Prompts for Young Novelists

Starting a novel is hard: first you have to think of an idea, then you have to write it. As an aid to aspiring writers, I have designed 10 "Prompts" which can be used to get the old juices flowing, and some new juices, hopefully. The most important thing is not to censor yourself, because, as we all know, censorship is wrong. Just take the prompts one at a time, go with your first impulse, let the ideas flow, and before you know it, you’ll be a fully published author, probably. Good luck!

PROMPTS:

1. “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she screamed.

2. As Donna's head began to spin crazily, Richard picked up the manual and noticed that her instructions were in Dutch.

3. “Helmet!” The man did not answer.

4. As Troy watched the heavy shape fall towards the stormy waters below, he felt that same familiar sensation stir, deep down, in his sack.

5. As Professor John Langhorne strode down the darkened corridor of the Louvre he suddenly noticed that the Mona Lisa had some kind of code on it.

6. Ontogeny recapitulates philogeny,” gurgled the mind-baby.

7. “Not again! This always happens to my hair!” said John Mayer.

8. "Do you have any great ideas for a novel?" laughed Sarah. "As a matter of fact, I do!" replied the Professor, before telling her one.

9. “Gregg, you are about to go literally, and figuratively, to heaven,” said the cock-witch.

10. "Dear Miss Jones," the letter began. Thank you for your query regarding the publication of your crime novella, 'The Sack of Troy'. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer you any assistance at this time."

11. Tina woke and went to the bathroom mirror. "That's not my face!" she exclaimed.

On The Road

My new Google Maps essay, 'On The Road: Memoirs of a Motion-Sickness Survivor', is here.

Please Judge a Book by its Cover: A Compendium of Popular Wisdom

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Contrary to opinion, the cover is one of the best ways to judge a book. On the cover you’ll find the title, the author’s name, a short biography, selected quotations from prestigious journals (often,) and a concise description (or “blurb”) of the characters, story, and themes of the work. The cover even has a piece of art designed to graphically evoke the mood of the book. In short, a cover is an excellent way to judge a book.

NEW PROVERB: Judging a book by its cover is the third best way to judge a book, short of reading it, or skimming the review in the Times Literary Supplement.

“An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.”

It’s clear that if two combatants each lose an eye they will still be left with two functioning eyes. This is assuming that they each had two functioning eyes. If the combatants are both pirate captains, or Cyclopses, then yes, there is the possibility of total blindness. Perhaps this proverb is speaking metaphorically about the entire world, and the pointlessness of violence and retribution, but even then you’ve only removed one eye from each human, which wouldn’t make the world blind, though it would make driving more dangerous.

NEW PROVERB: An eye for an eye will not leave the world blind, though it may make it harder for the world to judge distances.

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

I beg to differ. If you go to the trouble of fooling me on consecutive occasions, perhaps inventing mysterious foolin’ machines, or stringing intricate webs of fallacy, until I’m lost, wandering in a mire of deception, not knowing which way is up or down, then still shame on you. I’m not here for your amusement. Get a life.

NEW PROVERB: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on you again, dickwit.

“A penny saved is a penny gained.”

I’m no expert, but I don’t think you can just make a proverb by stating the same fact twice. “A sock in the drawer is a sock indeed.” It’s perfectly obvious that if I have a penny, I’ve gained a penny. We don’t need an aphorism.

NEW PROVERB: If you don’t have any good proverbs to say, don’t say proverbs at all.

“All's fair in love and war.”

We live in a more enlightened age, and recent events have taught us that techniques like waterboarding, and genital electrocution, are cruel, and probably the reason why 50% of marriages end in divorce.

NEW PROVERB: It is plain wrong to zap a man’s balls, even if he did snog your mate, and especially while he’s napping.

“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

It’s the egg. No, ssshhhh, don’t say anything, it’s egg, the answer is egg. The creature who would evolve to become the mighty chicken laid eggs. There were no chickens roaming around who suddenly learned to lay eggs.

