Random questions yield very random answers....

So, I got tagged - in return for that I'll point my magic 'blog tagging' finger (no, it really does exist) at the dwellings of 'Livewire', 'Luke' and 'Onkroes'. I've used apostrophes around their names as, surprisingly, they're actually all anagrams of their real names !

Anyway, on with the fun bit - me getting tagged.


(1) Imagine it’s 2015. You are visiting the library at a major research university. You go over to a computer terminal (or whatever it is they use in 2015) that gives you immediate access to any book or journal article on any topic you want. What do you look up? In other words, what do you hope somebody will have written in the meantime?

This question has so many possible answers that I'd need to look up if the QWWW (Quantum World Wide Web) had been invented. I'd then have a look at all the answers I could have used, check the comments for the most popular one and use that....thus proving the paradox of self-fulfilling things.

(2) What is the strangest thing you’ve ever heard or seen at a conference? No names, please. Refer to “Professor X” or “Ms. Y” if you must. Double credit if you were directly affected. Triple if you then said or did something equally weird.

I'm not a conference goer, per se, but have frequented training courses and expo's in the past. I'll choose from one of those, if I may. The people I tag will have to stick to the rules though - whoever said life is fair.

Travelled from Shropshire down to Cirencester for some database software training. I'm purposefully keeping the techie side down to save boring you before the punchline. So, it seems an average bunch - couple of lookers, an octal of geeks and a handful of others including myself: part led by knowledge and part driven by beer paid for on expenses.

So, we sit down in front of the admittedly shiny training room PC's and the instructor/trainer/boffin pushes his switch to take control of all out monitors.....and nothing. Black as you like. A frantic call is made by him to get 'the fixer' up to sort it.

Door opens and in walks one of my best buds from college, a guy I've not seen for about 9 years !! This is the guy that could rig free credits on arcade machines with a kitchen gas cooker lighter, a guy who got me into remixing via Depeche Mode on a 4 track reel-to-reel....the list goes on. Needless to say much falling down water was drunk on the nights there and bad heads were learnt through.

(3) Name a writer, scholar, or otherwise worthy person you admire so much that meeting him or her would probably reduce you to awestruck silence.

It's somewhat ironic that I'd pick Jeff Noon, a man with his own style that makes words feel like slithery things that you never quite feel you have control over. The thing with the Noon is that whilst others attempting this loose fluid style can often come unstuck he manages to always keep a heavy thread running through, something to hold onto like a safety rope. His first two books, Vurt and Pollen, are probably the books I've read more than any other. I actually own three copies of the former, one signed, and would still buy another if an unusual one comes around.

The irony comes from the fact that his way of writing has, over the years, done more to inspire not keeping within the dotted lines in many written or spoken ways and yet if I got the chance to speak to him I'd clam up and become the user of language as wild and swervy as a plastic chopstick.

Any writer worth his or her salt, of any genre or style, should check out his Cobralingus project. Imaginary word-circuitry that takes and re-forms language into something it is yet never was - a genius yet simple method for encouraging thinking outside of the style you normally fall into. Regular readers will know of the results when I applied the idea on Ray's "Big Blind" - still one of the things I'm most pleased with results wise.

(4) What are two or three blogs or other Web sites you often read that don’t seem to be on many people’s radar?

Every now and then I pop over to WWiTV, a collection of streaming TV from around the world. Fast connections help but there are some for most speeds. Anything that features amongst it's ranks such things as Latvian fighting sports or Mongolias first commercial TV station is worth a dabble.

Another love is JBox - a site where you can buy or, in many cases, stare with disbelief at pretty much anything Japanese. Food, drink, clothes, toys, novelties, films....you name it. I've ordered from there, as previous blog posts have testified, and it's very efficient. Where else can you buy things as diverse as muscat grape juice gummi sweets, a Chronological Table of Rice Prices as a wall hanging or, wonderfully, a tshirt bearing the slogan "You must be 20 Years Old to Purchase Tobacco and Alcohol".