September

I recall writing a blog about September last year, though I also vaguely recall I split it into three and it was halfway through October before I finished the segments. This year is different.

September has always filled me with ambivalence, a swirling mix of emotions both positive and negative that tend to leave me a bit spaced out until I get into the swing of things.

Work
This year will be the first year since I had my breakdown that I’ve been working in a school at the start of the academic year. A part of me — the part that values any kind of financial security — is pleased by this. Summer has been a slippery slope of expense, with various bits and pieces I rely on threatening to fail (looking at you, PC) or actually failing entirely (yes, you, Graphire4: though we had a good run, didn’t we!) As well as technical stuff, I spent too much money on alcohol. Sure I don’t really care that I’m spending money on the drink — I’m not in danger of becoming an alcoholic in any way — but my motivation for spending so much time in Chicago’s has been perhaps a bit skewed and, ultimately, foolish. Time will no doubt tell on that one.

Financially, then, things are on the up. 2 days departmental training and organisation this week, followed by 3 days per week until Christmas, and possibly after depending on the state of play at Pensnett in the coming weeks/months.

The downside to this, of course, is the work itself. Already I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get something as simple as a timetable and half-term-plan sorted out. The upheavals at the school are noticeable. There is a miasma of disbelief and an undercurrent of anger at what the establishment is enduring in these last few months of its existence. Shakeups to the established systems of the school are, in my lowly opinion, unwise. But perhaps that is what separates the Senior Management from the lowly grunt on the front lines. Maybe their vision for what the school can be in its final year will be a triumphant swan song. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that splitting a GCSE class between three teachers and trying to get a coherent curriculum going is fundamentally idiotic, and difficult to even try and put into practise. Yet that is what much of today was spent doing. Trying to work the hodgepodge timetable to not disadvantage the students’ learning.

I do go on.

Television
As with last year, part of why September excites me is the new lineup of television. I’m not going to go into a big list like I did last year, but two shows I’ll certainly be checking out this autumn are Supernatural and Castle, both of which premiere within the next couple of weeks. The latter, especially, I find very inspiring as a writer, and hope that the stories will continue to fuel my own imagination and creative process over the next few months.

Writings
Speaking of my creative process, I recently received feedback from a couple of proofreaders of the almost final draft of novel #1, with its finalised title of “Chains of Memory” (assuming a publisher doesn’t change it). I’d say its 99% done now. I’m tightening up a last few scenes and then knuckling down to get it sent off to agencies. Publishing is a fairly arduous and lengthy process, so even if somebody snaps it up, it’s likely to be 12-18 months before it gets spotted on the shop floor. Expect excited blogs/twitter/facebook updates should the unimaginable happen however!

While I’ve been polishing that one with my finest literary chamois, I’ve also been hard at work on the sequel, “Chains of Time”. The second novel is a real change of pace, as well as setting (and time period, as the title might suggest). So far I’m thoroughly enjoying having the creative output, though I admit the going has been slow due to distractions over the summer and the lack of an actual deadline for me: yet another reason why I should try and get a three-book deal signed. Publisher pressure is a great motivator, so I’m told.

Distractions
As I mentioned during the holidays, I’m prone to hoarding games. I tend to start playing them in a burst of vigour and then peter out after a few hours. I play games for stories, not the exciting and dynamic whatever systems that games these days try and show off. Artificially lengthened games where the story pace is slow and there is, for example, a lot of wandering down darkened corridors, annoy the hell out of me. A game that is 8-10 hours long is just perfect for my attention span, and while it may seem outlandish to pay £35 or whatever for a game that long, I put it into perspective that I spend more than that on alcohol on a night out, and at least I can sell or trade the game in after I’ve finished with it.

During the course of the holiday I went back and finished Half Life 2. I bought HL2 way back when it first came out, and got bored of it about a third of the way through. Since friends very kindly purchased me a copy of the Orange Box via Steam, I decided that I would definitely have to finish not only HL2, but its episodic successors, creatively titled Episodes One and Two. And I’m glad I did. As the games are now pretty old, my slowly dying PC didn’t struggle running them at maxed settings, and the atmosphere they evoked, and the stories they told (while a bit linear) were definitely more in tune with my more mature gaming sensibilities these days. I also finished a couple of other games, made some headway into others, couldn’t for the life of me get Crysis to run for more than a couple of minutes without crashing, and tried out Return to Such&Such MMO offers: Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning all threw freebie time at me, though I admit it took me longer to download the clients and install than I actually ended up playing the games. Nevermind.

I think that is enough on games.