NEW PROVERB: The egg came first. End of discussion.

“Better wed over the mixen than over the moor.”

A mixen is a compost heap or dung pile. Thus, this strange proverb means: “Better to marry someone who lives beyond the dung heap than beyond the hills, or, “Better to marry a neighbour than a stranger.” I suppose that’s true, though someone who lives in the next town might be preferable to someone who has chosen, for whatever reason, to live beside a gigantic pile of crap.

NEW PROVERB: It’s generally better to marry a neighbour, though you might set your sights higher than someone who lives beside the town’s communal septic mound, and also, you might want to check with his wife first.

“A blind man's wife needs no paint.”

I am going to go out on a limb and say that few wives require painting.

NEW PROVERB: Few wives require painting. If they do, paint in a well ventilated room and allow at least 6 hours for drying.

“The early bird catches the worm.”

Are there no worms around after 10? I like to sleep in. So shoot me.

NEW PROVERB: The early bird catches the worm, but don’t worry, it’s not the only worm. Enjoy your lie-in.

“Happy is the bride that the sun shines on.”

I was at my cousin’s wedding, and it was super hot, and the bride fainted and got duck shit on her dress, which is no good. Then a stray dog ran in and started licking itself. No one knew where to look, though mostly we all looked at the dog.

NEW PROVERB: Keep the bride out of the sun, and think twice about a riverside wedding in Hamilton.

“Imagine no possessions; it isn’t hard to do.”

Easy, I imagine, for those who have few possessions already. Harder, I would think, if you’re trying to imagine no possessions while hammering away on your magnificent ivory Steinway, in your palatial country estate, shortly before falling into the arms of your Japanese conceptual hoochie.

NEW PROVERB: He of the banquet should not preach of the bowl.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they’ll never sit in.”

Actually, I quite like this one.

The King is Not Dead

An Imaginary Conversation with The King That Aligns Itself with Popular, Contemporary Conspiracy Theories.

AIDE
Ok, Elvis, we just need to go through this one more time so we can be absolutely clear. You’re saying, basically, that you would like us to help you to fake your own death.

ELVIS
That’s right.

AIDE
Ok. Just remind us why you want to do that.

ELVIS
I’m tired, baby. Tired of all the fame. All the attention. I just want to be left alone.

AIDE
Right. Because, you know, we did the TV special, we did the tours, the Vegas shows. We did all that stuff that you wanted us to do to put you back in the public eye. You got us to take you to visit the President.

ELVIS
President Nixon.

AIDE
Yeah.

ELVIS
Nice fella. Nice fella.

AIDE
Ok, so anyway, hypothetically, if we did help you to fake your own death, and bearing in mind that we do NOT support this idea in any way.

ELVIS
That’s cool.

AIDE
But if we did help you, you would be able to choose any means of death you like. I mean, the sky is the limit. Any kind of spectacular, heroic exit that you can reasonably conceive of—we can do that for you. Theoretically.

ELVIS
Sure.

AIDE
I mean, high speed race-car crash, jet explosion, zeppelin fire, rescuing a child from a burning building. You can die screwing yourself to death with eleven beauty queens if you want. We could arrange it so you appear to die while jumping over a shark tank on your motorcycle.

ELVIS
Sounds dangerous.

AIDE
(Heavy sigh.) Ok, so with all that in mind, taking into consideration that there are literally no limits on the way that you can appear to exit this world, tell us one more time how you’d like to go out.

ELVIS
Dead on a toilet.

AIDE
Dead on a toilet.

ELVIS
Dead on a toilet, baby.

AIDE
Right.

ELVIS
In my underwear.

AIDE
In your underwear. Ok. So out of all the heroic and spectacular deaths you could have, you would like to be remembered by history as a drugged, bloated corpse on a toilet.

ELVIS
That’s right. Corpse me baby! (Laughter)

AIDE
Ok, we … let’s come back to that issue. The other thing I’m having trouble coming to terms with is … you said that after you’re gone you want to … come back once in a while?

