I nearly shot someone once.

There's no real clever headline for this. I nearly killed someone with a loaded gun - it's the sort of thing that doesn't really suit clever puns or references. I didn't know it was loaded at the time. I never thought for a second anyone was stupid enough to give a 16-year-old a rifle full of bullets. But I was in Pakistan at the time and they do things differently there.

It was on a school trip. Our aim was to climb a mountain but along the way we got to see plenty of the local villages; picking up supplies, porters and so on. I can't remember exactly where we were at the time, somewhere around Gilgit which is one of the main through ways to reach the Himalayas. The arse end of nowhere is probably the best description. We'd wandered into a small town which was little more than a collection of small shacks lining a dirt path. They were selling the basics: live animals, groceries, guns. That sort of thing. And, of course, as a group of teenage boys, we liked guns. We'd only wandered over to look, but within seconds the shop owner was handing out semi-automatic pistols and machine guns; smiling toothlessly and repeating “plez, plez” in bad English. I got a bolt action rifle and thinking I was being clever, pumped the bolt to check the chamber was empty. I pretty much started to point it at everyone's head after that.

Fortunately, I never touched the trigger. I'm not sure why, it just seemed like the wrong thing to do even with an 'unloaded' gun. It was for the best. The next time I worked the bolt a bullet flew out. Then another. And another. It was a breach loading rifle and I'd been pointing at everyone while making 'pew pew' noises. I never told them at the time and it took me six years to stop having nightmares.

Best President Ever

No, not that one. I'm talking about Andrew Jackson who became the seventh President of the United States in 1829. I'll be honest, I have no idea whether he was a good man or if he made a difference. He did know how to party, though. On the day of his inauguration they had to use ship's cables to hold back the crowds. For a while at least. Washington socialite Marget Smith covered the event in a letter to a friend, “When the speech was over, and the President made his parting bow, the barrier that had separated the people from him was broken down and they rushed up the steps all eager to shake hands with him.” The President of America, mobbed like a Korean pop star.

The best bit, however, was when Pres invited everyone back to the White House. Not a select few, not a specially chosen group but the 17^th century equivalent of a Facebook invite. It was chaos. Thousands of people tried their luck. According to Smith, “Ladies fainted, men were seen with bloody noses and such a scene of confusion took place as is impossible to describe. Those who got in could not get out by the door again, but had to scramble out of windows. At one time, the President who had retreated until he was pressed against the wall, could only be secured by a number of gentleman forming around him and making a barrier of their own bodies.” Probably not the best start for the ruler of an emerging super power. In the end they had to take all the booze and put it on the lawn to get everyone out. I'd loved to have seen the government the next morning; bleary eyed around the table promising each other that 'what happens in congress, stays in congress', as girls stumble around in the background, fishing knickers out of the picture frames.

American Medicine

It's basically terrifying. Every ad, whether it's heart mediation, diabetes treatment or even eye drops, is 90% warning. A handsome man or beautiful woman appears to mention briefly how medication x has made their life a wonderful place, before then spending up to minute and a half listing a huge collection of side effects. "May cause nausea, fainting, hallucinations, an adversity to cheese, should not be taken with aspirin, BBQ sauce, or on a Thursday" and my favorite "has not been medically proven in scientific tests". What! Isn't that the fucking point? Are they just filling capsules with chalk dust and hoping for the best?

Tylenol, an American headache pill, goes one step further and has an advert that is nothing but disclaimer. Drugs mess up your liver "so only use Tylenol when you really need to." Although the way these things are advertised you'd think the decision is more about accessorizing rather than treating symptoms.

The scary thing is how a lot of these ads are for serious drugs. Things to clear potentially fatal blood clots or treat diabetes and severe respiratory problems. All of which are presented with the white teeth, better world gloss of a well chosen small car. Shouldn't this shit be the sort of thing doctors decide rather than patients choosing the commercial with the prettiest actor?

Meat

There's a restaurant in Santa Monica called Fogo De Chao. It serves meat. That's pretty much it. Cow, pig, chicken. In the window there's a small fire around which the flanks of various animals slowly turn, spitting and browning in the heat.

The service is simple. You have a small place mat like card, red on one side, green on the other. Green means go, red, stop. As long as you display the appropriate colour waiters bring up slabs of meat and carve off hunks, directly on to your plate.

The best bit of the whole night, however, was watching the people eating there and their reactions slowly change. First glee, as they ate with wanton abandon, then confusion, as the endless supply started to overwhelm them, and then finally pain, as they realised several pounds of flesh was now testing their digestive abilities to the limit. I quit out after 20 minutes but some people ate for about 45. I left them to their 'kill me faces' and headed back to my hotel. Full of cow and regret.

Is this what you Wanted?

