All the films, books, graphic novels, and TV I shoved into my brainhole in 2021, all in one easy place to make mockery and derision easier.

Don’t say I don’t think of you.

Yes, I haven’t blogged in the very longest time, but let’s be honest. It’s not like anybody really cares, or anything I say is contributing to the improvement of the Universe. Who cares, really? I’ve long since passed into irrelevance and the obscurity from which I briefly lurched.

Anyway, 2020, eh?

It’s that time of year again: time to look back on a year of… uh… and celebrate… that thing… that… you know…

Actually, 2017 really was a year of is that all? If not for Luscious’ breakthrough, and our impending Pilbara adventure, I’d have a hard time remembering the year at all, and we’re still in it.

Really selling this year in review post, aren’t I?

Continue reading “2017: WELL, THAT WAS A YEAR…..” →

Can anyone explain what the hell just happened? I mean, I know we had a year, and all, but what the actual fuck? Who gave 2016 red cordial and fizzy lifesavers the moment it woke up?

Anyway, if I can dodge the rain of dropping celebrities long enough, here’s a quick attempt to sum up my year in a slightly longer form than just shouting “dumpster fire!” while pouring liquid lava up my orifices.

Stayed in love. Guess with who. Go on. Guess.

Hint: she’s graceful, and dignified, and looks like this:

• Continue my weight loss. I peaked at 111 kilograms this year, which is rather a lot for a bloke who tickles 5 ft 10 in his stockinged booties. I’ve managed to get down to a smidgeteenth over 102, but I won’t be happy until I’m at 90, looking towards 80. I’m trying to develop some muscle mass as well, and enough flexibility and conditioning that I can do something I’ve never before attempted: step into a boxing ring and go a couple of round with someone. I’ve never been muscular, I’ve never been able to fight. There’s nothing about it that wouldn’t be a challenge. Which is why I want to have a go.
• Rediscover my writing mojo. I dried up this year, almost completely. 2 short stories published, neither of them above 3000 words, 2 further short stories completed, neither above 2000. Father Muerte and the Divine is so bad nobody wants to touch it with a hazmat suit on. I’ve scrapped it, and next year, I’m starting my whole career again, getting out of Dodge and finding a new place to hang my shingle, metaphorically speaking. Don’t know if it’ll be crime fiction, kids fiction, realism, humour or whatever, and I don’t really care. I just know I don’t want to hang around here anymore.
• Change my work situation. I’ve been at my current job for almost six years, and I’ve grown tired of devoting so many weekends and evenings to a job that returns only slights and complaints. Either my situation changes or my place of employment will. 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

The drinks are cooling, dinner’s on the simmer, and I’m about to close down my innahnet for the duration.

I’ve decided against resolutions for the coming year: truth is, it’s been hard, at times, to keep my nose above water this year, and the idea of doing anything other than trying to get my personal and professional lives on track in 2015 does not appeal. So, rather than set up a wishlist I’ll spend a year feeling bad about not achieving, here’s a short list of things that’ll be nice to have happen, and a list of things I was glad to have happen in 2014.

1. Lose some weight. No targets, no plans. I’ll be in a new town, with new opportunities to be active. If I lose some weight as a result, I’ll be happy.
2. Give precedence to my writing. There have been too many distractions this year. My career has wallowed, and I’ve lost impetus. I’d like to recover that, and get back to the only thing I’m good at.
3. Spend more time with my family. I’m moving 15 minutes closer to work. I want to make good use of that extra 30 minutes a day.
4. Get out to some more Lego events.
5. Be happy. I’ve spent too long this year under stress, and miserable because of it. I’d rather not do that again.
6. Sell more work: whether it’s a new novel, more short stories, a film script, I’m not going to care. I’ve been happiest when I’ve been running my career for my own amusement. I’m going back to that.

As to the year just gone, here’s a few of the good things:

1. I was invited to present a workshop at the Perth Writer’s Festival, a career highlight and proof that I could think about entering the wider literary world with a straight face.
2. My family blossomed in ways that brought me to tears on occasion. 
3. I sold a few short stories, and every one was to a new market.
4. We sold our expensive, hard-to-maintain white elephant of a house and bought a new, smaller one nearer to my work, which should ease our financial pressure in 2015.
5. I found a group of largely like-minded Lego fans and made it to a couple of group meetings, giving my hobby a social dimension it has previously lacked.
6. I had a good year for passing on my experience, with a number of workshops and public appearances under my belt.

