To the waters and the wild

Just some pictures this time, taken on an early morning hike with Bob.

Look on my works, ye Meehans, and despair!

I recently met the first owner of the name Meehan who wasn't directly related to me. His name is Eoin Meehan and bizarrely, he also practices Japanese martial arts. It seems to be a fairly uncommon name here in Ireland, although that is only one translation of the name from Gaelic into English. Others include Meighan, Mahan and Meegan.

Apparently the name stems from the Sligo Leitrim border and when the Meehan ancestors, who were originally called O'Miodhachain (or something like that) fled Ireland to get away from the Famine in the 1840s, they got to Ellis Island in the US where they were asked their names. They were illiterate and so the immigration officials guessed at how to spell their names and wrote them down phonetically. Hence, the number of different ways of spelling what is essentially the same name.

Anyway, Wikipedia, the writer's friend, threw up some interesting Meehans from around the world. For a start, James Meehan is kinda cool:

James Meehan (1774 - April 21, 1826) was an Irish-Australian explorer and surveyor.

Meehan was born in Ireland in 1774, and was one of a number of political prisoners who arrived in Australia in February 1800. Two months later he became an assistant to Charles Grimes, the surveyor-general, and went with him to explore the Hunter River in 1801. He was also with Grimes on the expedition to explore King Island and Port Phillip in 1802 and 1803. In October 1805 Governor King directed him to trace the course of the Nepean to the southward a little beyond Mount Taurus, and in October 1807 Meehan prepared his interesting plan of Sydney.

In 1822 he resigned his position and was granted a pension of £100 a year in 1823. He died on 21 April 1826. He was a most capable and industrious official, and though he does not rank among the leading explorers, he did some very valuable work while carrying out his duties during the first 20 years of the nineteenth century.

Hmm, so this guy was mildly historically interesting. The next major Meehan dramatically upped his credibility game. Step into the limelight, Mr Thomas Meehan, who also went by Thomas Meighan:

Thomas Meehan was one of the most popular leading men of the silent film era. Mature, reliable silent-film leading man Thomas Meehan attended St. Mary's College with the intention of studying medicine. His acting career began when he was hired for Henrietta Crossman's touring company when it played his home town of Pittsburgh. In 1900, he made his first Broadway appearance, breaking through to stardom eight years later in George Ade's The College Widow. He married his leading lady, Broadway favorite Blanche Ring, thereby eventually becoming the brother-in-law of actor Charles Winninger and actress Charlotte Greenwood. He made his first film, Dandy Donovan, the Gentleman Cracksman (1914) in London; this led to a long-term contract with the Hollywood company which later became Paramount.

With strong leading roles in such Cecil B. DeMille productions as Male and Female (1919) and Why Change Your Wife? (1919), Meehan became a popular Hollywood star, exuding such intangibles as dependability and quiet courage (so many people inside the industry liked Meehan personally that they conspired to keep secret his ongoing liquor problem). When sound came to motion pictures, the 50-year-old Meehan sensed that his popularity might wane, and he vowed to leave films before his public tired of him. Nonetheless, he was coaxed back before the cameras for good character roles in films like Skyline (1931) and Peck's Bad Boy (1932); he also essayed the leading role of the thief-turned-sleuth "The Lone Wolf" in 1932's Cheaters at Play. Thomas Meighan died of pneumonia at the age of 57. -- Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.

Not bad, eh?, The next character up on stage, Tony Meehan, also has some street credibility of a sort, or at least he had:

Tony Meehan, (March 2, 1943 – November 28, 2005), was one of the founder members of the British group The Shadows, along with Jet Harris, Hank B. Marvin and Bruce Welch. He played drums on all the early Cliff Richard and The Shadows hits and also played on the early hits the Shadows had as an instrumental group.

Tony Meehan was born in Hampstead, England. He was only ten years old when he became interested in playing the drums. By the time he was 13, Meehan had his first job with a band playing in a dance hall at Willesden, London. He also played timpani with the London Youth Orchestra. Unlike the other members of the Shadows he was never short of work, playing cabaret at places like Churchill's and the Stork Club. He also played with Jet Harris in The Vipers.

Meehan left the Shadows in October 1961 and went to work as an arranger/producer and occasional session drummer for Joe Meek (John Leyton, Michael Cox: "Young Only Once", Andy Cavell) and from early 1962 on at Decca Records. He subsequently teamed up again with Jet Harris (who had also left the Shadows and moved to Decca) and as a duo they had great success with Harris playing guitar and Meehan on drums, notably on the track, 'Diamonds' which also included Jimmy Page on acoustic rhythm guitar. 'Diamonds' was a number one hit in the UK.

Meehan briefly played with The Shadows again some years later when Brian Bennett was hospitalised. At one point, John Rostill was in hospital at the same time, and The Shadows were playing live with Brian Locking on bass and Tony Meehan on drums. On November 29 2005 BBC News quoted Bruce Welch as saying that Meehan had died the previous day as a result of head injuries following a fall.

However, Jim Meehan is by far the winner in the coolness stakes. I may have to base a character on this guy - he rocks!

"Minneapolis" Jim Meehan (aka "Silent" Jim Meehan) (born March 19 in Saint Paul, Minnesota) is an American professional poker player from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He also works as a lawyer, but is semi-retired.

Meehan began playing poker in the 1960s, and began playing poker tournaments regularly in 1997, where he had a 2nd place finish in the $3,000 limit hold'em event at the World Series of Poker (WSOP). He finished 3rd in the $2,500 limit omaha event the same year.

He eventually won a WSOP bracelet in 2003 in the $2,000 no limit hold'em event, defeating a final table that included Juha Helppi, Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari, Mike Sexton and Kathy Liebert.

