The Ten Commandments (footnoted)

Recently, I've  been refamiliarising myself with the Ten Commandments and decided that they need footnoting for the modern world. Also, I want to make absolutely sure that I really do end up in hell, same place as all the good music, good drugs and bad women.

The Ten Commandments (footnoted)

Exodus 20: 1-17, King James Version:

And God spake all these words, saying,

I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage¹.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me².

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image³, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth⁴.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them⁵, nor serve them⁶: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me⁷;

And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments⁸.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain⁹.

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy¹⁰.

Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates¹¹:

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it¹².

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee¹³.

Thou shalt not kill¹⁴.

Thou shalt not commit adultery¹⁵.

Thou shalt not steal¹⁶.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour¹⁷.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's¹⁸.

¹This is meant to be treated as literally true, despite the lack of any archaeological evidence for the Israelites ever being in Egypt, let alone slaves there, the inclusion of such anachronisms as making mention of Dromedary camels, which weren’t introduced into Egypt until fifteen hundred years after the events in Exodus are meant to have taken place, and the idea that approximately one quarter of the entire population of Egypt, on whom the other three quarters had been entirely dependent as slave labour for either four hundred or four hundred and thirty years, suddenly down tools and disappear into the wilderness without there being any major implications of which we are aware. If you don’t believe this to be literally true, you lack sufficient belief and you need to up your game and try harder.

²Other than Jesus. Obviously. Oh, and Catholics get to worship Mary too. But that's it.

³Excepting crucifixes, crosses, altars, churches, temples, cathedrals, over large charity thermometers, statues to politicians, soldiers or sports stars, Nike swooshes, film and television in general, Facebook, Twitter and Justin Bieber. Actually, it would probably be easier to compile a list of the things of which you actually aren't allowed to make graven images. I’ll return to this point following an epic game of Biblical Guess Who?

⁴Obviously God doesn’t mean this literally or else he wouldn’t have invented the camera phone or moving pictures, because then every time you turned on the television or watched that dog riding around on the vacuum cleaner on YouTube, you would be sinning against the light twenty five times a second. Also, if making a likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth is a sin, then that would mean David Attenborough is going straight to hell, whereas I firmly believe that David Attenborough will be canonised as a saint about thirty seconds after he breathes his last.

⁵Unless they hold a gun to your head.

⁶See note 5.

⁷So you’re probably already screwed anyway.

⁸Or saved. Either way, there’s very little you can do, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

⁹Claiming that God told you to invade a Middle Eastrn country or to meet up with the former wife of a newspaper proprietor does not qualify as taking the Lord’s name in vain.

¹⁰Only one day of the week is the correct Sabbath day, but which day that is I’ll never tell.

¹¹This commandment does not however apply to footballers, either American or Association Football. .

¹²God may seem to be labouring the point here, but this only serves to highlight how important it is to observe the correct Sabbath. Black Sabbath are not a viable option, for reasons which should be readily apparent.

¹³One way in which to honour thy father and thy mother is to stick them in a home when they can no longer look after themselves, sell their home from out under them, and use the proceeds to fund a trip to Disneyland, Florida.

¹⁴By kill, God means murder and by murder, He means killing those who belong to the same race, religion and sexual orientation as you.

¹⁵Unless you really want to.

¹⁶Unless you can get away with it.

¹⁷Unless he’s an arsehole.

¹⁸His natural resources, private utilities market or democratic process are, however, all perfectly fine. Covet away. See also note 16.

Get it Done

Review: Shakespeare Beyond Doubt

Well, the posts get later and later, but they are getting posted and that's the important thing. Today we look at the thorny issue of who wrote the plays of William Shakespeare. I don't wish to give away the ending, but it turns out that there is no issue at all.

Review: Shakespeare Beyond Doubt

Did William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon write the plays that are ascribed to him? That, if you’ll pardon the expression, is the question which has encroached upon mainstream debate in recent years.

There was a time when authorship doubts were raised only by a lunatic fringe. They weren’t raised at all until the middle of the nineteenth century. The twenty first century has seen an petition entitled, ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’ published online and the release of Roland Emmerich’s 2011 movie, ‘Anonymous’ , which champions the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, as the true author of Shakespeare’s plays. It has even seen one prominent Oxfordian (as champions of Edward de Vere are known), noted Shakespearian actor, Derek Jacobi, expressing his doubts about authorship on primetime British television.

