Stare at the Hand

I know - it's bad form to use one blog to plug another. It bugs the fuck out of me when other people do that. But, this isn't a plug really - more of a public information announcement just in case anyone's interested.

I've started a blog about creative writing. It has bits of fast fiction on there, some short stories and some navel-gazing and pretentious thoughts about the process of writing fiction. It's called "Broken English". Have a look if you like that sort of thing.

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

So said The Investor's Business Daily as part of an anti health care tirade on July 31st.

Thing is, Stephen Hawking is British and lives in England. At 67, he is the longest surviving sufferer of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ever documented - and that is in part due to the treatment he's received from the NHS. Don't take my word for it though; this is what the Prof himself said on the matter:

"I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high quality treatment without which I would not have survived." --- Stephen Hawking, August 11, 2009*

I don't know which is more offensive, frankly; the inaccurate depiction of the NHS or the assumption that Hawking is American. I guess it must be his accent...

*source

Sarah Palin is insane. People realise that, right?

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=113851103434

A response more measured and informed than I am capable of:

http://sobeale.blogspot.com/2009/08/dont-talk-to-me-about-death-panels.html

This guy redesigned the NYC subway map because he could. The MTA keep telling him to fuck off. Who do you think is right?

http://www.kickmap.com/pages/7_wholemap_comparison.html

This web stuff's funny. I haven't built sites since - oooh, way back in the early 2000s. Things sure have changed since then. Yes sir. Now it's all keywords and analytics and SEO. Whatever happened to "build it and they will come"? Oh, right - that was just a terrible Kevin Costner movie.

ANYWAY - using Google Analytics - which is magic and powered by fairy dust or something - I have been able to see exactly where people have been landing on Ruth's new website and where they were leaving. Turns out lots of folks were entering the site at the Virtual Friends Offer, then checking out the Gallery, then using the Contact form. She's had a few commissions out of that - so it all makes sense.

We've only had a few enquiries about full commissioning though and looking at the path people took through the site suggested a reason why that might be. It looks like people were clicking through the site like this: Home Page > About the Artist > Commissioning > Pricing --> EXIT.

There are two interesting things about this. The first is that it seems like lots of people skip the Gallery section. I assume this is because they've seen examples of the work on the home page. The second is that they exit after the pricing section.

Now - the pricing section is buried quite deep. It's in a second tier of the site - internally linked from the Commissioning page and the FAQ page. I did that on purpose.

Ruth and I made a decision early on not to list hard prices on the site. This was for two reasons:

1. Prices will vary according to the complexity of the work. There are lots of factors, such as the medium used, its size, the number of subjects painted, whether a background is included and so on.

2. Basically, we wanted the work to retain its value as art rather than be "portraits on demand". That's a whole other market that we wanted to avoid associations with.

As a result, there are no actual prices in the "Pricing" section. It seems I underestimated folks need to know how much things cost before they'll even make an enquiry based on a) the fact that the majority of contact we've had has come from the "Virtual Friends Offer", which has a fixed price and b) people tend to disappear from the site after discovering they can't immediately find out how much it might cost to commission, say, a three foot high oil painting.

I've made a couple of immediate changes to try to influence this, without actually publishing fixed prices. First - I've highlighted the "Contact" info in the commissioning section. Second, I've created a Get a Quote form and made this a main link.

This form looks high-tech - but all it does is send an email to Ruth with all the details she needs to estimate how much a painting will cost to produce. So, you fill in the form and get an answer from Ruth within a day. It seems like a way to give out prices while retaining exclusivity. At this stage though, I don't have enough data to know if it's working yet.

What do you think of this solution? Any other ideas?

While we've been promoting Paint Portraits some of my faith in human nature has slowly been restored.

In my book, the world has always been divided into unequal slices; a plethora of self-absorbed me-first snarkolytes with stinky rat shit where their sclerotic souls once crouched - and a smaller group of genuinely good people.