Time to look back on 2014, and like SOCO in an abattoir, carefully pick through the mountains of shit in the hope of discovering something worthwhile.

Well, this is the end of it, I suppose, 2013. Can’t say it’s been entirely vintage.

There’s been good: As announced the other day, I’ve sold a children’s book and opened up a potential new market for myself. I saw my children continue to blossom into stunning young people, and Aiden moved out of home to continue his personal growth out in the wider world. Luscious found new skills and new levels of personal growth. And yet….

Master 9’s illness is well documented, and I can’t overestimate the effect it has had on us as a family. It touches every decision we make, every plan we undertake. Luscious, in particular, sacrificed almost all of her personal aspirations in order to care for him: setting aside her University studies; ceasing her search for employment; putting down her writing career for the duration. It’s only now, almost 8 months later, that she is beginning to think about how to incorporate some small measure of ambition into her life, now that his illness is so completely part of our fabric that we can deal with it automatically.

My day job has become simultaneously more complicated and a greater part of my daily thinking: new laws and an increased management responsibility have combined to severely curtail my own writing time, and I find myself more and more decided that what little spare time I have, I want to spend focusing on Luscious and the children rather than my own selfish ambitions. Our house continues to be a tiresome burden– a large, ramshackle mistake we should never have made– but with no financially-viable options, I have little choice but to invest a severe portion of my minimal spare time and spare income into its upkeep over the next few years. Either we sell up and move, or we reconcile ourselves to staying until the children are grown. We can’t sell, so the decision is made.

My day job is my day job, and it’s a good one– after aaaaggggghhh years in the Tax Office I know a good wicket when I’m on it, and I’ve been on it for almost 4 years now– but I’ve reached a position of stasis: I do good work, but I have no ambition to move further up the corporate ladder, so I either accept any changes that are imposed upon me or seek new employment, and I’m nowhere near ready to do the latter. And while comfort may be a good thing, being paralysed is not. There may come a time, one day soon, when I have to decide which one applies.

Our financial situation is, well, private, but I’ll go so far as to say that Thoreau was right, and we need to simplify, simplify, simplify. We have some hard choices to make, and there are days when I feel exhausted before I face making them. Put simply: we can’t go on like this, but what we can go on like is, as yet, hidden.

And, of course, I’m still fat, I’m still in pain, and I’m still not the man I thought I was going to be when I wanted to be one.

So what comes next?

If the story of my year has been anything, it has been one of growing disillusionment. I’ve found myself drawing away from speculative fiction, particularly as a reader: a quick scan of my Goodreads list shows that our visit to CrimeScene WA in October preceded a massive change in reading habit, and I’ve been swallowing crime books wholesale over the last couple of months. It’s a habit I’ll be continuing for a while, too: there’s only so far I can take myself as an SF author, and I can’t help but wonder, as I continue to be enthralled by the works of Walter Moseley, Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy and the like, whether I might be in need of an infusion of new skills, and new horizons.

Naturally, what I have attempted, are a couple of picture books. Because reasons, that’s why!

As it has been for a dozen years, writing seems set to be my refuge. I’ve started two picture books, and I’ll be completing them over the Christmas break. It’s time to finish the edits of Father Muerte & the Divine and get them to Agent Rich. And I want to have at least one adult and one children’s book completed in the new year, and be started on at least one other: I’ve not yet cleared my desk of speculative work, and in truth I may never do so– it’s simply the desire to expand my literary ambitions that I acknowledge. The best I can do is write as quickly, and as widely, as I can, and aim to move farther from my beginnings with each work. I’m too old and too busy to attempt to find another marketable skill– if I want to escape the mundane world, I’m going to have to write my way out of it.

It’s summer, and I’ve started walking in an attempt not to lose weight, but to simply inject some movement into my day– a desk-bound day job and a desk-bound second career do not make for an active lifestyle, and I’ve fallen too readily into torpidity as a way of life. I’m also addressing my eating habits: Luscious is a brilliant cook, and although I love to cook I find it all to easy to let her take the load and not contribute anything myself, making her carry the full responsibility for determining what we eat, how often, and in what ways. I’ve resolved to take more responsibility, to stop being the one to say “take a night off, let’s go and have chips”, to stop being selfish and undermine her efforts to keep us healthy. In short, it’s time to shoulder some of the load. Lyn always chooses the healthy option, but it’s my responsibility to back her up and put in a shift.