For these several reasons, the editors of the book currently under discussion, Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, have gathered together contributions from leading Shakespearean scholars in an attempt to try and settle the matter of authorship once and for all.

A title like ‘Shakespeare Beyond Doubt’ should leave the reader in no doubt as to which side the essays in this volume are weighted towards. The book is split into three sections. The first section examines the various claimants that have been advanced as alternative authors to Shakespeare’s canon; Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, as well as some of the more unusual candidates, like Elizabeth I. The middle section looks at the various arguments that have been put forward as to why Shakespeare couldn’t have written the plays and provides extensive evidence to refute these claims. Finally, the book looks at the history of the authorship debate itself, including individual critiques of both the ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’ campaign and ‘Anonymous’ movie.

‘Shakespeare Beyond Doubt’ isn’t just a clever title, for no one should be any doubt by the end that the William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon is the same William Shakespeare that wrote Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and all of the other plays that are ascribed to him. Indeed in reading this anthology, one comes more and more to see his detractors, Anti-Stratfordians as they are dubbed, as akin to creationists, crying aloud that we should ‘teach the controversy’.

Yet the controversy is that there is no controversy. Evolution is definitely true, as has been amply demonstrated by examination of the fossil record, radio carbon dating and DNA sequencing. Honestly, if scientists had got things so badly wrong at this point, you would expect aeroplanes to fall out of the sky a lot more often than they do, which is almost never.

Similarly, ‘Shakespeare Beyond Doubt’ catalogues the various methods which have been used to put the question of authorship beyond all reasonable doubt. There is ample historical evidence to show that Shakespeare was acknowledged during his lifetime as a great playwright and sufficiently mourned at his death in 1616 that elegies were written about him. The bust of Shakespeare at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon Avon was installed in 1623, the same year that the first folio of his completed works was published, prefaced with a poem by his contemporary, Ben Johnson, the authorship of whose plays has never been called into question, despite Johnson been raised the son of a bricklayer. It should also be noted that quarto editions of several of Shakespeare’s plays were published during his lifetime.

Then there is the textual evidence. Shakespeare did not always write alone and where he collaborated with other writers like Thomas Middleton and John Fletcher (tentatively, perhaps, even Marlowe), textual examination can tease out which scenes were written by whom. Moreover, far from the usual rejection of a mere actor not being capable of writing such plays, James Mardock and Eric Rasmussen reveal an author intimately acquainted with the workings of the theatre, structuring scenes in such a way as to allow his actors to play two or more parts during a performance. This skill reaches its apotheosis in Henry VI Part Three, where the action is constructed in such a way as to allow just twenty one actors to take on sixty seven different characters.

Two of the three main Anti-Stratfordian candidates, Marlowe and de Vere, were both dead by the time that many of the later plays were written. Advocates of Marlowe like to claim that he faked his own death, whilst the Oxfordians posit that de Vere wrote the plays at a earlier date than is generally acknowledged.

Yet Christopher Marlowe’s death is one of the most well documented events that survives from Elizabethan England. His body was presented at the coroner’s inquest, where it was examined by a sixteen man jury. The coroner’s report still exists, confirming that Marlowe died after being stabbed through the eye with a blade.

Oxfordians are on even stickier ground. De Vere died in 1604, yet the plot of The Tempest, one of Shakespeare’s last plays, is, as Alan H. Nelson explains, ‘clearly based on reports of a shipwreck which occurred off the island of Bermuda in late 1609’. Worse for Oxfordians, there was a general shift in English drama away from more antiquated words like ‘hath’ and ‘doth’ towards ‘has’ and ‘does’. Like carbon dating a piece of bone, the switch to the new forms occur in the canon of Shakespeare at exactly the time that they are traditionally held to have been composed. The case for de Vere is thin to non-existent.

Perhaps it’s simply that we expect too much of Shakespeare. Four centuries of adoration  have conditioned us to expect the greatest writer who has ever lived and we translate this into thinking that his works are the greatest writing that ever could be written. We are wonderstruck not just by his words, but by the fame of those words, as when witnessing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and being unable to decide whether one is impressed by the painting or by its fame. Who can hear Hamlet recite the words, ‘To be or not to be’ and not have mentally completed the line even before the actor has come out of his dramatic pause?

