The Meaning of Truth (No Really)

We create our own truth, or truths, or versions of it, every time we think our way towards our respective futures.

That is why the only person we must never be totally afraid to speak the truth to, is ourself.

Wow, for a minute there I was coming over all Philosophical.

I should have swandived into a bit of Krishnamurti or the fella down the pub who looks just like him and then stared you right in the metaphorical eye and held your gaze and bluffed it.

But as I sit yer waxing lyrical looking out over the Bay into the darkness, I watch the lights of a trawler some five miles off shore, hauling in its catch.

I wonder what it is like to be one of those men, to be buffeted from high tide to low water in search of Mackerill, Prawns, Rusty Old Fridges and I wonder what truth they tell themselves when things are hard, really hard?

What truths do they say to themselves when the waves throw the boat around like a tin can and the catch is so low that they earn nothing?

Or the Gambler tearing the losing ticket angrily from the stub?
The shop girl crying into her makeup sad to be alone again?

What about you?

Sometimes Insomnia can be a good thing

Storms lashed us from the west and south-west. The Atlantic did not like us last night and decided to show our tiny collection of houses clinging onto the edge of west Wales a thing or two.

I led in bed, the rain slashing across my window, not being able to sleep, hoping that the Outhouse Roof I had fixed yesterday was still in one piece and not somewhere over Ireland by now.

OccassionallyI'd gawp at the radioactive dials of my megabell Chinese alarm clock. No amount of self-fulfillment could help me drop off, so I got up and started reading.

I've had the Charles Willeford omnibus (Pick-Up, Burnt Orange Heresy, Cock-Fighter) in my possession for the last four years, but I had only ever read one of his previous novellas 'Kiss your Ass Goodbye', which is excellent hard-boiled neo-noir stuff.

So I started reading and lost myself in the spare functional words, grim lives, stained linoleum.

Next thing I know I'd read one hundred pages of complete immersion and then I went to sleep and into my own 'Live All Girl Revue Mabinogion!'. Marvellous.

And then I thought of Paris again, the view from the Sacre-Coeur, world-famous, thronged by tourists and looky-looky men alike, it still inspires action in me.

http://www.sacre-coeur-montmartre.com/

And then I started writing. A Treatment for an idea which has become much more than that, a strange movie that goes back to a theme that I can't seem to shake, one of FATE, Destiny.

Almost every script that I've ever written has in some way dealt with fate, even, or especially the comedies.

Fate is the hammer that strikes the bell, a displacement of unsettled ideas, a collection of fragments, something unknown that knows us.

Just one Krispy Kreme and i'm done

A furious rain beat down upon me as I walked to the top of the hill to look out over the islands.

I sheltered under a wiseoak and watched the crows and gulls soaring on the updrafts.

I thought of Paris, a city I love the feel of and not for the fortune cookie romantic cliches but for its beauty, its order, it's cut-price cassoullet and its vibe.

I thought how I have been due to go back there to complete the mammoth walk that I started with someone who is now just a friend, where we did our usual over-impulsive enthusiasm and ended up stomping for about twenty miles until we had walked so much, that we could not stop because we literally would of seized up.

I started laughing into the wind and rain view as I remembered asking for guidance at Francois Truffaut's grave in Montmartre cemetery, touching the black marble he just replied (in a cod french accent) 'you've just got to keep going mon amee'. Thanks Francois.

So I have kept going, through the lows, lower and lowlives until I started to climb to the lip of something brilliant, just to look out and admire the scenery.

The problem with life it seems that we remember strategic moments, but we don't remember the effort inbetween, so everything seems like it was only yesterday, because memory is selective and then we say 'where did the time go?'.

It went the same way it always goes, onwards like time and tide ever-constant.

The Cure That Won't Kill You

Now that the self-inflicted car crash of Valentine's Day is well and truly over for another year, I can put away my toys and get on with the rest of my life.

For some beautiful reason, some of you loonies out there are interested in me and my flummery and I have been contacted by some to say as much (excellent!).

To the girl who keeps sending me pictures of her arse, thank you, inspiration is nine/tenths of frustration, or something like that.

And to that dastardly couple who were having a shag on the bench at Penally beach on that night, all I can say is, you lucky bastards, where's mine?

Seriously what do you do in a situation like that? There was I walking up the steps off said beach and in plain view is two people really going at it, I honestly didn't know what to look at first.

And is it healthy for it to be bent at quite such an angle?

Getting on with it means finishing various writing/ information projects and moving forward, growing as they say, these writing projects will in turn give me much joy and a lot of money.

It also means making more movies in the capacity of director/ producer/ impressario, which means another step forward on the road to happytown.

I am currently rewriting yet another of my feature film scripts (I've written nine and a half feature film scripts, twenty short film scripts, sitcom pilots, soap opera scripts, sketches etc etc) and I have found the exciting kernel that hangs the whole thing (of this current rewrite) together.

This is akin to Sherlock Holmes sussing out where the contraband is in 'the Pearl of Death' and then being horrified by the Hoxton Creeper at the end (still one of my favourite of the Basil Rathbone S.H movies).

