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

Why Colm Meaney makes me simultaneously happy and sad.

So, earlier today the radio station at work had an interview with Colm Meaney, where he was asked about Star Trek. In the past, I've heard he's been a bit insulting about the fans (let's grain of salt that one unless someone can provide a reference), but his good humoured response to it was that the spacesuit wouldn't fit him anymore (Colm Meaney, you were never in a space suit, coz you weren't in that scene in First Contact. You wore a military uniform, with the sleeves rolled up for easy access to malfunctioning equipment. Dude). And while I don't know just exactly what Colm Meaney thinks of Star Trek, I would hope that it is the fan culture he dislikes, rather than the show. Because I am very proud of what Colm Meaney and Star Trek did together.

In order to understand why I'm proud of him, you have to understand why it can sometimes be annoying to be an Irish person watching American television. We're represented as drunks, or druids; every evil fairy or elf has an atrocious country Irish accent. In fact, let's take a moment to discuss the accent. There isn't just one! We have four regional dialects of our native language on this not very big island, for crying out loud, of course we have different accents! I won't deny accent work is hard (I wasn't particularly good at them in my drama classes; I firmly believe my attempts at a Belfast accent embarrassed my mother no end), but if you are going to do it, do it right, please. And while we're on the subject of doing it right, please stop putting extra syllables in our words. Yes, we know they are confusing, but in this day and age, Google search should be sufficient to fix these things. Two of the most heinous recent examples of this are in shows I love: Supernatural chose to butcher the name of the Irish god Samhain, pronounced 'Sow-in' as 'Sam-hane'. Yeah. No. Not a bit. Also, the bit where you said he was a demon? No. It is in fact a season, and a month (November). These latter bits I can forgive, because it's Supernatural and I love it, but at least say the name right boys! The other recent culprit is in Lost Girl, where Ciara, played by Lina Roessler, is repeatedly referred to as 'Key-ar-ah'. She is supposed to be an Irish fairy (as far as I can tell), and over here, we pronounce is as 'Keer-ah'. This is all the more frustrating because they get most of it very right, and I don't understand why they messed with a lovely name, making it sound clunky and unfriendly (neither of which describes the character). There are many more examples of what frustrates the Irish viewer of American television, but I presume this puts forth some of the major complaints (I advise you not to get me started on the accents of Irish criminals in American crime shows).

Given that one person I know is very conscious of spoilers, and there's at least one in here, the rest of this is going behind a cut.

Staring at the Moon

So at 8.50 pm GMT my phone alarm went off. For a moment, in my post-dinner television watching I was utterly confused as to why it had gone off. When I remembered, I stepped onto my balcony to see if I could find the moon.

Earlier today, one of my Inestimable Work Colleagues happened upon the news that the International Space Station was going to cross the moon over Irish skies tonight. We were excited and I thought it would be a good idea to put an alarm on my phone as I tend to promptly forget about such cool things. Which I did, and which found me on my balcony, staring intently at the sky visible over our complex, much to the bemusement of my homeward bound neighbours.

I popped in to Child of Chaos to tell her the sad news that the moon was not visible. She informed me that on her way back from the shop, she had seen the moon from across the road. With only minutes to spare, shoes and coats were donned and we were off, with me texting my Young Man on the way to inform him of the situation.

On the way over, we saw two men about our age standing across the road, outside what we presumed to be their apartment complex, staring at the part of the sky where Child of Chaos said the moon would be, so we decided they must be out to see it too. At 8.57 pm, when the ISS was supposed to be rising from the horizon (which I hoped I had remembered correctly), we were across the road and caught sight of the moon.

There were two problems. One, it was setting behind our building. Two, it was only a crescent.

We kept backing up until the only option was moonwatching in the busy street, so while I kept an eye on the moon, Child of Chaos pushed the button for the pedestrian lights and let me know when it was safe to cross. The other side provided not only the space to back up and look at the moon, but also a handy signpost. I was still worried though; the moon looked blurry and was that yellowish colour it becomes as it sets. And then the clouds came. And then, to add insult to injury and to cause me to cry out in despair, "Dude!", two double decker buses came.

It was cold so we decided to Google when it was supposed to cross. That yielded nothing. We were convinced we'd seen something move slowly across the moon and wondered if it were the ISS. So we checked Youtube. Apparently, This is what it looks like when the ISS crosses the moon. Take a minute to go look. Go on, you know you want to...