Looking Forwards
As you will know if you tend to read my blogs with any regularity (there’s what, maybe 3 of you?), I’ve been trying very hard since my breakdown and back injury to stay positive and look forwards to a brighter future. This has obviously been fairly difficult recently due to the economic crisis, but I feel I am making some progress into getting life back on track.

Ideally I would like to move out into a place of my own sometime within the next couple of years. As much as I love the free rent of living at my parents’ house, with both brother and sister having now moved out, I feel a bit like the odd one out these days. This is, in many ways, a ludicrous feeling to have since I spent eight years in Lancaster and the North West, but nevertheless I shall be twenty nine years of age in January and I simply don’t like the idea that come thirty I may still be here and alone.

Obviously I don’t mean alone in the sense of people surrounding me. I run into people all the time, it being the very nature of my job, and me being an inherently social person (despite the time I spent chained to the PC or my netbook). But I am committed to the idea (and, I would hesitate to add, probable fact) that if I wish to move out, I have to find one of two kinds of people to interact with.

Either I need to find a small group of friends willing to rent a place together. Or I need to blunder about blindly in the hopes of finding a girlfriend, an endeavour that I continue to be awful at.

I’m still not particularly sure what the problem is in this regard. A lack of confidence and self-esteem may be part of the problem, but recently I’ve been finding it easier to talk and flirt my way into at least friendships with women whom I would consider quite attractive. I suppose my main failing is a complete inability to tell if women are interested in me in that way. I’ve always kind of fallen into relationships, without any real kind of dating process, so I’ve never really asked women out, or chatted them up at bars, or whatever the accepted social norm is (if there even is one).

I’m not exactly a bad example of the gender, either. I’m smart, I’m savvy, I have a certain kind of dry wit that perhaps has limited appeal, and I’m not altogether unattractive, though a couple of trips per week to the gym might help improve self esteem in that department.

I think maybe I get entangled in the “What ifs”. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. The “If I ask her out, what if she’s not interested. Will we still be friends? Will she etc etc” quandary.

My notion of relationships is a bit of a slow burner, I suppose. Taking time. Romance. None of the cheap, quick sex and its over that many of the men I see out and about on the weekend are so obviously after. I’m sure I can’t be too unusual, the this regard, but again, an inability to read if people like me as a friend or as something more is a huge mental and emotional hurdle to try and overcome.

It’d be so much easier if people just told me, but then there may be issues of a similar kind from their point of view, and I am nothing if not cursed with huge amounts of intellectual and emotional empathy for other people (thanks for that legacy, Mom).

I meant for this to be a fairly positive diatribe. Don’t think I quite managed that did I? The message to take away from this, should you care, is that I am getting better with all this. Even so far as to ask somebody out, though nothing has come of it yet. This at least shows an improvement in my confidence. Some would say a huge improvement considering me and my crippled emotions.

(Speaking of which, there has been no improvement in my recovery of so many lost memories from before my breakdown. I find sometimes that fragments of times and events that I don’t consciously remember seep into my dreams, but they always leave me somewhat disturbed upon waking, as you might expect.)

Fin
I think that that will do for me splurging thoughts, feelings and beliefs onto the page for now. I always have a tendency to feel embarrassed about what I write after I’ve posted these irregular monologues, (it’s one of the reasons I don’t spell check/grammar check/read through them) but I am not so easily embarrassed these days it seems, though I sincerely hope people don’t think ill of me for voicing my thoughts and opinions in this way.

We all need our outlets, after all, and when I cannot use analogies in my novel writing, this is the purest option left open to me.

~Jon

On Romance and Comedy

All of my friends are quick to point out that my taste in films, music, and television is questionable at best. I'm not really sure why we differ so much in this regard actually. But as a general rule of thumb, both Spence and Andy can both accurately state within 10 minutes of watching a new show whether it will be a Burrage Show or not. To the best of my knowledge, they've never been wrong.

Sometimes I try to get them both to watch the latest programme that I think is great, but I think they've become so skeptical of my taste that they simply smile and nod and don't give things a chance, which in my opinion is a shame, but for their sakes is probably a way of retaining sanity. Obviously I'm biased so I couldn't say.

I'm a very romantic person. Words used to describe me by female friends include "sweet", "cute", "silly", and "romantic". Yes, that last one is a bit of a giveaway. One of my friends said I came very close to sounding like "the perfect man". Obviously she's on drugs or belongs in a mental institute. ;)

But it's true, to a certain extent. I was brought up on old-world values, immersed in a world of chivalric nights from the tales of King Arthur, and the off-kilter chivalry of Robin Hood, as well as classic stories from around the globe. I've always had this sense of propriety in me. I open doors for people, I stand on the outside of the pavement so that ladies and older folk don't have to risk getting soaked by passing cars. If the pavement isn't wide enough for two-way traffic, I stop and let people through first or, if they beckon me on, I always say thank you. Simple, basic manners I guess, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't take the time anymore for such simple courtesies.