Just lately, we've had a lot of good will from folks keen to help us out. We had a lovely note today from a journalist on the local paper in Ruth's home county, who said she'd be happy to publicise Ruth's pictures because she remembered her from school. We've had email from virtual friends with good wishes and sound advice. We've had first commission enquiries coming in from around the world. Tentative and polite in every case.

I'm pleased to have my cynicism disproved. Thanks to everyone who's been nice to us. Please feel free to continue.

I just watched the trailer for Ricky Gervais new movie "The Invention of Lying" It's about a guy who lives in an alternate world where people always tell the gut-wrenching truth - who invents lying.

It sounds tremendously far-fetched and fantastic, but as a British person watching the trailer - I saw immediately where Ricky got his inspiration. It's not about honesty and dishonesty, it's about the difference between the Americans and the British. About one race of people who take most communication at face value and another who constantly take the piss...

Have a look - what do you think?

Inspired by the excellent guidance of vintagehandbag Ruth is now offering an A5 portrait to Twitter users, bloggers, web types etc - with a digital copy thrown in - for $130. That's what we're doing for the LiveJournal offer too - the big difference is, the LiveJournal version for my friends list is available forever - the Twitter/blog/Facebook version is only available until October 1st.

Anyways - even if you're not interested in the offer for yourself, please tweet the link, put it in your blog, stick it on Facebook, post it far and wide:

http://www.paintportraits.co.uk/friends/

That page contains full details of the offer we want to get out there.

We will love you for it.

I didn't think I had a vampire thing. What I mean is, I like Buffy (did I ever mention that?) but I thought that was just because under the bald, pumped up muso exterior, I'm made of nerd. Then we started watching "True Blood" and maybe I am into the whole vampire thing after all because THIS SHOW ROCKS.

It's like DBC Pierre wrote a season of Buffy, without Buffy in it. And sexy? Woah. You can't not have sex after that programme. Even though there are people getting strangled and getting their throats ripped out for 30% of it, there's the other 30% where everyone's boning.

I beginning to wish I hadn't had my canine teeth filed down.

Via Reuters:

The producers of the original Buffy movie, who exec produced the TV series, are making noises about making a Buffy movie.

YAY!

No. Hold on. Not Yay.  NOT YAY AT ALL.  Because:

"Buffy" creator Joss Whedon isn't involved and it's not set up at a studio, but director Fran Rubel Kuzui is working on a relaunch with Vertigo Entertainment, which specializes in English-language remakes of Asian films, such as "The Grudge" and "The Departed."

"The new "Buffy" film, however, would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Kuzui and Vertigo are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon".

I'm not the kind of fan-boy to get my knickers in a knot about things - but this is totally fucking stupid. It's clearly a quick buck tactic; a situation where a license-holder has seen a potentially profitable opportunity and is leaking the idea to gauge support.

They could make a good movie. They're right about the premise - it wouldn't have to be Buffy - it could be a "future Slayer"... But they'd also have to ignore the TV chronology to make that fly. At the end of the series, every potential slayer *became* a slayer...

Getting all whiny about canon is the kind of thing basement dwelling Trek gonks with one hand on their pink phase pistols do - I know. But Buffy wasn't "premise" driven - it was character driven. That was its USP - and why every SciFi franchise is now a knowing, postmodern soap opera. BtVS changed television. Full stop. END OF LINE. 

So - if you do Buffy without the TV series continuity, you might as well not do Buffy at all. Do it with the old characters, and you tap into all the good will of the fanbase. Do it without and you have to spend 90 minutes setting up the premise and establishing relationships with a bunch of new dudes. You might as well do Twilight or Blade or make up a brand new vampire franchise.

Furthermore, if you do a Buffy movie without Joss Whedon - you might as well not do Buffy at all. Whedon isn't quite the televisual Messiah that many fans make out - Firefly is just about OK and Dollhouse smells of chicken bums - but he was great for Buffy. He was responsible for Buffy's style, its meter and tone. Hell, he's responsible for how a generation of geeks speak. Ultimately, he's why it became popular.