We have bikes in the garage, parks within walking distance, beaches surrounding us… it’s time I put in a shift there, as well. I have no intention of losing weight: I’ve tried that every year for the past five years, and all that happens is the month count decreases while the weight target does not, and as it gets more stressful so I crumple and give in. I’m just going to eat less and move more, and if weight comes off, all the better.

Financially, well, it’s time to face those hard decisions and make them. I’m naturally indulgent of my family: Luscious and I both had difficult childhoods, Lyn especially, and I very often use the desire to live a better lifestyle than we experienced as an excuse to satisfy my indulgent nature. It is, I think, time to grow up and start looking at bigger pictures than I have done in the past.

2013 was supposed to be a year of breaking out, until that plan met the enemy and couldn’t survive. 2014 will be a year of consolidation, of small changes in moderation. Lyn has already started: she can’t go back to Uni, not yet– we’ll be homeschooling Master 9 for another year at least– but she can enrol in short courses, and home-based education, and has already done so. The best I can do is follow in her wake, and gently nudge all those aspects of my life that have become trapped in the mud out of their ruts and onto drier ground. If that means I take steps towards a new horizon in 2015, then so be it.

As a final gift for the year, play clicky the linky to view a mix-tape of the 60 songs I highlighted throughout 2013 via This Is My Jam.

Here’s to 2014, y’all.

Less than a week ago I claim I haven’t seen a movie worth calling the worst movie of the year, not a single movie that rivaled 2012’s Dark Shadows as a bottomless pit of craptitude.

It’s almost the end of December. Almost time to close my eyes to my day job, shut the door on the world, and have as many as ooooooooohhhhh, nine or ten entire days of rest before I have to plaster a smile on my face and head out to do this shit all over again for another year.

Most people drown in sight of shore, you know….

So. 2013. Here’s how it panned out:

So this is me, my friends, closing down the computer and signing off for 2013.

See you through ON the other side…

And so we come to the end of 2012, a year named after a shitty movie that replicated it in as much as it was overbudget, filled with bad science, was downright made of stupid, and made me want to stab John Cusack in the eye. Thus it is in a somewhat reflective and grown-up mood that I contemplate this year’s annual review. Some mighty highs, some pretty deep lows, some jelly beans found down the back of the coach that tasted okay once you got the fluff off, a dead guy in the boot that’s beginning to smell. And chips.

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before?

Saw my novel in print, achieved promotion to co-ordinator level at work.

2. Did you achieve your goals for the year, and will you make more for next year?

I’ve changed this question slightly, from ‘resolutions’ to ‘goals’, as I think it’s a more positive approach, and there’s one change for me for a start– I’m going to try to be a little more positive this year. My general sense of humour has slipped alarmingly from ‘wry’ through ‘dark’ to ‘gallows’: I need to rein it back a bit.

Other than that, I actually did not bad this year. Most of my goals were writing-related, and despite problems with me weight (more on that later) and a promotion at work which has resulted in longer days, I still managed to successfully navigate the publication of my first novel and the completion of two more, which was pretty decent going under the circumstance.

So what’s on the cards for 2013? I’ve a list of 8 goals this year, covering professional, personal, and hobby. This is what I’m aiming for:

