BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Cosmic crash unmasks dark matter

Striking evidence has been found for the enigmatic “stuff” called dark matter which makes up 23% of the Universe, yet is invisible to our eyes.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Cosmic crash unmasks dark matter.

Pah! I knew it was there all the time.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

A Recommendation for Fellow Writers.

Sometimes the best way to say something is to let someone else say it for you. That’s why I like hiding behind a character in my fiction. I can voice all of my most outrageous thoughts through him (or her) and then let him (yes, or her) take the flak. Not very noble of me, I know — and I suppose that’s why I started blogging, in an attempt to rid myself of this strange brand of cowardice! In my blogging life I like to be myself, to say it myself, and to face up to the consequences — whatever they may be.

Today, however, I’m going to make an exception and let someone say exactly what I think and feel for me.

Kathleen Brandt on plot.

If you’re a writer, please read this. It’s well worth a few moments of your time.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Seizing the Opportunity — On the Misuse of Terror Laws.

 

A few weeks ago, I was watching the above video on YouTube (I was researching conspiracy theories for The Yesterday Tree at the time — that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it ) in which Noam Chomsky points out, quite correctly, in my opinion, that every authoritarian government (i.e. every government — it’s a matter of degree… of what they are allowed to get away with) benefits from incidents such as the 911 attacks in that it allows them to rein in their populace more effectively (“effectively”, that is, from their point of view.) This is not to say, of course, that the Bush administration planned and implemented the attacks as some (idiots) would have us believe, but it is very much an observable phenomenon, and one which I was reminded of when my friend Lou today sent me the article below.

“Underage drinkers are being arrested by police using laws brought in to combat organised crime, terrorism and identity theft, it has emerged.

“Teenagers using fake, borrowed or ­stolen ID to get into pubs are being targeted ­using the Identity Card Act. Offenders can be jailed for up to ten years.”

Now I’m not disputing that we have some very real social problems, in part centred around under-age-drinking, in the UK. The behaviour of some of these young people impacts severely on whole communities and, yes, it has to be addressed — or more to the point, the underlying problems that prompt this kind of behaviour need to be addressed.

But is this the way to do it? No. Absolutely not. We have enough existing laws in place to deal with this problem without taking such an extreme approach. As far as I’m concerned, the comment form Inspector Neil Mutch of South Yorkshire Police pretty much hit the nail on the head:

“The Act was brought out for terrorism but it suits us very nicely.”

Lazy policing. This Act was implemented to protect the UK citizen from serious crime and terrorism, not to make Inspector Mutch’s job that little bit easier.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Through the Stormy Shades — Outline Sample.

As most of you will know, I recently abandoned the outline for The Yesterday Tree/We Are Watching. I simply wasn’t happy with the progress — or, rather, I was unhappy with my lack of excitement for it.

Never exactly comfortable without having something to work on, however, I quickly decided on what I was going to do next. Another semiautobiographical novel entitled Through the Stormy Shades.

I decided from the outset to approach this from a slightly different angle. I want the novel to be experimental in form (experimental for me, at least!) and I don’t want to nail it down too tightly at outline stage. At the same time, though, I want to know what material I have and how it can be used. I am therefore outlining in what is for me a very barebones way. I may go into more detail with it before writing, at this stage I just can’t be sure, but I already like the feeling I’m getting. I think the sparsity, the space between the lines is helping.

I’ve left room for surprises. I think I need that.

So you can see exactly what I mean about not nailing it down too tightly, here’s a short excerpt from the outline itself. I’ll be interested in hearing any thoughts you might have on it.

(PLEASE NOTE: the following outline includes references to adult subjects… well, adolescent subjects — my narrator is fourteen and surrounded by pretty student nurses so… work it out for yourself… that’s what he had to do )

 

Through the Stormy Shades — Outline Sample.

First section:

1. Arrival.
2. Introductions.
3. Admission Questions.
4. Weighing, Bath and Fellow Patients.
5. Bed. Locker. Limited Personal Space.
6. First Meal. Lunch. Ghastly.
7. Conversations with Fellow Patients.
8. Tests. ECG. EEG. Breathing. Height Measurement — True Height Measured Fingertip to Fingertip, Compared the Actual Height.
9. Visiting time. A reminder of two very different worlds even at this very early stage.
10. Next day. Measurements for and trial of the Stryker bed. Frightening, uncomfortable. Everything suddenly quite real.

