FootballOpinion

A Tournament For All of Africa

David Stringer

Over at Bornoffside.net, the plan is to cover the forthcoming African Cup of Nations in South Africa. With the tournament due to start in a week, previews have started going up this weekend.

Africa_Cup_of_Nations_037 by Schubi-uetersen Taken from Wikimedia Commons

Previews for Group A went up on Friday – previews for South Africa, Angola, Morocco and Cape Verde.

Previews for Group B have started going up today, including my look forward to how the Ghanaian national team will perform, despite having left many of their star players with their club sides.

Click here to read what I have to say about Ghana’s chances in this year’s tournament.

Egotism

A Toolbar Redesign? Woo and Yay!

David Stringer

I’ve recently redesigned the toolbar at the top of the blog, All your favourite features remain (presuming you have favourite parts of the blog of an obscure writer/reviewer, which I can only assume is the case).
I’ve added a review section, to help you look through the things I’ve reviewed, and find something you’d be interested in.
I’ve been working on a little scifi project, which I’ve vaguely hinted at in a previous blog post and will write more about soon.

As this was always intended to be a blog about writing, I’m adding two new sections to be regularly updated.
I’m going to talk about the projects I’m currently working on, and the state of the progress of each.
I also intend to keep a day by day diary of the different types of writing I do.
I’d imagine both of these will become more interesting if I finally reach the stage where I become a writer of note, but it’s there if you’re interested.
Basically I’ve decided that I envy the types of writer who spew out every thought they ever have, and have decided to become more like them.

Not the most fascinating post, I admit, but my hundredth in total, and hopefully helping to mark a new, more prolific era here on the blog.

Egotism

Writers Contract for 2013

David Stringer

As you’ve probably seen, the new year has just begun. It’s been mentioned in the news once or twice, as well as on some calendars. I’m not totally sure where all the time zones start and end, but as we’re now almost 120 hours into the New Year in Greenwich Mean Time, I think everyone’s made it across.
The tradition is to make resolutions, to look at things in our lives that need changing, and come up with a plan to make that change. Most of my bad habits (the ones I care about, anyway) are linked to my inconsistent writing habits.
So I’m going to do something I did briefly 13 months ago – a writer’s contract, a public commitment to do a few things that will get me writing on a consistent basis.

Practical tip - it's hard to sign a contract when you have no table to rest on, and also a pig is trying to seduce you.
Practical tip – it’s hard to sign a contract when you have no table to rest on, and also a pig is trying to seduce you.

So, my commitments from here on. I intend to: Continue reading “Writers Contract for 2013” →

FootballOpinion

T’was the Season to Be Jolly…

David Stringer

Over at Bornoffside.net, my weekly round-up of Leagues One and Two, the Lower League Week, has returned for the first time this year, cleverly disguised as The Lower League Christmas. (Okay, maybe not so clever).

Football in the midst of World War One. Back in the days when players wore their international caps while representing their nation.
Christmas day football in the midst of World War One. Back in the days when players wore their international caps while representing their nation.

In it, I covered the form of Gillingham, Port Vale and Tranmere over Christmas. All of them are battling for the title in League Two, Two, and One respectively, and all of them surprise challengers for one reason or another.

Leon Clarke has signed for Coventry, Hartlepool United have broken two club records in the last month, and Barnet’s management team have broken up. Bristol Rovers have appointed a new boss, who’s helped to force his Plymouth equivalent out of the door. Rotherham have a transfer target which is either delusionally ambitious, or a sign of how far the Scottish league has fallen, dependent on how things turn out.

And there’s evidence that it’s not Lazio, Roma or Millwall who have the most extreme fans in Europe, but Oldham. I also round up the other significant news over Christmas.

All of that can be found in The Lower League Christmas

Egotism

A High Writing Workload – Motivating or Paralysing?

David Stringer

This is my second entry as a member of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group.

InsecureWritersSupportGroupI started this blog, fourteen months ago, with the intent of using it as a tool to keep me writing on a regular basis.
However, the blog and the opportunity to write more widely for the internet have proven distracting themselves, as more and more of my effort has been poured into the blog, and other writing intended as motivation, rather than my fiction. I’ve recently seen another blogger voice the same concern, and I’d expect it’s not a rare problem. Continue reading “A High Writing Workload – Motivating or Paralysing?” →

Storytelling Geekery

In Praise of Spiderman #700

David Stringer

Spoilers for the last issue of Amazing Spiderman – #700.

The most recent issue of Amazing Spiderman, #700 was released on Boxing Day, and had caused controversy beforehand when the contents were leaked.
At the beginning of the current story arc, Doctor Octopus was close to dying from cancer. (Which I think is a good thing itself – I think it gives a sense of heft to a fantastical world.) This doesn’t stop him from being a menace to Spiderman, however, managing to switch bodies with Peter Parker, planning to steal his life.
Switching bodies is a relatively common trope in long-running sci-fi/fantasy/comics, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate SG1, Red Dwarf, The X-Files and four of the five Star Treks having used the idea.
As commonly happens with this type of story, the hero spends the majority of the story trying to get back to his own life, while the villain causes chaos in the hero’s life. But this time there was a very uncommon twist – Peter Parker fails to get back into his body, and dies in Doc Ock’s body.