Meehan has made one World Poker Tour (WPT) final table, during the third season. He finished in 6th place at a final table including Eli Elezra, Lee Watkinson, Gabe Kaplan, John Juanda and Scotty Nguyen.

He also made the final table of the Ultimate Poker Challenge first season championship. He finished in 3rd place, despite being given a time penalty for foul language.

Meehan's character at the poker table is often categorized by drinking alcohol at the poker table, particularly Heineken beer or whiskey, and keeping an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He also makes a habit of engaging his opponents in banter between and during hands.

He has played online at PokerStars as Actiondonkey and at ParadisePoker as Actionmonkey.As of 2006, his total live tournament winnings exceed $1,300,000. He has four children.

Seriously, how cool is this guy?

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

OZYMANDIAS of EGYPT

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

ByPercy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818.

A walk in the woods

I'm extremely lucky to live in a very pretty seaside town outside Dublin. We have two fabulous natural resources in the form of the beach and harbour, where we walk the dog, as well as the hills behind the house. I was up here last night just before sunset walking bob, and took the picture below.



We're very fortunate to live somewhere so pretty. Bob agrees.

Review: Prey by Michael Crichton

Prey by Michael Crichton, Harper Collins, €17.35
(Review published Sunday, January 12, 2003, The Sunday Business Post, review by Alex Meehan.)

When Jurassic Park became one of the biggest hits of the 1990s, scientists bemoaned the fact that the story's nightmare scenario of the return of the dinosaurs set back the image of genetic engineering by ten years.

With Michael Crichton's latest techno-thriller, Prey, those in the know are already levelling the same accusations. The plot follows a tried and trusted Crichton formula -- meddling scientists have opened a technological can of worms in the misguided pursuit of profit.

This time however, instead of giant dinosaurs running amok, microscopic nanotechnology robots have escaped from a secure research laboratory in the Nevada desert and are threatening to engulf the world.

The story centres on an out-of-work Silicon Valley programmer, Jack Forman, and begins by detailing his marital difficulties with wife Julia. She works for the mysterious Xymos Corporation, and has started putting in odd hours.

Jack suspects she is having an affair and so jumps at the chance to work for Xymos himself, troubleshooting a state of the art computer system using software he originally helped design.

The meat of the story takes place at the Xymos facility in the remote desert, where it emerges that ground-breaking research into the use of nanotechnology to create remote controlled spy technology has gone horribly wrong.

Millions of microscopic nanobots have escaped the facility and are lying in wait for their creators outside the safety of the lab. Jack, along with the usual mix of scientist types, is trapped inside and is faced with the problem of killing off the nanobots before it's too late.

Nanotechnology is still in its infancy as a technology, but the premise is that machines can be made so small that they could, for example, be used inside the human body for medical purposes.

Prey explores the idea that such atom-sized machines could be controlled using computer software, replicating the characteristics of animals, most notably predators and prey.

But the nanobots in Prey start to reproduce like bacteria and create man-sized swarms, and also develop the ability to evolve. The swarms appear and disappear at will and can float through keyholes and under doors, but most worrying of all is that they start to eat living things in order to reproduce.

For Jack Forman, a potential solution comes in the form of interpreting the programming behind the techno-bugs. They act like animals, so if you know how animals act you can fool the swarm. At least for a while.

Prey isn't an awful read, it's just not as good as you expect from someone like Crichton. It has its high points -- his descriptions of characters working against the clock help to build tension, while the plot development at the beginning is well handled.

But the characters are mostly one-dimensional stereotypes with little engaging depth. Lengthy sections recall phone conversations and most of the time the plot is as transparent as a mediocre airport novel.

In addition, large tracts of text are given over to lengthy explanations of the technology involved in this type of research, as well as the philosophical implications of its use. While this is a clunky technique that interrupts the flow of the book, it has also left Crichton open to criticism for other reasons.

The specialist website Nanotechnology Now said in its review of Prey that the science was "not just wrong, it's stupid".

This would be forgivable in the name of a good plot, but sadly Prey does not read like the latest offering of an experienced and extremely successful author. It would make a fine lightweight holiday read, but don't expect to be blown away.

Interestingly, the movie version of this book is already in pre-production and should be in cinemas by 2004. Unlike Jurassic Park's dinosaurs though, swarms of semi-invisible nanobots don't immediately spring to mind as ideal silver screen baddies.

Quotes from the Pros

Blogs are things novelists keep to distract them from the fact that they're not writing novels. So with no further ado, here are a few quotes from the pros, courtesy of my writer sister Ruth.

--

When you start writing you're 98% pure writer and 2%
critic. After you've written for a length of time,
you've learned a great deal about your craft, and you've
become 2% pure writer and 98% critic. It's like writing
uphill.

David Westheimer
--

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone.
Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading
magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching
infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can
to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning
and you reach the point where you have to write. Having
anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me
would be grisly.

Paul Rudnick
--

Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank
sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your
forehead.

Gene Fowler
--

I loved Feydeau's one rule of playwriting: Character A:
My life is perfect as long as I don't see Character B.
Knock Knock. Enter Character B.

P. Guare
--

Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you
start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your
writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene
O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs
start to go wrong.

Meredith Willson

--
They have followed their usual procedure and handed my
treatment over to several other people to make a
screenplay out of it. By the time they are ready to
shoot it may have been through 20 pairs of hands. What
will be left? One shudders to think. Meanwhile, they
have paid me a lot of money...

Aldous Huxley

--

Write without pay until someone offers pay. If nobody
offers within three years, the candidate may look upon
this as a sign that sawing wood is what he was intended
for.

Mark Twain
--

Writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very
bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book
is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some
painfull illness. One would never undertake such a thing
if one were not driven by some demon one can neither
resist nor understand.

George Orwell
--

Anybody can become a writer, but the trick is to STAY a
writer.

Harlan Ellison

Over the cliffs and far away . . .