 

Second section:

1. Preparation. Back shaved, testicles etc shaved. Back washed with iodine (?) and wrapped. Nil by mouth. Sleeping medication the night before. Doesn’t work.
2. Morning of the operation. Early.
3. A surreal sense of not being a part of what was going on.
4. Fear. And an unwillingness to show it.
5. Heading down to theatre.
6. People standing over him wearing masks and a hat like the one he was wearing.
7. Smiles behind the masks. Seen in the eyes.
8. Reassuring words that don’t work.
9. “Count slowly back from one hundred.” Ninety-nine…

 

Third section:

1. “Is it over?”
2. Freezing.
3. Space blankets in the cavernous, too bright recovery room.
4. Vomiting.
5. Pain — pain that isn’t remembered but is intensely real. So real it doesn’t feel a part of him, even whilst it so clearly is.
6. Someone else’s body. Not his.
7. Fading in and out of consciousness.
8. People coming too close, falling away. Movement, echoing noise.
9. A whisper somewhere. Wants to hear but can’t. It hurts too much.
10. “Something for the pain?” Soon, but never soon enough.
11. Blessed unconsciousness. A temporary but still disconcerting respite.

 

Fourth section:

1. Back on the ward.
2. Pain, confusion, medication — always begging for more.
3. Nurse always there in the side ward.
4. Blood-pressure, temperature etc constantly monitored.
5. Parents visit, in spite of being strongly advised against not to.
6. Surgeon drops by after his day in the theatre: “Ah yes, I thought Mum and Dad wouldn’t be able to keep away.”
7. A sense of being in another world… another body, alien, wholly unfamiliar.
8. Never to be the same again.

 

Fifth section:

1. Steady improvement. Not being sick quite so often.
2. The room is now familiar.
3. Not so much pain.
4. Drinking the first time laid on his stomach. Sucks up the juice through the straw and it comes out of his nose. Straight back into the glass.
5. Soon masters this.
6. Visitors — parents, family, neighbours. Welcoming them but still uncomfortable, feeling too different.
7. Waiting to be turned. Parents annoyed at the delay (the ward sister has to be present.)
8. Staff rivalries. He becomes aware of them… one staff nurse in particular confides in him that she is practically running the ward herself, without any financial recompense, the sister being so incompetent.
9. A growing crush, founded in lust, for a number of the younger nurses — but also the staff nurse, who kisses him on occasion.
10. Moved from the side ward to the six-bedder. The room is needed for someone else.
11. Initially, he’s on his own.

 

Sixth section:

1. First night alone.
2. Loneliness as the ward grows quiet — quiet but never exactly silent.
3. One of the younger children cries out. Haunting. Disturbing.
4. Imagination works overtime.
5. Thinks of the staff nurse and student nurses.
6. Aroused but doesn’t dare do anything about it.
7. Torment. Touches himself experimentally. Stops.
8. A nurse in an unusual uniform enters. He’s never met her before. She introduces herself as the matron. Doesn’t come on the ward all that often but tonight she’s doing her rounds.
9. Talks to him about his operation whilst he hopes she hasn’t guessed what he was considering doing.
10. She is friendly and nice. Asks him how he’s finding life on the ward. Any complaints?
11. The food. She nods. A common complaint.
12. When she leaves: alone again.
13. Can’t sleep. Difficult to read flat on his back. Nothing on television.
14. Considers masturbating. Chooses not to.
15. Falls asleep and dreams of horses. He rides them, even though he’s never been on a horse in his life. Over jumps. Surreal. A disturbing sense of dislocation. Out-of-control. Falling.

 

Seventh section:

1. Two new admissions.
2. Brian [Martin] and Frank (real name in the novel Francis) [that other kid who had the alcoholic mother from hell].
3. Frank is full of shit. Cocky. Pretending not to be in the least bit perturbed at the thought of having an operation. His mother, as yet, relatively well-behaved.
4. Brian is a better class of person and Carl takes to him immediately. His mother, Janice, is quick to laugh, nervously — her voice cigarette-raspy.
5. Talks to Brian and Janice about what the operation was like. Brian is also having a spinal fusion.
6. Tries to make it sound better and less painful than it was.
7. Brian is anxious but tries not to show it. Not cocky like Frank.
8. Before he is to have their operations, both Brian and Frank are to be subjected to halo-femoral traction.
9. Carl was thankfully spared this and is completely unfamiliar with it.
10. Has his stitches (metal clips) removed. A young girl in a body plaster from down the ward sees him and hangs about outside the treatment room.
11. The nurses rib him. The girl likes him. Her name is Chrissie.