With our visibility, there was no hope of seeing it. We came in at 9.10 pm GMT, and, as Child of Chaos said, even if we didn't see it, it was still great to be watching the moon when it happened.

Even knowing it was cold outside, and that we might not see it, and not knowing quite what we were looking for, it was the right thing to do. I will talk often and at length to anyone who will listen that we need to get off this planet, if only for the heavy metals. I have argued with Child of Chaos that if we wait to solve our problems here, we will lose our chance to move out into the solar system because we will have expended our resources. I genuinely believe that we need a great grand project of our age and that project should be a space elevator. We need to get into space to survive, but also for ourselves. The history of mankind has taken place under the stars. We have prayed to them, sang about them, imagined being out there. We can't keep being the young children who have just learned to walk, standing at the glass door, looking out into the treacherous back garden. We need to start going out there, start walking among the stars. We'll fall down (a lot), but we'll find our footing far more surely than if we just stay here. There is so much out there and yes, we have our problems here. But without finding more resources, we're only going to make them worse. And we are explorers; we need to keep finding the next horizon. True, we don't have a history of doing it the right way, but we're better than we were. We're always learning how to be better than we were. The days when humanity is the best and brightest it could be are far ahead of us but they're not impossible. We can get there. We just have to get out there first.

And sometimes that just starts with two girls, standing in the cold, staring at the moon.

Riddick Me This

So, part of the reason my posting is sporadic is that, in addition to feeling guilt over not doing thesis or fiction writing while writing my blog, I also have a Young Man to spend time with and a non academic job, which I've had for years and quite like (and I've had enough bad jobs in my life to be prepared to leave a bad one as soon as I can). I'm talking about the job now because we've recently been very busy, and as a result, I was looking forward to seeing a fun film last Friday with both my Young Man and the Good Doctor. And that film was the inestimable Riddick.

Now, I'd like to give you a bit of background on my history with this particular character. I can't quite recall how I stumbled upon Pitch Black, but I do know that I loved it. Let's be fair, this is Vin Diesel's best role, not least because he clearly loves it (by all accounts, ie SFX, he took basic wages for the latest installment). But back to Pitch Black: it is a fantastic creature feature, and, unlike many creature features, the reveal of the monsters is not a disappointment. The reveal is helped by the fact that we see them most clearly through the eyes of Riddick, with the purplish night vision that entails. It also, and this is important, does not make Riddick into a hero. In many ways he finishes the film the same unmitigated bastard he is at the beginning, though let's be fair: Riddick, embracing his anti-hero nature is often a better person than those trying to be heroes (this, I think, is true of many anti-heroes. They don't try to be better and succeed at being as good as they are capable of). I saw Chronicles of Riddick in the cinema (I can't recall who I went with) and, despite the sheer madness of the plot, I loved it as well. Even things which would normally annoy me (50 degrees below absolute zero? Are you kidding me?!) went down very well, mostly because it seemed clear to me that everyone involved just had a lot of fun with it (they got Dame Judy Dench! That was awesome!).

Fast forward a few years and my Young Man invited me along to a movie night with the Good Doctor; specifically a Bad Movie Night (there have been some dire examples, which I thoroughly enjoyed). So, of course, I brought Pitch Black, which was the edition which happened to feature the first 8 minutes of Chronicles of Riddick. The Good Doctor immediately suggested the latter film for our next Bad Movie Night, after which she discovered the impending approach of Riddick, which brings us back to last Friday.

What does one say about Riddick? Well, firstly, I'm glad to finally be seeing some adult-rated movies (the impending PG-13 Robocop is depressing to me. Is Hollywood really that worried about ticket sales that there can't be any adult movies anymore?). I mean, if I had to have my mother buy the tickets for 15s movies when I was 13, can't modern children do the same (my mother is awesome. And I'm fairly sure she knew what every film I saw was about)? Secondly, Riddick has a fantastic cast of characters, one of whom is imbued with a lethal drinking game (you take a drink every time he says something ridiculous). And the creatures once again don't disappoint. What I liked best is that, like the transition from Pitch Black to Chronicles of Riddick, we get another genre jump; this time to a thriller with Riddick playing mind games with the people he loathes the most: mercenaries.

[I interrupt this train of thought to bring you the Good Doctor's best comment of the night; upon 'Richard B. Riddick' coming up as his full name, she turned to me and said 'Is his name actually Dick Riddick?']