(Greystones harbour, Wicklow)

We're in the middle of a pretty epic heat wave, by Irish standards. It hasn't rained in three or possibly even four weeks and the temperature every day has climbed towards 26 and 27 degrees. I know that's downright chilly for some readers of this blog - which has regular readers from as far afield as Texas and Yamagata, Japan - but it's positively tropical for Ireland!

Anyway, because Ireland is so green, when it does get hot here, it starts to look positively Mediterranean. So to celebrate the good weather while it’s here, I took a couple of pictures of the scenery on the cliffs where I walk my dog every day.

(His name is Bob and in general, he’s in favour of walks but most definitely not in favour of cats.)(Bray Head, Wicklow)

Author Interview: Ian Rankin on Rebus and making crime pay

This was a fun one to do - Ian Rankin is one of the world's top detective authors and is famous in literary circles for his Scottish themed novels. I met him on Tuesday morning in the Clarence Hotel in Dublin and spent hours chatting to him about . . . well, loads and loads and loads of things.

We share many of the same tastes in music and literature and somewhat bizarrely know some of the same people, so this was one of those interviews that was a lot less like work than some others. Anyway, enjoy . . .

Rankin, Rebus and making crime pay
(Published Sunday, November 06, 2005. By Alex Meehan)

Described by the legendary detective writer James Ellroy as the “King of Tartan Noir", Ian Rankin is about as well-known as modern fiction writers get. His first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, was published in 1987 and the Rebus books have now been translated into 22 languages. His books adorn the shelves of almost every bookshop in the western world, and when it comes to crime fiction, only a handful of writers have matched his success.

This, however, comes as something of a surprise to Rankin himself. “I didn't start out trying to be a crime writer - I got good at it by accident'‘, he says.

We are discussing Rankin's first novel, The Flood, which has just been re-released almost 20 years after its first appearance. He's nervous about it, as the novel is a far cry from the Inspector Rebus series for which he is primarily known.

“I'm waiting for the backlash to come; this book is a great chance for reviewers who don't like my work to give me a good kicking.


“It's a young man's book - I wrote it when I was 23. I was still at university and I was in love with words. I was using as many words as I possibly could,” he says. The Flood is being republished in response to requests from fans.

Originally released with a print run of just 800 copies, it's a dark coming of age tale set in a small Scottish mining community similar to the one in which Rankin grew up. It is gothic in its outlook, atmospheric, and it taught its author more than a few lessons about the craft of writing.

Rankin admits he would like to rewrite certain parts of The Flood, but has resisted the temptation because “once you start, where do you finish? No book is ever quite finished, you just hand it over when it's good enough.

“With The Flood, almost as soon as it was published back in 1986 I thought of a better ending.

“It will be interesting to see what people think of it because it's not Rebus, but one reviewer has already said that they could see the seeds of the Rebus novels in there.” This isn't too much of a leap. The Rebus novels are dark and gritty, set in the world of a middle-aged Scottish detective.

Rebus himself works in the underbelly of society and it's not a shiny happy place. The Flood is not a shiny happy novel, and is the more interesting for it.

“I got into a lot of trouble for The Flood, because it was basically set in my home town and some of the residents didn't like some of the stuff I said about it,” says Rankin.

Rankin grew up in the coal mining town of Cardenden in the Kingdom of Fife, and in The Flood refers to the fictional town of Carsden - a close-minded and suspicious place. His neighbours were not fooled, and it was this experience which prompted him to invent a character and a world he could write about without fear of a backlash. The result was Inspector Rebus and the first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses.

“The idea for the first Rebus book came to me while I was sitting in my bedsit. The plot almost wrote itself and Rebus was born almost fully formed,” he says. Rebus - the word means picture puzzle - is an icon of the crime fiction genre, with some 20 novels devoted to him.

Far from being concerned about being pigeonholed as a crime writer, Rankin is enthusiastic about the genre.

“I don't mind being known as a crime writer, because I think crime writers are doing some of the most interesting work on the novel just now. I would much rather read a crime writer writing about contemporary life than I would one of the Booker prize nominees, for example,” he says.

“If you want to engage with the world, if you want to talk about the problems we have in society, you go to the crime novel and that's always been the case, from Dostoevsky to Dickens to Raymond Chandler. Crime writing has its own rules and conventions, but they are there to be broken. The mystery element of my books is probably the thing that interests me least. What I like about crime fiction is what it tells you about the world you live in.”

As well as re-releasing The Flood, Rankin has branched out with the publication of the coffee-table-style book, Rebus' Scotland.

“It started out as a picture book with some captions, but the captions got bigger and it seemed like a good chance to tell some of the story behind Rebus and his world, explain some of the in-jokes and show how the characters in the book were formed,” he says.

“It's partly an autobiography, but it is also an opportunity for me to say that, although I paint a fairly bleak picture of contemporary Scotland in the books, that's because I'm writing crime fiction; I don't necessarily think it's as dark as it seems. I sometimes get e-mails from people in Glasgow and Aberdeen saying ‘Why do you hate our city?’, and I have to write back saying I don't - Rebus hates your city, it's a different thing.”

To keep the Rebus books fresh and engaging for himself, Rankin also makes a point of using them to explore aspects of modern life. “Usually the books begin with some big question I am asking myself. In Fleshmarket Close, I was thinking of Scottish identity - who are the Scots? We primarily define ourselves by the fact that we are not English, but then what are we and what makes us different exactly?

“While I was thinking about these questions, an asylum seeker was murdered in Glasgow in a race crime. I thought, if I move that murder to Edinburgh, I can investigate that whole question through a book,” he says.

By necessity, crime writers must routinely place themselves in the minds of murderers, rapists and psychotics; for most people this would present something of a challenge, but not for Rankin.