Naturally I have a psychological weakness for films and television shows dealing with the interaction of men and women. I've not exactly had a lot of relationships, and I often feel a bit awkward until I get to know someone much better than perhaps they need to know me. I'm a man of various tastes, and some of them are - perhaps - a little surprising. And I love watching well-rounded characters on the big or small screens who are involved in some kind of romantic daliances.

This is why I love Chuck, my current favourite TV show which I may or may not already have written a blog on... (did I mention I have a bloody awful memory, and I'm too lazy to check >_>) It's especially true to my life in a way as I think of myself as very much the Chuck Bartowski type guy. I'm good with computers, I'm nerdy, I'm sarcastic, I have fairly high ideals but often find myself stuck in a rut for one reason or another. And obviously I hope that at some point a super-hot Agent Walker-type is going to sweep into my life for whatever reason, and that - in the words of Mr Bartowski - I am going to have to win her over again and again (and again!)

That's just my idea of romance, I guess. Not just sitting back and letting yourself go no you've found someone, but constantly trying to keep things fun and alive and exciting. It could be something to do with low self-esteem I dunno, but part of me really digs the idea that yeah, I should have to work for a decent relationship, and make sure I do everything right.

Of course, Chuck is a romantic comedy action espionage adventure show. With an emphasis on the comedy a huge amount of the time. I truly believe that I have a decent sense of humour. Sure it may be a little sarcastic and prone to innuendo at times, but I at least think it can be sophisticated most of the time. I find a lot of things funny, and if I don't, I won't force a laugh just to appease someone (sorry, I'm a bastard like that ><) People who make me laugh include Alan Davies, Billy Connelly, and Jack Dee. Peter Kay sometimes (but not often) gets a chuckle from me. Every now and again, Russel Brand gets likewise, but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch anything either of them do. I've got a dry, straight man kind of humour about me. I like dry wit, deadpan stuff. Clever jokes. Things you have to think about. Arguably I'm a thinking man. (Yeah I know, lol!)

I think Shakespeare is funny. "What the fuck?!" I hear many of you cry! And yes, based on how it's taught in schools and stuff, I can fully understand why people don't like the Bard's plays (and I still can't stand most of the History plays, sorry Bill!) But there's a lot of funny stuff in Shakespeare if you can understand it.

Some of my favourite films of the last few years have been adapted from Shakespeare. The scenes with the Nurse in Luhrman's Romen + Juliet are funny in both the original and modern versions. Likewise 10 Things I Hate About You is a rather excellent and witty retelling of the classic Taming of the Shrew. And yes, both of them are romances, bringing me 'cleverly' full circle.

My inspiration for this post was the film No Reservations starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart. It's not a brilliant film. The plot is formulaic, with no real surprises, twists or turns apart from the one death near the start which I must admit I hadn't expected. From there on everything unfolds exactly as I knew it would from that moment on. And yet I'd still speak highly of the film for a couple of reasons.

Firstly the casting is excellent. I get really really sick of films where they've cast big names stars simply because they're big name stars. If you're gonna have romance in a film, it has to be believable. It has to have chemistry. Say what you like about Mr and Mrs Smith, but when you look at Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in that film you know exactly why they're together in real life. Eckhart and Zeta Jones have chemistry in spades, and the whole film really revolves around the aloof, proud female chef and the dorky, opera-loving male chef.

Secondly, there were some very touching moments in the film. Obviously I'm a big sap prone to crying at emotional things as I'm sure I've mentioned before, but I do like it when a film billed as a romantic comedy has the guts to throw some tragedy in there too. It worked for R+J after all.

I'd give it 4/5 stars just for having the casting, the tragedy, and some pretty damned funny scenes.

Romance and comedy. Two of my favourite, essential elements of life!

September Part Deux

Welcome back to my rundown of TV to watch this season.

We had Monday last time, so we'll leap straight into Tuesday!


TUESDAY

There's only one TV show worth watching on a Tuesday night, and that's HOUSE M.D. starring the ever-awesome Hugh Laurie. Its probably one of my all-time favourite TV shows. A great blend of humour, interesting stories, and attractive female doctors. What's not to like?!

Season 4 ended with a brilliant double-parter involving House, his best friend Wilson, and Wilson's girlfriend Amber. Season 5 opens up with the repurcussions of these events, and how life has changed for all because of them. As far as I'm concerned, it is essential weekly viewing. If I could only watch 1 programme a week, it would be an awkward toss-up between House and Chuck.


