hatmandu

I’ve just finished watching the third season of Heroes. I enjoyed it, but various things about it - and about Lost (I’ve yet to see season five of that, though), and other contemporary TV shows, make me ponder about narrative theory. As one does.

One thing that’s really noticeable about these series is their reluctance to let characters die. In Heroes, the same core of characters continues from one series to the next, and various ingenious ways are thought up to aid this, to the extent that they can even reappear after death, whether as a figment of someone’s mind, or as a physical duplicate, or in someone else’s body, and so on (no names to avoid spoilers). The actors must have really good contracts drawn up… Yes, a few loveable characters have died, but they’re the exception.

A similar pattern persists in Lost, which seems to throw Occam’s razor ever further to the wind: it relentlessly multiplies entities beyond necessity, beyond the enjoyable teasing of the audience to the extent of suggesting the writers are rudderless. Season five, I’m told, may change this view - we’ll see.

Much is made of the ’story arc’ these days - how TV shows have become more sophisticated, and demand a complex level of attention. Which is fair enough, and of course books have run over multiple volumes before - but I wonder if the arc is being stretched to breaking point, and sometimes misses a fundamental of narrative: the expectation of an ending.

Frank Kermode, in The Sense of an Ending, wrote that fictions (as with human lives) have an implied ending all along, which makes ” possible a satisfying consonance with the origins and with the middle”. Peter Brooks’ Reading for the Plot also studies how we “strive toward narrative ends” - he coined the phrase “the anticipation of retrospection” for that sense of how we imagine ourselves at the end, looking back on where we are now.

We are promised an ending for Lost in season six - but is there any way we can meaningfully look forward to it? What about Heroes: we’ve saved the cheerleader and saved the world a couple of times already - what’s left? It just doesn’t seem clear that there’s a narrative architecture any more. Maybe they’ll have to end, like Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (another character brought back from the dead to satisfy a hungry audience) with a whimper more than a bang.

Another TV series that comes to mind is Doctor Who - long ago this came up with a clever notion for letting the character die, but the series live on: regeneration. We want the Doctor to keep having adventures - but even he is mortal, and the 12-regeneration limit gives a whiff of the grave that helps keep his adventures alive, I think. But I bet if the series is still running, the BBC will give in to the temptation to renew his regenerative lease when they run out…

Life on Mars worked well, partly because, I think, it had a clear two-series remit, and we knew an end would come, with all the fun of guessing what it might be and looking for signposts along the way. Ashes to Ashes neatly revives some favourite characters without the narrative problem of Sam Tyler (though is less innovative as a result, so far).

Maybe it’s time to start killing things off, and having ideas for new stories, instead of keeping the same ones going at the expense of all sense.

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

There are some enjoyable web comics about Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace here, here and here - even includes a coupla Gaussian copula gags (and for aficionados of the game of Horse!: representational horse!).

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

As far as I can see (oh, see here and here for comments from people in my flist, or posts by julietk, to whom apologies for my scepticism), the only reason why any of us here are getting Dreamwidth accounts (myself included) is to cybersquat our favoured usernames just in case it takes off/all our mates migrate to it.

So, two possible fates seem likely for DW:
1. It consists almost entirely of empty accounts, and implodes.
2. We realise we're all on it anyway and actually start using it.

I don't doubt its features are much better than LJ, yada yada, but I still can't see why we'd all be arsed to bother. LJ works fine; who's really desperate for more?

Wow. My Twitter personality test site, Twanalyst, has been used 150,000 times since I launched it just four days ago! It’s all pretty overwhelming, especially as I’m  trying to concentrate on a shedload of ordinary work at the moment… Anyway, thanks to everyone who’s used it and helped spread the word.

I’m genuinely working on new features for it, and in fact although the personality thing is a bit of fun, I think the site will have serious uses to give it longer-term appeal. For one thing, it’s useful to see stats and a user profile all on one page anyway; in future I want users to see how their stats have changed over time. I’m also working on a system to suggest relevant users for people to follow. If you have more ideas, do let me know.

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

A single blog post by one person I admire greatly, John Crowley, about another, Coleridge, has brought back in a rush all the haphazard things I love about the latter (and it turns out I’ve written briefly about them both before here). Crowley quotes some of this passage:

You have not above 300 volumes to write before you come to it— & as you write perhaps a volume once in ten years, you have ample Time, my dear Fellow!— Never be ashamed of scheming — you can’t think of living less than 4000 years, & that would nearly suffice for your present schemes—/To Be sure, if they go on in the same Ratio to the Performance, there is a small difficulty arises/but never mind! look at the bright side always— & die in a Dream!

The “dear fellow” he is talking to is of course himself, mocking his own tendency to scribble endless ideas for books and other projects in his notebooks – something I can relate to dearly.

