My Favourite Handshake of the Graduation Ceremony Was

Me after the ceremony

The one where the guy raised his hand a full five metres before reaching the chancellor.

Now that's confidence.

'Holiday'

Hey folks, how are y'all today?

I've been thinking about the fact that I've blogged for nearly every day last month and, as I've said in other posts, I got plenty of views and some comments. That was very nice and all, but there has been a bit of a downside. I know some people have been a little bit fed up of the updates I've been posting which has made me think about cooling it down a bit.

There are some people who have done really well publishing every day. Calum Kerr did a great job on Flash365 (I believe his wife is currently doing a flash fiction piece a day). Incidentally a book containing a selection of some of them is available. I admire the patience, persistence and skill that he has and may try to do something like it in the future (hopefully without annoying people with my updates!). For now, however, I feel like I've done a lot of good (improving writing fitness, increasing confidence, encouraging a wee bit of discussion etc) and am going to tone it down now.

I'm not stopping blogging, or anything, I just want to compare and contrast a blog-heavy month with a blog-lite month. I have a workshop session coming up later in the month, so I want to get cracking on a piece for that. Will not spending as much time on here make me uber-productive elsewhere? I don't know, but let's see...

Speaking about writing though, I recently submitted a wee piece for a competition to win a copy of Threshold by David Hartley. It felt good doing a hundred-word piece, there was a sense of freedom to have fun. On the reading side of things, I really rather like Le Cafe Du Jour. N starts all the posts I've read with an artistic quote. It makes for great reading because it gets your mind going on themes and contexts before the body of the post. I think it's a great way of writing, especially since some people have made novels out of much of that material, right David Markson? It's all so thoughtful, so aware and well-written. I'd check it out if I were you, but since I'm me, I can be happy that I already have.

Oookay, so bit of a longer post than I'd normally like, well done if you made it to the end. So long! Peace out.

Merry Christmas

THIS is a Christmas jumper folks. It looks horrible. The pattern can only have been designed by a badly acid-damaged amputee on a bus. Presumably it has been made of materials so crap they had to be put into a the jumper equivalent of a concentration camp to preserve the purity of fashion.

These days you can get these other jumpers (shown to the left). Look at the colours. Completely sanitized. Red and white? Where's the gaudiness in that?

To all those tossers lined up at the bar in Wetherspoons across the country, wearing these and thinking 'ooh, look how cool I am. I'm wearing something uncool, but making it cool because I'm such an awesome, arrogant tit who really wants another Corona with a wedge of lime and a Jagerbomb and maybe some Sourz and maybe throwing up and hating anyone who's different to me (thank God all my friends are wearing the same stuff as me or I'd have to hate them), and if I don't objectify every woman I see tonight then I'm gay (urgh)', to them I say fuck off.

Merry Christmas everyone!