Intolerance Food of the Gods: Super Cheesy Pizza

So, for those of you who don't know, I have food intolerances, the worst offenders being yeast, milk, sugar, anything cultured/fungal, nightshades and spices. As you can imagine, this creates many difficulties in eating. I have discovered, however, the greatest trick to getting around this is substitution: soy and goat products instead of dairy, baking soda instead of yeast, and just avoid the cultures, fungi, and nightshades. I have decided to share some of my methods for substitution on the basis it might help others with food issues. Also, some of the substitutions make for very yummy dishes. Now, on to pizza!

I haven't yet found anything which can truly replace tomatoes, so when I say this is a cheesy pizza, I really mean it. My last housemate gave me her recipe for making a cheese sauce, and I substituted and now can have yummy cheese sauce! Let's start with the base though:

The recipe for the base comes from this site: http://www.cooks.com/recipe/u097r22f/yeast-free-pizza-dough.html. I used soy milk instead of regular (for the love of your taste buds, be very careful of heating goat's milk, because it is very often vile when heated). Use whichever oil you like best. This time I used self-raising flour as I was out of plain, and didn't include any baking powder. You may notice my base looks spotty. I like to put oregano into my pizza base, to give it an extra kick. My conversion may have been wrong, but I seemed to have needed twice the amount of milk asked for by the recipe to make it nice and moist. Two good tips for the base: when it says 'oiled baking sheet', I suggest you use your fingers to spread a small amount of oil all over the sheet, because otherwise you have a mess. The other tip is to take your time spreading it out, and make sure you have a nice big ridge around the edge.

For the sauce, I don't have exact measurements, I'm afraid. I chopped up one rasher (unsmoked in this case, but any will do) and fried it until it was starting to brown up nicely. Then I took a dollop of goat's cheese (Lidl has amazing soft goat's cheese and slices for a very good price, so I highly recommend those) and melted it over the bacon. Once that was melted, I added milk (be generous with it, you need to fully cover the base), just over a tablespoon of flour, some more oregano, and let it thicken. As you can see from the picture, I also slopped it over the handle. After that, I poured it over the base and set to the toppings.

I added smoked ham and beef, and broke up some of the goat's cheese slices to cover it. Like any pizza, you can make this vegetarian. I've been trying to think of veggies to add, but as peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms are all out for me, it's difficult to think of anything other than spinach. Suggestions are welcome!

Half an hour in the oven later, and voilà! Pizza for those of us who can't handle yeast, dairy, or tomatoes! Delicious and very quick to make (especially the sauce), and, of course, easy to customise.

If anyone has any recipes they'd like me to customise, let me know!

What I Really Want to See #1: The Warrens

This is the first in a new series of posts about things I would really like to see in my favourite media, which I think would be amazing and wonderful projects. In this post, it is the TV show which I feel should be made out of The Conjuring, to be named The Warrens.

For those who haven't seen it, The Conjuring is a beautifully timed haunting story, in which a vindictive ghost torments the unwitting family which moves into her old home. Pretty familiar fare. I find this is sometimes a problem with this type of horror story, because there is very little variety in the format (I find ghosts, like fictional serial killers, often have limited motivations and thus can be a little boring).

So, what makes this different? The Conjuring is based on a true case handled by a couple called Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were supernatural investigators, who apparently investigated over 10,000 cases during their career. Lorraine was a clairvoyant, while Ed was a demonologist. This couple, to my mind, were the most interesting part of the film for two reasons. First, they are shown investigating a supposed haunting and actually finding the problem is in the pipes. So they are intelligent, capable people. Secondly, they have a collection of possessed items in a locked room in their home (which I can't help but describe as a demonic Warehouse 13).

10,000 cases. A collection of possessed items and (presumably) a love story. This would make an epic television series. Picture it: in the opening we see their first encounters with the supernatural. Then it cuts to their first meeting (I have no idea of how this went, but I like to imagine they found themselves working on the same case, and decided to team up). There are so many things which can happen. Why did they start the collection, and why keep it in their home (in The Conjuring, Ed says they get a priest to bless the room regularly)? How did they make the decision to be so public about what they did? And how, exactly, do you manage any kind of a normal life when your everyday life involves ghosts, demons, and possessions?

Now, as with most television shows, it would veer away from real life, but the potential is there and wonderful, considering one of their books is about how they exorcised a werewolf demon. Consider it like Supernatural, but with a married couple and probably a bit more reserved.

It could happen, I think. Certainly Lorraine Warren seems eager for the work of her and her late husband to be known, so I think she'd be on board. And if it's as beautifully paced as The Conjuring (if you've seen it, you know the bit with the sheet is damned terrifying), then it would be a pleasure to watch regularly.