WEDNESDAY

As I've explained in previous blogs, I am a big fan of crap TV, and also of the "Bad is Good" phenomenon, where something is so unbelievably bad it actually holds your interest to see if it can ever actually get any worse. One of Wednesday's programmes holds my interest because of this. If someone had asked me last year, which one 80s-90s classic TV show would I remake and update for a modern audience, I'd have probably gone into some kind of spasm and said "None of them! Don't you dare do it! Don't you dare spoil my childhood memories!" I mean, can you imagine what a modern day TV exec would do to something like the A-Team?! Update it for the war in Iraq or something? No! Just NO!

But sadly I'm not the boss of TV, and thus this year we've seen a remake of Knight Rider hitting the screens. Now, everyone knows which two things made the orginal Knight Rider a success: a super-cool car with lots of gadgets and special effects; and of course the Hoff!

Now I watched the pilot for the remake, and I was kinda intrigued. I mean, it was poorly paced,but the special fx were kinda cool, and it at least had a cameo from the Hoff in it. It ventured dangerously close to the absurd a lot of the time though, and since my general weekly line up doesn't really have any shows that fit the Bad is Good category, I figured I'd make it my mission to watch Knight Rider and see how long it takes before they cancel it for being pap.

Only good thing about it so far is that the female lead is very pretty. Not sure how long she will be able to distract me from the actual content of the episodes, but since they got her in her undies in episode 1, and in a bikini in episode 2, they're doing well so far!

The other show to hit the screens on wednesday night is the Tim Burton-esque "Pushing Daisies".

Its funny, it has cool dialogue, an interesting premise, and soooo many bright colours and interesting characters you feel that some of them could easily hog the show if it wasn't so well-balanced. Its a difficult show to explain, but the basic premise is that Ned, the main character, can touch dead things and bring them back to life for sixty seconds. If he does not touch them again within that time, something else has to die to balance everything out. If he touches them again, they go back to being dead. Of course, his childhood sweetheart dies and he brings her back to life, but while they are in love with each other, they can never actually touch. This provides all manner of awkwardness and hilarity.


THURSDAY

I constantly argue with people about "Smallville". I'm still unsure if it should go into the "Bad is Good" box. Certainly there have been a lot of bad episodes, but I still watch it, and this is one of the Bad is Good criteria. The latest season has seen 2 of the main cast leave (Lex Luthor and Lana Lang) but as I think I mentioned in a previous blog, I thought that might not be too bad a thing. Seems I was right. Season 8 has started strong, with interesting pace, some cool, well-rounded characters, and a fair bit of action. The last episode which was essentially an origin episode for the Green Arrow was a bit weak, but hopefully the season won't slide down into rubbish now that they've shaken the dynamic up so well by having Clark Kent finally move to Metropolis and become a reporter!


FRIDAY

Disappointingly, there's nothing on Fridays that I could see. Gives me a day to catch up anyways :P


SATURDAY

Nothing on American TV on Saturdays either, so I've had to scrape the barrel a bit and watch BBC1's latest attempt to fill the Doctor Who-shaped hole, "Merlin". Now, I studied myths and legends as part of my degree. I also studied them as a hobby before that. I like Arthurian myth a lot. But I'm not above people changing classical myth and legend to create an entertaining TV show. It kinda worked with the BBC's "Robin Hood" and its kinda working with "Merlin" too.

Sure the 'established' timeline of the legend is all out of kilter, the characters are kinda different, etc etc, but over all: its reasonably entertaining, it has Anthony "Giles from Buffy" Head in it, and the girl that plays Morgana is really quite fit. Obviously for a more discerning television viewer, this might not be enough, but for me this does quite amicably.


So that's my TV week. Hopefully there won't be any other cool programmes coming out soon, as I don't really have any more time to watch stuff now ><

~Jon

September Part #1

I realise I’m behind on blogs, but in keeping with the spirit of my new year’s resolution I’m going to write 3 and backdate them to the appropriate date. This is blog #1 of 3.

This blog is about September, the month thereof. This particular month means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but to a good percentage of the British populace this means Back to School.

Back to School is a fairly important part of the British calendar. Stationary stores and clothing stores tend to have special sales on; and teachers, children and parents alike prepare for the end of the summer holiday and the start of the new term. Some teachers look forwards to it (especially the supply teachers who don’t get paid over the summer holidays), others do not. A lot of parents look forwards to having their children out of their hair for most of the daytime. And even some kids look forwards to it because it means they can see their friends more, and their parents are out of *their* hair. Works both ways that. Instead everyone gets to be a headache for the teacher. Sigh.