“All writers write as a form of therapy and I think crime writers specifically would be dangerous individuals if we didn't have this outlet,” he jokes. “Because we get it all out, we are all actually well balanced and fun to be around. I think the ones you have to watch out for are the writers who do romantic fiction - they can't get any of their dark stuff down on paper and have to bottle it up. I've definitely used Rebus as a punch bag though, where I have given my personal problems directly to him.”

The next Rebus novel hasn't been written, but Rankin already knows what it will be about. “The G8 was such a big thing in Scotland and especially so in Edinburgh, where the population is just 400,000, but 250,000 people marched through the streets. It affected every policeman in Edinburgh. I thought there's no way I can write a contemporary crime thriller set in Edinburgh and not mention it, so that's where we are going next.”

After this, the future is less certain. The Inspector Rebus novels are written in real time and with the eponymous main character now aged 58, the end is in sight. Police officers retire at 60 in Scotland, so he has just two years left.

“He has two more books and then that's it; either he dies or he has a happy retirement, we'll have to wait and see'‘, says Rankin.

Where does this leave Rankin as a writer, and is he looking forward to being free of the series, to being able to write about other things in other genres?

“I'm not looking forward to killing him off in that sense at all. He has a younger sidekick, Siobhan, who might continue the series.

“From time to time, Rebus could be a consulting detective like Sherlock Holmes.

“Outside the series, I don't know. I recently heard JK Rowling say that when she finishes the Harry Potter series, she's going to write a crime novel, so perhaps we could swap? I could write Harry Potter and she could write a Rebus novel.”

Man, you should be a writer!

There has been a conspicuous lack of mention of creative writing for a while, with good reason – there hasn’t been any to speak of. I’ve had to deal with some work related messiness that has forced me to focus my thoughts and energies away from writing and towards journalism. Initially, I was sort of sad about this, as I felt some of the enthusiasm and drive I came back from the States with ebbing away, but actually this turn of events hasn’t been as harmful as I thought it would be.

I’ve been generating journalistic story ideas to beat the band and talking to newspapers in the UK and Ireland and it’s actually gone quite well. More significantly, I’m realising that creativity is a bit like a muscle – the more you use it the stronger it gets. If you don’t use it, it atrophies, but generating ideas the way I have been is actually not dissimilar to the kind of creativity required to write creatively.

During bootcamp (which seems like several years ago now, but was actually only last month!) Orson Scott Card did this . . . thing.

We sat around the table and critiqued each other’s stories and when everyone had had a go, he gave his summary and then came the magic words . . . “but what you could have done is . . . “ Without exception, each of his plot and character suggestions were just jaw droppingly good, in the sense that they were all of the “that’s brilliant, why the hell didn’t I think of that!” family.

After the fifth or sixth time he did that, I got a laugh from the class by saying out loud “Man, you should be a writer, you’re really good at this!” But actually I got it the wrong way around – he’s really good at it, because he is a writer. He’s been working with character and viewpoint for what, 30 years? That’s the currency he trades in, and his experience shows. It’s actually sort of reassuring – you should be very good at anything you actually put your mind to doing for that length of time. So in one sense, all is right with the world.

Anyway, in real writing news, my bootcamp story, “The Brand New Suit” is up to 5,500 words and is nearly done. It should top out at around 7,000 words. It’s been both a pleasure and a pain – on one hand, it’s not bad, on the other, from this end of the writing process, I can see where I messed up, and fixing it feels a little like swimming through treacle.

On the other hand, I actually can’t wait to be rid of it and free to start on something new. I’m tempted to just drop it and go from scratch, but I can’t bear the idea of leaving it part-done. Anyway, the point of this blog entry is to write about how I’ve found myself brimming over with good story ideas, but hanging in the background is the historical fantasy trilogy monolith, The Middling Saga. The first page of that got me into bootcamp, but . . . maybe that’s for another blog entry.

Review: Samurai William

Review: Samurai William by Giles Milton
(Review published Sunday, June 09, 2002, reviewed by Alex Meehan)

In 1598, an English man named William Adams set sail for Japan as pilot of a Dutch expedition with five ships and 100 men. Lured by the thought of lucrative silk and spice trades, the Europeans hoped to make their fortune and return with enough cash to secure their futures.

However the journey proved extremely difficult, and when Adams eventually landed in Japan in 1600 after 20 months at sea, four ships had been lost and just 24 crew had survived. Those that did make it were suffering from scurvy and dysentery -- only six could stand and several died the week after they arrived.

Giles Milton's Samurai William is the story of this epic voyage to Japan and the subsequent events that took place during Adams's 20-year stay in the country, with a special focus on his spectacular rise in stature in the court of the feudal Shogun, or ruler of Japan, Lord Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Milton's account of the trip makes for unsettling reading. Sailors of this period did not yet know that fresh fruit prevented scurvy, and so many died painfully on long sea journeys.

Standard rations consisted of salted meat and biscuits which were frequently infested with weevils. This was bulked up with whatever fresh food could be gathered en route, although boiled rats and mice also featured when stores ran low.

In 1600, there were no reliable maps of the Pacific and the Far East, and navigational techniques were still extremely rudimentary. As a result, the route taken by Adams's expedition involved sailing down the coast of Africa, across the Atlantic, through the Magellan Straits and across the Pacific to Hawaii before finally reaching Japan.

Europeans had arrived in Japan some time previously -- most notably Jesuit missionaries intent on converting the natives to Catholicism. The Jesuits had told the ruling Shogun that all of Europe was united in Roman Catholicism under the authority of the Pope, and that all rulers in Europe deferred to him.

Needless to say, the priests weren't too impressed when the Dutch and English Protestants aboard Adams's boat arrived, and tried to have them crucified. But Shogun Ieyasu was intrigued by the tales of political division which Adams told, and invited him to court to educate him in European politics as well as shipbuilding and navigational techniques.

