Connecting Work

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Adam Randall

I’ve spoken before about how I got a lot of enjoyment out of connecting all of my work together, but another thing I like to do is connect my work with my friends and their work. Today I will talk about all the pieces that are directly linked to people I know:

  • Elliott Egan: He scripted one of my Finger Puppet Show strips and he gave feedback on so much of my early work that his influence can still be felt now.

  • Mairi Mac Arthur: Only a small link, but one Finger Puppet Show strip was made for her as a birthday present and Colin the Cow certainly seems to be familiar with her! Much like Egan, as she workshopped so much of my earlier writing, I have doubtlessly been greatly influenced by her in my later writing too.

  • Rory MacLellan: In 2010, while doing NaNoWriMo, I couldn’t help but have my character Bernard mention that he had visited Rory’s fictional world of Tyrencia. Then in 2011 we wrote a fairly long horror story together. Currently, I also have plans to write a Tyrencia story for him (which I really must get around to doing.)

  • Sophie Marie Mills: We both had a story featured in an issue of Perspectives and I later made a link to that in a Finger Puppet Show strip.

  • George Moore: He’s a very talented artist and since his paintings are so beautiful, I couldn’t help but ask if I could use them for a Finger Puppet Show storyline and he gladly gave his permission.

  • Rhino Water: A regular contributor to this blog who I enjoying working on countdowns with. He also has some lovely fictional stories (“Monster War” and “Treasure Boy” to name two) and we did a little crossover featuring characters from his stories and a character from my stories called “Monster Village” which was a lot of fun.

  • Oscar TK: I featured Frederica Williams, the star of Oscar’s hilarious novella A Dark Hand, in a Finger Puppet Show strip. He also writes a webcomic called Crazyx Comix and we each did a crossover strip when we swapped webcomics for the day on April 1st 2014. He’s one of many people who wrote me an entry for this blog too. Finally, we were also both had a story featured in an issue of Perspectives and I referenced both of those stories in a comic strip as well.

  • David Tubb: David himself is actually a recurring character in the Finger Puppet Show webcomic. His popular Toast Faces have also made an appearance in my webcomic. He wrote a good science-y post for this blog. And, of course, we have worked together on several videos. We’re always thinking of new things to do together too.

  • Tülin: We used to play a lot of writing games together, and the small pieces produced through that inspired some of my later, bigger ideas. I also wrote a story where my character Gordon is personally familiar with both her and her fictional characters. Together we created the character Jeb and, indeed, the very first Finger Puppet Show strip was made as a small gift for her.

  • Ben Wood: Together we created the characters Lord Adam Welmington and Lord Ben Costington who were supposed to be obnoxious billionaire versions of ourselves. To this day, I still occasionally write stories with them alongside my other characters. I even mentioned them in a Finger Puppet Show strip. He also wrote me a blog post once.

  • When in school, I’d occasionally do a ‘big’ story featuring my friends as characters in the hope’s of getting them to read it. One was called “Everything is Explained” and featured (as well as some of the people mentioned above) my friends Davey Hamlen, Sarah Kryworuczka, Hayley Wiltshire and Laura Young, and they all get killed only to be brought back in return for the sacrifice of my characters, My ‘100th Story’ features, as well as others already mentioned, my old friends Milo Goodspeed and Danielle Tyler.

  • Finally, a handful of my friends have kindly written blog posts for me: Emma Darcy, Chris Hunter, Dalfino Madrigal Keyte, Anthony Nanson and Chloe Ward,

When I look at my work, I don’t look at it as lots of different things in different areas, but as one massive whole. Everything from SmartDating articles to my Lightning Made of Owls strips, I like to look at as part of the same thing and that’s why it makes me so happy that I have been able to work with so many friends. My body of work, much like my life, has been positively influenced by all the wonderful people that I’ve met. Thinking about it just makes me feel very warm and happy; especially as it creates indirect links between people who don’t know each other!

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

(Don’t miss my latest article for SmartDating UK!)

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Market Research

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Adam Randall

A couple of weeks ago, I had an email from an employer looking for a Market Researcher. They’d seen my CV online and were offering me a position with a team of Market Researchers. The job description was vague, but it was a temporary position (only fifteen hours over one week) and as I am unemployed (other than a little bit of writing here and there) I thought it’d be a good idea to take it, even though I didn’t know all the details.

I arrived at the address I was provided, sat down with the other few new people and everything seemed fine. The boss walked in.

