I am certainly not the first person to write this and probably not the last, but; as far as I can see, popular media is regressing. Not in that people are returning to older formats (what with all the emergent technologies like on demand television and (apparently) BBC iPlayer is coming to Wii, the range of ways in which to find stuff out has never been bigger). The first time I noticed it was with “gentle drama”. Production companies have been chucking these out for years (Heartbeat, we know where you live) and there has always been something on that is ridiculously mild mannered, yet with the recent dramatisation of Lark Rise to Candleford things came to a head. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike it (it really is quite good), but gentle isn’t the word for a TV series whose finale was a missing parcel (it’s set in a post office). I know it was originally a book, but at what point was the decision made to script it into hour long episodes?

Another thing is things which seem to be an extension of the armed services PR departments. Top Gear comes to mind, in which they raced a Bugatti Vayron against a Typhoon fighter jet, or attempted to outwit an Apache helicopter with a TVR (the Typhoon won, but the hellfire missiles on the helicopter refused to lock on, this was solved by saying they would have used the chain gun instead). Then Giant Engines or whatever it was called, in which that chap off Red Dwarf waxed lyrical about the wonders of the 120mm cannon mounted on the British Army’s Main-Battle-Tank.

Then there is the re-birth and “re-imagining” of TV, film, plays, the re-formation of bands (Spice Girls? The Verve?) (ok, The Verve is acceptable).

It

And whilst we are on the subject of my strange obsessions, the new Guillemots album, Red is out. Nationally, reviews are pretty varied. The Times (like me) loved it. I must point out I don’t normally read The Times, it was a one off: The Guardian is where it’s happening. The BBC music site / reviewer / whatever liked it a bit, but complained that Fyfe Dangerfield (frontman, my hero) was “too quirky”. Off course he’s quirky. He’s a rogue music teacher and alternative musician. There’s a difference between him and what’s his face from Arcade Fire. Fyfe “composes” rather than “writes”. That’s not his words, but mine, everything he or Aristazabal, Magrao or Greig create seems so…finished. Arcade Fire’s music is good, but it sounds like it has been slapped together by a load of Canadians (which is true, it is). Guillemots produce the kind of music that sounds as if it has existed for thousands of years; it has been refined over a good deal of time. Fyfe was once dared to write a song in the time it takes to tune a guitar. He refuse, but he claims to be able to do it in the time it takes to eat a hot dinner.

They play with different genres; they always hark back to a kind of “jazz”, a word which sounds really derogatory, but I can’t think of any other way of classifying it really. It’s like The Mighty Boosh (note: a sort of halucinogenic, musical sitcom in the UK involving talking gorillas and men made of sandpaper) (don’t ask). They have a way of taking a popular musical genre (e.g. NuRave), then mixing it up, mocking it gently, then passing on to something different. And the rip-off music is really well done, I seriously believed their “Underwater Funk” was a cover version. It was written especially for the show, along with the bright pink constumes. I think the Guillemots do the same. They describe their music as “pop on a magic carpet ride”; The Mighty Boosh also involving magic carpets, but they tend to hop between things. From the swing-style Trains To Brazil and sheer size of the Big-Band-esque Sao Paulo (yes, one of them is from Brazil, but not Fyfe, he’s from Birmingham) to the airy alternative Over The Stairs (think: a strange combination of Somewhere Over The Rainbow and crystal-meth, plus a bit of wailing). By some strange fortune they have managed to create a modern 1980s album full of all the sorts of things you would find lying about in that peculiar transitional period. I say strange fortune because of a sudden 80s revival here in the UK; probably of the back of time travel sequel Ashes to Ashes, about a modern police psycological profiler trapped in her own mind in a construct of 1981. Rumour has it that sales of blue mascara has rocketed, along with off-the-shoulder blouses. And amongst all this comes Big Dog (my God, he has actually had a go at R+B), Clarion (Studio Ghibli in audio form) Last Kiss (KT Tunstall singing Girls Aloud) and Cockateels (disco / Las Vegas showtune, along with show girls). And all of it slightly mocked, but done lovingly. It will make you laugh (thank goodness I’ve got imaginary creatures, they don’t get in fights), it will make you weep (please don’t leave me, you’re all I’ve got, believe me, stay…, don’t close your eyes, nobody really dies, they all just end up in the sky, so far away…) and just generally smile at some wonderful melodies.