Much to the displeasure of the religious orders in Japan, Adams rose in stature to become a trusted confidant of Ieyesu and he was eventually honoured with the title of Samurai and Hamamoto, or Lord, complete with country estate and retainers.

After 13 years as the only Englishman in Japan, Adams was longing for the company of his countrymen. But he was horrified when the next batch of English seamen eventually arrived -- he thought them smelly, bad mannered and uncouth; they in turn thought Adams had gone native.

He had adopted the local customs of bathing daily, as well as washing and oiling his hair. He dressed in silk kimonos, had a large retinue of servants and carried the signature daisho, or twin swords, of the Japanese ruling samurai class. Most shockingly, he had married and had children by a local Lord's daughter, despite having a wife and daughter back home in London.

By contrast the newcomers had been on a ship for two years without a wash, had lived on rats, were suffering from scurvy and were intent on boozing and whoring once they hit dry land.

While Milton's book purports to be about William Adams, it would probably be more accurate to describe it as an intensely readable account of the first trading missions to Japan.

Much space is given to documenting other voyages to the region at the time, key among them the Dutch East India Company's efforts to establish trading bases around the Far East.

Much of the book is constructed from the records and logs left by the sea captains and pilots of the day, and so also provides an intriguing insight into the workings of feudal Japan and the attitudes of European travellers to this unique island nation.

Adams's story was the inspiration for James Clavell's epic novel Shogun, and the subsequent 1970s TV series of the same name starring Richard Chamberlain. It's easy to see why, as it is a fascinating tale.

Giles Milton has managed to provide a complex history lesson in the form of an engaging narrative. Anyone interested in the mysteries of the East or in the cultural make-up of the inscrutable Japanese will find this an engaging read.

If I ever become an evil overlord . . .

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labeled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labeled as such.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

18. I will not have a son. Although his ludicrously ill-planned attempt to usurp power would fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

Genius. Taken from http://www.sff.net/paradise/overlord.html - Head over to check out the other 210 maxims for anyone considering becoming an evil overlord.

Yamabiko

I've just noticed that this blog has been running for several weeks, but I haven't explained the slightly hippy-ish title.

"Echos from a distant mountain" is a rough translation of a Japanese phrase, yamabiko, used by poets and philosophers in the past, and by Masaaki Hatsumi, the patriarch of a some very old Japanese samurai traditions, today. It's an artistic expression, referring to the idea that you can shout unknowable questions at the distant mountains of the kanto plain and then listen carefully to the reply echo back to you.

However, to modern Japanese people, the term yamabiko is more likely to be recognised as the name of an express train from Ueno to Morioka on the original Tohoku mainline. In this sense, it has a double meaning, both of seeking for answers to life's great unknowable questions and also of being on a journey, possibly doing both things at the same time. Neat, huh?

Hatsumi Sensei is a true renaissance man and his writings and paintings are as sought after as his skills as a teacher of koryu bugei. However, amongst his uniquely impressive skills is the ability to use one word to encompass many different conflicting but related ideas. This allows him to create what are know as kuden, or oral transmissions in budo - short maxims which tend to be extremely deep in resonance and which can encourage people to think creatively and come to new understandings.. I first came across the term yamabiko in the publication of the Bujinkan Dojo, Sanmyaku, in which Hatsumi Sensei invited senior practitioners of his art to write articles before titling his responses with the headline yamabiko.

This phrase is also part of an old tradition of four syllable maxims that would be painted on kakejiku hanging scrolls and then placed in a special alcove in Japanese tea houses used for the meditative practice of Sado, or tea ceremony. Japanese is a syllabilic language, and words are pronounced in syllabels, each of which usually takes one borrowed chinese character to write. Yamabiko is one of those phrases, along with countless more. As a budoka (literally martial way person) more obviously martial phrases associated with our traditions include Banpen Fugyo (ten thousand changes, no surprises) and finally, a complex idea known as Seijin Yojyo. I received a present from Hatsumi Soke of a six foot shodo painting of the calligraphy for this expression earlier this year.

As I understand it, seijin, the first two characters, literally mean saint or holy, and then virtue or human character point. The second two are very complicated but sort of mean the essential points of life experience.

In Japan, the coming of age day that happens in January is called Seijin day, and it’s celebrated by anyone who has their 20th birthday in the previous year. Girls dress up in fabulous kimono and boys wear formal suits for the day. Then they get drunk!

Anyway, that’s the conventional meaning of the expression that most Japanese people would recognise from the sound of the words. However Hatsumi Sensei has used different kanji to write the same words, and the kanji he has chosen to write it with actually form part of a kuji incantation used by yamabushi (google it if you don’t know what this means) as a spell to help give them courage before a battle.

A third interpretation of these kanji implies a meaning of old age, of the life lessons learned by an old person looking back on their coming of age day and everything they thought they knew as a 20 year old, from the perspective of an old person.

He has also added two characters, so the one to the left actually says Seijin Yojo Shinden. Shinden sort of means divinely transmitted. So you can see, sometimes a lot of meaning can be squashed into a very few words.

So there you go, now you know. Yamabiko is sort of like throwing ideas into the void, which is basically what writing here feels like.

Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
(Published Sunday, April 24, 2005 - Reviewed by Alex Meehan)

As starts to the day go, it's not a good one. Arthur Dent wakes up to find bulldozers are about to demolish his house, and his best friend is not actually from Guildford, but rather from a distant star known as Betelgeuse.

Things only get worse for Arthur (Martin Freeman), the everyman hero of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when the Earth is demolished by aliens to make way for a hyperspace bypass. One quick hitchhiking session later, Arthur and best friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def) are adventuring around the galaxy in a film which is equal parts slapstick comedy, half-baked philosophy and 1980s retro science fiction.