“As you all know, we’re all here to get the conservative candidate elected,” he said.

“Are we?” I thought, a little alarmed. There’d been no mention of any political side to this.

It seemed that they were expecting us to knock on people’s doors and have them fill out a political survey with you, this was changed (before we started) to just giving them the survey and asking them to fill it out and then changed again (near the end) to just slipping them through letter boxes. I’m not enormously fond of pushing my own beliefs onto others, so, you can understand why I wasn’t that keen to be pushing someone else’s beliefs on others.

Still, I don’t want to give a negative impression of the people: I liked all of the leaders of the groups, they were nice, and I was quite fond of the other members of the team. In fact, I find it a little sad that I won’t be seeing them again. This was just not the kind of work I’d actively choose to do.

I had one very memorable encounter while doing this job which I wanted to write down.

I knocked on the door of a house and waited.

Eventually an annoyed looking man opened the door, just an inch or two and looked out at me.

“Hello!” I said with a smile. “I am conducting a survey, would you mind filling it out?”

“Not at all,” said the man.

“Excellent! Thank you very much, here it is,” I said. As he had looked unhappy to see me, I had assumed he would be reluctant to do the survey, but since he said yes, I was very happy.

“No,” said the man. “I mean, no I won’t do it, not at all!”

“Oh I see,” I said, smiling because I found it quite funny. “To me it seemed like you were saying that you wouldn’t mind at all! You can see why I’d be mistaken there.”

For a small second the man smiled as if, he too, could see the funny side, but then it changed, like he had remembered he was supposed to be angry and he just said “Yes.”

“Well, bye bye!” I said, turning off. “Enjoy your evening.”

I heard the door slamming behind me.

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The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Adam Randall

PictureIt was his three first novels, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau that made H.G. Wells into the successful author he’s remembered as today. However, while those first two are always remembered as pinnacles of science-fiction and have found their way into popular culture, The Island of Doctor Moreau is a little more obscure, which is a shame as it’s equally as good.

The story follows a man named Edward Prendick who, after an accident at sea, is left to stay on an island with the titular Dr. Moreau and Montgomery, his associate. Prendick finds that Moreau has been conducting some strange kind of experiments on animals there: surgically altering their appearance to make them look more human and doing things that will enable them to talk and think.

The Beast Folk (as Moreau’s creations are called) are the most interesting thing about the novel. Other than the clinical horror that surrounds the descriptions of their creation, the idea of them just seems quite disturbing. Though they are animals, they are made to stand upright and act like humans; they’ve been given a sense of human morality which contradicts their natural instincts which causes them a great deal of distress. It feels so wrong (and is also rather sad.)

The story’s rather grim and there’s rarely anything to lighten the mood, which might be off-putting for some people. The narrator’s ability to dismiss clearly sentient life as beneath him just due to certain differences feels a bit like an uncomfortable reflection of the colonial attitudes of the time. Prendick does generally feel like a character who lacks empathy. Luckily, since this novel is a fairly short read, none of these flaws ever feel especially grating and it remains a rather interesting book with a fast-paced sense of adventure.

Rating: 8.5/10

Buy it here.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

(Don’t miss my latest article for SmartDating UK!)

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The Art of Conversation

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Adam Randall
You know, for some people, it can be quite difficult to hold a conversation with others, especially if they don’t know the other person. This can lead to feelings of awkwardness, anxiety and sadness as well as making the person not really want to engage people in conversation very often. So, for today’s blog post I wanted to write about a handy tip which will help if you have any trouble of this kind.
    The trick is just to use a lot of words. If somebody says something and ‘That’s nice,’ will be an appropriate reply, don’t say that, instead say “Oh my! That sounds lovely. What an especially pleasant surprise that must have been for you” because it actually takes a lot longer to say. It works with anything. It’s also a skill that anybody who has written an essay before will have had past experience with: I’m sure everybody’s filled a whole paragraph with information about something which only required a single sentence.
    In fact, to give you a perfect example: this entire blog post could have just said “If you find it hard to talk to people, just use more words” but I managed to pan it out to this 220 word entry because I’m just so skilled at talking at great length about nothing at all.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

(Also don’t miss my two new articles for SmartDating UK!)

(And finally, I’ve also written a new article for Rice Digitial.)

