Yes, I didn’t do a full week of the themed entry things. I know.

Look, it’s 10am and I’m awake. Surely that’s impossible? Well, it would be... if I had of (had’ve... hmmf) gotten to sleep last night. As it happens, I didn’t, and now, I’m going through periods of immense tiredness and immense energy. Currently I’m on “immense energy”, which bodes well. But if I sound incoherent, don’t blame me, blame the moonlight. Just, whatever you do, don’t blame it on the boogie. It gets enough shtick as it is.

My ‘Last of the Time Lords’ review has been posted on the Doctor Who Ratings Guide. My first ever! It feels... weird. I’ve been reading the reviews of those absolutely awesome people for at least a year and a half now, and now I’ve suddenly joined their ranks. It’s like studying theology and suddenly finding oneself atop Mount Olympus.

(Yes, that analogy is possible. I should know)

My inability to sleep, by the way, is further compounded by the fact that I’m apparently not looking very healthy. “A vampire”, was, in fact, the description... actually, no, that’s not unhealthy, that’s dead. That’s instantly cooler, but perhaps more worrying.

Perhaps I haven’t been eating very well. I generally manage to limit myself to $5 a week on groceries. Yup! That means... well, it basically means milk, and two lots of bread a week. I live off that for a week.

Well, on other weeks, I branch out a bit. Obviously I need something to spread on the bread. And then sometimes there’s Milo, and then there’s cereal, and above all that, there’s my endless supply of Coke, which is the thing I easily spend the most money on. Alcoholic? Nah, not for me. Cokaholic, more like.

Funny how that still sounds like a bad drug, even though it’s obviously not anymore. Especially since I apparently called it “black juice” when I was younger, which makes it sound like an ethnic slur and a preemptive drug reference all in one.

Oh, other reason for poor health? Uh... probably, something to do with sitting on my computer all day (read: all night, because that’s of course when I’m awake. I resent the implication that I’m vampiric, though; apart from anything else, I find blood a bit overrated. Give me tomato sauce anyday). Buuut... what’s a boy to do? Well, okay, go out and booze and shit, obviously, but I dunno. The problem lies – again – with the fact that I have the internet on this computer. Meaning I’m not just sitting here talking to myself (i.e. this Journal), and I’m not just watching movies and I’m not just playing games.

Do you know, whenever I play The Sims 2, I make sure my Sim never has to work and instead sits around all day socialising. Hmm, what does that say about me?

Well, I guess that’s it, in a nut- no, I refuse to use that phrase. That’s it, anyway. Because me not “getting out of the house” doesn’t actually mean “me not socialising”. I am socialising. MSN chats with Ugmoers happen to be the most intensive, most hilarious, and most interesting of things in life at the moment. That’s either sad, or a really big compliment. Take your pick, Ugmoers!

...should I be talking about my vaguely ill health? Surely I should be writing something entertaining instead. Okay, if this is getting you down, just pretend the next god-knows-how-much-I’ll-write is actually me discussing the virtues of brown water.

Quick swerve of topic – do you know what gets me down more than anything else (REMINDER: Think brown water. It’s water, and it’s brown! Whoa!)? The throwaway nature of thoughts. So for instance, I’ve spent many a night – including last night – thinking and basically writing in my head, word for word, what I’m going to write in here... and obviously, I end up forgetting a load of it. In fact, I only just remembered why this isn’t a swerve of topic, and how this is linked to what I was saying before.

Uh, thoughts in order. Get it straight, Dom.

(Brown water vs. Black juice? YOU DECIDE)

So yeah, if you wonder why these entries feel rushed and unstructured sometimes, it’s because... well, I can’t claim it’s purely down to having already thought them out, cos that’d half absolve me with something you could never compare with, but, well, it’s true.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Oblivion. I said a little while ago (and I’m going to have to link to old blogs soon rather than simply saying “I said a while ago” and expecting you to believe it. It’s pretty unfair of me), in relation to Bz talking about ‘Pyramid Song’, that it terrifies me. Not death, but oblivion. And obviously that’s true. The idea of not thinking is just fucking scary in a way that nothing else is.

And yet...

And yet, in ‘These Storeys Never End’ – that novella I’m writing-or-rather-aren’t-really-cos-I’m-lazy – I postulate that eternity is scary. Eternity in the sense of the same thing endlessly; a never-ending cycle of boredom. The day when your thoughts become so loud and continuous in your head that they overpower you and destroy your sanity.

Mind you, you’d probably be so insane that you wouldn’t care anymore.

But.

The two aren’t really contradictory, not really. Because... that’s what socialising does. Or at least, that’s what socialising with people you’re at ease with does. You don’t have to think, at all. I remember many conversations with Liam, and with Jack Bz, and with Dave Hampton, and with Ugmoers in general, and with Kate (she doesn’t yet count as an Ugmoer yet, which makes us all :@ !! a fair bit)... and rarely remember what I was thinking during them. Even if they’re MSN convos, where there’s obviously a layer of distancing in play, a level of solitude.