Joining them on the trip are the two-headed delinquent president of the Galaxy, Zaphod Breeblebrox (Sam Rockwell), and Trillian MacMillan (Zooey Deschanel), Arthur's love interest, as well as planet engineer Slartibartfarst (Bill Nighy) and Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Twenty years in the making, Hitchhiker's Guide is a funny film, and a lot more besides. As the adored life's work of the late Douglas Adams, the story has been through several incarnations – from radio play to computer game to television series, as well as, most notably, a bestselling series of five books. A lot is expected of this latest incarnation – and director Garth Jenning's feature debut – from the millions of Hitchhiker's fans around the world. The complicated story sees Arthur Dent adventuring around the universe on a spaceship powered by an infinite improbability drive, visiting obscure and unlikely planets and eventually finding the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything.
As he comes to terms with the universe, he consults the electronic book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which has the helpful phrase ‘Don't Panic!’ on its cover. Along the way, Arthur wins the heart of the only other human left alive, Trillian MacMillan.

Early in the film, his indecisiveness sees him lose Trillian at a party, when she is whisked away by the windswept and interesting Zaphod using his tried and trusted line “I'm from a different planet. Would you like to see my spaceship?”

Hitchhiker's features its fair share of effects-driven space sequences, but the look of the film is reassuringly old school. Jim Henson's Creature Shop is responsible for the disgusting seven-foot alien Vogons, and the majority of filming took place on real sets. The result is a stylish yet retro movie that can stand alone but feels true to the spirit of the books.

Hitchhiker's features very English humour, and despite being made in the US the movie retains this regional feel. The narrative is interrupted by short extracts from the Guide itself, voiced by Stephen Fry. Martin Freeman, best known for his role as put-upon stationery salesman Tim in The Office, turns in a good performance as Dent. Alan Rickman provides the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android, while John Malkovich is the creepy Humma Kavula.

While it has its flaws, Hitchhiker's is that rarest of things – a truly unusual and funny film that will have mass-market appeal. It delivers a good story, doesn't take itself too seriously and owes more to Monty Python and Austin Powers than it does to serious sci-fi. One for the whole family.

Rating: ****

(The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, directed by Garth Jennings, at cinemas nationwide from April 29. )

Review: Innocent When You Dream

I occasionally review books and movies for The Sunday Business Post, and seeing as I can't realistically see these ever getting gathered together or resold, I thought I'd start posting one or two here. These are also already available online through the newspaper's website (www.sbpost.ie), but I still own the copyright.

Enjoy!

Innocent When You Dream: Tom Waits: The Collected Interviews, edited by Mac Montandon, Orion Books, €21.90.
(Published Sunday, February 26, 2006)

Listening to Tom Waits’ music has the ability to make you feel cooler than you actually are. Innocent When You Dream, a selection of the many interviews that Waits has given over the years, sees Mac Montandon take us inside the world of one of America’s most enigmatic songwriters.

Waits’ music is keenly observed and often bizarre, but never boring. He is best known for his distinctive baritone foghorn voice and for his penchant for utilising debris he’s found in junkyards as percussive instruments on his records. He’s a rarity in the modern musical mix: a clever man who plays interesting music, isn’t afraid to use his intellect and is genuinely amusing.

This is the same guy who, when questioned about his on-air drinking, retorted to a disapproving TV interviewer: ‘‘I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” In 1977, he remarked: ‘‘I’ve never met anyone who made it with a chick because they own a Tom Waits album. I’ve got all three, and it’s never helped me.”

His eventful career has spanned three decades, and Innocent When You Dream is a record of that time, albeit through the filtered pages of his collected interviews. With a foreword from Pixies frontman Frank Black and contributions culled from the pages of Newsweek, Zig Zag, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and the NME, this is what life looks like from the other side of the interviewer’s notebook.

The book is split into three parts with interviews covering different sections of his career, interspersed with the odd poetic contribution from Charles Bukowski and contributions from famous fans like Elvis Costello.

Part One covers the 1970s and the first stage of Waits’ career. This Waits is heavily influenced by the Beat movement and Jack Kerouac and his music shares the limelight with his swaggering, hard-drinkin’, hard-smokin’ crooner persona.

In Part Two, Waits’ marriage to songwriting partner Kathleen Brennan - a script editor he met while working on his acting career - takes centre stage, along with three of his most significant albums: Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Frank’s Wild Years. Waits has now calmed down somewhat, to the extent that he has even given up the booze.

By Part Three, the interviews become increasingly entertaining, if less revealing, as Waits has adopted the media management technique of answering interviewers’ questions with interesting facts he has amassed in his notebook about the natural world.

A book like Innocent When You Dream is aimed at the fanatical Waits fan, but arguably there isn’t any other kind. You either love the guy, haven’t heard of him or just don’t get it. Waits is an enigmatic figure, the Hunter S Thompson of music, and he’s purposefully constructed an impenetrable persona about himself.

While we don’t get to find out too much about him in the book - Brennan, his songwriting partner and muse, remains hidden throughout - we do get to trace the development of Tom Waits’ thought processes as he grows older.

In the first interview, he’s a 24-year-old wild man, a barely housetrained musical hobo sitting nervously in the corner, but by the end of the book, he’s a settled fifty-something with a wife and kids.

Intriguingly, he has retained his dangerous edge for all this time. As a book, Innocent When You Dream is a middling effort, but that largely couldn’t be helped. Waits is an entertaining subject, with a well known penchant for lying through his teeth in interviews.

He is incredibly witty, but has a tendency to repeat his bons mots to sequential interviewers. So, combine the entertaining falsehoods with witty comebacks and the ubiquitous background material, and soon you start feeling like you might have read this bit before.

That said, in some ways, this is the book’s strongest point. No official autobiography of Waits exists, so this is as close as you’ll get to one. The interviews collected in Innocent When You Dream form a record of his career, music and personal life from 1974 through to 2004.

