Chip Dale's New Blog

My first full day back between the cracks, neither employed nor claiming benefits, and I’m already thinking about opening a new blog. I know I’m crazy. My Romanian psychotherapist tells me that every morning over breakfast. I also know I don’t find time to write just one blog a day so why should a man tasked with keeping Wales’ largest thong collection clean want to give himself more work? The answer is: I won’t be doing any more work than I’m already doing. I’m just considering publishing my work in progress daily to the web.

Quitting my job has made me focus on getting something finished and I think a new blog might be the way to go about it. The difference is that I’ll be blogging it to a site that is closed off to the general public and to the causal reader. I’d only open it to those of you interested in wanting to see something unfinished, liable to change, and more than likely to end in a wall at 60,000 words. The blog would rarely (if ever) mention thongs and would be a rambling mess that just details my adventure trying to finish a book. It might fail after a week or it might just be my own private playground. I just don’t know. Anybody interested in writing, literature, books, the whole writerly thing would be welcome.

For me, I’m making this step tentatively, aware that I’d be opening up my rather haphazard writing process to the world. I’d be looking for constructive thoughts, feedback, and occasional ego massage during my regular downturns of mood. In exchange, you’d have my eternal thanks and a credit should I ever get the book finished.

What can I tell you about the book? It’s historical novel with little sense of history, darkly comic, with a very scatological theme which I hope to make filthier by the day. It has vague sense of satire and, in tone, I’m aiming for Vonnegut but I figure I’ll be lucky to reach Jilly Cooper. I’ve got 20,000 words written but I’m falling into a trap of polishing the opening chapters. I need to get the words committed to the page so I can move on to write the next 20,000 and then the 60,000 after that.

If you’re interested, leave a comment or email me. I except to get no takers. If I get any, I’ll print up official Thonglateer membership cards and then think about starting the blog.

Chip Dale's A Tart

Okay, I’m going to be a tart again and have a good moan. But does my bloody bad luck never end?

This horrible cold is finally settling into congestion and sinus headaches and has taught me never to have coffee with an old friend who works in an infant school. I swear those teachers are immune to the germs that just leap for the first man that they see wearing a thong. It’s my second bad cold of the year and, despite what you’ve probably heard, there’s nothing attractive about the sight of a wheezing Chipster dripping with mucus as he straddles a bridesmaid on a hen night.

Being ill has, however,allowed me to read and enjoyed 300 pages of the new Harry Potter. Only, Amazon displayed their usual brilliance by sending me another damaged copy, no doubt packed my some ungrateful 15 year old, having their first experience of a job in the big bad world. Last time, my edition was missing 100 pages and I had to rush to the shops to get myself a second. This time, the cover was folded back and ripped.

As to the book itself: it’s more of the same and I won’t spoil it for you. It just reminds me that effortless story telling makes you feel like the thing writes itself. Potter just feels effortless and it just goes to show what memorable (though two dimensional) characters do to a story. It also reminds me how much I enjoy reading and have made a promise to myself to go through my book shelves and fill in all the gaps in my learning.

That’s if I don’t quit my life as a stripper and go and get myself a proper day job…

You see, the problems with my PC continue to get bigger by the day.

This is an appeal to anybody who understands this stuff: I just can’t install Windows XP on my PC. It has three SATA drives, which means that the XP installer won’t recognise them without preloading the right drivers from floppy disk. After days spent searching for a floppy disk that still works (I haven’t used them in years) I managed to load the drivers, only for the PC to tell me that it still can’t see my hard drives.

It’s getting insufferable and I know my work will begin to suffer on Monday. I rarely blog from my laptop and do most of my writing at the PC. The laptop is for revising, where I can be more relaxed and hidden away from the distractions of all Romanians. But I guess I’ll have to get used rewriting to the sounds of chickens being plucked and peasant songs being sung. The alternative is to go out and spend £200 on a copy of Windows Vista. Only, I don’t have £200 to spend on Vista, which itself, makes me wonder what kind of man devotes himself to the noble art of the strip whilst remaining so broke?

Depressing thoughts.

Before I start appealing for anybody who knows any good jobs going in the Bangor area, I’m going to finish the Harry Potter. It might make me change my mind. And I’m also hoping it will cheer me up with a suitably happy ending…