In the meantime, there is Annabelle, a movie based around the haunted doll from The Conjuring. I'm still holding out hope for the television debut of The Warrens, though (I'm open to suggestions on a better name).


Edited to add: For the record, I take an agnostic view of the supernatural. If it ever happens in front of me, I'll be sure to believe in it.

The Final Stretch

I find myself approaching the final stretch of my PhD, as I'm due to submit in March, and I'm feeling a strange mixture of terror and jubilation. I recently got some great advice from a wonderful friend of mine, who told me she felt (like me) as if the amount left was overwhelming and too much. Her advice was to keep working on it every day and suddenly there will be a day when it's all done.

(I have found PhDs are, in many ways, the height of anticlimactic experiences.)

Hearing that made me feel a lot better; a PhD is an isolating experience, because in the last year, you're probably skipping most of the socialising with others at the university to get writing/research/other work done. With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of my top tips which have helped me, to hopefully help others keep their spirits up.

If anyone has any other tips, put them in the comments here!


1 - Don't panic if things change. This is so important, because what you submitted as your proposal is so far removed from what you submit, it'll probably be unrecognisable. In a recent chat with The Supervisor, I talked about how my initial proposal had me comparing the worldbuilding techniques of Ursula Le Guin, Frank Herbert, and Douglas Adams, including works from after the deaths of Herbert and Adams. Within weeks of starting I asked my supervisor if I could choose just one author because, frankly, thirty-plus primary texts was a ridiculous prospect. When I reminisced about that, The Supervisor informed me she would never have allowed me to do all that, but wanted to give me the opportunity to realise it. Since then, the focus has winnowed further, and I'm now analysing landscapes in Adams's worldbuilding. This is still awesome, but it is so much more manageable.

2 - Listen to your supervisor. For the love of whatever you do or do not believe in, listen to your supervisor. Not only have they done a PhD themselves, but they've also seen a lot of PhDs (presumably). They will know the standard of writing you need to achieve, what 100,000 words actually means in terms of work, and what pitfalls you will face. In my case, The Supervisor had seen me through my Masters dissertation as well, so she knew all my bad writing habits. For example, I can no longer write 'that' without feeling the need to delete it immediately.

3 - Sleep. Yeah, this can be a tough one, especially if, like me, you are prone to procrastination. It involves changing your habits, which sometimes means turning off the Internet for a while. This will not kill you, though if you're anything like me, you'll feel antsy and want to be distracted. This is your procrastination speaking. My method of overcoming this is to get myself into writing mood with this lovely orchestral piece from the last battle in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIRVjYz9nTw. I find it's a great combination of 'Let's Kick Ass!' and 'Huh, I forgot that was playing'. A quick Google search will give you many pieces of advice for putting an end to procrastination, so find what fits for you. Once you do this, you'll find you not only have time to sleep, but you won't wake up with thesis guilt in the middle of the night. Yep, that is a thing I do. I also wake up with Christmas-present-buying guilt/anxiety, hence my habit of shopping early.

4 - Embrace the glory of the To Do List. Seriously, this helps, even if your list reads like this:

a) Wake Up
b) Eat Food
c) Find thesis books under pile of stuff which somehow multiplies in the night
d) Read one thing
e) Lunch
f) Write for two hours
g) Existential angst

I read an article which had a lot of the standard thesis advice (I suspect, like what I'm doing here, it was written more for the author than anything else) which recommended a program called Trello, which I now love. The joy of being able to drag something from 'In Progress' to 'Finished' cannot be underestimated.

5 - Make room for the things which make you happy. Even if it is one hour a week watching your favourite TV show, or reading webcomics, or knitting, or Skype calls with friends, find something which will let you disconnect from the thesis for a little while, and let your brain have a rest. The Young Man was bemused to find me, in the middle of a particularly exhausting week, turning on America's Next Top Model, which I consider a perfect chance for the critical part of my brain to recharge. (This has replaced Yu-Gi-Oh as my top guilty pleasure).

6 - Don't do too many conferences. This is coming from Miss I-can-do-seven-conferences-in-my-thesis. I loved them all, and I regret none of them, but maybe I shouldn't have let myself be sidetracked too often. Still, I really enjoyed them. Basically, do as many as you think you can. I like to make my conference papers different from my PhD, because it lets me explore something I get interested in without it mucking up the focus on the thesis. But, having done it and been quite brain dead after, I do not recommended three conferences in six weeks. Still not quite sure how I scheduled them without realising how close they all were...

