Monday, June 27, 2011

Picture taken on a run while running



Open

I think you need to close another gate.
Run! keep the key tucked safely away.

I think a lock is opening somewhere.
Jump! to its jar without any fear.

I think an open window is blowing in a breeze.
Stop! let the cold fly in through the breach.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

First draft of the opening chapter to a potential story about which I don't know what yet. Well, don't know EXACTLY what yet.

1

The phone rang. Nothing about it stood out; it was simply the typical electronic bleating of a modern-day cordless. Unremarkable. There was nothing emphatic about the way I sprang from my seat as I always do when the phone rings, either. For some reason the phone ringing has always been my master. Whether I’m eating dinner, on the toilet, when I used to bathe my children or in the process of making love - whatever that is - I have to know who is at the end of the ringing. The unanswered phone is the greatest mystery of them all.

Anyway, it rang. I sat up, and with a couple of hurried strides I was looking down at the orange backlit display. It read P-R-I-V-A-T-E. “Aye”, I thought, “one of those.” The chances are that the P-R-I-V-A-T-E call is anything other than an over-eager eighteen-year-old telephone monkey reading from a hymn list of carefully scripted phrases designed to lull the receiver into a verbally incapacitated state by which the words, “no, I’m not interested, sorry” are somehow wiped from your vocabulary as they bombard you with open questions and well-crafted one-liners was pretty slim. I always look on the bright side. So I wasn’t expecting much. But then why would I?

“ello.”
“Will?” to which I hmm-hmm’ed.
“It’s me. I…I need to talk to you.” The voice was quiet, somewhat nervous, but I knew who it was.
“I’m here. Fire away.” Then I thought about it a bit. “Is everything ok?”
“When can you come over?” For some reason her reluctance to give me more information as to her condition brought out the stubborn child in me.
“Depends on how important it is,” I replied, having a pretty good idea as to how important it was. She changed tactics.
“Don’t worry about it. Look, I’ve gotta…”
“No, no.” I broke in, defeated - again. “What’s up?”
Silence.
“Ok, I’ll be over in a couple of hours and you can tell me then, yeah?”
“Ok.”
“Right, well, see you in a bit.”
“Got any fags?” I had.
“Ses.”
“Ses.”

I waited listening until she put down the phone. I didn’t know what I was listening for, or what I thought I would hear, but I was sure I heard a male voice murmur just before the phone went dead. The kind of muffled speech that could be the hollow sound of the TV bouncing off one of the white, picture-less walls of her apartment getting itself caught in my earpiece or, it could have been another man saying something in another room of the house, or perhaps just in the background.

Why would this bother me? She’s is free to entertain who she likes when she likes. Up until now, the only things that didn’t add up were that a) if it was another man, why call me and ask me to come over? and b) why not tell me the extent of what’s on her mind on the telephone?

There was only one way to find out, really. And unfortunately that required me to shower, trim my beard, deodorant, aftershave, one of those cheap-but-ok-looking plain-coloured, long-sleeve T-shirts from H&M – black - coupled with a pair of tight-fitting slightly faded navy blue jeans. The mirror told me I looked semi-decent so I smiled broadly at my reflection, showing all my teeth. It promptly bumped my score from a merit to a distinction. It was easily bought.

I considered getting my jacket on to the extent where I imagined putting my arms through the sleeves, picking up my car keys from the Redwood-carved all-purpose varnished small bowl my dad took back from California while on one of his jaunts that lay on a cream-coloured metal IKEA upright shoe cabinet by the utility room door, but a cigarette with a nice, cold tall glass of Ribena on my terrace called and told me that five minutes in their company was needed before the almost unavoidable car-ride into town.

Tar tar










Location:Tarupvej,Odense,Denmark





Location:Lykkegårdsvej,Odense,Denmark







Niels and Albert

Pensive personified.




The power of the publisher: Why does the games media sit back and take it?

In the wake of 2K Games - or a PR firm the company hired - threatening to withhold review code to websites that reacted infavourably to Duke Nukem Forever I've decided to pen a couple of my thoughts on the issue. 
It's easy to blame the publisher for its Ivory Tower arrogance, but what irks me more is that the games media is so passive. Its passivity, of course, is down to market competition, comparatively low wages, and a lack of a homogeneous “journalistic ethic.”
2K should now be banned across the board. All UK publishers should not promote any story featuring any of their games. Eurogamer should not review their games nor should VG247 give them any news coverage. CVG, RPS et al. should all be in on it.
The power has to be with the publication, not the publisher. This reeks of journalism in the 80s where a politician could call an editor and get a story pulled. Now the power is with the paper (maybe too much, some might argue) and the powers-that-be simply need the publication for exposure just as much as the publication needs them; a two-way street.
In the video game industry, publishing houses can pick and choose who they want to cover their stories. Where’s the balance in that? How can we now trust the next review of Duke 5 in 13 years’ time? How do we know how far their influence reaches? Why should we blindly trust a reviewer to be impartial when his or her editor just sits back and takes it?
A blanket UK boycott against all 2K products (or if you count Eurogamer then you’ve got Germany, Portugal, Denmark etc. etc.) Hopefully the coverage blackout will effect certain wings of the 2K corporation financially and they’ll soon think twice. But if editors continually focus on finance, oneupmanship and the “exclusive” above and beyond principle, ethics and the balance of power between the publisher and the publication, the industry will never be considered a real home for journalistic talent as question marks will always hang over just how much a publisher has influenced certain sections of it.
Which is a shame, as on the whole, and the people that I’ve met and worked with are just as talented as any broadsheet writer and more than deserve to be recognised as such. Site owners and editors need to  stand up and be counted. For the sake of their craft and their reputation.