ELVIS
That’s right. Comeback specials.

AIDE
You want to reveal yourself to people?

ELVIS
Sure. That’d be cool.

AIDE
Even though you’re supposed to be dead?

ELVIS
On the toilet.

AIDE
Ok, and where did you imagine these appearances happening? Churches, hospitals, mountain tops?

ELVIS
Malls.

AIDE
Beg pardon?

ELVIS
Malls, I want to appear in malls, 7/Elevens, Dairy Queens.

AIDE
(Heavy sigh.) Ok Let me just … I mean … (Heavy sigh.) We’ve done a lot of crazy shit for you. I mean, man alive, the stuff we’ve done. Do you do know how foolish it is to fake your own death? That’s crazy enough. But then to start “materializing” in restaurants and convenience stores. Just walking into a mall there and wandering around. I mean, that’s just so mind-blowingly reckless …

ELVIS
And on crackers.

AIDE
I’m sorry, what?

ELVIS
I want people to see my face on crackers. I want people to open up boxes of Saltines and there’s old Elvis, smiling back at them. Hey, Davy, any chance you can get me some of them Saltines, maybe with some shaved ham, and some of that cheese I like, what’s it called?

DAVY
Gruyere?

AIDE
Ok, I’m just having a real problem getting my head around all this. Basically, you just had your big come-back. The whole damn world loves you again. We did Aloha Hawaii. 1.5 billion people saw that!

ELVIS
Phooooweeeee!

AIDE
Yeah. Now you want us to arrange for it to appear as if you’ve died of an overdose on the toilet. You want us to fly you to a secret island, an island which you want to call … ?

ELVIS
Qualudia.

AIDE
Qualudia. But you also want us to fly you back occasionally so that you can make appearances in convenience stalls, fast-food restaurants, and suburban malls.

ELVIS
Yeah.

AIDE
And to top it all off you want us to infiltrate a snack-food manufacturer and arrange for your face to be secretly printed on a small number of crackers.

ELVIS
That is correct.

AIDE
Colonel, I'm speechless. What the hell do you make of all this?

COLONEL
Boy, I think you’re madder than a sack full of raccoons in a bath full of snakes.

ELVIS
Thank you very much.



Kiwi Rhyming Slang

I'm in London: The Grumpy Apple, The City That Often Sleeps. As an unofficial, non-payed, non diplomatically sanctioned cultural attaché to London it is my job to sniff out innovative ideas that can be adapted to my country of birth. This is how we got Gok Wan and competitive vomiting. One of the things that I think could do very well in New Zealand is Cockney Rhyming Slang—the street-slang invented in the 19^th Century by London merchants to confuse their wives and mistresses.

Here is a story I wrote for a New Zealand magazine on the invention of a Kiwi Rhyming Slang.

The Sucky Giant

A Christmas Story

(With apologies to Oscar Wilde)

There was once a Giant who lived in the middle of a town in an high-spec, architect designed home with semi-detached lodge for guests (though he rarely entertained, he mostly just used the lodge to get his head together,) and though his home was minimalist, he used objects from his travels to express his style: an antique Japanese kettle that General MacArthur had once peed in, a Victorian, steam-powered dildo called Danielle Steele, and a bust of Ayn Rand killing an eagle with her bare hands. The giant had made all his money from hedge funds.

The Giant also had a large, lovely garden. It had been designed by a Swedish landscape-artist known for his ability to create the illusion of space in restricted urban environs. Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant's garden."How happy we are here!" they cried to each other.

One day the Giant came back. He had been away in Thailand on "business". When he arrived home he saw the children playing in the garden. "Get out of my Dutch elms!" The giant said in a very gruff voice, and the children gaily soiled themselves.

Then the giant built a high wall all round the garden, and put up a notice-board.

TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
MURDERED

He was a very sucky Giant.