Like the Bible, we hear the beauty of the King James Version and somehow believe that the words are so perfect that they can have come only from God. The sublime rhythm of the English translation detracts from the actual content, which is riddled with absurdity, atrocity and flat contradiction. The same is true, to a lesser extent, with Shakespeare. There is a tendency amongst true aficionados to elevate every single word that Shakespeare wrote to the level of revealed wisdom. Yet as George Orwell noted in his essay, ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’, a lot of Shakespeare’s plays are padding. It’s not revealed wisdom, it’s killing time, filling out the plot, giving the Elizabethan audience its money’s worth. The Tempest is a brilliantly written play, but even a diehard Shakespeare fan like me finds himself bored rigid when watching it performed, even when I have been fortunate enough to see Patrick Stewart or the late Pete Postlethwaite in the role of Prospero.

When he’s at the top of his game, there isn’t another writer anywhere or any time that can match Shakespeare. A lot of the time, however, he is, in the words of the Player in ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’, “Merely competent.” It’s time to take Shakespeare down off of his pedestal, or at least place him on one that isn’t quite so lofty. Then we might find a proper sense of perspective towards his works.

In fact, my favourite proof that Shakespeare was indeed the author of his own works comes from Isaac Asimov. Asimov, amongst other things, wrote a two volume guide to the complete works of Shakespeare, as well as two volumes on the Bible. He also wrote the article, ‘Bill and I’, included in his 1972 collection of science essays, ‘The Left Hand of the Electron’.

In, ‘Bill and I’, Asimov argues that rather than think of Shakespeare as being too uneducated to have written the plays, it might be more useful to think of the plays as being too ill informed to have been written by any of the other usual suspects. He notes that during the Elizabethan era the prevailing view of the structure of the universe was still that of Ptolemy. The Ptolemaic view was of a geocentric universe, the Earth immobile at the centre, with the Sun, Moon and the five know planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) each occupying one of nine planetary spheres. These spheres moved independently of each other against a fixed background of stars that were set on an eighth sphere (the ninth being the ‘prime mover’, which set the universe in motion). This set up was held to account for the relative motion of the planets against the backdrop of stars during the course of the year.

Yet Asimov notes that the writer of both ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ seems to think that each and every star occupies its own planetary sphere, rather than being all fixed, relative to each other. He therefore concludes that a well educated man like Bacon or De Vere would not have made such an obvious blunder, but a man with just enough grammar school education like Shakespeare of Stratford could have done.

I’m not sure that I entirely agree with the theory, but I find it a pleasing one, because it once again demonstrates that the doubts surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays come down not just to classist snobbery, but to the desperate need by some to give credit where it is not appropriate. Shakespeare was a genius, to be sure, but a flawed genius. What other kind of genius is there?

The incredulity that a lowly glover’s son could have written such works comes out of the same kind of mentality that can’t fathom how the ancient Egyptians could have constructed the pyramids, leading to the only obvious conclusion that they must have been built by aliens. The fault lies, Dear Brutus, not in the Egyptians or with William Shakespeare, but in the paucity of imagination of the conspiracy theorist, which is all that the authorship debate ultimately boils down to. It has no more validity than the notion that the moon landings were faked or that 9/11 was an inside job. Or like a creationist vision of the universe, the alternate premise is meant to explain away the impossibility of the accepted version of events, but ends up being infinitely more messy and unsupportable than the original.

It’s a pity that ‘Shakespeare Beyond Doubt’ needed to be written and compiled at all, but we live in interesting times. Given events of recent years, a book like this was needed and its release in April of last year was timely. It’s a fine addition to the already substantial number of works dedicated to Shakespearean scholarship and I would advise anyone with a fascination with the Bard to give it a read. You will find in its pages ample ammunition to use against those who cast doubt upon Shakespeare the writer. Not that we need worry about it that much. ‘Anonymous’ was a flop at the box office and no more than a couple of thousand people out of the hundreds of thousands of Shakespeare’s experts and admirers have signed up to the ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’.

Shakespeare definitely wrote Shakespeare. It’s just nice to be able to show your working.

Get it done.

Ad Jamming

In today's post our hero rails against the iniquity of advertising.

Ad Jamming

I hate it when people try to sell me shit. I’m also very stubborn. If you ring me trying to hock double glazing or anti-virus software, I will boycott your company forever. Zero tolerance. It’s the only language they understand.