Despite what any other reviewer might think, quirky is cool, Fyfe can get into falsetto, Arista is amazingly good looking (apparently she knows the exact frequency that will give a woman an orgasm, but refuses to tell anyone what it is. Fyfe thinks it is F#) and the album is

* * * * * and that’s a rating, not a swear word.

I must really be getting on everybody’s nerves at the moment: I’m doing an hour by hour countdown to Battlestar Galactica, season 4. If I could, I would get one of those “12 Weeks To Christmas” counters, unfortunately you can’t get them for quasi-sci-fi/political-thrillers. What is the world coming to? On the note of Christmas Counters, someone I know has already put one up on their myspace site. As far as I’m concerned, that is considerably sadder than anything else. 10 Hours to go…

Whilst I’m on the subject of Galactica, I was wondering if anyone has written (or had a go) the Battlestar Galactica religious text, that is Pythia… If they haven’t, I’m going to have a go.

“All this has happened before and all this will happen again”

For those of you not in the know, as well as seeing the recreation of Doctor Who, the 21^st Century brought the “re-imagining” of old, rather rubbishy sci-fi classic “Battlestar Galactica”. Far from being what it was (to be fair I never actually watched more than ten minutes of what appeared to be jingoistic “Star Trek” rip-off) it has morphed into a complex and engaging political thriller, arguing about the war on terror, governance by religion, terrorism (and imprisonment without trial/government sanctioned torture) undemocratic elections, the lot. The fact it happens to have a ruddy big space ship is beside the point, large sections seem pretty “soapy”; i.e. who is Kara fracking at this moment in time? In essence, there are no aliens, only evil (to a given definition of “evil”, for their motives seem fair, they were placed in servitude for their entire existence) robots, called Cylons for reasons unknown. There are no laser guns or stuff; the human population are not Jedi Knights but survivors of a nuclear holocaust, led by a former secretary for education and an aging Admiralty Commander, protected solely by the Galactica of the title, a complete rust bucket of a battleship that had been destined for decommissioning. The characters are rounded individuals with motives, ideals, morals (or lack of) desires, emotions: the writing is perfect. What many people have been wondering about in the Galactica fan-base (we are not geeks, but intelligent individuals who are interested in contemporary politics) is who is and who isn’t a Cylon. Basically, there are several varieties of robot: mechanoid (made of metal with a single sweeping red eye, guns for arms, that kind of thing, originally soldiers working for the humans), bio-mechanoids (metal skin, organic innards such as the animalistic “Raider” space craft), humanoid-mechanoid (the “Basestar” capitol ships, with metal armour, organic innards and a human shaped thing controlling it) and humanoid (a.k.a skinjobs) who come in 12 flavours. Essentially we know who 7 of them are at the end of series 2 and by the end of series 3 we know who all but one of them is. The ultimate humanoid one. The thing is, many humanoids think they ARE human; they live normal lives until they snap, blowing themselves up or shooting someone for example. Many people have tried going through, ruling out who can’t be Cylon, for example, we are fairly sure Cally isn’t because, although cute, she isn’t interesting enough. Kara and Gaius are far too human to be Cylon (everyone who is never had any vices, such as excessive alcohol consumption, making love, drugs, power, etc). It is not possible to cut out rounded characters, for example, my favourite, Tyrrel turned out to be one of the last five and he was such a deep character. I was thinking about it the other day; Galactica likes to deal with symbolism and religion so: Is it possible it’s Roslin or Adama senior (President and Admiral). I mean, that they have this will they/won’t they relationship thing going on and say, the ultimate Cylon plan (that we never get told what it is) is the unification of beliefs? Roslin seemed to react very well to the Cylon stem cell experiment…Adama has a past (his dad) and a present and a future (his son). He seems to have a perfectly explicable back-story which is provable with documentary evidence, whereas characters like Sharon have very vague pasts. Roslin has neither parents nor children. She has suddenly arrived, unelected into a position of power from being a forgettable school teacher. He is the father of the fleet, she the mother (I know this is a bit mystic, but what part of Galactica isn’t?) he the elder god and she the new… see what I mean? When they kiss or whatever (say I love you or something) then they will find Earth. Or paradise, or whatever…

