Tuesday Tunes: The Return of the Sci-fi Song Of The Week!

Apparently, so my Great Uncle Wikipedia informs me, it's one of the blokes out of Run DMC's 47th birthday today. And because I've been writing about ghosts lately, it seems only logical to mash the two together, zap them with a little sci-fi magic (without crossing the streamers, mind), and see what turns up to reintroduce the Sci-fi Song Of The Week.

I always thought Ghostbusters II was a poor relation to the original; the walking Statue of Liberty tries to top Mr Staypuft, but just comes across as silly. And I can remember several fun one-liners from the original movie, but from the sequel I get stuck after the 'Do' 'Ray' Egon' moment, which was probably the comedy highpoint of the film. Or maybe I've just watched the original a lot more than the sequel.

No, actually, I'm pretty sure GBII was rubbish. Still, gotta love the wacky pop-rap cover version of the theme, eh?

Oh yes, and happy birthday DMC :)

Greg Mitchell, and a strange quote

For those who followed the CSFF Blog Tour for The Strange Man a few weeks back, you might be interested to check out the interview with author Greg Mitchell on the Spirit Blade Underground Podcast last week. At the time of writing it's still queued up on my mp3 player, but apparently it's a 'great conversation about approaching the taboo genre of horror in a Christian publishing market'. So if that (and indeed general discussion of all things speculative from a Christian perspective) sounds like a good way to spend half an hour, hop on over and take a listen.

Oh, and, Doctor Who quote of the week: 'Reverse the jelly baby of the neutron flow!'

Homeless Characters

As part of my attempt to blog something hopefully interesting, I decided (in a moment of madness) that Fridays would be About Writing. Which, in theory at least, means I should get on and atually do some writing, if only late on Thursday nights.

And with that in mind, I'm briefly dusting off a currently homeless character. I invented her a few years ago, as part of a comedy writing exercise pretty much for my own enjoyment and nothing else. I think she was a good comedic character; she had her own gimmick, a catchphrase and everything, and was a nice litle way of poking fun at her real-life counterparts. With a bit of work I could probably have sold some sketches to Little Britain or something.

However, I knew I couldn't do that. I always wanted my writing (at least, any that got released into the wild) to be in some way God-honouring. And this girl, as she stood, was far from being that. She was too light-hearted, too busy making light of a lifestyle that really isn't very funny. And so she has lingered, unloved, on my hard drive, until I began to wonder...

Can I breath some fresh life into her, and somehow use her to highlight what was wrong with her life? Can I concentrate really hard and not make her a stupid caricature, but something useful and potentially God-honouring? Maybe if I replace the stupid juvenile humour of her original incarnation with something more dry and self-deprecating, she can help me to show the way things really are.

Maybe, some day, she will get a second chance. For now, though, I don't think her story is for me to tell. Back to your little corner of the hard drive for now...

I've been distracted

I realised Towel Day was coming, and it's taken me about five weeks to find my towel. That's why it's been so quiet around here lately. Honest.

Well ok, that's not strictly true. I actually forgot it was Towel Day until, well, half way through the day. But did I panic? I did not. Instead I chose to use Towel Day as an excuse to try and reboot the blog (again) in a completely non-labour intensive way.

Incidentally, the reason it's been so quiet around here lately is just that I'm rubbish at coming up with interesting and witty things to write. Could you tell?