Alternative Vote / Daily Update

So, the Alternative Vote. No, don't run away yet please, I know it's politics, I know it's usually as much fun as being nailed to Jeremy Beadle, but just bear with me. We don't have to do this for long. I think I'm voting yes after a bit of research this morning. It seems slightly better than the current system, and let's face it, most of the drawbacks aren't any worse than what happens now. It just means I can actually vote Lib Dem without risking my vote going to the Cons again. Link: Q&A: Alternative vote referendum
(Thanks BBC News, I love you. No really. Marry me and have my tiny, factual babies) What else? FYP is progressing... well, it's progressing. Now currently at a grand total of 3,500ish words, but they are 3500 words I'm actually proud of and would want to read myself commercially, you know, like in a book or a kindle or a toilet wall in a particularly profound restaurant. Here be sample:

"I know now that it is a necessary part of the change. The human brain learns through instinct and over time the subtle movement and inflections of the human machine, and so many of these lessons are stored deep in automated, subconscious routines. Absolute control of the body and mind begins with the relinquishing of instinct and fear; and stripped of those, I found I was now looking at my situation with absolute clarity."

Criminy. Those certainly are some words right there.

Clean for One Week

Events in meatspace have conspired, as they so often do, to deprive my usual haunt of internet for one week. One week in which I got a surprising amount of FYP done, the missus completed Mass Effect and we discovered a new, cheap source of noodles. But yes, the FYP. The bane of our collective existences, THAT is the source of my current tension and forthcoming apology. Yes that's right, I'm apologising for the apology I am about to launch into. Sorry. I mentioned free writing as a warm up to writing last time, and it is my intention to, unfortunately, use this blog over the next few weeks as a way to get my brain into gear and producing me that nice fat 2:1 I deserve. My biggest issue right now is my brain not wanting to write - there are so many bright and shiny alternatives to doing so that, like a petulant child, it would rather watch the xbox, or or play about on Facebook, or pretty much anything except work on the capstone to the last three years. The issue is though, a lot of things accumulate over a week-long internet blackout. I haven't even looked at my emails yet, mostly because there are a bunch of stag related ones in my staff account. So there is currently a war going on in my attention span between the FYP and the internet. In other words, everything's back to normal.

Blodge

Blog noun / verb; blogged, blog·ging. 1. n. a web site containing the writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Web sites. 2. v. to maintain or add new entries to a blog.

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Drudge noun / verb; drudged, drudg·ing. 1. n. a person who does menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work. 2. n. a person who works in a routine, unimaginative way. 3. v. to perform menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work.

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Blodge noun / verb; blodged, blodg·ing. 1. n. a web site containing the writer's or group of writers' own dull, distasteful or unimaginitive experiences, observations, opinions, etc. 2. v. to menially maintain or add unimaginative and/or dull entries to a blog.

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In other words no, I don't have any spectacular ideas for today, so it's rambling i'm afraid. There is a concept in creative writing called 'Free Writing,' where you just write about literally whatever's on your mind, and keep going without stopping or self editing for five minutes. Or your career, if you're Julie Burchill. At the end of this, you slap whatever you have into shape, adding the correct grammar, references and spelling to it and then trim it down to just the good ideas (again, unless you're Julie Burchill). The thing is, this is a good start for a piece of writing, but only after it's been through the mill of post-production editing and polishing. So many people now seem to see this as the primary means of production of writing: dashing off whatever comes off the top of their heads; Youtube comments, Facebook statuses, tweets, and more. As Kevin Smith said, the internet has given everyone a voice, and apparently everyone wants to use that voice to bitch about movies. Or bitch about people bitching about movies. Or bitch about... well, you get the impression. All web 2.0 has really brought us is thousands upon thousands of voices screaming into the void, hoping someone will do something about it. You know, someone other than ourselves. And the hope from our perspective, the blodgers, is that someone will sort it out for us. We're only shouting because we want something done without having to get off our arses and do it ourselves, and the increased option of feedback gives us at least the illusion that this might happen. So as a consequence, the quality of the feedback decreases by being spread too thin - if a company has 20 hard copy letters a year, they can actually give more than five minutes time to crafting a reply. But if there's a couple of thousand forum posts, or comments, or @tweets, they're more likely to fire off a quick and categorised self-help sheet that covers the vague area of concern. Ultimately it comes down to a problem with interactivity in media. Open yourself up to feedback and people expect that feedback to mean something. But it has to mean something for EVERYONE feeding back, and in the case of large corporations that means feeding back to every minor point raised, since the feedback is now so much easier to leave. See? Karl Pilkington was right. You leave your mouth going long enough and the brain starts working.

I do not write, therefore I am not

Let me clarify something. I call myself a writer, but do so with absolutely no authority. I have never been published. This ethereal pissing into the wind is about as much a form of publishing as the crazy guy shouting on the train is a form of media personality. But if anyone asks me what I want to do (and in my third year, they DO), I answer without hesitation "A Writer." I want to be a writer. I'd rather be a writer than anything else. A day job is just the thing I do to pay the bills until the Guardian notices me and all of a sudden I'm having lunch with Charlie Brooker and Danny Wallace. They both secretly hate me of course, but smile politely because I'll name-drop anyone. But we are currently being bombarded, the other half and I, with a steady stream of brochures full of management babble about how they want graduates to work for them. It's all 'realising potential' and 'maximising productivity' without ever actually saying what it is that you (or even the company) actually DO. Really. There's one company in there who's page I read three times, and I still have no idea what their end product is. But it all sounded very decorative, regardless. I'm just very suspicious of people who offer you £35,000 and a gym and don't tell you what you have to do. I'm fairly certain that's how hitmen start out. Paranoia aside; is the entire upper echelon of the working community now made up of terrified postgrads throwing bollocks at each other? Thinking up more and more convoluted sentences to cover up the fact that they don't understand the management babble they were replying to in the first place? So maybe that's it. The writers have lost. There are no great novels any more, just marketing copy and a population too caught up in baffling and sesquipid turns of phrase to realise it means nothing. These people exist to manufacture, hype and trade networks of bollocks, and the money's all so knotted up in that level of tittybollocks that there's nothing left for the people who actually do some sodding work round here. I don't include myself in that noble category, by the way. I'm a writer.

Now we have Adwords

A brief note of semiparental responsibility pulls at my heartstrings - the kind of parental responsibility that would occur looking at a toddler who's holding a bag of flour, and hasn't thrown it yet, but you know they're probably going to, and it's going to make a mess, and you'll have to apologise to the woman he's aiming it at... You see Google sent me free Adwords money, so if you've been misled here through an Ad, I can only apologise. Really, I do. I tried not to bother you while you were just innocently stalking people on Facebook, or shopping for cats on Ebay or just looking for porn like everyone else. Really, I'm sorry to have troubled you. I even tried to make the ad weird enough that nobody would follow it, but here you are. Anyway, enjoy the scenery and rants. Having been given this free money gives me an annoying responsibility to actually put up content over the next month, so we'll see how this all works out. And I'm sorry about the flour. It'll wash out. I promise.