It is in turn frustrating rewarding and exciting. Writing is frustrating rewarding and exciting, it is a self-made fruity truth that serves the greater good of humanity. Well, my humanity anyway.

In the words of Les Dawson, 'I only do this for the luxuries in life, like bread, and shoes'.

Valentine's Day Joy or Hell is Other People

Ah the sound and smell of true love as they go at it like rabid lollypops.

On the eve of Valentine's Day I stand before you, my number one fan, as a now currently single man and make my pitch.

Actually large parts of this blog are about me making my pitch as a burgeoning ball of potential potential rolling its way towards you.

And whilst I go off on many tangents that are off-topic, I am definitely looking for Lurve in all the right places.

'Ah but your not conventional they say'. Well tough, unconventional people rule the world not because they think outside the well-thumbed box, but because they see no well-thumbed box whatsoever.

So on this Valentine's eve what do I wish for in my life? I'm making a special point of saying wish, as it's much more dreamy and cause state than 'want'.

Am I lonely? No. I'm really good at being just with me, but experiences are amplified massively if you share them with someone who shares at least some of your values and is on a similar wavelength.

I have been to places that are absolute paradisetropicalislands and they were gorgeous and fantastic, but, the experience is always amplified by the other person and that sharing of an excellent experience. That is something I have been looking for, a natural relationship with someone where things mostly flow.

I'm feeling very vital, healthy and ebullient, because I know that i'm getting to where I want to go, this is an intense set of emotions that I have been cultivating and just like a well-tended garden, it's working.

So ladies and genitals put a penny in the slot and 'dial-up-my-number' (Marks out of Ten if you can name that tune).

Whatever Happened to Salter's Duck?

You could hear the sea from a mile away, roaring.

As I turned left and walked through the wooded sandy path that comes out onto a lip at the top of the beach, the full power of the ocean hit me, like being in the Millenium Stadium when Wales score a try, the noise was deafening and other-worldly.

And the waves were fifty yards away.

I was walking back along the beach, in the dark, as I love to do and what I hope to be doing with the new love of my life some time shortly (hint hint keep it coming ladies ;p)

The beach is fantastic when nature is keen to show you some of its awesome power, Carmarthen Bay was a froth of white water churning.

And then as I was pretending to be in my version of a video that I want to direct for the Niles Barclay track 'Crazy', where I'm doing a funky dance with a skeleton in a women's red wig and mouthing the words, it hit me.

Whatever happened to Salter's Duck?

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Salter's Duck was a wave power machine that generated electricity from the rising and falling waves and tide.

Here's a link:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Salter%27s+Duck&btnG=Google+Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB

Just copy and paste if you're not feeling too lazy.

My point being, why don't we have loads of these things strung out around the coast of Wales providing for our energy future? Otherwise all that awesome power is going to waste and its free like the wind but prettier and potentially more productive.

Anyway, as ever I shall keep looking for Ms Right or even Ms Not So Right and we can go on great walks on the beach at night and maybe if she's really lucky i'll show here my Niles Barclay Skeleton dance, which is far more entertaining than 'wanking on ice' or whatever other apa is on the TV on a Saturday evening.

Peak Oil at the Fish Fryer 2

We use oil for absolutely everything and it has enabled us to develop an immensely complicated society and develop exponentially over the last two hundred years.

Oil is directly responsible for you being able to read this blog right yer, because a lot of powerstations are powered by oil, oil provided the plastics used to make your computer, the petrol to dig up, transport etc the raw components for everything around you that you can touch or see etc etc.

In short Oil is a big story.

So if oil production is running low and the top oil fields are tapping out, then we'll need to find more oil and develop some new technologies to replace it right?

We are finding new supplies of oil by the way, the problem for us is that they are relatively small finds.

A new well of 2 billion barrels sounds massive, but then when we look at the fact that the world uses approximately 85 million barrels per day, then you can see that 2 billion barrels isn't going to last that long, even if we found say ten of those fields in the next five years.

The demand for oil is increasing because the world's economy is getting bigger, there are more people who have moved from subsistance living to being 'consumers', all these people need to be fed, watered and to be able to live in a way that they aspire to.

The world's population is increasing by about 73 million per year at present rates.

This may slow down due to:

More women taking control of their own contraception.

Better healthcare which means that less children die in developing countries, so that eventually people realise that they don't have to produce so many.

And because as people's affluence levels rise, they realise that children cost lots of money and so tend to have less of them.

Then there's the fact that most of these new oil finds are at much deeper depths and in more inhospitable places than hoped for (Sakhalin for example).

First stop Ethanol.

Ethanol is going to make a lot of American grain farmers very rich. America is the world's largest corn producer and the vast majority of ethanol is produced from corn. Large amounts of the world's population rely upon corn as a staple food, but increasingly more and more corn has been used to produce ethanol which is mixed with gasoline to make it go further in terms of fuel consumption.