I go out of my way to avoid advertising. I hardly watch anything on television these days that isn’t either on the BBC or recorded for the express purpose of fast forwarding through corporate litter. Even on the rare occasion when I’m forced to watch a commercial channel live, a book and the mute button are on permanent stand-by. Ad breaks are the cosmos telling you that you need to read more.

Even when I go to the cinema, I prefer to go alone these days so not to appear rude when keeping my mp3 player going all the way through the Pearl and Dean bit (a reference which demonstrates how long it’s been since I paid attention to anything before the BBFC certificate).

All of which is fine. With the advent of DVD and Blue Ray, TiVo and Sky+, Netflix and Love Film, it’s very easy to avoid the commercials that clutter traditional mediums. It’s a personal choice for which you aren’t judged.

The same cannot be said online. Here a few pieces of litter, an occasional bad smell, are replaced by something approximating the North Pacific Gyre: Casino pop-ups and five cylinder YouTube pre-ads, with a side order of McDonalds’ offers blinking away out of the corner of your eye, a swirling mass of rotting matter and non-degradable carcinogens that will probably still be broadcasting into inter-stellar space long after we’ve killed every living thing on the planet.

It’s a captive market and if there’s one thing I hate more than people trying to sell me shit, it’s being made to endure them whether I like it or not. I’m stubborn, likesay, which is why I use ad blocking software wherever and whenever I surf the internet. It doesn’t take care of everything, but it does get rid of 95% of pop ups, side ads, even the scheduled, captive breaks enforced by most iplayers. Like hill walking, solid surfaces of earth and stone blocking out the incessant motorway drone. Bliss.

Fast forward through the break on a recorded episode of ‘The Daily Show’ or ‘Game of Thrones’ and you don’t receive passive-aggressive messages from Rupert Murdoch or Richard Branson telling you that  they rely on advertising revenue to make a profit. You frequently here this online though, usually from companies that are already quite big (to name them here would be counter-productive to the point of this article, as would saying which ad jamming software I use).

The usual resolution of the petulant displays is, hey, subscribe to our service and you’ll never see advertising ever again. Which is blackmail. And a declaration of war. Here’s my counter offer: If I don’t know who you’re whoring from then I don’t know which companies to boycott. If you’re going to make me pay attention to the Johns you turn tricks for then you can be certain that I’ll be adding their names to my list. A list I always check twice (yes, just like Santé Claus).

Which isn’t to say I don’t sympathise to a degree. I have, on occasion, been guilt tripped by a scientific journal. Not enough to turn off the software, but enough to empathise with their predicament. Our current economic is unfair, of course it is, any system where Hedge Fund Managers get paid more than doctors, musicians or scientists clearly has skewed priorities. That doesn’t mean we should simply submit to the insanity of it all, but fight back in however small a way.

The true extent of our skewed priorities shine through when you consider our attitude towards athletes. In the general melee that surrounded the build up to the London Games 2012, I noticed that the British tend to treat their athletes the same way they treat their soldiers. Apply a few meaningless epithets and it offsets the need to do anything to actually help them. Call someone a hero and it negates you from the responsibility of financially or emotionally supporting them. Call someone a star, an ambassador, and you need feel no guilt at seeing them selling themselves to some shampoo company to make ends meet. Admire someone’s bravery at sailing single handed around the world and it washes out the bad taste occasioned in the mouth by some DIY company’s gaudy font plastered all over her sails.

There was time, in my youth, that I looked forward to the Olympics, summer and winter alike. Not in many years. To have to sit through endless endorsements for Budweiser, Pepsi, McDonalds and all the other companies that have no place within a thousand miles of a sports stadium is more than I can bare. I think the IOC may be one of the most despicable organisations on the face of the planet. I mean, not only is its defining image, the Olympic torch, something that was introduced by the Nazis in 1936, but spectators are banned from drinking or eating anything not sold on the premises by the usual purveyors of obesity, heart disease and domestic violence. That’s a dictatorship in my book.