Continue reading “In Praise of Spiderman #700” →

FootballOpinion

Silly Forest

David Stringer

Nottingham Forest Football Club, one of the bigger teams in England’s second tier and former double European Champions, have been underachieving for a long time. Bought out by rich Middle-East businessmen in the summer, they made what I’d consider to be a smart appointment, by naming Sean O’Driscoll as manager. O’Driscoll had put together successful, entertaining teams at Bournemouth and Doncaster, but this was his first job at a ‘big’ club.

On December 27th, O’Driscoll was sacked.

Are those Christmas trees by the City Ground? Let's assume they are. Merry Christmas Sean!
Are those Christmas trees by the City Ground? Let’s assume they are. Merry Christmas Sean!

Over at BornOffside, I’ve written about my feelings on the sacking.

Film & Television Opinion

Christmas in Albert Square

David Stringer
This Christmas Day, British screens have been filled with scenes of people suffering.
TV Tropes calls this ‘Soapland Christmas’, which is a pretty generic term that perfectly describes how generic the attempts to outdo each other’s misery have become.
The trend famously began with Den and Angie Watts on Christmas Day 1986.
I’ve never been a big Eastenders fan, and I wasn’t old enough to properly follow the show at the time. But my understanding of how the story progressed is that the pair, who had an aggressive and wild on-off relationship which drove a lot of the drama on the show at the time, were on the verge of reconciliation. But Den, having discovered that his wife’s cancer was a lie to keep them together, suddenly and surprisingly hands over divorce papers to his wife.
That’s how drama should work – keeping the audience on tenterhooks, unsure of what will happen, before revealing a twist that’s both shocking, emotionally powerful, and true to the characters.
Film & Television Opinion, Storytelling Geekery

Beyond the Bechdel Test

David Stringer

You may be aware of the Bechdel test. If you’re not, it’s a pretty straight forward idea – it’s a form of criticism, primarily of movies but which can be applied to any other form of fiction. To pass the test, the story must

Include at least two women,
Who have at least one conversation,
About something other than a man or men.

The Bechdel Test isn’t an in depth test of how feminist or misogynist a piece of fiction is. But it’s a simple way to measure if female characters are seen, and have their own problems and personalities, rather than just being defined through their relationships to the male characters.
I bring this up, as I’ve recently come across two similar tests.

The head the idea first came out of
Alison Bechdel, writer of Dykes to Watch Out For

Continue reading “Beyond the Bechdel Test” →

Comedy

Strangest Search Terms 2: May – December

David Stringer

Back in April, I took a look at some of the stranger search terms to lead to my blog.
I’ve decided to do the same again…

jordan rhodes yorkshireman

I think everyone from Yorkshire introduces themselves in that way.

chinless will

I get a few hits for ‘chinless’ because of a Walking Dead still I yoinked from somewhere, but I’m still surprised at the number of people who search for the word ‘chinless’.

lego evacuation of dunkirk

I don’t think we really did enough to get all the lego pieces out of occupied France. God rest their souls.

michael bay is awful

I’m pleased to see that this seems to be getting a few hits.

chinless person

As I’ve said, this is a fairly common search term.

do you like my crits yes they’re natural

Less so.

hulk share lyriks bruno mars iwanna be biilion

Hulk no more smash, Hulk reformed man. Hulk share lyrics to amusing songs!

robot asimov

There’s nothing strange about this term, given how much he wrote about robots (and invented a fairly ingenious Three Laws of Robotics). But it gave me the idea of Isaac Asimov living on in a robot body, which I think is pretty cool.

bruno mars wealth says he’s a billionaire

And if he’s not, he’s a dirty liar. Everyone should be held accountable for the things they say in songs. Bob Marley died without serving his life sentence, but there’s still time to lock up Tom Jones.

bride prostitute

Is this intended as a feminist statement, marriage, is like prostitution, that kind of thing?

travie mccoy write his own music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That depends what you mean by ‘write’. I’m fairly sure he’ll have transcribed his music at some point.

warwick davis seems nice

Glad I’m not the only one to think so. Despite some noticeably artificial and predictable plot twists, and a few characters who don’t act like any humans, a worrying number of people seem to have thought Life’s Too Short was a documentary.

gilf

Think about that.

pauos porno

Earlier in the year, I got hits for ‘smokink pauos lesbies kom’, which I noted sounded a bit like mis-spelt dirty words. Is this more of the same?

mel brooks on how i met your mother

I’ve got tags for both of these, and I’ve had a few hits for the pair combined – I really liked the episode of Mad About You he guest starred in, and his film work is genius.
I really want to see him guest star on HIMYM, and I’m sad that this doesn’t exist yet.

baseball square

I used this as a joke in a review of Moneyball – glad to see I wasn’t accidentally being original.

lego man doing coke

The idea amused me, so I did an image search, but couldn’t find anything. Disturbingly, one of the suggestions was ‘lego man doing a poo’.
I didn’t click on that.

who does matthew briggs talk to on twitter

I talk to him occasionally. Apparently he’s either got a stalker, or an overprotective mother.

samuel johnson quote “no manbut a blockhead ever wrotebut formoney.”