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Yo-yo Teacher

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Adam Randall
Back in 2012 I was just a regular person who couldn’t use a yo-yo. I had always wanted to have a yo-yo and to know how to use one, but, whenever I got my hands on one, I was terrible at it. While I never stopped wanting to have my own yo-yo and to learn how to use it, I had begun to think that, maybe, I’d never be able to.
    But this all changed in the December of that year when I had a very lovely ‘Christmas’ day (I put that in quotation marks because it was actually a week or so before Christmas) with my friend Tülin. Among very many other nice things, one thing we did was pop into a toy shop and pick out a rather attractive green yo-yo (this was a Christmas present for me) which she then taught me how to use. I was extremely surprised (and extremely happy) when I found that I was able to use the yo-yo very easily and since then I always have it with me. Not only is yo-ing an extremely therapeutic action, it is also very fun.
    The years went by and that lovely green yo-yo broke (of course I didn’t throw it out though, it remains in my ‘special items’ tin) and so Tülin replaced it was a very attractive red yo-yo (which actually seems a bit sturdier). She’s gone now (moved far away) but, of course, I still have the yo-yo.
    Just the other day, I found myself heading out to meet my good friends Oscar, Chloe and Sophie and I brought my yo-yo along as well. This was a very pleasant surprise because I don’t get to see them enormously regularly and so I was very happy about getting the chance to do so. It just so happened that on that day I decided to yo the yo-yo while I was walking along with them and when we got into a very nice jazz bar, I was spending a few minutes untangling it. As soon as I had just sorted it out, Sophie took it from me.
    “I’ve never used one of these,” she said.
    “Well, don’t worry!” I said. “They’re very easy to use.”
    Sophie let go of the yo-yo and down it went, she moved her hand upward, but the yo-yo itself did not come back. That was exactly what happened to me before I was taught! She did it again and the same thing happened.
    “It doesn’t come back up,” she said sadly.
    “Hang on, give it to me for a second,” I said as I took it back. “Do it like this.”
    I was a little foolhardy there, because there wasn’t much room to be playing with a yo-yo and when it came back up I got very worried for a second that it was going to smash some glasses.
    “Phew! I thought I was going to smash those glasses. I better not do it again, but try and move your wrist like this.”
    I gave Sophie the yo-yo again and this time she was a success! She only managed to do it once, but she was still quite pleased.
    “Very good! You can always remember that as the happiest moment of your life,” I said, and smiled.
    And I was certainly very pleased. Not only was I seeing my friends for the first time in a while, but by teaching Sophie to use the yo-yo (albeit briefly) the events of that night are now directly linked to the events of the night nearly two years before, because without being given the yo-yo and taught myself, I’d never have been able to then teach Sophie how to do it! I love things being connected like that.
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Wish You Were Here

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Adam Randall
Currently, I don’t get to see much of my friends because they’ve moved away or are busy with work and so on. It’s quite sad and I miss them a lot. Lately, I always keep thinking I see people and it’s probably because I miss them.
    The other day, I thought I spotted Tülin at a nearby Tesco’s (which is silly since she lives over six hours away and would have no reason to be there). Today I thought I saw Rory MacLellan getting off of a bus, despite the fact that he is now in Scotland, just like Mairi, who I thought I saw in Bath recently. And on the subject of buses, I thought for a moment that I saw David Tubb on a bus recently, even though he’s not at all likely to be riding on a bus. Then of course, I also thought I saw Oscar Taylor-Kent and Chloe Ward in Corsham (at different times). There are probably other examples I’m forgetting too!
    I’m sure it’s a case of me seeing what I want to see. I always only think it for a fraction of a second before realising that it is almost completely impossible. I feel a bit like a dog waiting for its owners to come back, getting extremely excited every time it hears somebody walk past because it thinks they’re finally home. It’s a bit of a silly thing, but I felt it worth writing down nonetheless!

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

(Don’t miss my latest article for Rice Digital!)

(And finally, don’t miss my latest article for SmartDating UK!)