Here’s another quote from the same year, 1804, collected in Anima Poetae:

This evening, and indeed all this day, I ought to have been reading and filling the margins of Malthus. I had begun and found it pleasant. Why did I neglect it? Because I ought not to have done this. The same applies to the reading and writing of letters, essays, etc. Surely this is well worth a serious analysis, that, by understanding, I may attempt to heal it. For it is a deep and wide disease in my moral nature, at once elm- and-oak-rooted. Is it love of liberty, of spontaneity, or what? These all express, but do not explain, the fact… From infancy up to manhood, under parents, schoolmasters, inspectors, etc., our pleasures and pleasant self-chosen pursuits (self-chosen because pleasant, and not originally pleasant because self-chosen) have been forcibly interrupted, and dull, unintelligible rudiments or painful tasks imposed upon us instead. Now all duty is felt as a command…

A time will come when passiveness will attain the dignity of worthy activity, when men shall be as proud within themselves of having remained in a state of deep tranquil emotion, whether in reading or in hearing or in looking, as they now are in having figured away for an hour…

His defensive stance on being allowed to dream is the tip maybe of an iceberg of agonies about his lack of output - but he still managed to outcreate most people, and much as some (far from all!) of his poetry is fantastic, I think it’s his prose which should be his lasting monument. He almost created a genre by himself - fragmentary reflections, allusions, digressions (all of which were what attracted him to Borges).

Some day I’d like to collect his thoughts of this kind into a ‘defence of dreaming’… But I probably won’t. And maybe that’s the point.

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

In case anyone cares, today I are trying an experiment: every time I want to do a Google search, I'm using Twitter search instead - posting reactions @hatmandu with the hashtag #twoogle. Will post reflections here tomorrow.

vigornian has made some good comments about the whole social media/malarkey. Having engaged in the debate on Facebook he mentions, and tried very drunkenly and probably unsuccessfully to explain Twitter to Paul and Craig last week, I feel the urge to explain why I like it so much.

The biggest reason for me is a slightly odd one: I'm obsessed with the idea of 'formal constraints' being a spur to creativity, hence an interest in crosswords, Oulipo, barnacle's "show me the way to go home" variations, etc etc. Having to write in 140 characters or less for me is a hugely liberating idea. I don't use Twitter to keep up with friends per se - that's what LiveJournal and Facebook are for (among other things) - though of course it's great to see friends there, some of whom don't use those other sites much or at all anyway. If you like, I use it to show off to strangers.

I have reasons for that, partly: I like creating oddball web quizzes and so on, and I've got plans for several Twitter apps that I hope could go viral. It's a bit depressing to put it in such terms, but much of this is about marketing - I'm not interested in the whole "drive business with Twitter" tedium that's everywhere, but I suppose I'm ego-brand building, which might lead to interesting work (I'm self-employed, remember?), but better still just leads to meeting interesting people. So, yeah, it's all about me - but really that's all about encountering all the myriad creative, interesting people out there I've never met before. I can gain an audience for my whimsies, and be the audience for others'.

Facebook is fantastic as a shared repository for friends' experiences (tomorrow, I'm meeting a friend I haven't seen for 15 years - thanks to Facebook); LiveJournal is best for discursive reflection and comment - but neither helps you meet new people much. I love LiveJournal because it's all about writing, and that's part of what I do in life; Facebook doesn't offer much creative expression - other than the status update, which I loved until I found Twitter - so leaves me colder.

I also love the elegant simplicity of the Twitter concept. The way you connect to others through @ and to subjects through # is very simple, but has a lot of power (I'm not saying it's without faults, mind).

editor says he thinks Facebook would kill Twitter by allowing public updates. maybe he's right, maybe he's not - but I personally prefer the sites (as cyclotronic says) to keep their separate strengths. Trying to be all things to all people might just end up being disappointing for everyone.

I mentioned to vigornian that I like Twitter's search facility, and he replied with a shrug - why would he want that? I don't know why he would, but I love it: I find interesting tweets and people all the time through it, all well as skimming the thoughts of a zillion people. It's like being telepathic. Many of those are dull as ditchwater, but with just 140 characters, gems shine out. Others on the web have written better than I can on how this "live search" concept is a big thing. It's not Facebook that should swallow Twitter - it's Google.

I couldn't quite get all this into 140 characters.

Small edit: I should also have mentioned how useful Twitter is for news feeds, whether national or specific (eg BBC technology) - if headline writers are any good, you can get the gist, and lately (=baby) I've sadly little time to read full stories. Though I still prefer RSS feeds somewhat, as the timeline gets so cluttered.

OK, so you love or you hate Twitter. I have six accounts so far, so you can assume I'm keen. Also, you may have different views on the celebs in Twitter thing.

But I am quite chuffed that Peter Serafinowicz has started following my daily crossword clue, entirely unbidden my me - I didn't even know he was on Twitter. I shall celebrate with a pint of pilk.

Oops. Yesterday I had the rare luxury of a day to myself, with wife and child visiting family in Lincoln. So instead of doing all the things at home I'd lined up to catch up on, I went on an 11-hour perambulatory drinking binge with sillage and Craig, rounded off with the pub quiz. Ouch.

BoJo MoFo!