The principled corruption of the IOC is symptomatic of our entire culture. On the occasions that I’m flicking past adverts, I usually catch sight of Amazon flogging something. Amazon pay little or no tax in this country, treat their employees like medieval surfs, yet their operations put strain on our transport and energy infrastructures. Power stations brownout, tarmac cracks under the articulated weight and the cost of rebuild and repair is outsourced back to the consumer. Hey, you know the 3 quid you saved on the new John Bishop DVD? Turns out you’ll have to pay it back eventually. Comes with compound interest too.

Personally I think we should ban all adverts, at least at the cinema and on TV, and replace them with government endorsements of the companies that contribute the most in tax during the previous financial quarter. It could be broken down into four tax brackets, with national and multinational companies getting the prime time spots. Smaller and medium sized firms would make up the late night schedule, as they do now, with a handful of the juicier slots decided by lottery. Give smaller firms a chance to grow and compete.

These endorsements would still have a artistic budget and a creative director (the Don Drapers of the world subsumed by the civil service), but advertising exposure would be based upon merit, rather than the aggressive marketing of shit you don’t need.

Tax revenue calculation would be offset by any social and environmental damage caused by the company. If Shell contributed £10billion in taxes but shot its petrochemical load all over the Severn Estuary, then headlines saying what a bunch of polluting douche bags they are should be the only exposure they get until the cleanup has finished. At least then the oil industry might be inspired to actually finish cleaning up, not just until ten seconds after the news crews had packed up and driven away.

You have probably noticed the comparisons of advertising to litter in this article. The simile however is apt. Advertising is the polystyrene container thrown on the floor by the fast food consumer. Except we don’t even get to experience that polyunsaturated, transfat high that Hedge Fund Managers and oil executives experience on a daily basis before the inevitable cocaine-induced heart attack. All we get is a pile of garbage towering over us that we lack the money or resources to have taken away. As consumers, the only thing we consume is the effluent being constantly sprayed all over us from above. Killing us by degrees.

Fight back. Use ad blocking software, use the mute button, use the Pearl and Dean bit to catch up with friends and family. Apathy changes nothing and whilst it might seem like a small step to actively turn away from advertising, it is at least a step in the right direction.

Get it done.

Pilot

Today's post is actually something I wrote a year ago, but hasn't been posted in full until now. Originally meant as the opening monologue/pilot episode of Danny Roberts' Heuristic Tales. 

Pilot

Captain's Personal Log: Stardate 47552.1. By which I mean to say, hello. (groans). Captain Roberts here. Laid up and alone. Usually I'd write, but I've dislocated my shoulder. My good shoulder. Tried typing one handed, but it gets tiresome. But I've been watching old episodes of Deep Space 9 and that got me thinking about an audio log, until I can get out this sling. Besides, I've grown used to the sound of voices on board again after the days sailing Agatha and her people to safety.

These won't be long entries. I used to talk to myself a lot as a kid and these days talking out loud when there's no one there makes me uncomfortable. You'd think I'd be used to myself by now, I do it all the time anyway. And it's not like I'm really alone, there's Anna and Issy for company. Issy understands a lot of what I say, she's very smart for a jaguar. Must be from growing up on this ship. Anna understands things in her own special way. That's what I get for naming the computer and the ship after a character in an obscure book. Still, it's the power of the book that gets us around.

You find us out in the Azores. I've tried drifting down to the tropics to recuperate, but it was far too hot. I drifted further north, up into the North Atlantic, but that really is the worst, even at in the calmer seasons. So then I sailed south until I found the Goldilocks zone and dropped anchor. And this is where I ended up. On the holo-displays I can see islands to the north, north-west and east, but I just want to sit up on deck for a few weeks and catch up on some reading and do some physio and plan my next move.

***

So I bet you're wanting to know how I did my shoulder in. Well alright then. I haven't told it yet and I suppose this is as good an outlet as any. First, here are some things you might need to know.

My ship, the Anna Livia Plurabelle, is a magic ship. She travels through space, time, reality itself. I call myself Captain, but I am also her high priest, intoning words from a special book to jump from one place to another. The words are culled from dozens of different languages and almost always obscure. But they do lead to interesting places.

So what I've spent some years doing is sailing around, reading out parts of the book at random and mapping where the words lead me. Seeing what I can find. This time the words were:

Only the caul knows his thousandfirst name, Hocus Crocus, Esquilocus, Finnfinn the Faineant, how feel full foes in furrinarr!

Said it was gibberish. Unless you know. Generally the whole page has to be read up to the trigger words, so I am safe in reciting portions. And then there's anything from a pop to an explosion and the scenery vanishes and a fresh vista appears.

