I'm sorry I'm late, but...

Well, predictions ran true. With all the best of intentions, my regular one-hour writing sessions lasted all of two nights.

I tried though, I really did try.

I even started on a third one which I attacked over the course of a few nights, 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there. It was a well reasoned, well-thought out, but still damned funny piece on state funerals in Australia, and how there hasn’t been a decent one given out for a while. (I completely ignored Don Chipp, but hell, I wasn’t thinking.) There was even a couple distasteful gags about the rule of threes of ironic Australian celebrity deaths, and Colin Thiele’s death not being by a pelican attack or a falling bookshelf.

And then I thought about writing stuff about the Pope’s recent statements about Muslims. As far as I understand it, he said that Muslims were violent, and in protest, Muslims became violent. (Right up there with Christians claiming to be pro-life and so shoot abortionists.)

There was some other crap, like Channels 7 and 9 going to war over a delicacy called Wa Wa. But I didn’t write anything about that either.

I’m just too buggered.

Firstly, let me explain that term to non-Australians. ‘Buggered’ usually means ‘sodomised’ with implications of non-compliance. In Australia, like most of our slang, it means something completely different. (I only discovered this year, that no non-Australian knows what ‘How’s it going?’ actually means.) ‘Buggered’ in Australian means simply, stuffed. Or Exhausted.

So let me do the Australian thing and whinge here. Yes, we say poms whinge no end, but we are descended from them for the most part, so we occasionally like to revel in our British Heritage. (Then and during the Commonwealth Games.)

I am a high school English teacher. I work from 7:30 to 6:00 Monday to Thursday. Drinks start at 3:16 on Friday so I finish early then. On Sundays I put in about 6 hours. So what’s that? 40.5; 47.25; almost 54 hours a week (and a big ‘fuck you’ to anyone who thinks teaching isn’t real work). My work is piling up (not helped by the exhaustion I’m currently feeling now being put off temporarily by this blog entry) and when I go home I have three girls under 4 to spend quality time with (feed and shower them and put them to bed is pretty much it) a pregnant wife to help out, sleep interrupted by said children under 4, and now a house almost complete that I’m slowly moving furniture into, painting, landscaping, and whatever other crap we can’t afford to pay other people to do.

So I’m rooted (see the definition of buggered).

But hell, why should I inflict that upon you, hmmm?

I have half an hour left, so I gotta say something.

I was teaching This Divided State the other day, and I thought about it when I heard these Muslim riots, that were in protest of the Pope’s accusation that Muslims are essentially violent. (Okay, I can’t claim to have knowledge of exactly what he said, but that is how it’s being reported.) It got me thinking.

At what stage do hypocrites realise they’re being hypocritical? That may seem like an odd question, but as a high school teacher I realise I’m being completely hypocritical. Me, as teacher: “study for your exams at least two hours a night per subject.” Me, as student: “there’s no point in studying, as if you didn’t learn it at school, you’re not going to learn it at home.” Me, as teacher: “don’t leave essays to the last minute. Plan, draft, and proofread.” Me, as student: “It was only due yesterday. Sponge, scull, and vomit.”

Now I realise I’m being hypocritical, but I have to do it for my job. Surely someone must occasionally feel the same way in these more extreme examples of hypocrisy.

This Divided State:
Conservative One: Why are we against Michael Moore coming to Utah?
Conservative Two: He’s against American values.
Conservative One: Isn’t freedom of speech an American value?
Conservative Two: Freedom of speech only works because people know when to shut the hell up. (*That last line is an actual quote from the documentary)

Rioting against the Pope.
Muslim rioter one: Let’s shoot that Catholic nun.
Muslim rioter two: Why?
Muslim rioter one: The Pope said we were violent.
Muslim rioter two: Ummm, hang on…

Southern State of the US
Christian fundamentalist one: Let’s shoot that abortionist
Christian fundamentalist two: Why?
Christian fundamentalist one: He kills babies.
Christian fundamentalist two: And?
Christian fundamentalist one: The bible clearly says: “Thou shalt not kill.”
Christian fundamentalist two: Good point, pass the ammo.

An ABC studio somewhere:
Studio pleb one: What’s John Howard doing here?
Studio pleb two: recording a congratulatory promo for Play School.
Studio pleb one: Didn’t he criticise us in parliament saying that we were out of touch of the community and promoting un-Australian values?
Studio pleb two: Our Prime Minister being demagogic and contradictory? Never!