If nothing else, it’s an illuminating record of what it must be like to have to deal with the media from Waits’ perspective, or, as he puts it: ‘‘I deal with the media exactly the same way I deal with the cops - nervously.”

Lost in a forest

A fan has produced this alternate video for the classic Cure track, A forest, entirely out of Lego. Clever stuff worth watching.

Paris Tai Kai

I spent a highly enjoyable weekend in Paris, attending the third annual Bujinkan Kobudo Paris Tai Kai, organised by my friend Arnaud Cousergue. He teaches for three days along with another friend Peter King and a swedish guy called Sveneric Bogsater, who I don't know so well, but is a really fantastic budoka, statesman and all round funny guy. I try to keep this blog relatively budo free - as I spend quite enough time already on that topic - but I took some nice pics I thought I'd share.

Surfer pop - the video

Right, this is seriously surreal. I do some guitar based doodling in my spare time in the privacy of my home office, but a week or two ago, I used audiocity to layer a demo together for fun. Quitely chuffed with the result - although it's horribly unprofessional in its production - I sent it to some friends. One of them, Ali Martinez, has grabbed the ball and run with it, creating a video to go with the track. He's posted it on his blog - ausmosis - so as it's out there, it might as well be out here as well.

To view the track, click here. Enjoy!

Lightsaber Fight

Lightsaber Fight


When nerds and technology meet! This is actually extremely well done. There is a huge community of star wars nerds out there doing their thing, reshooting star wars and getting a kick out of it, but it's rarely done to this level. Enjoy!

(To get this to video to play, just click on the tiny play button above. I've reduced the size because for some reason this you tube clip was showing up far to large in my blog.)

Do I mean what I say and have I said what I meant?

Do I mean what I say and have I said what I meant to say? This sounds like a Lewis Carroll quote - probably from the Mad Hatter - but it’s actually something that my old journalism teacher used to say. Although he probably wouldn’t appreciate being called old (sorry Darren!) It refers to an important principle in journalism, that of accuracy.

You have to be sure that what you have written is what you think you have written. At the time, the lesson was designed to illustrate that it was possible to be commit libel without being aware of it, but that this was no defence in law. It’s important to re-read your copy (work) to make sure there are no other ways of reading it that might give it a meaning you don’t intend it to have. Sometimes these alternative readings can be harmless, but sometimes they are not.

Newspapers employ solicitors to ‘legal’ the final proofs before they are printed, but they are human too and can miss things, so it’s better if journalists have at least a basic understanding of how the law works, if only to cut down on the amount of work the lawyers have to do at the other end.

(I seem to recall, the humorous anecdote that went with this concerned a successful law suit brought against a newspaper when it printed a picture of a woman attending a dog show. If I recall correctly, she was pictured on her own, but holding a poodle or dog of some kind. The caption under the picture read something like “Mrs J Doe, left, with her dog fluffy.’ Can you spot the libel? She sued, claiming that the implication that she couldn’t be told apart from her dog without a caption was libellous and damaged her reputation. Technically this is a libel by juxtaposition. Is this opportunistic or what?)

Anyway, the reason I am blogging about this today is that in the last few days I’ve seen people write things on the net in web pages and on discussion forums that are libellous and damaging to others and just plain nasty. In some cases these people have done this deliberately, but on others, it’s accidental. They are not good communicators and have never been trained properly in how to communicate using the written word.

One of the first lessons in journalism is to reread everything several times before you file it. This is just basic professionalism but you can always spot an amateur because of the number of stupid mistakes in their copy. (There are lots of other ways to spot an amateur - this is just one of them.) However, people today don’t do this. They just type and hit ‘post’.

In some ways, the net has been fantastic for reintroducing the lost art of correspondence, but sadly, it’s not always practiced at a very high level. Before the telephone largely killed letter writing off, the ability to write a letter properly was considered the mark of an educated person. Indeed it is through the correspondence of some of history’s most notable politicians and public figures that we have the degree of detail that we do about times gone past.

Today, though, there are many people sitting in front of computers as part of their day to day jobs and they spend hours conversing with others online. Sadly, they do not have the contextual training in order to do this clearly and concisely, through the correct use of language. The good news is that I think over the next fifty years this will be a self correcting problem. There won’t be less text based correspondence, there will be more and people will do it from an early age and continue their entire adult lives.

Technology will only aid this, not replace it. This morning I got a phonecall from a third party (My mum) regarding a friend in China who was looking for an IT job. Before I got a chance to mail him, he skyped (www.skype.com) me via text and we discussed the matter before I popped a mail off to another friend in Tokyo that runs a recruitment company specialising in the industry my friend in China works in. Other than the initial call, it was all done via text in a way that was not just cheaper than using the phone, but actually easier and more convenient.

I can’t see how this will change in future. I don’t always want to talk face to face with someone, as that involves time wasting pleasantries that I don’t always have time for in the middle of the working day. Sometimes text is best, but for the good of the language and human communication, I believe all of us should take the time and effort to make sure we are good communicators.

On writing a short story

I’m currently working on my bootcamp story, about a man who dies more than once, and the internet isn’t helping. I keep looking at my fellow bootcamp alumni websites and blogs and seeing references to the multiple stories they’ve written since they got back. That’s not helping.

At the moment, I’m tidying up my story and getting it finished as there are some plot problems with it, largely created in the rush of trying to get it done in time to get it critiqued by the end of the camp. However, not that I’m home I’m realising two things.

1 – it’s actually pretty good.
2 – The deadline helped me, rather than hindering me.

I think I actually wrote ‘above my weight’ because of and not despite the deadline factor. Now that I have as much time as I like to finish it, I’m realising that I tend to rewrite things too much, when really, the first draft as it comes out of my fingers is by far the best.