• Lose 12 kilograms. My weight ballooned in 2012, to the point where, if I was getting on a plane with Jabba the Hutt and Colleen McCullough they’d probably ask one of us to take a later flight. To a certain extent I’ve been time-poor, but the greater truth is that I’ve been a fat lazy bastard with no willpower. 12 kilograms will take me back to 100 kilos, which would mean I only needed to repeat the feat in 2014 to be back where I belong.
• Send the Father Muerte & The Divine chapter package and synopsis to SuperAgent Rich. Winning my first novel contract was wonderful, but the bigger trick is doing it again. Now that I’ve fulfilled the 2 novels of that first contract I’m in a position to aim for a new one, and with the Father Muerte novel first draft finished, it’s time to get it in the hands of the man who can get it for me.
• Pitch the 3rd Corpse-Rat King novel. Angry Robot have made encouraging noises. Nothing worse that a robot that gets cold feet. I’ll have this in their hands in a couple of weeks.
• Write a new novel. All part of the career arc. Write, write, and write again. I’m up to ‘again’.
• Write a kids’ book. At the particular behest of Miss 11 and Master 8, kidlings about town. And why not? Strings, bow, career. And it might be fun.
• Turn Napoleone’s Land into a fantasy novel. Way back in the dim, dark past, I wrote an alternative history that utterly failed to do anything worthwhile. But the armature is good, and I’m a better write now, and when you read a novel like Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country and see what can be said whilst not being said, it sets a mind to wondering. This is a very do-able task, and there’s a good story there, just waiting to find its best format.
• Enter Nnovvember. Every year the Lego community on Flickr produce a poster in memory of Nate ‘nnenn’ Neilson, a much-loved member of the community who specialised in building twin-pronged spacecraft called Vic Vipers. I had my first crack at it this year, and while I didn’t make the poster, loved the craft I created and really enjoyed the feeling of being part of a hobby community. So I’m going to have another crack this year.
• Design a Cuusoo kit. Lyn’s challenged me to build a ‘substantial’, well-realised MOC, and somehow I’ve escalated that into putting it up on Cuusoo, the Lego/AFOL collaboration site. Once a set reaches 10 000 votes, Lego commit to reviewing it with the possibility of releasing it as an official Lego kit. It’s been done several times already, and for those who have read The Corpse-Rat King, Lyn has requested a ‘wreck of the Nancy Tulip’ set complete with Nandus/Littleboots and Marius. Maybe. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe.

So. Tune in same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, to see how I get along.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My step-daughter Cassandra gave birth to a gorgeous little girl, Aisla.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Not close, after 5 years of estrangement between them, but Lyn’s mother Pat died late upon this year. Thankfully, they managed a small reconciliation in her final days, but really, no good came of it

5. What countries did you visit?

I tried to visit a country for old men, but there wasn’t one.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?

A Happy wife. 2012 was rough on my beautiful darling, from her Mother’s illness, to a demoralising work situation, to serious health issues of her own that are likely to result in surgery some time in 2013. we sat down the other day and decided that, as of the 1st, all is tabula rasa: 2013 starts with a blank slate on all fronts, and the past can fucking well stay where it’s put. If we get to this time next year, and this one thing is achieved, the year will be worth it.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 

28 August. Call me Captain Self-Obsessed, but the publication of my first novel was the highlight of the year.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Seeing The Corpse-Rat King hit print. It’s been a long time coming– too long– but becoming a published novelist, in the way I wanted to become one, was a big turning point in my life, one of those turning points I hope to look back on in many years’ time and say “Yeah, there. That’s when I started out on the path that got me here.”

Honourable mention to outmanoeuvring several more-qualified applicants to gain a promotion at work and become co-ordinator of my department after my old co-ordinator suddenly upped and left after 8 years. My manager cheerfully admits (too cheerfully?) that mine was the weakest application on paper, but my interview blew them away, and after 8-odd months in the job I feel like I might just be coming towards making the position my own.

9. What was your biggest failure?

The upkeep of this enormous white elephant of a house in which we live. I’ve lost 900 grams in the last 5 days sanding, patching, painting, and basically working like a reno-wallah trying to get the big bastard up to a condition where we can think about selling. a house this size was appropriate when we bought it three years ago, back when we had a small army and a trail of camp followers to house. But it’s now too big, too expensive, and too much like constantly painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge to keep it maintained for the remaining 5 of us.