Amanda Vanstone’s office
Personal assistant one: Prepare a statement condemning Kim Beazley as racist.
Personal assistant two: Why?
Personal assistant one: He agreed with the Prime Minister on something.

Bugger! (Note: That word can be used as an expletive as well.) That was the other thing that got me worked up. Why does Beazley exist? Isn’t he the opposition? Isn’t he like to, you know, oppose the Prime Minister? Other than the IR laws, what has he actually opposed of the Prime Minister lately? Iraq War? Nope. Reinstatement of super? Nope. Cross-media ownership laws? Nope. Sale of anything the Liberals can prop up their coffers with? Not that I know of.

You wanna know why the Opposition is the opposition? ’Cause they’re not an alternative. That’s kinda what the opposition is supposed to be in a two-party system.

Morons.

And that’s close enough to the hour. (A couple of minutes short, but my ride’s here and I have things to mark.)

In Defence of Iago

Alright. 8 pm and time to type.

I figured for the first proper blog away from my introduction, I’d get pretentious. Really pretentious.

Let’s talk Shakespeare.

A thought occurred to me the other day while preparing for a class. I was teaching Othello to a class of uninterested Year 11s (16 year olds). Boy it’s a struggle.

These were the top non-Lit kiddies. Unit 2B. (Course of Study – look it up and weep.) So I thought it wouldn’t be a bad choice of text. Sure there’s none of the blood or violence of Romeo and Juliet, or MacBeth, or Titus Andronicus, but at least there was manipulation, betrayal, duplicity and sex. It was basically high school life with blank verse. (And yes, I know there is O. We watch it tomorrow.)

They just don’t get it though. It’s as if the kids place up a barrier the moment they hear “Shakespeare” and think that it’s much too hard – even when Shakespeare’s using words they know. These are Catholic kids dammit! At least once a week they say The Lord’s Prayer in Early Modern English with the thys and thees, but they still don’t get it.

But that’s a side issue, in here to chew up time before my hour is up.

What I realised was (and if you haven’t read Othello you may as well tune out now): Iago isn’t the villain. Othello is the tragedy of Iago. Iago is Macbeth without the opening Act to construct him as the good bloke he so obviously was.

How?

1. Everybody claims Iago to be an honest fellow. Yes, he is manipulative, but his reputation is known far and wide by everyone. They all comment on it. How could not one person have suspicions of Iago before the play opens, unless Iago either: was planning this his entire life (unlikely); or he truly was honest at some stage?
2. Iago fought beside Othello for years. Othello trusted him enough to be his ancient and fight beside him. Yet he overlooks him as the lieutenant for some mathematician who’d never fought a battle before. You’d be a little pissed off wouldn’t you? What would the reaction be in the 17th Century when honour was all people lived for? (Yes a broad generalisation, but it was pretty important.)
3. At one stage, it can be reasoned, Iago truly loved and trusted Othello. At the end of the first Act he says to the audience (or himself): “it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets/He has done my office: I know not if't be true;” How can a guy dismiss these rumours so off-handedly if he didn’t hold Othello in such a high regard that he couldn’t possibly dream that his boss would cuckold him? He obviously ignored it and only recalled it (and used it later as motivation) when Othello proved to be such a treacherous bastard himself.
4. The hanky. A colleague argued that I couldn’t just ignore the hanky, the MacGuffin that finally pushes Othello into madness. Iago (according to Emelia) had always been begging for it. She (my colleague, that is) says this proves that Iago had been planning this for years. Au contraire. (Geez. As if talking about Shakespeare isn’t pretentious enough, I’m now throwing in French.) In that same soliloquy I quoted earlier, Iago is wondering about how to really get to Othello and decides then that he should make Othello believe Desdemona’s cheating on him. Iago says later that he’s always wanted the hanky so he can copy the pattern on it for Emelia. What’s to say that wasn’t true?
5. Even Aaron in Titus Andronicus had more than two dimensions. Shakespeare did not write villains who were villains for the sake of being villains. Iago appears to be a complete bastard. Is it not out of the realm of reason that he could be played in a sympathetic manner, insofar as MacBeth can be sympathetic? Iago was a loyal soldier, who waits and waits and waits for some recognition, and when the opportunity of a promotion comes up, it goes to a politician who has never risked his life. He snaps, and attacks Othello – not directly – but by trying to get him in trouble for doing something – if not illegal, at the very least immoral: eloping with a senator’s daughter. When this doesn’t work he then tries to get him to feel what Iago himself feels – the betrayal of someone who he thought he trusted. Of course, like all Shakespeare’s protagonists, he oversteps his bounds and goes nuts, but for a moment there, Iago could be a person to cheer.