The film is fantastically bad; aside from he of the fatal drinking game, there are what the Good Doctor called snakeadiles, a magnificently overdone badass walk out of the wilderness by Riddick himself and some wonderful moments with a vicious puppy (it even features a whole 'even lesbians are into Riddick' bit, which was so cheesily done I can't help but feel they're sending up that particular trope of the irresistible anti-hero). There is a very real sense that Vin Diesel kind of wishes he were Riddick; aside from being the ultimate Gary Stu, a lot of the film feels like wish fulfillment. But all of the silliness of Riddick is recognisable to the audience, and you're left with the feeling that this is a film you can take the piss out of for a very long time.

I think what a lot of filmgoers can forgot (and certainly Hollywood studios can too) is that one of the primary reasons we go to the cinema is to be entertained and lifted out of our world. Riddick is set in a far future where the biggest bastards are the mercenaries who bring in criminals and the only one likely to save the universe from a planet destroying army is someone you wouldn't trust with the silverware - you can't tell me that's not entertaining. Thankfully, Vin Diesel wants to bring Riddick back some more (and ya know what? Finding out he plays D&D on set means I am a fan forever), so we should get more genre jumping madness.

Now, the only thing we need to do is have a Riddick marathon when the DVD comes out. I'll report back as to whether our brains melted...

The Past Through Letters

My living room now holds a literary history of my life. In the past couple of days, I obtained the last few boxes of my possessions, including a box of research that is now readily available online (but which was hiding my clarinet music, which pleases me greatly), several boxes of keepsakes that I am trying to squash into one or two boxes and the remainder of my book collection. When I moved from home, I boxed up the ones I thought I wouldn't need urgently, finding in the end that I had to open a few to find a book (and after all that, my copy of Salem's Lot remains at large). And they are now shelved in my living room.

I dislike getting rid of books. It seems wrong, somehow. Illogically, it feels like they're being abandoned but more than that; it feels like giving up a piece of my past. I deeply regret getting rid of many of my Point Horror and Babysitter Club books when I was trying to feel mature. Such things should be enjoyed in later years!

The books in the Last Boxes are a scattering of some early childhood ones, many teenage books and a number of college texts. It's a strange combination, as expediency and practicality meant that I needed to place the books according to size, not content, genre or, in some cases, authorial order. So To Kill A Mockingbird sits above The Silver Chair, and I can't help but remember the mock trial we had in secondary school and wonder at how I never got the rest of the Narnia books, in spite of my adult self's problems with CS Lewis. A large Star Trek book rests between King's Black House and The Illustrated Library of World Poetry. There are books on writing, fortune telling, forensics, psychology, Egyptology, archaeology, literature, and criminology. There are Point Horror books and one of the most complete collections of Christopher Pike novels anyone may ever see, not to mention the major part of my Stephen King collection.

It seems eclectic and strange and too many different things at once, but it's all brought together by the fact that I own them; that their words and ideas and styles, be they good or bad, opened up my mind to other worlds and other dreams. And some of these books were loved perhaps a little too much, and are worn, or, in one case, in two pieces, but they still deserve a place on the shelf, because they tell part of my story. That makes them more than what they once were.

I am, to the amusement of many, I am sure, a fiction girl. I need a story. I recently commented to Swordsman, in regards to my needing to read webcomics to wake up fully in the morning, that I clearly run on narrative, and I think it's true, not just of me but of all other writers in the world, regardless of what they write. And those old books were some of the formative fuels of my life, and that makes them beautiful, even if I was once so clumsy as to crack the spines.

Stats

So, one of the cool things about blogger is that it lets you know where in the world you're being read. Which I think is a wonderful, fascinating thing, because when you start a new blog, you are fairly sure that only some of your friends read it (those that have the time and when you're in academia, that's not always the biggest number). Keep in mind, it doesn't tell you any details of the people who visit your site aside from where they're from, what browser they use (why I should need that information is beyond me, though I'm sure there's a technical reason for it) and their operating system, and none of that information appears to be linked up. Maybe I should be doing something to make it easier for users on other operating systems to see this? I don't know. The techie stuff fails to interest me, but the countries do, because some of you are reading me from countries where I'm not sure that I know anyone, and that I've certainly never visited. Which is so cool!

So, the point of this post is that it is a shout out to my friends and family that read this (Hi guys) and a shout out to the people I have never met in countries I have never been that have read this. It is an amazing testament to our modern world that you're here! I hope I am managing to entertain you and enabling your procrastination just enough that you can still get work done.

In the meantime, here's the link to the latest Lovecraft Live! Don't forget to go to the main page for some amazing news as well!