Now the poor children had now nowhere to play, except the local youth centre - which was full of drug dealers and smelled of pee. They used to wander 'round the high wall when their lessons were over and talk about the beautiful garden. "How happy we were there," they said to each other. "Let's set fire to it!" But the wall was made of stone and the giant had installed thermal sensors.

Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were blossoms and birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant was it still winter. The birds did not care to sing there as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. The only people who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. "Spring has forgotten this garden," they cried, "so we will live here all the year round."

Spring never came, nor the Summer. The Autumn gave golden fruit to every garden, but to the Giant's garden she gave only grapefruit. "Enjoy your weird, shitty-tasting fruit," she said. So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees like annoying theatre people.

"I cannot understand this," said the Giant, as he sat at his vast window, on his beloved Eames, and looked out at his frozen meditation pond. He wondered if he was dreaming, but the Giant never dreamed. "Dreaming is for pussies," he often said to himself. "I can't think why winter would be localised exclusively to my garden, but I'll need further evidence before I can leap to the absurd conclusion that this kind of weather event is caused by human activity."

One morning the Giant was lying awake in his king-size Japanese memory foam bed when he heard some lovely music. It was a little linnet singing outside his window. "I believe the Spring has come at last," said the Giant, and he jumped out of bed and looked out.

What did he see?

Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, thereby evading his motion sensors and laser-guided tranq-darts. They were sitting in the branches of the trees. In every tree that he could see there was a little child. The birds were flying about and twittering with delight. Only in one corner it was still winter. It was the farthest corner of the garden, and in it was standing a little boy. He was so small that he could not reach up to the branches of the tree, and he was wandering all round it, crying bitterly.

And the Giant's heart melted as he looked out. "How selfish I have been!" he said. "Now I know why the Spring would not come. I will put that poor little boy out of his misery, and then I will knock down the wall. So he crept downstairs and went out into the garden. But when the children saw him they were so frightened that they all ran away, and the garden became winter again. Only the little boy did not run, for his eyes were so full of tears that he did not see the Giant coming. He was basically a sitting duck. The Giant stole up behind him, licking his lips, but at the last minute he changed his mind and put him up into the tree, and the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy flung his arms round the Giant's fat neck. Then the other children came running back, and with them came the Spring. "It is your garden now, little children," said the Giant, and he took a great axe to knock down the wall, but the children saw the axe and ran away, and it immediately became winter again, and the giant thought, "This is getting ridiculous." But they soon returned, and when the people were going to market at twelve o'clock they found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they had ever seen.

All day long they played, and in the evening they came to the Giant to bid him good-bye.

"But where is your little companion?" he said: "The boy I put into the tree."

"We don't know," answered the children, "he has gone away."

Every afternoon, when school was over, the children came and played with the Giant. But not the little boy whom the Giant loved. "How I would like to see him!" he would say.

One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing for work. He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that by opening his heart he had made Winter his bitch.

Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonderment. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child, and when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who hath dared to wound thee?" For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on his little feet.

"Tell me, that I may get some of my associates to hurt him!"

"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."

"That's weird!" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, but to-day you shall leave this world for another garden, a garden of fire!"

And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms. The little boy explained to them: "For years this giant ran a complex and clandestine Ponzi scheme with several of his buddies. My Dad gave him our savings, and the giant lost it all. Because of that, Christmas in our house has not been a time of joy; it has been the suckiest no-present suck-fest you could ever imagine. Don't even get me started. Today I came to take my revenge on the giant, but it seems as if some of his imported cactuses have leached into his drinking water, causing him to hallucinate that I was Jesus, and that Winter was only happening in his garden, and ultimately to die of a cardiac arrest. It's funny how life works out, isn't it?"

And the children all agreed.