Funnily enough, that was something that Orson Scott Card said – “there’s no such thing as a second draft. Write it properly first time and then get rid of it before it stinks the place out.”

When he said this, I thought he was mad, or at least far more skilled than me in writing and so able to make a comment like that, but I’m beginning to appreciate the method in his madness. I’m also realising how valuable the enthusiasm and creativity he has to offer are to aspiring writers.

You really need them to motivate yourself. I met an old friend for coffee last week, and she is about to publish an amazing book – her first novel, set in Dublin and weighing in at a massive 220,000 words. To put this in perspective a light to medium novel is 80,000 and a meaty novel is around 110,000. She had a proof copy of it with her – Penguin are publishing it - and it was just the most amazing thing to see it come to life, but it’s taken her years to get it right.

It’s called Hellfire and her name is Mia Gallagher – I have no doubt it will be a success because it’s a clever idea full of interesting and engaging characters and it’s written by a clever and interesting person. Here’s the blurb from Penguin:

“On a glorious midsummer’s evening in 2003, Lucy Dolan returns to the Dublin Mountains, and to the scene of a mysterious and brutal atrocity that happened thirteen years earlier, changing forever both her life and the lives of those closest to her.

As the sun sets and the shadows deepen, Lucy waits for the showdown with the young man who is the key to everything that happened that night. While she waits, she summons up the ghosts of her past and recounts her life story. It is a tale spanning two generations of storytellers and deal-makers, fortune-tellers and gamblers, businessmen and warlords, and the people that fear, serve and betray them. With each twist of the tale Lucy revisits the world of her childhood and early adolescence, piecing together afresh the events that led to the crime that still haunts her.

But she knows she can never fully understand the mystery buried at its heart - nor get the revenge and retribution she is seeking - until the one to whom the story is addressed turns up to face her. But what truth will her old friend, her old enemy, bring with him?”

Sounds good doesn’t it? I hope it does brilliantly for her.It's published in September so keep an eye out for it.

The prognosis is good!

I have the journalist’s disease*, but thankfully it’s in remission and, God willing, I’ll make a full recovery.

The problem with long term journalism is that unless you are an exceptionally balanced person (hah!) you end up sort of existing outside your own life. You see, to practice journalism you have to be able to cultivate the ability to see how situations can be viewed from perspectives other than your own. It is a thing known as objectivity.

Of course, it’s largely a sham in real life, but it does exist as a shining ideal for young journalists when they set out on their professional careers. It’s the idea that in journalism, you should report the facts as they really are, rather than how they are viewed by the various different parties to the story.

The problem with this is that in reality, the journalist is usually no more equipped than anyone else to know what the facts are, so we as media consumers get something else that passes for objectivity – we get balance.

Balance involves the journalist presenting opinions from both sides of a story rather than trying to actually discover the underlying truths of the situation. Usually this will satisfy all parties because everybody has their say and if it’s done right and you don’t say anything that can’t be proved, nobody gets sued.

Of course, this isn’t actual objectivity, it’s merely balance – because the opinions expressed by the opposing sides of whatever debate, issue or disagreement is in question are no more likely to know the absolute truth than anyone else. In real life, there is no right or wrong, merely perspective. When everyone agrees with you, you’re right, when everyone doesn’t, you’re wrong.

Anyway, we were talking about objectivity. Being able to see the world from other people’s perspective is actually not as easy as it sounds. It takes a bit of effort, but the good news is that if you take the time to do it, you actually personally benefit. It’s easier to move through life if you can clearly understand why other people do things.

The problem arises though when journalists as people lose their own perspective. At the same time that you are cultivating the skill outlined above, you are also having your own sense of objectivity warped, because life treats journalists slightly different to other people.

Depending on what end of the media you work in, you end up being flown to exotic places (you probably couldn’t afford to go to), invited to boozy lunches in Michelin starred restaurants (you definitely couldn’t afford to eat in), and meet powerful/exciting/attractive - delete as applicable- celebrities (you wouldn’t otherwise meet).

The reason all these honours are bestowed upon you is because journalists are opinion-formers and we live in a world where commercial interests are attempting to influence your opinions all the time. An influenced opinion means a larger bottom line for the companies in question.

Most journalists enjoy a certain degree of personal power in terms of what agendas they bring to their writing, who they choose to cover in their work and in what way. This is a little simplistic, because there are also limiting factors at work, such as editors and the like, but it will suffice.

So does all this sound good? Well, it is. It’s great! It’s fantastic, but the problem arises when you start to take this kind of lifestyle for granted and real life starts to become a little . . . well . . . bland. Real actual life can end up being less interesting than work. People will credit you with some sort of higher insight into the hidden workings of the universe and your opinion will be sought after and usually respected. It's all nonsense, of course, but a lot of people end up falling for it. Those who don't get cynical about it, and those who do usually end up cynical about it too.

In your personal life this can cause problems, because you can end up observing life rather than living it, and I have felt this happening to me a few times over the years. You become so caught up in playing a role, than you lose sight of the fact that its just a role – your job is something you do, not something you are.

It’s perfectly possible to be an excellent journalist with a great sense of the importance of objectivity and an excellent home life and not have any of the above happen to you at all. But it’s also possible to really mess yourself up, and over the years I’ve met some seriously dysfunctional alcoholics.

More than ever, I'm convinced that it's crucial never to lose your sense of wonder at the world. You should avoid things that chip away at that. At least, that's what I think.

*(Actually, there are two journalist’s diseases and I have both. Or all three, if you count the third one. But really there are only two, and most people wouldn’t consider poor spelling an actual disease, merely a professional impediment. The second journalist’s disease is that I dislike writing without knowing in advance who is actually paying me to do it, but maybe that should be the topic of another blog some times. Suffice to say that every day in every way, I get a little bit better. )