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Humph. I am unconvinced by NaNoWriMo. My hard drive is already littered with old Word documents that I don’t remember creating, with names like “laserjesus.doc” or “untitledgluethriller.rtf”, that turn out to be the first few thousand words of abandoned novels. I can’t for the life of me remember what the plots were supposed to be, although there are normally cryptic notes explaining the story arc for an epic seven-book cycle at the end of the file (“Set up hair loss metaphor, kicks in during books 4-5″). If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s five days of insomnia followed by a month of feeling guilty just so that I can produce another one. And the lord knows I use too many adjectives already. Encouraging me to pad things out is just asking for turgid, overwritten, hyperadjectival trouble.

Defective Yeti understands this. And his proposed alternative, WriAShorStorWe, is a definite improvement, but still – a week? A whole week’s commitment? I don’t think we can have met. You do not seem to understand the astonishing force of my laziness. My laziness could power cities, if it could be bothered, which it can’t. And I’m not alone. There are legions of idlers out there, just flopping around like hopeful fish. I can tell they exist, because none of us have ever got around to meeting. Who knows how many literary geniuses are waiting to be uncovered – if only there was a writing event transient, casual and just plain easy enough to tap into their particular powers? Well, goddammit, I’m determined to maybe find out or something.

Having briefly considered NaHaiWriMi – it was abandoned on grounds of being stupid – I believe I have discovered the literary form we seek. And as such, I hereby announce that Saturday 5th November will mark the very first…

The date was chosen to coincide both with the optimum date for giving up on a NaNoWriMo novel, and with it being a Saturday, so you probably not having much else to do.

I really must write a novel called The Sea, The Sea, The Sea, so that Waterstones can include it in a 3-for-2 offer with John Banville’s The Sea and Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea.

Oh, balls. That twatting h2g2 link about the The Origins and Common Usage of British Swear-words has reared its tossing head again – del.icio.us suggests a memedemic of bird-flu proportions over the past few days. It’s a fairly funny article; unfortunately, there’s a rather British habit of mistaking dry wit for intellectual expertise*, which might be leading people to lower their bullshit detectors. There was a MeFi thread a while back where it got fairly fucked-over – too many folk etymologies that are purest arse, and some dodgy-as-shite usage advice. Some of it is all fine and good, and the etymology of slang is an obviously tricky and contentious field, but really… would you trust a guide to swearing that buggers-up “bollocks” (not derived from pulley-blocks high in the rigging of a ship), “naff” (doesn’t stand for Not A Fucking Fairy), “motherfucker” (no evidence it’s based on the rape of slaves’ mothers) and “cunt” (which isn’t based on the Latin word kuntus, because there is no Latin word kuntus)?

*A factor which contributed to my briefly becoming the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, with embarrassing results.

In a surge of unrepentant blog laziness, it’s one of those loose collections of dissonant impulses that never really made it up to the level of “thought”:

• Has anybody else been afflicted by this same nagging earworm sense-memory thing that’s been driving me mad for the past few days? The chorus of The Fallen, the fine and giggleful first track off of Franz Ferdinand’s rather splendid new one – it’s basically One Week by the Barenaked Ladies, yes? Am I not right about this? And is it not, somehow, deeply deeply off-putting?
• Apparently, you simply can’t take away that part of Wayne Rooney, or you’ll lose what made him great in the first place. Hmmm. Has anybody actually, you know… tried? Just to see? Perhaps Jim Beglin, Steve Claridge and the rest of the football punditry community could give us access to the neurological studies they have demonstrating that the area of the brain responsible for “running into space” and “close control” is the same as the one that controls “borderline sociopathic batshittery”.
• Exactly how has the Blair government managed to get me to a stage where I keep agreeing with patrician Conservatives on the TV? There I am, nodding along as some iconoclastic radical tears into the cant and mendacity of this arrogant administration, and I’m thinking to myself, “Yes! Yes! This is the exact sort of righteous firebrand we need to shake up the hidebound kleptocractic elite, if only someone like this was in government, and ohshitthatsDouglasHurdisntit?”
• OKAY GOD WE GET THE MESSAGE WE WON’T LET THE GAYS GET MARRIED NOW PLEASE STOP SENDING DISASTERS THANKS.*
• I really should finish of the long, rambling post I’ve been drafting for days about political desperation, public morality, sex, danger, psychology, space exploration and Edgar Allan Poe’s imp. Or maybe not.

Beyond that, all there is to say, is: “Birgitte’s dry tone sounded odd with her wet cheeks.” Very true.

*I have this strong sense of, I don’t know, not so much “compassion fatigue”, more “impotent raging at the empty, darkening sky fatigue”.

Less high-profile tasks given by God to George Bush:

• Fix leaky gutter.
• Buy milk.
• Smirk inappropriately whilst discussing national tragedies.
• Try to get congressional leadership to say the word “plop” during Appropriations meeting.
• Bring peace to Switzerland; recieve thanks of grateful Swiss people.
• Confound the Freedonian menace.
• Cause next Deathcab album to totally blow.
• Learn how to properly fold Middle East Roadmap.
• Get into Katamari Damacy.
• To the best of your ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constiyadda yadda yadda.
• Ground Jenna.
• Canada. Canada. Say it a few times: I hereby declare war on Canada. Sounds good, don’t it?
• Clean the oven.
• Suck.