THE END

HETEROPODA DAVID BOWIE: FACTS

I wish I was David Bowie, then I would get the maximum quota of respect, and men would invite me to have the sex with their wives while they watched (an offer I would decline with a knowing smile that seems to say, “I’ve been down that road, man. It was a blast, sure, but I’m married to four beautiful women now.”) Doe-eyed girls would ask me to do that thing where I twirl my balls in my fingers, and I would again smile knowingly as I said, “That wasn’t me, man. There was a small man in my robes who twirled my balls for me. True fact. Do you want me to sign those?”

FACTS:

David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 Jan 1947. He shares the same birthday as Elvis. Rock guitarist Peter Frampton was Bowie's friend at school. David’s right pupil became permanently dilated when his friend George Underwood punched him in it. They were fighting over a girl. He changed his name to Bowie to avoid confusion with Monkee Davy Jones, who’d twice attempted to steal his soul. At the age of 17, Bowie was interviewed on a BBC programme as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men. Bowie's first hit - 1969's Space Oddity - was used by the BBC in its coverage of the moon landing. Bowie was hit in the eye by a lollipop while on stage in Oslo, Norway in 2004. George Underwood became the main suspect, but he had an alibi, saying, “I couldn’t have thrown a lollipop that far from where I was standing,” to which the charging officer replied, “We didn’t even mention a lollipop, did we Noel?”

David is 5 feet and 10 inches (178cm) tall. David lives in London, just like me, though he won’t return my post. David recorded a version of Space Oddity in Italian titled Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Solo - which literally means Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl. He has been in 10 bands - The Konrads, The Hooker Brothers, The King Bees, The Manish Boys, The Lower Third, The Buzz, The Riot Squad, The Hype, Tin Machine and Tao Jones Index. There’s a spider named after David Bowie. The spider is described as being large, yellow and hairy. David Bowie has enough poison in his sack to kill an adult male, but his mandibles are very weak.

The Space Oddity 40th anniversary edition was released in the US this month.

www.davidbowie.com

The Butterscotch Bandits

I have had a leg pain for a while now from trying to do the forbidden dance with a four-foot nougat Santa. (long story: I was drunk.) Now whenever it rains I get a pain in my leg, and whenever it stops raining the pain switches to the other leg. This pain is most acute during sex (which happened once.) What would happen during sex in the rain? I hate to think.

I have gone to various experts and body mechanics such as a regular doctor (who advised me to get a surgery,) and a country doctor (who said I should get kicked in the legs by a mule.) The best result I had was from a local witch doctor who took me into his hut and performed certain (I presume) ancient rituals. He lit candles and put on some nice music and we smoked his pipe and watched X Factor. That’s when I noticed that whenever Jedward (The Butterscotch Bandits) were performing my leg pain would almost completely disappear! (His neck-rubs also helped.) I was amazed, and even though through the night he performed a lot of other rituals on me (some which made me feel uncomfortable,) the one that worked the most was when I was watching the Butterscotch Bandits perform Under Pressure, by David Bowie and also Queen.

Well, since BB got their sweet little asses kicked off the show my leg-pain has returned. My witch doctor never called me for a follow up consultation and when I went back to his hut and rang the bell the lady there said he’d moved to Norwich (Norwich — Nor-witch?) and all his witch doctor stuff (oils, albums, rubber wands,) had all been boxed up ready to go.

I don’t know what to do now.

In Pain.

*******

Dear In Pain

Life is pain. Pain is life. I wonder if you’ve learned a valuable lesson about the consequences of dealing with charlatans. My friend, the Prince of Nigeria, still owes me $7 million, but I know he's good for it, I have his email picture. I love the Buterscotch Bandits, too! Ha ha!

Louis Walsh.

ON THIS DAY, THURSDAY NOVEMBER 26th

1476 – Vlad III Dracula defeats Basarab Laiota (great, great, great, great uncle of Ray Liotta,) with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Bathory, becoming the ruler of Wallachia for the third time. (Wallachia is Romanian for “All the cheese”.)

1901 – Hubert Cecil Booth patents the vacuum cleaner. The machine is powered by a team of skinks locked inside and forced to share the same oxygen tube.