A smaller house, with a garden I can enjoy, rather than constantly service, will be the aim.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

We have 5 people living in our house, and every single one of us has seen the inside of a hospital in the last 18 months. even now, I’m hobbling about on one foot after an accident playing basketball with Master 8 a couple of days ago. Health has not been good for either Lyn or myself.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

I’m tempted to say our new car, a nice downsize from our enormous gas-guzzling 6-seater Falcon with its myriad of mechanical issues to a neat, compact 2012 Hyundai i30 with its parsimonious appetite and nice level of comfort and space. But I’m going to plump for the $700 we spent on our space-age Dyson Transformer vacuum cleaner. It’s the first decent vacuum we’ve had, and came at a point where we could afford to buy  from the top shelf, and in this instance, we got exactly what we paid for. Just one of those pleasing moments where we could indulge on a necessity, and have been well rewarded.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Each of the members of my family, who pulled together to make a year in which both parents had full time jobs with long hours as painless as it could be, and as usual, my darling Lyn, who puts everybody before herself, and whose sacrifices this year really were sacrificial. The burden shall not be so great in 2013, I promise.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

In the wider world, the National Rifle Association in the USA, whose response to the latest gunning down of innocent schoolchildren showed a vile and reprehensible lack of basic humanity and love for the very citizens their existence is not only predicated upon but, in its purest form, happens only in order to serve in times of national emergency. They skirt perilously close to advocating the armed assassination of their own country’s citizens, and egregiously close to the behaviour of a terrorist organisation. It’s time they were disbanded, burned to the ground, and a new, saner organisation erected on their bones.

On a level much closer to home, the grandfather who lives less than fifty kilometres away and simply sent his grandchildren envelopes with money in them for birthdays and Christmas, and who left one of his grandchildrens’ names off the Christmas card, hardly covered himself in glory. That’s one slow decline in relationships that’s about to slip right underneath the radar.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Restoring some lifestyle we’d been missing, and more recently, paint.

Oh, and Lyn  and the kids finally badgered me once to often about getting a dog, and now they’ve got one. As far as I can tell he eats money and shits happiness for my kids, so he gets to stay another year.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

The Hobbit movie, especially as I am father to an 8 year old who decided to read the book for himself this year and then totally lost his shit when he started watching the trailers. I’ve been an uncritical Tolkein fan since I was his age: Sue me.

16. What song will always remind you of 2012?

No one song, really. Musically I had a rather disappointing year. I always try to discover one new band that excites me, but this year I couldn’t find one. The closest I got was a song by Gotye and a couple of distracted listens to Florence & The Machine: amazing voice, but I lacked the time to really explore it.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: i. happier or sadder? ii. thinner or fatter? iii. richer or poorer?

Even-keeled, muuuuuuuch fatter, slightly richer in material goods but battening down for a period of proper, grown-up belt-tightening. And, I should mention, fucking exhausted! I can’t remember ever feeling so tired, so often for so long.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Achieving a decent work-life balance. It tilted a bit too much this year.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Working Saturdays, missing my kids’ assemblies, flaking out exhausted in front of Foxtel of an evening and letting it all wash over me and my beer/cider/moscato.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

Cooked the family a slap-up breakfast, did the presents thang, then lay on the bed with my Christmas books and my winter cider and me beloved wife while the Bigguns went off to their dad’s for lunch and sleeping over and the littlies went to their grandparents for lunch and more presents and sleeping over.

21. Who did you meet for the first time?

My new offsider at work, the lovely Donna, and quite a few Facebook friends and Goodreads buddies, most notably the esteemed Brian M. Logan, who I’m counselling through a sad, tragic addiction to a plastic football club. I also met, for the first time in the flesh, those splendid fellows Daniel Simpson and Anthony Panegyres at the KSP SF Mini-con (well, okay, I’d met Daniel before, but this was a proper, full-on, hail-fellow kinda meeting)

22. Did you fall in love in 2012?

I did, with the T-Rex Master 8 got in his giant Lego kit for Christmas. But the little bugger won’t share.

As always, of course, I am gushingly and diabetes-inducingly in love with my beautiful and wonderful wife, the Luscious Lyn.

23. What was your favourite TV program?

Again, nothing really jumps out, and this is probably a reflection of the year as a whole: a lot of stuff was absorbed/watched/listened to, but very little made any sort of lasting impression. Recently, the kids have discovered Monty Python’s Flying Circus, especially Miss 11, so I’m getting great enjoyment watching it with them, but largely because I’m watching them watching it.

Mock the Week and Russell Howard’s Good Week were the two comedy panel/variety style shows that had me rocking back in my chair roaring every week. They’ll be the ones I’ll be scrabbling to pick up in iView or similar now we’ve finally cut the Foxtel umbilical.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No, not at all. I had a largely hate-free year.