There's another reason why it's dumb to write off the TV series continuity. The actors still want to do it. Anthony Head has been pitching the Ripper spin-off to anyone who'll listen for years. James Marsters has been itching to do Spike. Boreanaz said he'd play Angel if it was on the big screen. There have even been recent rumours that Sarah Michelle Gellar might finally be up for a return - after her post-Buffy movie career failed to go ballistic. Actually, let's just make that "failed".

Before going off "half-cocked", getting all producery about their ownership of the franchise, the Kazui's would have been better off arranging a quiet meeting with Whedon - see if he's got any ideas first. Let him sound out Gellar. Get the core team back at least. Because this premature bluster shows that the Kazui's really don't get the Buffy fanbase at all. And if they can't get the preliminaries right - how does that bode for a future movie?

And, yes, I do realise that I only post these days about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Bite me.

I fucking hate Franz Ferdinand. They stole my look:

Madonna's on the rack at Bad Music

There's a new poll on Bad Music

Run! Vote!

Over on Bad Music (UK vs US) - I'm giving Whitney Houston a right old slapping and no mistake.  You should check it out and friend us!

I'm stuck, so over at Bad Music I'm asking you to vote on who I should be nasty about next.

Just do it!

Over at http://bad-music-uk-us.livejournal.com/ I just gave Guns N' Roses a punch in the liver.

There's a new post over at Bad Music: UK vs USA - the blog where bart_calendar  and I debate who has the worst musical taste; the limeys or the yanks.

Fear it.

There can't be many people reading my blog who aren't also on the friend list of bart_calendar - but for you last few holdouts, we've just started a brand new joint blogging enterprise.

The premise is this: Bart thinks that the UK is responsible for all that sucks in popular music.  I take the position that the USA has the worst taste of, well, any other country in the entire world.

So, the batttle begins at Bad Music: UK vs USA

In the first entry Bart trashes Oasis.  I respond with a proportionate attack on Bon Jovi.

Join the debate, friend us and enjoy the snark.  We've turned it up to 11.

I try not to despair too much of people, but the Internet makes it hard.  From behind the rudimentary cloak of anonymity it affords, you see the true colours of humanity; the questionable ethics of a society that puts self-interest above... well, just about everything.

Case in point.  Ruth and I were supposed to go and see Echo and the Bunnymen this wednesday.  I ordered the tickets almost four months ago, when feeling more economically buoyant.  As the date approached though, we realised we couldn't afford the trip in terms of time or money.  It would mean a night in a hotel, train fares and two days off work.  Neither of us could manage to make the sacrifices necessary.

So - I decided to put the tickets on eBay.

If you've ever used eBay, you'll know that you are limited in the number of characters you can put in the heading of a listing.  To save space I listed the band name as "Echo & the Bunnymen".  Most search engines ignore the word "and" anyway...  Not eBay, it turns out.

The listing was close to the end of its three day run and only had one bid of 99p.  This was no where near what I had expected.  I did a search for similar pairs of tickets and found them selling for £55 and £60...  And then I noticed that my listing wasn't turning up in search results at all.  It was because I'd used "&" instead of "and" in my listing title.

By that time it was too late to cancel or edit the listing, so I could only wait and hope.  Thirty minutes later the auction ended - the tickets sold for 99p.  In trying to save the little money we have, we'd lost £60.

I wrote to the guy who had won the tickets, explaining the situation and asking that he void the auction and let me relist the tickets.  Twice.

He didn't reply. 

Instead, he waited a full day, then silently paid the 99p via PayPal - which completed the binding contract imposed on me by eBay.  I had no choice but to post him the tickets.

What a twat.

Ultimately, it's not the loss of the money that bothers me.  It's that this guy, knowing that he had acquired these tickets for nothing due to an error that cost another person £60 (about $90), still took them.  I wouldn't do that - and it saddens me that I feel I'm in a minority.