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Retroactive Significance

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Adam Randall
It’s interesting how events that seem to have no real significance while happening, suddenly gain a whole new layer of significance when remembered. That’s the case with today’s anecdote, which may initially seem to be nothing but a small interaction with friends.
    I had a long wait for the bus back to Corsham once after a day at Bath Spa University and so I was paying a very short visit to a couple of my friends on the way to the bus station. I was, and am, extremely fond of both of them so it was always exceedingly nice to spend time with them. I don’t actually remember the main part of my visit, but I remember what happened just before I left.
    I was in the hallway, about to leave when one of my friends stood in front of me with her arms outstretched. I didn’t understand why she was doing it and the confusion must have shown because she soon elaborated.
    “Hug,” she said.
    “Ah, I see!” I replied and then we hugged.
    “It’s so nice to hug you,” she said.
    “Well, that’s good,” I said.
    “How come you never hug me?” said the other friend.
    “Well,” I said to him, “that’s because you never ask!”
    And before he could reply, my other friend said “Oh, look out! You’re going to get hugged!”
    “No, stop, don’t touch me,” he said in mock-absolute disgust.
    So, of course, I didn’t hug him, but I didn’t think he was actually asking me to anyway.
    We all had a nice laugh about that and then it was time to go.
    “Bye bye!” I said as I went through the door. “Nice to see you both!”
    And now for the cause of the retroactive significance: that was the last time I ever spent time with them together. Don’t get me wrong, I still spend time with both of them whenever I can, but it’s the last time I saw them at the same time. You see, the ball was already rolling for the pair of them to have a rather unpleasant falling out. It’s such a terrible shame because in reflection, I do believe I could have prevented it and saved them both a great deal of upset. It is, at least, a regret that I can learn from.

(Don’t miss my latest article for SmartDating UK!)

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show, either!)

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Violent Retribution

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Adam Randall

Back in 2009, my friend Ben Wood and I were involved in a little bit of a misunderstanding. I don’t want to divulge too many details, but there was an ill-considered comment here, a hurt feeling there and we ended up inadvertently upsetting somebody (the folly of youth!). The upset person then told a friend of theirs, who, one break time at school, wanted to have a ‘word’ with me and Ben.

We went over to see him, and the first thing he did was grab us both by the neck and lift us into the air intimidatingly. He was quite impressively strong, you see.

“Hello,” I said and smiled, trying to keep to situation as pleasant as possible.

“This isn’t funny!” he shouted, which is a shame, because I wasn’t trying to be funny. He then shouted at us for a while about how we had upset somebody, and it made me feel pretty bad.

“So you are going to apologise,” he said, at the end.

“Well, yes, of course,” I said, and perhaps I should have left it there, but I carried on. “Will we get an apology from you afterwards, if we do? I mean, yes, it was probably quite stressful for them, but it could be argued that it’s also quite stressful for Ben and I to be violently grabbed and shouted at too.”

He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. At this point I got quite a bit of bad luck, because I suddenly had quite a tingle in my throat. I needed to cough. But because of the way he was holding me, I’d end up coughing right into his face and that would seem awfully rude. I thought for a second about explaining my predicament, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer and I coughed right in his face.

Before I could say anything he spat right into my eye, which was a little unpleasant. He then lifted us a little higher into the air and threw us hard onto the ground, which was quite painful. Ben and I exchanged a few “Well, that wasn’t very nice” words, and then got on with our days.

So I just wanted to share that; the story of, perhaps, the most intense conflict I’ve ever faced. And there were no lasting bad feeling, either (in case you were worried!) We made up completely with the person whose feelings we had hurt and I bumped into the other person just the other day and we had a lovely little chat.

EDIT: I have been reminded that, after being spat on and thrown on the floor, I actually got quite angry and said to the other person that I’d make a fake Bebo account of them. A rather silly thing to say (again, an example of how immature we can be when young) but, of course, I never actually did that.

(Don’t miss my latest article for SmartDating UK!)