 

Eighth section:

1. Brian and Frank are now on traction.
2. Carl considers himself lucky to have avoided it.
3. The school holidays haven’t yet quite arrived and the teacher is still coming in.
4. Everything has settled down into a steady, predictable pattern.
5. Almost pleasant.
6. “A curious bird is a pelican…”
7. The school holidays approach.
8. Mornings watching Sesame Street and larking about.
9. Chrissie starts sending letters down to him from the girl’s room. Silly letters — “what are you doing?”, that kind of thing.
10. He likes her but isn’t really all that interested. Or only interested in what she’s got in her knickers.
11. Thinks about this a lot.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Fancy a Tax Rebate?

Cartoon by Pugh.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | McCain picks female running mate

The Obama campaign has suggested that Mr McCain’s choice is irresponsible, referring to her former role as mayor of the small Alaskan town of Wasilla.

“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” said spokesman Bill Burton.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | McCain picks female running mate.

American politics is something I only rarely comment on — the three-ring circus appeal wears too thin very quickly for me.

However, it’s just got interesting. Okay, so her credentials and her politics suck but she is kinda cute.

Remember to drop by soon for more in-depth political analysis

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Idiosyncratica Update.

Well, my short story for the September first Idiosyncratica challenge is now pretty much complete. It was a lot more difficult than I expected keeping it around five hundred words, but, with a lot of effort, I managed it.

The story, entitled “Lost”, will be appearing here on the first of September. If you are an Idiosyncratica member and you haven’t yet written your piece, you’d better get on with it or Pirate Mike will be after you with his pointy thing!

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Living a Bad Life.

Yesterday I received a quote that a friend had found and kindly forwarded to me. I always like it when friends send me something that they think I might find interesting — especially when I find it interesting in a way that’s probably different to what they’d intended! (I can be a contrary son of a bitch at times, so I beg the sender not to beat me across the head with a dictionary of quotations until I’m nothing more than a bloody mass quivering on the floor! )

The quotation was from the American novelist Alice Walker, and it really did make me sit up and take notice, for all the wrong reasons.

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.”

On the surface, there’s a kind of sense to this. I can see that. The lives we lead unquestionably influence our fiction. I can see and accept that. But, naturally, being the kind of person that I am, I had to look at it a little more closely.

What is “a good book”? That was the first question I found myself asking. I could probably ask this of ten of my regular readers and get ten quite different answers — but, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Ms Walker means “a well written book”. Is it possible for “a bad person” to write a “well written book”, a book that has something to say, something it communicates effectively? Well, actually, I think the answer is a resounding “yes!” The reasoning behind this is quite simply this: fiction does not have to be nice or even moral to be of value.

But, of course, this led me to another question… one that, frankly, I was amazed I even had to address. What is “a bad person”? Or, more to the point, what does Ms Walker consider to be “a bad person”? Someone who cheats on his wife, drinks heavily, smokes excessively, shoots wild animals, drives irresponsibly, abuses her daughter, doesn’t believe in God, does believe in God, participates in orgies, tells fans to “fuck off” when asked for an autograph, is a supporter of the Republican Party, is a supporter of the Democrats, is wealthy but doesn’t give to charity, receives charity but squanders the help he’s been given, has a lesbian relationship and who is no longer interested in being a mother to her daughter… what? Because, you see, as I’m sure we all know, it’s more complicated than that. Life on the whole is one big grey area and to throw around phrases like “bad person” willy-nilly will inevitably end up with one shooting oneself in the foot.

Now, I’m sure we all know bad people. We can all talk about the things they have done and how they should be dealt with. But I get the distinct feeling that this isn’t what Ms Walker was talking about. I’m happy to be corrected on this, but it strikes me that she’s making a moral judgement of writers who live their lives and approach their work differently to her.

And that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Clinton urges party to back Obama

“Whether you voted for me or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose.”

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Clinton urges party to back Obama.

I still get the feeling she’ll be skipping around with glee singing “I told you so, I told you so! Shoulda voted for me, shoulda voted for me!” if McCain ends up in the White House.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Twitter.

For those among you who like to get their updates in the most fashionable way possible, you can now follow me on Twitter.

I’ve had a profile for a short while now but haven’t really been using it… I wasn’t sure that it was really for me. However, having given it a go I think there might be some real benefits in it.

I’ll largely be using it to post notifications of blog updates, but may occasionally use it to harass close friends and associates

So, if you’re at all interested, you can find me at: http://twitter.com/garymurning.

(I’ve just got in from an afternoon on the moors and have a lot to catch up  on, so I will write something more interesting tomorrow! Promise.)

© 2008 Gary William Murning