7 - Write. I don't always keep to this, but it is the advice everyone will give you. Write when you are bored. Write when you are tired. Write on a day when it's sunny outside and you want to go out, but the stupid thesis is stopping you. Write when you hate the work, and write when you love it. Write when you have no damned idea what you are saying. Going over it with your supervisor later will help you figure out what you want to say, and how to do it. In the end, just write.

And delete almost every 'that' you type...

Why Conference?

Unfortunately, moving house and a chapter deadline meant I was not able to do a conference report on CRSF 2014 immediately afterwards. Needless to say, it was, as usual, brilliantly organised, and there was always something interesting to go to. Highlights of the day for me included both keynotes, Dr. Mark Bould and Prof. Roger Luckhurst, the Female Roles panel (which I somewhat haphazardly chaired, my first time ever doing that!), the Video Games panel I shared with the awesome Dawn Stobbart, and the Performance and Building Fantasy panels in the afternoon (okay, it was all highlight for me). My only regret was missing the Young Man's first international paper as our panels were running at the same time, but I'm told he did well, so I'm as proud as punch!

I've been thinking a lot about conferences for the last two days, especially as I'm considering putting an abstract in for yet another one, which would make the eleventh conference I've spoken at, and my thirteenth overall. I've spoken in Dublin, Buckinghamshire, Aberdeen, London, and Liverpool. I've spoken on Battlestar Galactica, European Science Fiction, why science fiction characters have no science fiction of their own, the Scream series, Fringe, zombie narratives, Irish science fiction, The Lord of the Rings, All-Star Superman, and most recently, the Portal video game series.

Clearly I have a love of conferences. In fact, I like them so much, I did three in a six week period, two of them being a week apart. This love may pall when I organise my own conference someday, but I really do enjoy them. From these conferences, I've managed to publish essays on Battlestar Galactica and The Lord of the Rings. I'm still mildly disappointed with myself for not submitting my All-Star Superman for the book which came out of that conference, but timewise, it just wasn't possible (links to these books will be at the bottom of this post).

I have a particular approach to conference papers, at least part of which I'm sure is shared by many academics:

Step 1: Am I interested in this topic? Conferences tend to take time out of your usual academic work, so do something which interests you passionately, but which you can't devote a lot of time to right now. Remember this is not a journal article; this is your presentation of an interesting idea you've had, and what does everyone else think? CRSF is also a chance to present your thesis work for feedback, so if you're a spec fic researcher, start looking out for next year's cfp! (Seriously, this is an awesome conference, I'm already working on an abstract for next year.)

Step 2: No more than 8-9 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman, size 12. This keeps me within the 20 minute mark, and if it goes a little shorter, all the better. Twenty minutes is the outside limit, and having once had to adlib the last three pages of a paper, going under is a far better idea than going over. And going over is the absolute best way to piss off your fellow panellists, and questions at the end are a lot more fun if ye all get along. There's a picture of me and a fellow panellist chatting before our papers from the Tolkien conference, and someone (jokingly) captioned it as us getting into a debate. Perhaps I have resting bitch face, but we were wishing each other luck! Similarly, Dawn Stobbart and I had a nice chat before our panel at CRSF this year, so I felt really comfortable standing next to her and answering questions. In short, be nice to your fellow panellists! They are usually pretty interesting people.

Step 3: Try to practise, if there's time. Otherwise, just speak slowly and hope for the best. And for the love of all the gods in existence, try to look up. Some of us are half deaf and need your face directed at us to hear clearly. Some of my speech and drama training kicks in automatically for me, and I get the projection going, but some practise is still a good idea.

Step 4: No text on the Powerpoint except for the title slide. This is a personal preference. I want people to look at pictures and admire them, not read something while I'm trying to talk. For common Powerpoint mistakes, look at this hilarious video: Life After Death by Powerpoint. Simpler is always better.

Step 5: Take it as an opportunity to try to be entertaining. This is important, I think. Conferences are long days, and people's attention can wane. This is why Step 1 is important; if you are interested, so are others. I finished my zombie talk with a picture of me done up as a zombie. Sadly, the last audio clip on my video game presentation failed, so I had to let everyone know GLaDoS wanted to hurl a last insult at them. Dr Bould and Professor Luckhurst were fantastic examples of this; informative, but interesting and entertaining. Most of the speakers at CRSF this year were the same, though you can tell who's been doing this for years based on how comfortable they are giving the talks. I'm continually aiming for that level of 'look relaxed and make it clear I know everything about this subject'. I'm not sure I'm there yet...

