.

I have to admit to a small smile when I read about it. Obviously, it would have been an entirely different situation had anyone been hurt, and while I would never seek to make light of the fear and trauma that those involved undoubtedly felt, nonetheless the fact remains that no-one was hurt, aside from Graaf’s insurers. I have no particular love for the wealthy elite and so I’m afraid I can’t find it within me to feel a great deal of sympathy for their loss. As far as I’m concerned, that £40m in adornments to decorate the necks and ears of people who have, arguably, done little to deserve their wealth would be far better spent in helping the thousands of people who are being made homeless everyday by the capitalists who are repossessing their homes. Which is why I have to laugh at the £1m reward now being offered for information leading to their capture. When the rest of the country is struggling to make ends meet, do they seriously believe that anyone will be that outraged by a crime which only offends the upper class where it most hurts – in their wallets?

Peter Bleksley, a former police officer and current crime writer, appearing on BBC’s Breakfast show yesterday morning expressed his outrage at the glamourization of crime while he pointed out that these two men were dangerous armed criminals and that people could have been hurt but for a stroke of luck. There were a few things about his comments that bothered me, not the least of which was the health and safety credo of "could have". Yes, "could have" but "didn’t". If people weren’t drawn to the dark, seductive, inherent sexiness of crime, then he wouldn’t be selling any books. I highly doubt that people buy them because they are horrified at the things that human beings are capable of doing to each other; they buy them because they are intrigued by the criminal mind, and because of their innate desire to know that justice has been done.

Perhaps it's not so much the glamour of this crime that has seduced people. Perhaps it is more of an expression of the desire to strike back at the capitalism that brought about the recession that has ground so many people down. It is the rich being targeted at a time when the poor are suffering. It is a sense of justice, of balance being restored. Maybe that is what Mr. Bleksley should be considering, instead of condemning people for their lack of moral fiber in failing to regard the heinousness of the crime. Being seduced by crime does not mean that a person is lacking in ethics.

After all, I glamourize crime in my own writings, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. I believe very strongly that the world is a highly complex place and that the nature of right and wrong is not as easy to define as perhaps it once was. For example, whilst I disagree with Ronnie Biggs being allowed compassionate release from prison, I also appreciate his son’s remarks earlier on this week that there are teenagers knifing and murdering each other on the streets who don’t get anywhere near the sentence that his father received. Justice is a very sticky issue which comes down to many different things, and the right decision isn’t always made in courts. Is it any wonder that movies such as Ocean’s 11, The Italian Job, Robin Hood and Swordfish have such wide appeal? So what if the law is broken? True justice is being served, and that’s what really matters to people when they are morally outraged and the system has let them down.

So sue me for wishing those boys well, and for glamourizing crime. I also glamourize morality, for those who care to look deep enough.