All I could see was sea at first. Then I turned around and saw the beanstalk. It reached up from an island in the sea. I was twenty miles off, the base covered in jungle, over which a thick fog hung. The beanstalk shot up from the centre of the island and into the clouds. The clouds were green.

As I came further I could see that what I thought was a beanstalk was more a ginormous tree. It tapered inwards towards the clouds, but spread out into a single bower above the clouds, turning the sky green with foliage. I could see something moving up there. A big something. I was hoping it hadn't seen me. I sent out a couple of remotes and fired up the engines.

***

So where did we get to yesterday? Oh yes. So I fired up the engines and soon I was just a little way off the shore. The fog got thicker the nearer we got, but it was no match for the sensors. You couldn't see as far as the bow, but through the honeycomb of displays encircling me, I saw like it was clear. The remotes had already mapped out most of the shoreline and were making their way inland. So I kitted up, lowered a boat down from the dock into the water and me and the cat went ashore.

The second we landed I felt like I was in a chose your own adventure novel. This happens a lot if I'm honest. I never really got into computer games, but reading adventures books always thrilled me. I got to use my imagination. This was the most I'd felt it though, what with the beam of light shining through trees in a halo of light. Issy growled beside me and the labile rippled from finger to elbow. I let it do its thing and it flowed into my hand and formed a broadsword. Then it jumped the gap to my other arm and gave me a shield for protection. I took a step forwards.

I felt we were being watched. Issy felt it too, the low rumble in her throat given as a warning. Only I heard the agitation in her growl. But we were left unmolested to approach the tree at the centre of the island. The path was well tramped, it took barely an hour.

The other reason it didn't take long was because of the sheer size of the trees trunk. The remotes had its circumference measured out as a mile and a half at the base. There were vines and all kinds of plant leaf growing on it and I quickly found that not only could I start to climb quite easily, but so could Issy. Her claws dug in where necessary, but for the most part she jumped from one floral shelf to the next. We made good time.

After climbing for an hour or so, we came to a road. Planks of wood were embedded into the trunk to form a surface. Like running the wrong way up a helter-skelter. And then there were gaps, where instead of road there were branches to climb up like great rungs in a ladder. Issy could still climb some sections, but I had to use the labile as a harness to winch her up some of it. The stifling heat of the jungle was long below us. It was freezing up there and getting colder. Good job I brought coats for both of us.

Up and up we went, the way now almost entirely paved with timber. And that's when we ran into two more adventures. They had the high ground and were keen to defend it, swords bared at us. Issy was ready to tear them apart, but I held her by my side with a raised hand. I had no doubt she could take both them out in an instant, but people always deserve a chance. I told them I mean them no harm and asked them who they were and I waited to see how they'd respond.

***

The taller of the two men spoke and when he did I knew instantly that he didn't understand my language. Luckily, I understood or something like it. It was Greek. Ancient Greek that is. A dialect of it at least. I've been learning the language for years and only recently got the hang it when I went to Greece for the first time. This sounded more Ionic than Attic to my ears and I blurted out what little I could remember. He spoke a little Attic too and through a mishmash of half uttered sentences and hand signals, we told each other our stories.

He said a giant lived at the top of the tree. The giant had stolen his wife and his son and daughter and his friend's family and many families from lands all over the area and brought them here. Most he ate. Some he kept as servants. They had come in from a cove to the west of the island, the opposite way I arrived. They said the cove was littered with the boats of the men who had come to rescue their families and never returned. I had seen the corpses in the undergrowth as I'd started to climb. Lot of bones around there too.

I offered my sword and my cat to them and they accepted and we climbed the last mile together. They were called Cyril and Cletus, I kid you not. I established that they were farmers by day but also served as soldiers when it was needed and knew how to use their sword. I quickly led them to believe that I was some kind of minor god. Unethical it may be but you have to speak to people in their own language and it's simply quicker than having to explain a piece of technology like the labile. Far better to let them believe in magic. Things get done quicker that way.

After a bit more of a climb and a bit of cat hoisting, we reach the top. It was like something out of a fairytale. The clouds at our ankles. I'd expected to see a castle or a palace, but instead what we found was a gigantic log cabin. It sat at the end of the space, surely only incredulity keeping it there. At the opposite end of this top tier was the rubbish dump. A graveyard of bones and half eaten corpses.