Step 6: Avoid theory heavy stuff. This is not to say you shouldn't include theory, if it suits the topic. My first paper was on Judith Butler's identity theory, but I (surprisingly as it was my first conference) moved on as quickly as possible from the theory to talking about how it applies. I find theory heavy papers tend can be prone to running long (I've been fortunate enough not to see it happen often). Also, I think it's usually enough to mention the theorist and let your audience look them up if they want.

Step 7: Enjoy yourself. This is a chance to meet people other than the academics in your university, often specialising in your field, and able to give you feedback on your ideas. Yes, you can get this in your home university, but it is so important to share ideas and knowledge further afield, especially in literary circles. And if you're in a period of writing and no teaching, sometimes a conference might be the only place where you actually meet people for a few months, so the human contact is definitely important. And, as my conference buddies from TCD at CRSF 2012 will attest, you can get to know people from your home university even better when representing your home university and trying to look awesome.

The advantage of a going-away conference over one at your home university is you'll stay for the whole day (or as much as you can manage with travel arrangements) at the going-away conference. For the home one, you'll be likely to still be trying to finish your Powerpoint the morning of the conference. The disadvantage is you might find yourself not getting travel funding from your university. However, I've generally only taken on conferences when I knew for sure I could afford it (even if it was a stretch) without funding.

I love conferences. I love speaking in public on interesting topics in general. If I ever get offered a job as a paid speaker, then hell yes, I am doing that (provided it's talking about generally cool things). And I adore the experience of standing in front of my peers and knowing, no matter how deep into the academic argument I get, they are following along and are interested. I think it's one of the best experiences in being in academia, and what research should be about; the sharing of ideas and thoughts, and having people question and add to those ideas.

So again, to the lads at CRSF, and everyone conference I've ever attended, congratulations. I've always had a blast!



Books:

Tolkien: The Forest and the City, edited by Helen Conrad O Briain and Gerard Hynes
Battlestar Galactica: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up?, edited by Josef Steiff and Tristan D. Tamplin
Grant Morrison and the Superhero Renaissance, edited by Darragh Greene and Kate Roddy (forthcoming)

Sticking up for the little guy, or why I think Garth Brooks was right

First, a quick explanation. Life is insane and I've had to move house (but I'm living with my young man, so yay!), and thus the blog has fallen to the bottom of the priority list. Now things are more settled, I intend to update properly. Now, onto the post!

 

So, the big controversy in Ireland (or at least its music scene) these past week or so has been the hoopla over Garth Brooks's concerts. Here's the quick low down on what happened (if I'm inaccurate in any way let me know). Skip if you already know this.

 

As far as I can tell, Garth Brooks and Aiken Promotions agreed that he would perform on five consecutive nights in Croke Park, Dublin. However, when the license to perform was applied for, only three nights were granted (there were also protests from some local residents). The entire run has been cancelled as no one seems able to come up with a solution to this affair which meets everyone's criteria. Hopefully it can be sorted, as going by last year, the Irish like Garth Brooks.

 

What I want to talk about is perhaps the most inflammatory part of all this: Brooks's statement he would play all or none of his shows. A lot of the reaction (that I've heard) is people saying he should have agreed to only do three shows. Personally, I back him entirely, not because of him, but because of the precedent it sets.

 

Say Brooks agreed to do three shows. The next time an artist is asked, for any reason, to reduce their number of shows, his capitulation will be used against them, and we can be sure the legal side of what's happening now will be ignored in favour of the argument "But Garth Brooks did it, and you are not as famous as he".

 

Brooks is not only protecting his future earnings by sticking to his guns and making it clear that shows, once booked, cannot be treated as a pick and mix. He is actually protecting newer and younger artists, ones without any clout in the music industry. It is the flip side of the expectation that a musician will do the shows they promise to do, namely that they'll be allowed to do the shows they agreed to. And while this is all probably costing Garth Brooks a fortune, he won't be destitute after it. The same could not be said for a newer act who might sign up for a performance, turn down other work, and find themselves with fewer shows - and a smaller income - than they'd anticipated. This is about more than a single set of shows, and more than Garth Brooks's bank balance: it is about industry standards. And as long as people like Garth Brooks insist upon industry standards, younger, newer, and poorer artists are protected. And I am willing to bet Brooks learned this when he was a young singer starting out, and making a pittance until he hit it big. Many singers never hit it big. They need the protection people like Brooks can provide.