It’s a thought that at least interested me for a while.

That’s why so many stories suck, but Shakespeare’s holds up. A villain being villainous “just ‘coz” isn’t interesting. This is why Magneto being in charge of the “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” or “The Masters of Evil” never worked as villain names for me. Who thinks of themselves as evil? Does Saddam Hussein or George W really sit there cackling in their palaces about how delightfully eeeevil they are? Of course they don’t because everybody is the hero in their own lives. They like to think they’re doing what is right. And there’s nothing scarier or interesting than a villain who thinks they’re the good guys. (Read I Am Legend for a great take on this.)

A good writer knows this and always takes this into account.

12 minutes to go.

I was sure this one would last longer. It was stewing away in my head for a while so I was sure I’d have at least an hour’s worth of stuff to do. But I’m tired and still have stuff to do, so I figure I may have forgotten stuff.

I guess I should have called this blog ‘the hour challenge’ but I didn’t consider the fact that, hey an hour of writing shit is harder than you’d think? I’ve actually gotten up twice for a minute or two already – once to sort out my girls, and once to double-check what ‘ancient’ was (it’s the rank one below lieutenant).

But I couldn’t resist the chance to name it after my favourite Shakespeare quote. (It will be a tattoo very soon.) Have you figured it out yet? Quick, look at it again and think. It’s from Hamlet, does that help? It was quoted in A Nightmare in Elm Street. Nope?

“I could be bound within a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams.”

4 minutes to go.

I have to start typing now so my wife stops talking to me. (It’s not as bad as it sounds, she’s telling me off about some ex-girlfriend stuff. Okay that did sound bad.)

3 minutes to go.

And yes it did take a minute typing that last block. I’m a shocking typist. So bad that in uni, when I had to go over a mate’s place to write essays, they came up with a joke: what goes ‘tap, tap, tap, fuck, tap tap tap shit, tap tap tap fuck? Me, typing an essay.

And that might not transfer well to the computer screen. But at least, if I type this last sentence really, really, really slowly…

That is the hour.

And so another desperate voice cries out from the ether

(This is unproofread, so please be gentle)

This is the first entry of what will hopefully be the first of regular entries on my blog, and this is the best opening I can come up with.

I’m a frustrated writer who has gravitated to the profession that caters for frustrated male writers: English teaching. This year I’ve been stuck at a school which I paradoxically love, but can feel my life being sucked out of me by the extra-curricula work demanded of me. I appear to be at a school where actual teaching takes backseat to filling out forms, helping kiddies get through their issues and meetings, always meetings.

So, you won’t find my real name on this blog. I get the feeling I may be at times spitting viciously at my place of employment, some colleagues and students so it would probably be best if I keep my name to myself.

So scratch fame and fortune as a possible motivation for writing this blog. No; my reason is far more pathetic. As I said above, I am a frustrated author. I do want to write for a living, but this year, I find myself without time to write. I get home from work at between 6 and 6:30. I get an hour or so of playing with my girls, and then, after dinner and a little (a miniscule amount, admittedly) of housework, I’m far too rooted to do anything that requires thought or effort.

Last year I wrote a 66, 000 word novel, which I haven’t found time to edit this year. I was reading a novel a week. This year I’ve found time to read three – one I had to teach, and one I’ve already read.

But still I’ve got to scratch that writing itch. So…

This is my attempt to keep something going. One hour of writing a day, from 8 pm to 9 pm. An hour of drivel about anything that springs to mind and keeps my fingers pummelling my laptop keys for 60 minutes. So if you are reading this, take this blog as a social experiment. You’re privy to a wannabe writer’s writing exercises. It could be fascinating (but probably not).

No, I have no delusions that anyone will read this, let alone agree with opinions that all-too-often delve into rants. A lonely pathetic voice crying out in the ether desperate to attain some level of respect in the writing world.

Shit, that did sound pathetic didn’t it?