1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3000 years, despite the glyphic saying ‘Do Not Make Up My Room’.

1948 — Addressing an audience at Harvard, Albert Einstein claims that he's so complex that only 3 women in the world can understand him.

1977 – 'Vrillon', claiming to be the representative of the 'Ashtar Galactic Command', takes over Britain's Southern Television for six minutes at 5:12 PM. It’s true …

Advice For Aspiring Novelists (2)

This is National Novel Writing Month, the month in which people try to write a 50,000+ word novel in 30 days. I made my own attempt, and wrote in a previous post about the sheer volume of (mostly pointless) advice for a aspiring novelists. But Cees Nooteboom, the deliciously quirky Dutch novelist, sums it up best:

"Try the next five things: try to get a little bit of asthma [like Proust], lay down in bed half-suffocated, line your room with cork, and write Remembrance of Things Past. As soon as you see that it doesn't work for you, try a lectern and smoke a pipe, or then again, before you commit suicide, go big game hunting [like Hemingway] and then from time to time write a novel about life. Or, well, whatever, do like Nooteboom: go to Spain, buy notebooks, and write 500 words a day with a fountain pen, Mont Blanc, of course. This happens to be my way of doing it.”

Here's Eleanor Watchtel's interview with Nooteboom.

A La Recherche De Tweets Perdu

I’m currently working on a Twitter novel: A La Recherche De Tweets Perdu, A Rememberance of Twats Past.

In Search of Lost Tweets recounts, through sensory experience, my privileged but troubled childhood in an age where children were seen and not heard, and even then were only allowed to speak 140 characters at a time.

Please follow me on Twitter, if you have the inclination.

@suddain

Excerpts:


Swann's Way. “I would go to bed early. Sometimes my eyes would close so quickly that I hadn't even time to say ‘Good morning, Henry’”


“… But before I knew it I would wake to the smell of fresh butter, the kind mother used to make me dab before church."


"... 'Wear your butter, always,' she used to say. 'Then you will be too slippery for the priests.' That buttery smell takes me waaaaaaaaaay back."


"The beach, winter, a strange time to go. Mother's strongman boyfriend, Krutz, would hoist me on his shoulders. He smelled of hocks."


"Once I sprained my ankle on a ham. Oh, how I bawled as I clutched that ham. Those were happy times."


"I recall at Easter we'd each get a ham. Not directly, but blindfolded we would search with our jambon de sensibilisation, our 'ham-sense.'"


"It might seem that many of my "recherches" are about ham. This is untrue. As a small boy I loved all God's meats, even the ungodly meats."


"There were bad times, too, like when Mother left me at the cat circus. At night I still hear cats, but that’s normal in a residential area.”


"But though acrid, the cat circus incident reminds me of my own lost cat, Nigel, and it begs me to continue … a la recherche du chats perdu."

Guest Science Blogger: The Parasitic Nematode

We are the parasitic nematode. We are small worms, but also so much more. Four out of five of us here on earth are nematodes. We are EVERYWHERE: in pastures, dunes, beneath the ocean floor, on cutlery, iPods, in Emma Bunting’s eyes. Where there's organic material, we are present in an abundance you can scarcely imagine, even with your complicated brains and “female’s intuition”. A handful of dirt contains at least 50 different species of nematodes, yet we never feel crowded.

“If all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable,” your nematologist Nathan Augustus Cobb wrote in 1914, “and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable, since for every massing of human beings there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes." To which his wife replied, “I am leaving you, Nathan, and I shan’t be back.” We know. We were there. We have always been there. We see what you do … in the night.

Anyway. The way you have chosen to spread your genetic material is strange, but it is nothing compared to what we have come up with. Behold.

Our mermithid nematode has a particular problem. Mayfly nymphs eat their eggs and then carry them until their deaths. When the nematode infects a female fly it waits until the fly returns to the water, then bursts out of her guts, a la John Hurt in Alien. But what if they’re eaten by a male? How do they get out? Well, the mermithid simply turns the males into females, a la Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society.