 

This can crop up in writing, too. Take the time to pop over to Youtube and watch THIS: This is Harlan Ellison explaining to young writers why they have to demand pay, namely that it undercuts older writers. As someone who was undercut by fifty percent while freelancing - and I was only working at market rate - I can tell you, it stings to have your work utterly devalued. It is a damned difficult thing to make money off. But imagine if all the experienced writers, the ones with clout, allowed their contracts and agreements to change at will. Imagine just how much harder it becomes for younger writers. If Stephen King were willing to allow his contracted number of books - his wages - to be cut, then no younger writer could ever enforce their own contracts. Child of Chaos once said she liked a group of books so much, she'd translate them for free. My response to her may not have been as vitriolic as Ellison (who is?), but it was no less emphatic. Doing something which adversely affects the wages of others in your industry is not only morally dubious, but foolish, as you are only hurting yourself in the end.

 

I'm not going to say it's not disappointing to see it all come to this. Many people were excited about having him to come to Ireland. If a pair of tickets came my way, I would not have said no (my attitude to country music being that I'll listen to it for a night at least). But I'm afraid I, for one, can't argue with the man's reasons.

Captain America versus The Hulk and Superman: Why Does One Succeed Where the Others Fail?

From the title, you may presume I have seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Happily, the Young Man and I wandered into the cinema, leading to his family witnessing me squealing with joy over a film. I believe they are now aware of just how geeky I am. Fortunately, they don't seem to mind it.

Watching The Winter Soldier has led me to question how it is that Captain America has successfully carried off two solo films while the Hulk, Superman, and other superheroes, fail so miserably. I'm going to try to avoid any big spoilers, but just in case, here's a cut for the rest of this article.

 

Talking about what you love

I sit here with a cup of decaf tea by my side, about to play some Broken Sword V (it is astonishing to me that they are still making new entries for my very first point and click game), and thinking about how, in June of this year, I'll be getting up in front of a room full of people at CRSF 2014 and telling them what I think about narrative in computer games. This will be the tenth time I speak at a conference, my fifth time internationally. My first conference was terrifying; it was at 'The Politics, Poetics and Philosophy of Battlestar Galactica', at Buckinghamshire Chilterns New University back in 2007. I was terrified; I had finished my undergraduate degree so recently, I hadn't even had my graduation ceremony yet. At the time I was working a job with only ten hours between shifts, proofing Masters' students dissertations, and trying to get two buses to my college library on my days off to read up on Judith Butler's identity theory. On top of that, despite owning season three of Battlestar Galactica, I hadn't finished watching it by the time I flew over. I did not have high hopes for how the paper would go. When I received the line up, I was even more distressed; I was speaking between two doctors! Seventeen years of speech and drama training almost went out the window when I got up there and tried to adlib some jokes, leading to one academic commenting on how I didn't like Baltar much. (For the record, I do like Baltar. He was just an easy target for me that day.)

But it went well. The question and answer session (which managed to turn all my internal organs to stone at the mention) was not as heinous as I had feared. I was among people who were genuinely interested in my ideas and in helping to improve them. I loved it. I was also fortunate enough to meet Roz Kaveney that day, though, to my shame, I did not discover the full awesomeness of the woman until much later and so did not appreciate her presence as I should have. A wonderful upshot of the conference was my eventual inclusion in Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: MissionAccomplished or Mission Frakked Up?, first with the brilliantly named 'I Frak, Therefore I am' (the editors' idea and I still adore it), and secondly with the anonymous 'Dreamers in the Night' (we were making a final five joke. I still like that too).

Since that fateful 2007, I have spoken in Ireland, England, and Scotland on European science fiction, slasher films and 70s feminist science fiction, science fiction within science fiction, Fringe, Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman, Lord of the Rings and Metropolis (which landed me in JRR Tolkien: the Forest and the City), science fiction in the Irish literary canon, and zombies. I have been very lucky; these conferences were all organised by brilliant, enthusiastic people, and I have fond memories of all of them -- though few things will top my delight at being called "Bold, in both senses of the word" by the conference organiser at the University of Aberdeen for saying Samuel Beckett's Endgame could be read as a post-apocalyptic text.

Thinking about this, and about how meeting people as interested in genre fiction as I am has helped my own critical thinking, I start to consider how I got into all this in the first place. It comes down to wanting to talk about the things I've read and seen, wanting to dissect them, find out what they're doing. One of the infinity of things I love about the Young Man is that he likes to discuss texts just as much as I do (and he's good at it too. I am very lucky). We could talk for the rest of our lives about the books, movies, and television shows we've seen, and never get tired of it.

My love of literary criticism also comes back, as so many things do for me, to Douglas Adams. I think I was about eleven or twelve when I found a tape in my house called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Having nothing better to do, I put it in and watched it. Despite only having the first couple of episodes, I relished it, but it stuck in my head not just because it was science fiction and it was funny. It stuck in my head because Adams spent the first few minutes making me laugh and then, just when I was comfortable, he gave us that terrible silence when the Earth was destroyed. And I couldn't understand how I felt about it. To some extent I still don't, which is why I research Adams's worldbuilding, and why I research other genre fiction. In the end, I want to know why I react the way I do to these texts.