So what to expect? Like most bloggists (“blogger” sounds too phlegmy for my liking) I live under the mistaken, egotistical belief that my opinion actually matters, and since, like most English teachers, I am a pretentious arse this will be a place for over-opinionated rantings on whatever strikes my fancy at the times.

There will be few facts. There will be little verifiable content, and Wikipedia will be the extent of research.

Since my wife banned me from watching the news because my girls were learning too many swear words from what I yelled at the screen, I will rant on the state of the world.

Since I still – inexplicably – love my job and so am too afraid to tell my bosses what I really think, I will rant on the state of education and my job.

Since I am a pretentious popular culturalist, I will rant on everything popular cultural. (Yes that is grammatically correct.) I will try to avoid art, as I generally get a headache trying to understand it (much like the ones I get when trying to understand a time travel tale.)

There will be no poetry, fan fiction, or my short stories.

Modern poets are song writers. Any tosser who puts a few random, pretentious words together and call it poetry are failed advertising copy writers. As someone (I think it was Coleridge) once said, “Music without poetry is just noise. Poetry without music is just words.” Or too put in a way that I much prefer, someone else (I think it was Francis Bacon) once said, “Writing free verse poetry is like playing tennis with the net down.”

Fan fiction scares me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because my first experience worried me immensely: an otherwise genius intellectual reading me a story he’d written about a dimension-hopping Power Puff Girl (or something similar) getting involved in an investigation with Mulder and Scully. I found it oddly like a nerd version of the Penthouse Forum letter page.

And short stories. I have a colleague who teaches his stories in class, and the kids write in them in essays. I guess he can get away with it. I once insulted a uni lecturer by writing in an essay that it was the height of desperation, egotism and laziness for someone to put their own book on the required reading list for a course they were teaching. So, I partly don’t want to turn into one of those stereotypical internet critics bagging everybody else out while placing my own unpublished works, claiming I’m much better than them, and circumstances prevent me from being published. That, and the moment I put out my short stories for free (without, obviously selling them) is the day I admit I cannot become a writer, and I’m not ready for that just yet.

And now I’m rambling.

15 more minutes to go.

I should mention that I am rather intelligent. Actually, that’s not true. (If I was I wouldn’t have put my balls in the wind like that, or at least delete that and pretend I didn’t write it in the first place.) I’m knowledgeable. So don’t be surprised if I throw in the occasional entry on something that may not be considered pop culture. (Anyone who gets my blog title will know what I’m talking about.)

I will accept criticism, though I do have a stubborn streak that tends to piss an awful lot of people around me. I am – I like to think – at least a little open-minded, but I guess that’s a little like referring to yourself as honest and trustworthy. If someone has to say it, then they’re probably not.

10 minutes. Or truthfully 12 minutes, but if I type this out badly and have to spend some time going back and editing the mistakes, by the time I’m finished, it should be ten minutes.

Yep, ten minutes.

This is getting painful isn’t it? I promise I will have a focus on most days instead of this stream-of-consciousness rant. I really am as shallow as most people accuse me of being, so introducing myself doesn’t take that long. I am the master of the bad first impression. I have never dated a girl who liked me from the moment we met. Every person in my department had a terrible first impression of me, but they’ve grown to like me (or they at least hide their contempt extremely well).

So if you do have a terrible first impression of me, stop reading now and come back in a couple of days and see if anything’s changed.

I’m actually typing this before I set up a blog account (which I have to do for a couple of kids I’m teaching to write proper) so I’m not sure if the following information is provided in some frame somewhere but I still have 6 minutes to go and not much else to say.

I am a music snob, a film geek and a fantasy nerd. And yes I do believe there’s a difference in the terms.

A geek is a person who has extreme knowledge in an esoteric area that not many other people know about (and is generally worthless); but has social skills.
A nerd is a person who has extreme knowledge in an esoteric area that not many other people know about (and is generally worthless); but has no social skills.
A dork is a person who no knowledge in any area; and has no social skills.
A snob is someone who refuses to acknowledge the worth of anything mainstream.

And how can I be a nerd (no social skills) and a geek (some social skills) at the same time? When talking fantasy (or especially roleplaying) you can’t be anything but a nerd.

Favourite singers (yes I am getting desperate now) Fiona Apple, Ani DiFranco, Jeff Buckley (my sensitive side)
Favourite authors: Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Robert Cormier.

And there’s the hour.