When the ant cephalotes atratus is infected with a parasitic nematode, its normally black abdomen becomes red and swollen, resembling the many red berries in the tropical forest canopy, thereby attracting the birds that normally feed on the berries, thereby distributing our eggs high and wide across the land, thereby blowing your freakin’ mind.

Now, most human people fall into two groups: those who believe that our curious behaviour came about through countless billions of micro-adaptations to our DNA over the ages, and others who believe that we could not possibly have come about through natural changes, that we could only have been intentionally designed. These people will describe at length how a magical sky-wizard created the earth in a ballistic seven day freakout, and then said, “You know what this place really needs? An organism that distributes its eggs by making ants’ arses glow red,” before taking another long draw on his skull-shaped, Jupiter-sized, cosmic love-bong.

Myself, I have no idea.

Now bow to us!

Find out more about the wonderful world of parasites here.

Do Good

DoGooder is a browser plugin which hides generic advertising content and replaces it with green-related initiatives. I heartily recommend it. The DoGooder HQ is ...

here.

Advice For Aspiring Novelists

This is National Novel Writing Month. Across the world, thousands of people are furiously scribbling their tween-fang love epic, or their crime thriller about an attractive young body-language expert hired by MI5 to track a 21st Century Jack the Ripper copycat who targets promiscuous women in dance clubs, or their thriller about a young hacker fleeing for his life from a newly sentient Internet, or their retelling of Dune from the sand-worms’ perspective. I did my novel-in-a-month experiment last month and ended up with a first draft of a steampunk adventure for young adults that I am now too scared to read. But it was an enriching learning experience.

The volume of advice available on the web for aspiring novelists is quietly chilling. No, wait, I mean noisily chilling. The web provides a white hum of information on everything from plot development to naming your characters. Did any successful novelist ever need to subscribe to an ebook about naming their characters? How would Roald Dahl actually have responded to the spam-o-gram I got the other day?

“Uncover the Secrets of Writing a Kid's Classic QUICKLY!

Matt

Have you ever dreamed of writing a BEST-SELLING CHILDREN'S BOOK?

Imagine strolling into your local bookstore, and seeing your children's books lining the shelves. Children are reading, their imaginations sparkling. Your pride is bulging. And so is your bank balance! You're following in the footsteps of J.K.Rowling, Terry Pratchett, Roald Dahl, and many other popular children's authors.”

Imagine. You could spend a lot of time imagining. The industry that tells us how to write has now ballooned to compete in size with the industry that gives us things to read. Based on all the advice available, the secret to writing a breakthrough novel seems to be about keeping to a strict daily schedule: Rise early, collate your notes, name all of your characters, devise spreadsheet profiles for each, figure out where they went to school, or what they had for breakfast, re-arrange your desk, download an e-book on creating believable characters, colour-code your pens, Google “novel+structure,” stop the oven clock from blinking, get the temperature in the room to exactly 23 degrees, and plan a “brain-food” diet to optimise creativity. That way you can conceivably get to the end of the working day without having written a single thing.

National Novel Writing Month site

ON THIS DAY

NOVEMBER 4th

1677 – The future Mary II of England marries William, Prince of Orange. They will later ascend the throne of England together under the stage-name Tango & Cash.

1922 – British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to King Tut’s, a VIP only casino located in the Valley of the Kings.

1942 – World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein – Disobeying a direct order from Adolf Hitler, Rommel takes his officers on a 5 month retreat in the Swiss Alps.

1959 — The first Barbie doll is seen in America. People will criticise her for her “impossible body” and Mattel will reluctantly agree to remove her penis.

1967 — President John F. Kennedy appears on the cover of Playboy, giving America a first glimpse of his ‘Man-Hussy’ tattoo.

2008 — Barrack Obama is elected President of the United States. Doesn’t time fly.