There was movement inside the cabin and the giant emerged. He stood maybe thirty foot tall. The three humans fanned out into an arc around us. Issy hung back like she was told. We tried to keep our distance, but I stepped in and got too close and he grabbed the tip of my sword and yanked me up and threw me backwards. And that's how I did my shoulder. So now you know. So I can stop now, right?

Oh ok then, So the two Aegeans went for him next and he carried Cleitus away he wasn't as lucky, 'cause the giant ripped him two and spilled his guts everywhere and threw the two halves of him over the ledge. And then I finally saw what danger we were in and I had to act quick. I commanded the labile to my will and I willed to fly at the giant. And as it did so, it flattened out into a sheet and blinded the giant. And as he struggled, it wrapped itself around his neck. And as it grew tighter, he stumbled closer and closer to the edge with a little gentle encouragement, the giant fell over the edge. The labile wrapped on to the bough as it passed and the giant's body hung there limp for a little while. Then the labile slowly released its grip. The giant's body fell to the heap that he had consigned so many too. The labile found its way back to nestle on my arm.

***

Cleitus was dead and there were tears in Cyril's eyes as he mourned his fallen friend. I felt terrible. If I only I'd been quicker, he might still be alive. Still, Cyril's tears were soon turned to joy when his family came running out. They had seen what had happened and hugged him and offered thanks to me. We ransacked the place for loot (them more than me, I don't have much need of gold these days), then began the descent.

We had with us twenty seven refugees. On the way down they told me of their problems. There were giants all over these parts. I guess I must have wandered into the mythical realms. Cyclops and all kinds around here. Most of our refugees were children and most of them were now orphans thanks to the giant. A few were mothers, but many of them were little more than children themselves. If they went back to their homelands they would only have fallen prey to some other giant eventually, so I decided on that long climb down to find them a new home.

As we descended I could feel all the things that had watched us on the way up were now racing ahead of us to the ground. A second confrontation was coming and I put Issy and Cyril on standby. As we reached the forest floor, I saw how right I was. A dark circle of beats encircled us. But the kids weren't afraid anymore, not with the giant's blue face sticking out the jungle at them, and they raced out at the mass, sending it scuttling.

We got everyone on board in five trips and were under sail by nightfall. If they had any doubt about my godlike status before, they soon melted away when I showed them around the ship. Well even people from my era are awestruck by the old girl (sorry Anna). And we got the kids set up in the barracks rooms on the bottom gundeck and set up some camp beds in the empty room up on deck and gave Cyril and his wife and family and some of the other adults use of the three state rooms.

Amongst the women was Agatha. She was in her late twenties, had lost her husband and two children, boy and girl, to the giant and had her one surviving seven year old with her. Gaiane. Her family had once been Athenians and she spoke the nearest to a Greek dialect that I recognised. She became the liaison for the Greeks. 

And liaison is the right word, because for most of the nine days we were at sea she lay with me in my quarters. She was my nurse as well as a lover, tending the arm. Her daughter slept in the hammock in my ready room, Issy curled up at her feet, content as a lamb. We were a little family for a while there, I even asked her to consider staying on board. But she quite sensibly wanted to start a new life somewhere else and found a new society. She asked me to beach my ship and turn the timbers into a home, but I said I could not. We lay in silence that last night together.

I found them a land that was fertile but not isolated and gave them the means to defend themselves. I gave them technology too. Some would be appalled at giving people in the past technology, but once a thing has been invented, who cares who has it? That's discrimination against the temporally challenged. I told them what they needed to know and what they were curious about and left them to it. I sailed away and moped for a while and watched DS9 episodes as I drifted back out the Mediterranean a meandered around the Atlantic. And then I started to speak and here we are.

***

Still bored. The arm's out of its sling at long last. Stiff, but the movements slowly returning. Should be fit in a few more days. Might weigh anchor and sail off in search of some adventure. Maybe read a passage out of the book. Or mooch over to one of the reality crossroads. Amsterdam or round the horn, up to Madagascar. There's Timbuktu, but there's nowt but desert out there. Need me some water to reach a place.