I've developed a weird fascination with Wanted, both the movie and the original comic book. Specifically, the absolute lack of similarity between the two. Neither of them are particularly amazing but I'm fascinated by the fact that the only thing they share in common is the opening scene and the name of the main character, Wesley Gibson. After that the two so rapidly diverge that it seems almost impossible that the film can take the book's name with out being fraudulent.

The film follows a group of super assassins with superpowers, bending bullets like curve balls and eliminating targets to keep the world safe. The comic, on the other hand, follows a cabal of super villains who, decades earlier, teamed up and wiped out every superhero in existence - taking over the world and ruling it in secret. There's no bullet-bending, no Matrix-flavoured action. Just a bunch of superhuman bad guys. There are mad professors, an alien, a man who creates murderous robot dolls and Shithead. Ah, Shithead; a sentient, shape-changing monster formed from the excrement collected from the most evil people in the world. Spot the difference?

I'd love to track down the people involved, interview them and write a piece on how the comic became a film with absolutely no connection save a few names. It's incredible that Universal even bothered calling it Wanted. According to those rules I could write a story about a CIA space operative investigating tax fraud on the moon and call it Shindler's List.  

[Update] Turns out book author Mark Millar had the assassin idea first, which the movie studio bought, but then went on to write a completely different comic.  Thanks, Mark, for making this entire post redundant.

Whoz teh looz0rs?

I think a lot about the internet. As a writer who is paid to make words on paper it's hard not to. I love the freedom of speech aspect and the empowerment of everyone to talk, discuss and spread information like a tidal wave. The thing that fascinates me most, though, is the effect it's having on language. Already website commenters and forum posters have reduced communication to a primitive phonetic grunting, full of elongated vowels and experimental consonant combinations.

The basic function of English been has reduced to its barest, most minimal components. The intent is there; conversation is achieved but at what cost? What place for writers when linguistics are a majority vote decided by fashion, trends and typos, changing as fast as you can hit 'refresh'. The building blocks of words reduced to an easy, freestyling improvisation timed to the click of a mouse. Already there are websites popping up on aggregators, placing highly, getting the hits but with misspelt articles, devoid of punctuation and requiring you translate rather than read them. That said, the information gets through and word is spread, even if it's not properly used.  

Great Entertainment

There's a line in Hotel Rwanda where Joaquin Phoenix, having recently filmed the first acts of genocide, talks about how people will react. "They'll say 'Oh my god that's horrible' and they'll go on eating their dinners". It ruined the film for me because I didn't want to be one of them, but what can I do? A little Googling, some light research - hey, fuck, it really was terrible wasn't it? - and then back to normal. It's a million miles away and I might as well feel bad for the Mars rover that never landed. 

It didn't help that I thought the film was trite and emotionally cloying; reducing a million plus genocide into a made-for-TV special. Still, it's in the American Film Institute's 100 most inspirational films. Presumably because a) it really speaks to the people, and b) nothing says "Sorry we ignored everything" like coming below Babe and Star Wars in a list.

Worst. Flatmate. Ever.

I had to live once with a man that pleaded guilty to stealing £230 from me. He spent it all on porn. The two important lessons I learned from this is that there is enough information on a Coop till receipt to buy things over the phone. And that the police can't make people homeless. Even criminal ones. So after he'd peaded guilty we had to take him back in.

The police had turned up unexpectedly to make the arrest. Twelve of them. At 1am. While me and my friend desperately sprayed air freshener to hide the smell of weed, the police barged through the thief's door and started asking questions. When they found the phone he'd used to steal the money, they marched him off. Leaving us to poke nervously around the room.

He had a pile of bin liners in the corner, propped up against a wardrobe door to push it shut against the weight of the other bin liners inside. They stank. Not just a bad smell but a presence that clung to your clothes and haunted you hours afterwards. There was a hole in one of the bags where a policeman had torn it open to see what was inside. I looked. It was used tampons. Each bin liner stuffed to a full, fat 'ready to throw out' size with soiled sanitary products. He'd lived in the house for three months with this stuff. With us. It turns out he got off using it as an aid and was trying to sell it to like-minded people. He'd collected his impressive stash through his job - cleaning at the local girls school.

It took a month to get him out. The bizarre legal twist meant we couldn't stop him living with us - even while he was awaiting trial - because it was his home too. I even recieved a verbal warning from the police after I stopped him using any part of the house besides sleeping in his room, and made him get out during the day. Turns out restricting access to where a person lives is illegal. I tried to point out that spending over two hundred pounds of someone else's money on skin mags wasn't exactly a moral grey area. “Sorry,” they said, but he'd logged a complaint and I had to give his key back. He did move out eventually after some friends came around and told him to leave or they'd burn everything he owned. He went, carrying two bin liners at a time, on the bus.