Failure to lunch

Basically, November has been an unmitigated disaster. In the sense that nothing spectacular has happened, and the huge goals set for the month (complete a draft of a 50,000 word novel for NaNoWriMo, grow an exemplary moustache raising loads of Moula for charity, get closer to a solid plan set for the 'top secret I've told everyone I'd love to do it' Route 66 bike dream) have all passed me by in an unnassuming and mediocre fashion. I've fallen into the middle ground of unexciting but bearable and pretty easy life, being mediocre and happy to let that happen. I've raised £26 for Movember. Reached just over 35,000 words for NaNoWriMo. And put together lists, sorted budgets and planned dates by which certain things have to have happened for the trip next year. But they're all just 'alright' things. There's been no huge leap forward or giant, spectacular event to really get them going. Why? Life.

My Movember Diary (Or 'It's not just dirt above my lip honest')- Day 7

Day 7

The "Is-that-even-hair?" face

Okay, so the idea of a day to day photo diary of my Mo journey was well and truly shot down when, on days two through to five there was very little change in the smooth surface of my face. So it'll be coming a week at a time.

I haven't put a photo on my actual MoBro page yet- so unworthy a 'tache it is. And I've raised a grand total of £0 so far, as many people at work have mentioned ( and I agree with this idea) that money will come my way when a)they get paid and b) there is something mighty enough on my face to be seen. So stay tuned for next week, when it'll be properly visible.

Donate here- http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1901064/

Our engineers are working hard to resolve this problem...

Hello again, all. Due to a recent increase in my daytime activities thanks to gainful communicative effort in a society of business and the commencement of involvement in a national social event there will be no Sunday Evening Read review on this day.

Basically, I've been buggered for time trying to up my wordcount for NaNoWriMo this weekend after work. So I haven't managed a book review. Don't worry, I've already got the book in mind, read and re-read it recently and have plenty to say, so it will be up next Sunday. Here's a hint- it's horror, written by a modern author, and involves the Moon somewhere in its title.

In the next seven days I promise I'll have it written up and scheduled. In the meantime, happy November! If we all wish it enough, it might finally start getting frosty and cold 'dahn sahf' like this time of year should be.

We apologise for this interruption...

There will be no Graphic Novel Review today. In between the determined concentration behind trying to force hair out of my face so I don't look like a fraud for Movember, the flurry of words, keys and pen against paper that is NaNoWriMo, and a few other things, I haven't had time to finish reading Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists.

So, I'll get to reading it in the few moments I have free now, and normal service will be resumed next week with a review of it. It might be worth a wait, I couldn't say just yet

In a messed-up wo-o-orld...

Hi everyone, cheers for popping by- this is a second quick update between the pub, NaNoWriMo and sleep, but I feel it's important to post because it's pretty disgusting yet phenomenal that people would go as far as to do such a thing.

I direct you to this link here, featuring real life Barbie Feet.

I don't want to go into the why's and wherefores, the contexts and containing features, the reality and the "what if?"s and the wonderings. I'll just spread word, via io9, via this link, of the horrifyingly real pedicural, perambulatory problems being pushed on owners of feet everywhere. They might not exist yet, but when they do...

Support this as & when you can- http://mobro.co/ChrisHousden

Tolkien didn't just write- he drew, too

Hi everyone, cheers for popping by- this is a quick update between the pub, NaNoWriMo and sleep, but I feel it's important to post because it's pretty cool. Like Tolkien, and the histories he wrote? Take a looksie...

Never seen original concepts of the Lonely Mountain before?

It includes loads of great artwork you'd never see anywhere else, unless you paid phenomenal amount for books with artwork. Surely worth a look?

My Movember Diary (Or 'It's not just dirt above my lip honest')- Day 1

Day 1- Bare-faced

Shaved it all off and I'm now clean shaven, a blank canvas upon which to grow a masterpiece.

Donate here- http://mobro.co/ChrisHousden

The November Experiment- see you on the other side

So I graduated a few months ago, I've got around to the pay-off of weeks of soul destroying job hunting and a naff unpaid placement in the form of a pretty sweet job, and I'm starting to plan properly a trip somewhere abroad which I've had in mind for ages to take place next year.

Things are looking up and up. And tonight sees the end of October. It heralds the beginning of November. A month in which two organised, month-long events are held which I have, in the past, ignored or shied away from as taking up too much time or being "not for me". Well, no more. As of tomorrow I'm correcting the imbalance of writing I've been doing by embarking on NaNoWriMo.

I'm also shaving my beard and 'tache off, for the reason of getting a clean slate for Movember. From that blank canvas a mighty handlebar shall grow. I may end up looking like Rufus Hound. Or being beaten up.

If I'm not dead from trying to write a novel in a month or from attackers objecting to the facial hair I shall cultivate, I'll see you on the other side.

Also, you can check up on the writing here- http://www.nanowrimo.org/, searching for CJMK2

and can donate to the cause for prostate and testicular cancer research here- http://mobro.co/ChrisHousden. Please give, even a little.

Catch-up TV Triple- Spooks and the Smiley series- why le Carré is wrong to snub the show so.

Spooks finished this weekend, culminating a storyline of intrigue, subverted Cold War tradition, intelligence and action with an episode which drew on double-takes and the embittering of those involved to deliver a stunning, intelligent and un-secondguessable outcome.

Le Carré vocally derided the show about a month ago as juvenile and not at all like the intelligence services that he depicts in his fiction or that he was a part of professionally.

Following on in the vein of arguing against Margaret Atwood's ill-informed assessment of science fiction and attempt to redefine it so she could categorise her work as realist, literary fiction, I'm inclined to disagree with le Carré's assessment of Spooks. I'm also inclined to have a bit of a rant here discussion over just what is so different, in his eyes, between the popular show and the popular books, stopping off at a little point wondering why yet another author is so disinclined to be associated with a sub-genre of entertaining fiction and wants, instead, to be revered as the ultimate high brow incarnation of that sub-genre to the point where it is absorbed into the literary fiction which is all that is worthy of being read in the author's mind.

Catch-up TV Triple- Too soon for a storytelling? Biopics on 20th century talents

Why biopic recent history to the point where the character or focal personae are still alive? I recently saw Frost/ Nixon and, more recently, Holy Flying Circus. I've also seen the original programmes of Frost interviewing Nixon and pretty much all of Python that's available. It made me start thinking- is either film worth doing? If so, what's the point in them changing things?

I'll say this- like with so many of my posts, this isn't going to have a definitive answer. To the point where I've actually said as much before we go on.

Dramatic licence and creative adaptation are all well and good. But when it comes to Frank Langella shouting "When the president does it, it's not illegal" while the real Nixon merely stated it as quiet fact in the true interview, all for the purposes of a crescendo, a turning of the tables in the dramatised debate, is it really worth it? If you want that, then have it. But make a political drama, write a new story, in which such an event occurs. Don't change history. More importantly, don't change what was a great, subtle moment in the undoing of Nixon by Frost. It cheapens the very interview it was inspired by.

It was a similar affair, but much more widely and liberally apportioned, with Holy Flying Circus. This 'dramatic re-telling', as it was marketed, of the furore around The Life of Brian felt as though it was trying too hard to be Python-esque in the weird and whacky but organic way that they were, in the same way that Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing tried to hard to capture the absurd humour of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Trilogy (of Five). The end result was something forced, a bit of a mess.