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Colour-Blindness

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Adam Randall
People tend to have a lot of questions for me when I tell them that I’m colour-blind (that is, if they even believe me) so as it seems to be quite interesting to some people, I thought I would make a blog entry about colour-blindness and the few (very minor) ways in which it affects me.
    Right at the start of the day, what’s one of the first things you do? Well, you put on a pair of socks of course, how hard can that be? Well, pretty hard actually because it’s really hard for me to tell which socks are a pair and which ones are odd. I used to have a nice way of avoiding this problem: I’d only buy beige socks. If all my socks were beige (which just happens to be my favourite colour) I could never put on an odd pair. I had this idea in 2008 and I kept it up for quite a while, but in 2012, for some very strange reason, beige socks became very rare and now I can never find any. In fact, I wrote about this sock trouble a little once before. Sometimes I’m told by people that I’m wearing odd socks, and these are people who know why I’m wearing odd socks, so I can’t help but wonder what exactly it is they want me to do with that piece of information.
    Another thing is that I find some DVDs so hard to use. Occasionally the cursor on the menu is a very similar colour to the background, and so I can sometimes get completely lost when trying to navigate around DVDs that have large menus. So, when this happens I’ll just ask somebody else to do it for me. You’d think I could just mentally determine how many clicks are needed, but often the DVD player will miss a button press and, if that did happen I’d have no way of knowing.
    The biggest problem comes when trying to create creating visual art. As I’m sure all regular readers will know, I keep a webcomic which is mostly photography based but I occasionally need to illustrate things. I use the computer programme Paint because when you hover over one of the colours, it tells you what colour it is. This is enormously helpful. The problem is, sometimes the colour I want isn’t there, so then I write ‘Blue’ into Google Images (yes, that’s right, Paint doesn’t have blue as a default), copy and paste something from there and then use the ‘pipette’ tool to extract the colour. I know what colours things are, but I can’t identify different colours easily..
    And that’s about it really. I don’t like it when people use colour as the main way to describe things, though, I understand that that is sometimes the easiest way. For example when people don’t know somebody they might say “that brown haired person” to describe them I might struggle to understand who they mean. If I really try, I can usually identify a colour when I’m looking at it, but it’ll take a little while, and I can’t really do it well from memory, plus, unless I make the conscious effort to identify the colour of something, I’ll just never register it. They’re all minor things, but I know some people are interested in this kind of thing, so, I hope this blog entry, too, was interesting.

(Don’t miss my latest article for Avoid Drowning, which is actually a companion to this entry, being about colour-blindness in video games.)

(Don’t miss my latest article for Rice Digital. It is about the arcade era of Donkey Kong games.)

(Finally, don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

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Bullying Documentary

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Adam Randall
I’m not really an expert video maker, no, I’m no David Tubb, so I don’t post video content very often. But, having said that, I do enjoy making videos and have very fond memories of a short film that I made along with my friend George Moore in GCSE Media Studies classes.
    For whatever reason, I had to make a little documentary on the subject of bullying in schools, which, of course, is a very serious subject, but my documentary ended up being not very serious at all. It’s a great shame that I don’t seem to have the file for it anymore as it might be something I’d like to post (I’m sure others would find it entertaining) but as things are, I’ll tell you about what was included.
    I introduced the piece and explained the forms bullying could take and so on, but I remember I had a big smile on my face the entire time and I sounded like a wonderful time (and, really, I was!) I ended this segment by saying that I wanted to show you “an example of bullying” just in case nobody knew about it, I suppose.
    The camera was then on George, who was leaning peacefully against a wall. He looks around and reaches into his pocket because, clearly, he has just received a text message. He pulls out his mobile phone and we cut to a close up of its screen and it seems he’s had the rather sad misfortune of receiving a text message that says, simply “I hate you” looking at the sender details, it was very clearly sent by me as well.
    The next bit is truly lost forever. I spoke recently about a science teacher that I liked very much and so, of course, back then I was keen to involve him in the project. I filmed an interview with him where I asked lots of questions about bullying (both in and outside of school) and he had a lot of interesting things to say. My Media teacher told me it was far too long, so I had to cut it down. So I edited it to the following:
    “Have you ever come across bullying before?” I asked, as the interviewer.
    “Umm,” he says, which was originally followed by a long story, but I cut it so that he just said “yes” and that was it. My Media teacher didn’t like it and, sadly, it had to be cut entirely.
    The penultimate scene was me outside, talking to the camera again.
    “Bullying can take many forms. There are the usual things like name calling and then there’s also…”
    But then I was interrupted when somebody ran over, pushed me onto the floor, reached into my pocket, and stole my wallet. The camera followed him as he waked away. It went into slow motion and sinister music played as he made his escape. After this, it was back to me, talking inside once again, and I gave a kind of summary (which I don’t really remember) which was followed by the credits, which were accompanied by more sinister music.
    I don’t know if I can really do it justice with words, but George and I certainly found it quite funny, as did most people we showed it too. We got a B grade for it in the end too, which was surpising, and nice. It’s quite a shame that I don’t have a copy anymore, but then, it’s exactly the kind of thing which people don’t take too much care of. Perhaps this should be a cautionary tale! Be sure to cherish your projects from your schools days.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

(Don’t miss my latest article for SmartDating UK.)

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