For some time now I’ve been making up a language. I know that sounds pretty immature like I’m ten or something, but it’s actually working out quite well. It means that if I want to write something that I don’t want anyone else to read, it works spectacularly. And if I want a sort of clique-y conversation with someone it makes it far harder for someone else to listen in. I had also made it more “poetic”, although calling that rather cheapens the idea. Essentially, I can use one word for certain things that would otherwise take about six in English.It wasn’t, however, until yesterday, that I really went about looking at it objectively, because (like most languages really) it had evolved fairly organically without any “rules” as such. At least, being that I sort of understand how grammar works, I was able to give it a hint of coherency and consistency, but otherwise it just “was”. It’s not like Klingon, or Elvish (I certainly don’t want to be tarred with the same brush). That was geeky, based upon something that was already a cult hit, surrounded by the kind of weird mysticism and “talk to fellow fans at conventions” style of thing. No, I’m using it as a tool. It is interesting to note that Samuel Beckett wrote ‘Waiting for Godot’ in French, originally, because it had none of the vagueness of English. The reverse is entirely true with my language. I like using it for its vagueness; more do to with suggestion rather than indication. Also, as an experiment, it has rather turned out to be a verbal driven language, rather than noun. For the lay man, it simplifies as this: English is a noun language; I do this to something, etc; whereas certain languages (which grow rarer by the day) are driven chiefly by verbs. It’s hard to explain in English or any western language how exactly it works, but instead of I do this to something, you get DO (and something and I are involved in the process somewhere). This may make it confusing, but once you get the hang of it it is relatively easy to use. This inability to translate directly worked well in the Second World War, where US military messages were written in a particular verb driven Native American language (the name of which I forget). This made it impossible for the Japanese to decode, because they thought it was just a load of nonsense.Looking at it now, it seems quite a pretty language. When I say pretty, it is an idea rather difficult to explain why. It looks…aesthetically pleasing (and I’m fairly sure that isn’t just fatherly pride) and, recently recording some snippets in my best BBC voice it sounded all soft and lovely. To an English speaker’s ear, German sounds harsh and guttural, whilst languages such as Italian and Spanish are soft and gentle. It was interesting to note that, after spending some time immersed entirely in Spanish and speaking it 90% of the time, English sounded coarse and hideous. The sounds, I noticed, were from rather a broad range of places, including double L from four different places (English, Icelandic, Welsh and Spanish), TZ from Mandarin Chinese and a sort of SCH noise that sounds, well, to be fair, Polish (I’m hazarding this, because to say my Polish is nonexistent is pretty near the mark). The letters are the usual Arabic derived Western alphabet, i.e. the one I’m using here, but using accents (English is the only European language that doesn’t use accents, which is why it is the second hardest in the world). These are, chiefly the ^ and / on top of vowels (to indicate stress, such as in Spanish).I’m not one for writing poetry and neither for watching manga films, but there was a particularly good piece attached to a film called ‘No Surface Moon’ or something (I only ever saw the marketing material). I later realised that this was a (ahem) magic spell in order to create havoc of a (ahem) kinky kind. I never watched the film. But the poem was pretty good, so, putting the new language into use I tried to write something along the same lines. It worked remarkably well, whereas No Surface Moon had about three or four words per line (it was a really skinny poem) I managed to get one or two, yet with the same resolution of meaning. To this day I don’t know what the heck I wrote that poem about, it was just random fragmented images, but, as a test of artistic merit, in my eyes, it worked quite well.At the moment the language is spread on small bits of paper across my life and the last few weeks have been spent collating it all. The big language dictionary is coming soon, with four genders (Yá, Dá, Lá and Já), verb trains (I’m not going to write one out here) and ridiculously narrow meanings. I never expect to create a whole language, at the moment I just build a new word as I need it, I never expect it to get massive (like Tolkien’s Elvish) but it would be nice if it was, becoming an internet all-speak or something (unlike the ill-fated standard European Language), but, if it lasted, becoming a useful language to use from time to time, or a postmodernist poet wants a lingual tool, then, please ask, and I’ll send you a recent copy of the dictionary. p.s. The way I “invent” words. Basically, a word isn’t created by just scribbling down letters and trying to say them. I spend a bit of time on onomatopoeia, that is, what does it sound like, does it sound like the thing I’m trying to describe, or the sound something would make if it made one. It is thought that everyone has a bit of that condition where you see flavours or smell colours, and that was the starting point of language; what does it sound like in your head. Then it’s a case of writing it down, finding where it fits into grammar, verb tenses, that kind of thing. Then it gets a trial, does it sound nice, is it fully pronouncable, does it look “good”? Does it work? If it does, then it finds a place in the ‘Red and Black’ address ledger on my desk.

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