Gosh. Years ago I did some subbing on The Lawyer. They ran an interview with Jack Straw, where da man was very grumpy: when he ordered a lackey to bring tea, he only ordered one cup. My headline was ‘One tea, no sugar’. (I think the pic of him might even have shown the tea - I have a copy somewhere.) Cos he was ‘no sugar’, right? I had to argue for ages to get them to keep it, ‘cos they didn’t get it. Eventually it stayed.

OK, so nothing very amazing, but I was Satisfied at the time. Today, I’ve just heard from a dear friend with an absurdly good memory that he met Straw today and they were discussing headlines. He told him mine - and Straw loved it, and then told it to the editor of The Guardian.

This is probably as famous as I’ll ever be.

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

Gosh. Years ago I did some subbing on The Lawyer. They ran an interview with Jack Straw, where da man was very grumpy: when he ordered a lackey to bring tea, he only ordered one cup. My headline was 'One tea, no sugar'. (I think the pic of him might even have shown the tea - I have a copy somewhere.) Cos he was 'no sugar', right? I had to argue for ages to get them to keep it, 'cos they didn't get it. Eventually it stayed.

OK, so nothing very amazing, but I was Satisfied at the time. Today, I've just heard from a dear friend with an absurdly good memory that he met Straw today and they were discussing headlines. He told him mine - and Straw loved it, and then told it to the editor of The Guardian.

This is probably as famous as I'll ever be.

There’s a reasonably interesting article here about how Twitter could bring Google to its knees (well, in some ways), but the best thing from it is this:

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

There's a reasonably interesting article here about how Twitter could bring Google to its knees (well, in some ways), but the best thing from it is this:

Every December, my work tends to tail off into the black hole of Santa's arse. Every January, I somehow assume this hiatus will continue, and I'm taken by surprise that it's consistently one of my busiest months. But boy, February this year is gonna be 'fun'.

Owing to the 'economic climate crunch' or whatever it's called, I have lost two clients recently. One involved designing showguides for property exhibitions - the administrators have just moved in. The other entailed writing various bits of frippery for a website which three of my LJ friends also wrote for. In this case, the consultants have moved in and realised that all this cheery content doesn't actually bring any revenue. So it goes.

Fortunately, I now have three new clients. One bizarrely is a London psychotherapy firm for which I initially offered to do a small job for free; one is a chain of London children's nurseries, which needs a new web dude, and for which I was kindly recommended. One is a large national membership organisation which publishes four magazines - I'm part of a small team which has stolen the work from the previous providers (a complicated saga in itself).

This is all good news, really - but sod's law dictates that everything happens at once. We have to hit the ground running with the latter and get a magazine out in the next three weeks - a time-frame in which I already have two other magazines and the flappy monster of the fringe brochure to design and get to press, along with a feature about DNA testing, several news articles and various website management tasks to undertake. This evening I now learn that my co-designer on the new big magazine thing has just lost his hard drive so can't do anything (he too is very busy) - so muggins here will do the whole first mag. Somehow.

I'm spewing all this out just to get my head round it, really - think of it as a very inefficient to-do list. I'm also very tired with baby-related sleeplessness. But hey, all this work does at least mean we can continue to survive while Helen's on maternity.

But if only people's deadlines didn't all collide like this every time!

Oxford chums will be glad to hear that The Epstein, Stornaway, Travelling Band and probably Little Fish will all be performing for Oxfringe!

• 09:13 The animals filed in dually: ll~ll ll~ll LV LV lll\ lll\ l\l\ l\l\ ll ll l\ l\ <Lˆ<L <Lˆ<L llllllll llllllll __--T(_____ ... #L #
• 09:17 LalalalalanternlalalalaladarlinglalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalatenderlylalalovedmelaalwayslalaLililalaLamplightlalaLiliMarlenlalaLili... #L #
• 09:36 #L IwillIwillIWILLIWILLIWILLyoullseeIwillIllfulfilmywillIwillIwillIWILLIWILLIWILLtheyllseeIwilliwilliwillIWILLIWILLIBLOODYWELLWILLIll (Fail) #
• 10:52 Having been using Fetch as my FTP client for years, I've finally discovered Cyberduck - hooray! Quack! #

Via LoudTwitter

• 14:32 Alas Geeknight attendance unlikely tonight #
• 15:17 Hillbilly Lil Lyle (Dullsville AL) lolls idyllically;ill Al Bell rollerballs pellmell to Llyn Hall Llanelli,lilts villanelles.Love/Hell? #L #
• 15:20 @stephenfry - as #L doesn't work, just in case: qurl.com/lllll (50 Ls tell a story) #

Via LoudTwitter

• 12:54 The grommet manufacturing industry congratulates Barack Obama on his inauguration today, which heralds a bright future for grommet retail #
• 20:31 GRRRR! My bloody gmail account has been hacked and sending everyone spam. #

Via LoudTwitter

Apologies if you've had spam from my gmail address. Some maladaptive swamp-dwelling pissflap has hacked the account and sent spam to everyone I've ever mailed.