September also sees the degradation of the already piss-poor British weather. Yes it rains most of the summer, but at least it’s usually warmish rain. September things get chilly fast, rain turns cold, and if you’re unfortunately enough to have a job outside like my Father does, then the Weather Gods play an important role in daily life and must be appeased with ritual sacrifices and offerings of beer. Or maybe that’s just an excuse to go to the pub on an evening...?!

But neither of these things are particularly relevant to my actual topic for this blog, for today I wish to state my love of September for one thing and one thing only. While I will never say “god bless America” in any kind of unsarcastic tone, I will state “god bless the US television season”.
Yes, September sees the start of the latest season of all the US TV shows. After a summer of reruns and quirky programming (some of which is actually quite good), the US networks bring the big hitters out to draw in maximum ratings/viewers for the winter months.

Now, I’ve often stated that I don’t really watch TV. This is, or at least was, true to a point. Most of my TV watching while I was in Lancaster consisted of series I bought on DVD well after their air date in Britain, let alone the US. But as the internet has evolved, and I’ve begun sweeping my creative nets far and wide for sources of inspiration, I’ve gradually come to realise that I *do* watch television. I just don’t watch British television (apart from Doctor Who and other oddities). That means no soaps, no sports channels, no quiz shows (though I occasionally watch something that another family member is watching).

There was a time when I would catch maybe one or two American TV shows per week, but *now* times have changed. This season I’ve had to make a frackin’ *LIST* of what is on on what night.

So here’s a rundown of my televisual week.

Sunday (Yes, the week starts on Sunday. Don’t argue with me, I’m a teacher.)

Only one programme (so far) worth watching on a Sunday, and that is True Blood starring Anna Paquin and some other people I’ve never heard of. It’s about vampires and a psychic girl set in the Louisiana (I think) swamps. It’s a late night, post-watershed show. There’s a lot of blood, a lot of swearing, and considerably more nudity and sex than I would ever have expected. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s an awesome show, but it’s intriguing to see where they’re going with it, and the chemistry between the male and female leads is very good. I shall keep on watching.

Monday

Monday is the heavy-hitter of a season of heavy hitters.

Firstly season 3 of Heroes is on. Season 2 was a step backwards from the awesomeness of season 1. It was a bit slow-paced, and it was cut short by the writer’s strike and not really allowed to reach any kind of decent conclusion. Hopefully season 3 (Villains) will change all this. Having seen the first couple of episodes, I have to say they seem to be on the right track, even if the actual formula isn’t all that different from previous seasons.

Secondly we have Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Yes, I hate the name too, just like everyone else, but I have to admit I was expecting the first season to bomb and yet was pleasantly surprised. The acting was strong, the special effects were very good for a small screen venture, the tension was there, and while there wasn’t as much gunfire and action as the Arnie movies – no surprise really, that wouldn’t exactly translate well to small screen – there was nevertheless the Terminator feel about it. Again s1 was cut short due to the writer’s strike, but it certainly ended on a cool cliffhanger, and s2 started up seconds after s1 concluded so there was no continuity jump or suspension of disbelief needed...if you can even use the term suspension of disbelief in a TV show about robots from the future being sent back in time to terminate the future leader of the resistance.

Thirdly, and probably the biggest draw of any programme of the week for me, is Chuck, now into its second season. It’s a romantic comedy espionage action drama series that pretty much defies any real convention. The premise is simple enough. Supernerd Chuck Bartowski has an entire supercomputer worth of government secrets downloaded into his brain, and now when he sees someone or something with possible shady background, he tends to get flashes, images of stuff in his brain. In a sense, he IS the computer now, and while he can’t control these flashes, they are important enough that he be kept around and alive. Thus he leads a dual life – computer repairman at the Buy More, a walmart style affair, and super spy analyst person type (at which he isn’t great, unsurprisingly). He’s looked after by two real spies, Casey (played by the ever awesome Adam Baldwin) and Sarah (played by the ever hawt Yvonne Strahowski – who the writers try and get into her underwear as often as possible. It works. Trust me.)

s1 ended with the revelation that the new Intersect computer was almost finished, and that Casey has orders to terminate Chuck when it goes online and he is no longer needed. S2 begins with Chuck finding out about the new Intersect, and how the last few months have changed him as a person, and what he’s going to do to move his life forwards. Of course, nothing is ever easy in TV world is it...

Look for the second part of this blog to conclude my rundown of Television goodness for the new season. ^_^

Yes I know this is cheating. It’s my blog. Sue me.