There is, to me, something inherently beautiful about genre fiction, no matter the medium. It is an expression of something someone has created from themselves, and from the knowledge and experience they have to hand. It is crafting, weaving words and imagery into art. It is taking a journey and hoping the reader is willing to join them, walk the paths of this new world with them, to fill in the gaps they have left in the building with what the reader knows would be there. It is something potentially so fragile a single word could break it, and so strong that a million people will invest their time and energy into loving it. Speculative fiction is about the places which have never been, could never be, might never be; it is the child of imagination and intelligence and joy in different words, different images, different places. It is a celebration of hope, despair, joy, hatred, fear, faith, and wonder. While I accept not everyone will like it, it is genuinely hard for me to understand why anyone wouldn't. These are adventures the like of which we can never find for ourselves, paths we cannot take, roads which do not exist in our world. Who wouldn't want to walk down those roads?

So I go to conferences and I meet people who love these things, these imagined worlds and people, just as much as I do; who seek to find the meaning in the texts just as I want to, and to enjoy them as they do. It is, I have found, a nourishment for my soul, as doing what you love always is. If I could have a lifetime of talking about these things, I will find my life well-spent.

But in the meantime, I'm going to have my tea, and indulge my love of computer games. Because you can love a lot of things at once in this world. That's why it's the best one.

Proof it all happened!

Now that I am almost three weeks on from getting the head shaved, I decided it was finally time to put up the pictures! Proof I shaved all the hair off! Those of you who know me on Facebook will have seen these already, but now they have commentary!

The night before the big shave I took a picture for posterity:

I'll admit my hair wasn't that long to begin with, but looking back, it seems much longer!

The day dawned very cold, so I went to the World Record attempt properly prepared:

You can't see from this angle, but it's a Munster Rugby hat. And it is insanely warm. 

I liked the set up at the Mansion House as soon as I saw it:

Today FM is pretty cool, and so well-organised! I was through registration in just a few minutes.

Light blue shirts were our barbers, dark blue shirts were the people getting their heads shaved. We all got a number on the way in and had to find our seats and barbers.

About an hour in, this is what the place looked like:

Up on the stage you can see Ray D'Arcy of Today FM. He's a great presenter, a lot of fun and a consummate professional. He's one of those great interviewers who can both make you laugh and handles the most heartrending stories with empathy and tact.

Everything kicked off on air and online about 9 am, and at one point, I got to wave at the camera! Which is always fun to do, but it was number 61's idea (I was number 62). Then I got to meet the other 62, my barber! Here he is!

I think he was probably more nervous than I was (though as I had a cold, I'm not sure I quite believed it was already happening). He was a lot of fun, and did an amazing job, especially on my thick mop of hair!

This lady was the first person to get her head shaved. It was very brave of her, and we all got to cheer her on. The support and encouragement among everyone involved was probably the most inspiring part of the day. Everyone had a story to tell, a reason to be there doing it. It was beautiful and humbling. And at about 11.30, we got into our positions:

I told you he was more nervous than I was...

Or maybe not. And while it may not appear so, I assure you, I am squinting without my glasses.

There is an eleven minute video of the shave and a couple of minutes before it, which I will try to upload at some point, but I think I might break blogspot as it's so long. Not to mention it keeps showing on its side, so if someone can tell me how to fix that, it'd be great. Anyway, we were told beforehand that the lady from Guinness World Records would be walking around and seeing if anyone would be disqualified from the attempt. The previous record for most heads shaved simultaneously was 77 in Australia in 2013. There were 179 of us in the room waiting to be shaved, with as many barbers at the ready. At the end of 10 minutes (during which the clippers died and a kind person who'd finished passed over his), this is what I looked like:

Today FM even skipped the 12 o'clock news to keep the coverage going! And after a commercial break, we found out nobody had been disqualified! All 179 of us made it into the record books!

And then we were brought outside and had a big group photo taken of the barbers and shavees. And let me tell you, it was cold out. I was glad when I got to put on my hat again.

This is what the hall looked like after we were all done:

Never have I felt so glad not to be on clean up duty...

My hair's been growing in amazingly quickly. Here's what I looked like last Saturday, just over two weeks after it all:

It's even thicker now. Between online and offline donations, I've raised about €950. The generosity has been overwhelming, as has the support. Everyone has had something positive to say (some people have told me I look better now!), and I'm truly proud and honoured to have taken part in something so amazing. The donations page is still open, so if any of you have something to spare and would like to donate, go here: http://www.mycharity.ie/event/jennifer_harwood-smiths_event/. 