Unlike me you’ve got the quote right. You may want to put a few spaces in though.

cleveland show zombie

Is that because it lurches on when by all logic it should have been dead long ago?

fc blog women in boyfriend google search

I’m trying to figure out if ‘women in boyfriend’ is meant to be dirty.
But it’s not necessary to type ‘google search’ into the google search bar.

events 2012 mk dons jehovah’s witnesses

Well, crowds at MK Dons FC are only growing gradually, so going door to door could be the next option.

rev adam smallbone fanfiction

Rev. is absolutely fantastic, probably the best downbeat ‘Office’ style realist comedy in the past few years. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s inspired a bit of fanfiction.

citizen khan fanfiction

Oh, please God, no.

lifes too short to fall out meaning

Well…it means that life is relatively short, so it’s a waste to spend it mad at people you like.
Though if you didn’t find it self-explanatory, I’m not sure that my explanation will be all that helpful…

episode of how i met your mother where ross kisses rachel

There’s a few searches that seem to be riffs on ‘Friends and How I met your Mother are the same show’ but this is probably my favourite.

don’t tell me to be quiet

Wow – that might actually be someone specifically searching for my writing! I’m probably more flattered by that than I should be…

denofgeek.com the batman offside

If Batman does play football, I doubt he’d be caught offside. He probably has something on his utility belt to prevent it.

sitcom slippers

Is that slippers to be worn while watching a sitcom?
Or has someone tried to search for something they saw on TV, and tried to narrow it down by adding that they saw it on a sitcom?

4 person sack race

Is that a sack race between four people, or four people in the same sack trying to jump forward at the same time? If it’s the latter, it’s something I’d like to see.

messi was stalked by fabio capello

I quite like the mental image of Fabio Capello sneaking round the bushes after little Leo Messi. He’ll have to hope Messi doesn’t have a sudden burst of pace.

analyze friends epidsodes

I’ve analysed one in the past and intend to analyse more Friends epidsodes at some point soon.

the real billie bean

I’m not sure who this is, but she’s not my lover.

“used her beauty to”my pet” “beg me”

??

how much is graham westley money worth

I’m not quite sure on this, but his family had a pretty successful business, which he built up further in a break between being a footballer and a football manager. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s worth a few million.

followup to afrika reich by guy saville?

There’s a few searches along this line – Guy Saville is writing a sequel, though I’ve tried to steer clear of specific details. If you want them, he seems to update his facebook page pretty regularly.

citizen khan funny

We’ll have to agree to disagree there.

snyder’s beat sheet does it work for tv

I can’t see why not, but I’ve not looked at any specific episodes yet. The difference would be that, with TV, you already know the characters and the basic set-up at the beginning, so there’s no need to go through all the steps.

what dose a real devil

The devil would use the wrong dose, either so it does nothing, or does too much. Satan’s a meanie like that.

difference between all is lost and dark knight of the soul beat sheet

In ‘All is lost’, the hero realises something really bad has happened, the ground has been whipped out from under them. In the latter section, the hero is moping, lost, unsure how to recover from what’s just happened.
Though I do love the idea of ‘dark knight’ of the soul.

anthemion storylines software review

I’ve not written a review for this, and I don’t know where there is one. But Anthemion Storylines (which I got as part of Writer’s Cafe) basically runs on the idea of arranging plot points in a story you’re writing, with each plot point on a post-it note. But with Storylines being a computer programme, you can put things away safely, rearrange the order of ideas to see what works better, safe in the knowledge you can easily change it back. I find it useful.

does edgar david play for tranmere rovers

No, but Eugene Dadi, a muscular and dreadlocked forward who looks fairly similar, did… a lot longer ago than I remembered, actually.
Edgar Davids plays, and manages, Barnet – the Football League’s bottom side.

is asimov’s story eyes do more than see in public domain

I wouldn’t have thought so – in Britain rights stay with the author’s estate until 70 years after death, and I’d assume there’s something similar in America.

episode of men behaving badly when the blender

When the blender does what? I need to know!

dan snyder beat sheet

It’s actually Blake Snyder’s beat sheet – Dan Snyder is the director.
My main point of reference to Dan Snyder is Mark Kermode’s impression of him, so that idea amused me a bit. Also, I realised when I was searching for the video that Dan Snyder is actually called Zack Snyder, and Dan Snyder owns the Washington Redskins. They’re a talented family, the Snyders.

ross and rachel take a break opinions

I’m entirely on Rachel’s side. And not just because she’s pretty.

i am gulliver who has landed in the strange india of lilliput write a diary entry expressing feelings

The original opening to Gulliver’s Travels was perhaps a little too literal.

barnet fc+debt

Equals relegation, probably.

jonathan swift flows have little flows

This sounds almost like a zen riddle.

warick davis is a dick!

He always seems really decent in interviews, and has a similar reputation. Still, his character in Life’s Too Short is very punchable.

 

That’ll do for now, I think.