That’s sort of it. If this computer didn’t have the internet, and if I didn’t talk to people online all the time, I’d go insane. Even in Newcastle I felt the need to ring Liam up nearly every night purely because I didn’t want to spend all of those hours at night alone.

...that makes him sound like a prostitute.

You know what? I’ve completely lost where I’m going with this. Again. Goddammit, um, talk about something else...

BROWN WATER!

No, uh... oh, I watched ‘Midnight’. Twas fantastic. I watched Dead Fish. God knows. I watched Paranoia Agent. Twas amazingly awesome. I... uh... fuck.

No, don’t take that literally. The world hasn’t gone that mad yet.

Oh, to hell with it. I’ve lost that thread. So I’m going to start diving into something else at the moment. Here’s something else that’s bugging me at the moment:

Realism vs. Believability.

The number of times I’ve seen someone say they don’t like sci-fi because it’s “silly” is... well... yeah. It’s not good, anyway. For a start, spaceships aren’t exactly silly, considering, you know, we do have rockets. More importantly though... it’s also raising a question of what constitutes silly. Life on other planets is silly? Okay. So what is it that stops humans from being silly? Are you trying to tell me that you’ve sat down and watched Funniest Home Videos (god forbid) and yet you can still tell me that the idea of alien races is sillier than us?

Or does silly mean “cheesy”? Right, right. And, like, talking about relationship problems in, say, The OC isn’t? Terrible dialogue crops up in both.

In fact... if you’ll care to notice, that’s what the Star Wars films are routinely criticised for. Alien planets? Nah. Jedi? Nah. A ship that destroys planets? Good god no. No, it’s the dialogue that is stilted. It’s the dialogue that isn’t believable.

(Obviously I’m being provocative towards those who hold these views, not to everyone who’s reading this. Consider yourselves absolved of all blame!)

And yes, this is where we start to define terms here. I’m not entirely sure if everyone uses the terms in the way I would, but... there’s realism, and there’s believability. Realism is the closest you can get to reality. Believability is something that feels like it could be reality. Even though, under close scrutiny – or even under the “suddenly deciding not to suspend disbelief” category – it’s not very likely at all.

This seems like the most obvious thing in the world when I put it like that, but it’s amazing how often people ignore it. Religion is no more or less believable than Star Wars (ignoring the irony of there being a Jedi Knight religion) in a lot of ways, particularly in its presentation... and yet that’s taken seriously. I’m not about to argue that entertainment is as important, but... well, I mean, religion is based on faith, true. But it’s also based on believability. Example: faith would lead me to the secure knowledge that there is a God, and that Jesus could walk on water; believability would lead me to simply believe that there could be a God, and that Jesus really did say a lot of nice and wonderful things actually.

Historical accuracy in entertainment comes into this too, of course. The idea of a film getting a minor detail wrong and being thrashed for it is just... tiresome and stupid in my eyes. And this is from someone who greatly enjoys history! Leaving aside the fact that history is based as much on interpretation as solid facts – which is effectively the same for a based-on film, the difference being dramatic concerns – I don’t see why films should need to get every single detail right. Above anything else, if the pedantry got too much, we’d be portraying the Hundred Years’ War in... well, let’s just say “real-time”, and shudder at the implications of that.

I sound like I’m being down on scientific facts and on historical accuracy. It’s not that. It’s just that, were we to crystallise the “truth” so succinctly and simply, then, quite simply, we’d all go mad. With no diversity of opinion or expression, we wouldn’t even approach human.

Other things that have been getting up my goat include: the whole “musicians are great mathematicians” thing. Bullshit. If you honestly believe that mathematics is the foremost, most important thing about music, then you can bloody well piss off right now. Breaking down music into categories and words too can simply sap the life and fun out of it, but more importantly... what good, realistically, does knowing a song is in 4/4 really tell us about it?

That’s a simple example, but a pertinent one. Say a song uses 4/4 and word painting (which is nowhere near as interesting as it sounds) in its vocal melody... what are we left with? Nothing. It’s the expression of the notes – and no I don’t mean the dynamics – that counts, the way they are played, the way the musician plays and utilises them. And surely it matters less how the singer modulates pitch and more what the singer is actually singing? Or am I totally alone in this and really everyone just enjoys breaking down things so largely that nothing is sacred and suddenly jazz seems to be the only amazing musical movement because it comes closest to abandoning the rules?

Geez, even atonality is a rule in itself. You’d think something that’s the deliberate antithesis of tonality, of how notes are usually structured, would be saved from that. Nope. No-sir-ree.

Yes, I do prefer expression and interpretation over nuts and bolts. Am I too much of an idealist, do you think? God, perhaps, but at least I don’t feel like music has been spoiled for me.

...yet.

...and so basically that’s why brown water is the best thing ever, though black juice keeps me running. I’m Dom Kelly, and I approve of this advertisement and this undepressing message. Thank you for reading!

[PS: 21st of August fast approaches.]