There are other types of ethanol and these are gradually increasing in uptake, such as cellulosic ethanol which uses the stems, leaves etc of the corn plant and can potentially use most types of organic plant waste. In years to come i'm sure that your lawnmower will have the ability to use the very grass that it cuts, as the fuel to drive it. Exciting huh?

But for the now, most ethanol is:

A) Made from corn cobs therefore taking a direct amount of food out of the supply chain
B) Produces less energy than it uses
C) Uses large amounts of water in its production

All very important points. Less food means more pressure for the food being reduced in the supply chain, paricularly for some of the world's poorest people whose diet is largely reliant upon it.

Producing less energy from it than it takes to make means that the fuel is inefficient and therefore is only a stopgap.

And using lots of water to produce it is extremely wasteful of the world's most precious resource.

So this leads back to how to find a wife. If you're reading this and thinking WTF? Please bear with me.

If our society is going to be effected by Peak Oil then will it be best to live in the city, where you potentially have good transport links etc or in the country where in theory you could grow your food and potentially produce your own power?

Of course in the city I'd find it easier to meet people, which may lead to meeting a fantastic woman and all the great things that come from that (hmm Krispy Kremes and Green Tea...), on the other hand I could meet a strong farm gal and dig for victory.

Tough choices huh?

Peak Oil at the Fish Fryer

The Meejah is rife with every hack journo from Arsebags-on-Sea to Pithcairneynockers talking or wittering about 'Global Warming'.

Finally having woken up to what was a really important issue of major significance, five years or more ago the wordists have decided that this is really important.

Sadly the more pressing concern of how to run all this machinery type stuff raises its head now and then and goes relatively unnoticed.

In short, Peak oil. Whassat you say? Peak oil.
My simple exposition:

It is the phenom that we are running low on the black stuff, which our entire civilisation runneth upon and that's like, really bad.

'Ah it's those evil oil corporations' you cry.

Actually, not really, it's the fact that the world uses roughly 84-85 million or so barrels of oil per day in everything from fertiliser, ball point pens, printer ink, food production, medication, heating, power generation and oh transportation.

At most the barrels of oil being pumped out are approx. 85-86 million per day, depending upon the weather, political stability, who's not speaking to whom etc.

With more people in developing nations like India, China, Vietnam etc all wanting to live like us in the 'west', there's more competition for oil to run cars, have more fertiliser, more bal point pens etc.

That's okay says you, we'll run our cars on fish and chip shop oil and cellulosic ethanol:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=cellulosic+ethanol&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Well I wish, unfortunately most of these alternative technologies use more energy to produce than you get from them. Even Cellulosic Ethanol which is one of the best of these, because you use all the non-food parts (waste-stalks, leaves etc) of corn etc.

Oh dear, what are we gonna do? How about Bicycles? Use the car less, live closer to your work, quality public transport (every city over 100, 000 should have a reliable tram system for a start off).

The future means change, change is just different tommorrow than today.
But does this mean that I will have to:

A) meet the wife of my dreams via a chance encounter on public transport?
B) Travel less distance to meet my wife?
C) Import wife from foreign climes and feel guilty about the air miles that the gorgeous pussy-in-boots Svetlana is (at least she's organic)?

Ah but are you serious?

I've been asked this a few times now, 'Russell, are you serious about this?'.

I don't know whether to be flattered or confuzzled by this question, as yes I am serious.

I am looking for Love in all the right places, even a wife, a life-partner, the butt of my jokes, the joke of my butt.

I guess that a lot of people who know anything about me at all, have a right to ask that question, as up until now, seemingly, I haven't been too bothered about things like marriage.

After all if I'd been serious about it before, they figure, I would have done something about it when I was in a 'serious relationship' a while ago, right?

Well one of life's little ironies is the fact that I didn't feel ready in myself, to make the necessary commitment, but more importantly in terms of how it fitted in with the rest of my life, which has been at times a sort of chaotic mollasses.

Or rather I was approaching readiness and this consists of many things, such as Solvency, Knowing what you want and taking action to get it and getting things sorted so that you don't repeat the same mistakes that you have been making.

And whilst we're on the subject, why do long-term relationships always have to be described as 'serious', like a triple-bypass or very high blood pressure?

As if the sword of Damacles is hanging over your head at every moment going, 'hey don't mess up, else I'll have to cut yah..'

The best things in life are Fun, Pleasure and those Chocolate covered Halva bars that I recently discovered.

So am I serious about this? Only when I have to be.

It's apparently official, 'we're all doomed!'.

Well that's what you would be led to believe if you had the misfortune to hear any of the mainstream news reports today. Global Warming is all your fault whitey and make no mistake.

So what can be done? Well you could turn that extra lightbulb off for a start off.

Did you know that the construction industry is one of the most polluting in the world. Having worked as a labourer etc, I can tell you that their attitude to waste is chronic, they simply don't care.

If I can add my own mighty weight to the argument for the minute. I don't feel that we are doomed, but I do feel that we have some major adaptation to do, in terms of Peak oil, in terms of potential Global Warming.

But don't worry the Cheap Oil will run out well before then.

On the wife front, I'm still looking girls and I want to find awife before I am old, grey and mouldy.