Weather's turned, can see a storm coming in on radar, so I guess the decision's already made. It occurs to me that I have never seen a fjord. Which is to say, I have yet to see a fjord. Think I'll sail up to Denmark and do some fjord spotting and then swing back down to Amsterdam when I'm done. I always enjoy Amsterdam. You always hear the best stories there. Second only to Tokyo for inter-dimensional rifts. Can always catch a new torrent in the surrounding areas. Remind me to tell you some time about the couple that crossed through one of the rifts to find a man in Montana who send them back to when they were kids. Remind me also to tell you of the fate which befell them.

So I'm ofsky. I might try some light typing tomorrow. Just a more efficient way to get out what's going on in my head. Although I can see myself retuning to this method again at times. It has its uses. Speak to you again some time.

***

Get it done.

Addendum XXXIX

Well I promised to bore you with too much Joyce and I’m as good as my word. In today’s post we re-examine a piece from last year. The original article is available by clicking here.

Addendum XXXIX

At the end of last year I wrote a lengthy article on Dante and allusions to his work in Moby Dick and Finnegans Wake. That article discusses the numerology of Dante’s work and why he considered the number nine sacred. The following is meant as an addendum to that piece, outlining some further thoughts regarding the family in Finnegans Wake.

The Wake concentrates on its five family members, husband and wife HCE and ALP, as well as their three children, daughter Issy and the twins, Shaun and Shem. Something interesting happens when we assign numerical values to their names. If each letter is given a number, such that a =1, b= 2 etc., all the way up to z = 26, then what one finds is that each of the children’s names add up to a multiple of 9. Issy = 72 (9 + 19 + 19 + 25 = 9 x 8); Shaun = 63 (19 + 8 + 1 + 21 + 14 = 9 x 7); Shem = 45 ( 19 + 8 + 5 + 13 = 9 x 5).

Moreover, not only do all six letters of the parent’s names, HCE & ALP, add up to 45, but their initial letters also add up to nine.

If we adopt the theory that the Wake is a feminine history, the story of Echo rather than Narcissus, we see that HCE is the first three letters of Echo read backwards. The Wake is a circle, signifying the womb, and by reading HCE backwards, the o of Echo is to be found in the fertilised egg of ‘riverrun’, the book’s opening word, ready to divide into sentence, page and novel.

Adding up the numbers for each of the children (72 + 63 + 45) gives a total of 180 and 180/3 = 60. If we add the final ‘o’ of Echo (with a numerical value of 15) to HCE and ALP, we get a total also equalling 60 (60 x 3 children = 180).

Mathematically then it can be shown that HCE + ALP = Issy, Shem and Shaun, but only with the addition of a nourishing  womb, inside of which life can get started. It’s a mathematical joke, given the impact of the number zero in history of mathematics. The equation only balances, only makes sense, with the addition of nothing, which as a circle is also infinite. Unbreakable.

Get it done.

2014

My favourite story about Einstein is the one where he and a colleague are trying to find a paperclip to hold the pages together of a report they’ve been working on. They find a paperclip in a drawer, but it’s all bent out of shape, so they set about trying to find a tool to fix it.

In a draw lower down, the colleague finds a box full of paperclips. Einstein takes one out of the box, straightens it out and uses it to fix the original paperclip. He colleague says, “Einstein, what are you doing? There’s a whole box of new paperclips.”

“When start I a task,” replies Einstein, absentmindedly, “I like to see it through to a conclusion.”

I like the story, because it demonstrates two things. One, it demonstrates how obsessive and dedicated one has to be to be at the top of one’s particular field. It also demonstrates that even the brightest men and women in history can be a bit thick sometimes.

This year I’m going to try and post something new to this blog every day. In the past I've used the blog as a place to post stories, articles and essays and so in 2014 I’m going to try and write a steady stream of new pieces of writing, pushing myself as much as possible. That might sound a bit thick, but it also demonstrates the level of obsession that I need to start demonstrating to not merely good at what I do but an expert. That’s what I’m doing this year and I think this should be the year for all of us of getting shit done. My motto this year, Get it done.

Coming up in the next few weeks and months, invented news, Deep Space Nine, Blue Metal Jazz, on the hating of adverts and the electronic afterlife. There will also be far, far too much about James Joyce, for which I can only apologise in advance. There will be some filler, I’m sure, when I’m mired in some larger project, but I’ll try to keep the standard as high as possible.

Welcome to 2014 (please mind your head).

Get it done.