To everyone who has wished me well, and liked these pictures as they went up on Facebook (which made it so much easier to do), and all those who have donated, I can't thank you enough. It has been incredibly worthwhile. Cancer is a terrible thing, and all of you have helped towards fighting it. Quite a few people have told me I was very brave, and I suppose I was. But there are so many people so much braver, fighting such hard battles against so many different things going wrong in their lives, that a shaved head seems like the least I could do.

For those who want to learn more about the Irish Cancer Society and Shave or Dye, go here: http://www.cancer.ie/get-involved/fundraise/major-fundraising-drives/shave-or-dye. It is a fun and worthwhile cause, and even if I hadn't been part of the world record, I'd still have been proud to be a part of it. Making a bit of history was the icing on the cake though!

Shave or Dye 2014

So, as some of you may know, my mother has basal cell carcinoma on her face, and had three operations last year to remove it. The three operations were a bit of a shock, as we, and the doctors, had expected only one operation. Basal cell carcinoma can be something of a bastard; a few cells are enough for it to grow back, as my mother discovered eight years after her first bout with it. It's also something Irish people can be at risk from, as a single sunburn can cause it, and as anyone who is Irish knows, we're so unaccustomed to the sun that we don't always take proper precautions. My mother handled the operations (and, indeed, the return of the cancer) with amazing good humour and grace, and I admire her beyond all description for it.

So in support of her, I am joining Today FM's Shave or Dye initiative for raising money for the Irish Cancer Society. On Friday February 21st (the end of this week!), I'll be shaving my head as part of a world record attempt for most heads shaved at once. I'm raising money both on- and offline, and if any of you want to donate, here is my online donation page: http://www.mycharity.ie/event/jennifer_harwood-smiths_event/
I'll be posting pictures online when it's done, so ye'll all get to see me bald!

You may have noticed I had the option to dye my hair. Over the years, I have dyed my hair every colour you can think of. The only one that wasn't intentional was green, as blue fades to green. Because I'm so comfortable dying my hair, I decided to shave my hair, because I wanted to do something I wasn't comfortable with. For me, this had to be something I wouldn't normally do, and where I am now in my studies and work, I am able to do it, and I will take the opportunity while it's there.

So far the support from everyone has blown me away: the Young Man; his choir the Ranelagh Singers; my coworkers; my friends and family and colleagues at college; it has all been overwhelming and amazing. I set my original target for €150, but the support has been so great I've reset the target to €500, and I'm already less than €20 away from that. To put that into context, the money that's been donated to me can "train a vounteer to provide emotional and practical support to people with cancer at any stage of their cancer journery" (from the sponsorship card). For those of you who want to know more, here is the Irish Cancer Society's page: http://www.cancer.ie/get-involved/fundraise/major-fundraising-drives/shave-or-dye/about. 

Taking part in this was a decision that was at once easy and difficult. The easy part was all the arguments for it: it's a good cause; it's only hair and it grows back; my mother went through having an open wound on her face for a week, I can go through being shaven for a few weeks. Also, I will shave on shampoo and conditioner costs, and think how fast I can shower now! These are all solid, strong arguments and helped to make it easy to decide to shave..

The difficult part of the decision was dealing with the negative, but ultimately less solid arguments, all of which I've been able to bat down, with varying degrees of difficulty. The most trivial is probably that the weather is cold, so this is not going to be entirely pleasant. But I have warm hats, so that's fine. Will I look good with no hair? What better way to find out? The hardest is that it's culturally ingrained that as a woman, I should have a feminine haircut. It's how things are done. And it can be scary to say 'screw that, I'm going bald'. But I'm sure it's scary for my mother to go out with a still healing scar on her face, and she never shows it. She's magnificent, and her courage is what makes all of my concerns seem like silly little things. I've been told by many people that I'm brave for doing this; well, if so, I learned it from my mother, and if I'm half as brave as she has been throughout her life, I will count myself a lucky woman.

So in conclusion, if you can donate, please do. If you can't, supportive words are just as welcome! And pictures will follow soon!

Upon Reaching Salisbury Plain

I am a great fan of webcomics. I’ve always enjoyed the comic format when it appears in newspapers, but since I don’t read much else in the newspaper, it was a bit pointless. Thankfully, there’s the Internet. I read many webcomics on a daily basis. I love the quirkiness of Pixie Trix Comics’ various offerings. Tom Siddell’s Gunnerkrigg Court might be one of the loveliest things on the Internet. Jeph Jacques’s Questionable Content was my first ever webcomic and it is still one of my must reads each weekday it updates. Aaron Diaz’s Dresden Codak may have one of the slowest update schedules, but it is always worth the wait. The sad fact with the last of these is common among webcomic artists; time and money, specifically the time needed to make money to live on, often mean a webcomic which doesn’t support the author/artist must lose attention. This, in part, is what has happened to Paul Gadzikowski, author and artist of my favourite webcomic, Arthur, King of Time and Space (often shortened to AKOTAS), with a side helping of cancer in the family. The severity of Gadzikowski’s decision to end AKOTAS is all the clearer once you know that he once updated the webcomic from hospital after a heart attack (He is a legend).

Today was the last AKOTAS strip, and I came very close to crying. Last week, reading about the end of Gadzikowski’s (very successful) attempt to transcribe Arthurian saga into webcomic format felt like a punch to the gut, not just because I love the work, but because Gadzikowski and his wife seem like genuinely lovely people. He did, after all, give me permission to reproduce his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy parody in my thesis. I would give anything to live in a world where a storyteller as talented as Gadzikowski need never worry about money, but only about getting on with his art. As I don’t live in that world, and can’t make it, I will instead encourage all of you who read this blog to go read AKOTAS. And here are my four main reasons, out of many:

1. Characters

I am not, in general, a huge fan of Arthuriana. The inevitability of Arthur’s fall, and the betrayal of Lancelot and Guinevere, tends to make it hard for me to stomach. In addition, most retellings, like the movie First Knight, make at least one of the three lead characters absolutely unlikable. I like all of the characters in AKOTAS, not because they are without flaws, but because their flaws are well-examined by Gadzikowski. They are clever flaws. And I love all of these characters, to the point where the end had me thinking ‘Oh, Arthur’, missing him – and all of them – already.

2. Storytelling

This man can tell a story. And when he feels the story hasn’t worked, he’s not afraid to admit his mistakes. The unfortunate side of writing webcomics is that the work is posted almost on the go, so early work can lack the polish of later work. Artistic styles can change – see Howard Taylor’s Schlock Mercenary for just how much they can – and the story can often take an unusual turn, but Gadzikowski’s handling of these is what made me like his work so much. He often says he is the only one who likes his triangle drawings (and I’ll confess a preference for his line drawings as I love the character expressions), but he has taken those risks and made something quite wonderful. And the more tiresome stories for me in most retellings of the legends, namely the affair, are some of the most interesting and emotionally rewarding. And the mere mention of Sir Balin now leads me to say ‘Oh, crap, what’s he done now?’ Even the hiatus periods intended to prevent burnouts were interesting enough that I checked the update every day. That’s talent.

3. The Art

Gadzikowski describes himself as unashamedly amateur. Maybe he doesn’t make money off AKOTAS, but I would not call his art amateur. It is his and it is wonderful and I could not produce something half so expressive.

4. The Newsposts

When I reread the archives, as I have done at least three times if not more, I reread the newsposts, because Gadzikowski always says something interesting when he puts one up. And the last newspost broke my heart, because he apologised for not continuing, as if he were letting someone down, when he’d given a wonderful gift to every reader: characters to love and stories to wrap ourselves in until a day seemed too long without another update.

5. The Puns.

Few people can pun well. This man can. On top of everything above, this comic is genuinely funny. And that is not easy.

There are dozens of other reasons, but I want to keep this spoiler-free.

I hope AKOTAS makes it into book format some day. I want it on my shelf, to take down and leaf through and remember the days when my Internet was slow and every page took forever to load. And I find myself already thinking of when I can next read through the archive, knowing I’ll be coming to the end, revisiting Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot in their teens, watching them grow up, find their destinies, and meet their ends again. I want to revisit the things Gadzikowski says about being a writer and artist, because these are things I read when I needed to read them. 3518 uninterrupted days of storytelling made paths I will retread all of my reading life. I’ll be sticking around to read his other webcomics, The Hero of Three Faces and Creative Process, because I love his sense of humour. And while I will always miss my daily Arthur, King of Time and Space, I will be eternally grateful to Paul Gadzikowski for sharing this story with us.

So until my next stroll through the archive: goodbye Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, Nimue, Tristram, Isolde, Gawaine, Galahad, Mordred, Morgan, Morgana, Gaheris, Kay, Ector, Bedivere, and all the rest. You are all the heroes (or villains) your creators hoped you could be. Thanks for making them that, Paul. You did a good job.

Now go take care of yourself.

EDIT: It has just occurred to me I have neglected to include the link for the first comic. Go here for it: http://www.arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/0001.htm