25. What was the best book you read?

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie. Demoralisingly, Abercrombie does an enormous amount of what I’d like to do as a writer, only better, deeper, and at a level I not only can’t match but at a level I don’t think I’m capable of matching.

Honourable mention to the Book of the New Sun quadrology by Gene Wolfe, which remains as utterly superb as it always has been, but is beaten back into second place by being a re-read rather than a new one; Pyrotechnicon by Adam Browne, which is a wonderful confection of a novel that lifts and gladdens the heart; and Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer, which is soaringly intelligent, literary, convoluted and decayed all at the same time. I gave all of them 5 star ratings on Goodreads, and if you haven’t read any of them, I lend you my heartiest recommendation.

Golden Turds for Wolfskin Volume 2 by Warren Ellis, a pointless and boringly stupid thud and blunder graphic novel whose shiny paperstock meant it wasn’t even good enough for wiping my arse on, and Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn, a Thieves’ World collection edited by Robert Lynn Asprin, although in the latter case the fault was undoubtedly mine for revisiting teenage reading, rather than the book: it is what it is, unashamedly and unapologetically pulpy and slapdash, and it’s me that has moved on to more sophisticated fare, not it.

If you’d like to read my reviews of these books, some of them are here on the blog (try the ‘reviews’ link in the cloud) or you can see them on my Goodreads profile.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

As mentioned above, I bummed out this year. No new music that really gripped me and turned my head. I spent more time in my iPod playlists than in listening to the radio. so I’ll go left-field and nominate This Is My Jam, a music-based social media site that I signed up to a couple of months ago, and which I’m hoping will lead me to discover new sounds next year.

27. What was your favourite film of this year?

Yeah, it was The Avengers. Loved it. Loved it with a giggling, bouncing fanboy love. Loved it with my kids next to me loving it, loved it again with just my wife, loved it all over again on DVD. Love love love.

Yes, I’m a big stupid superhero spectacle loving fanboy. Bite me.

Honourable mentions to Seven Psychopaths, the downright funniest and don’t-give-a-shittingnest movie of the year, with Christopher Walken delivering the single best one word line in all of cinema. And a telemovie called Holy Flying Circus, about the reception given to Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the stitching up of the Pythons by the talk show Friday Night, Saturday Morning, which managed to be affectionate, dispassionate, intelligent and fantastical in turn, as well as damned funny in its own right, and was an exceptional piece of small screen film-making.

The Polar Express Award for Making Me Want to Stab My Own Eyes Out went to Prometheus, a film so god-awful bad I actually had blocked it when I wrote the first draft of this review and only remembered it when I took Lyn to the DVd store this evening to find something to watch, a film so bad it could only make Grant Watson happy because now Alien 3 is nowhere near the worst Alien movie ever made: Prometheus is so bad it’s the three worst Alien movies ever made.

Dishonourary stabs in the eye to Dark Shadows, the first movie ever to make me wish Johnny Depp would just stop, take a deep breath, and stop (thankfully, if he really is playing Tonto in a new Lone Ranger movie, my practice at wishing he would just stop should not go to waste), and reinforced my wish that Tim Burton would Just. Fucking. Stop! and Total Recall, a movie in which Colin Farrell– an actor I have a bit of time for– acted like a man possessed, but couldn’t stop this most idiotic of remakes putting the ‘stupid’ in What The Fuck Did I Shell Out Good Australian Dollars for This Stupid Piece of Shit?

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 42, and spent the day at home with my family constantly telling me I wasn’t allowed to do anything, just sit back and enjoy my day. So I did 🙂

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Greater satisfaction.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?

Falling-to-bits because I’d rather make sure the kids had decent kit.

31. What kept you sane?

Lyn, the kids, writing, cider.

32. What political issue stirred you the most?

The Newtown school shooting.

33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.

Many years ago I set myself the goal of being a full-time writer by the time I was 45. I might not reach it by that age, but it remains a goal most devoutly wished.

34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Dear sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
                    Paperback Writer, the Beatles.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Membership in the Green Lantern Corps. And punching Ryan Reynolds in the face. The two may not necessarily be unconnected. 

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011? ‘Concept’ is a very strong word…

31. What kept you sane? You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause.

32. What political issue stirred you the most? FIFA, racism, and the widespread corruption and general shittification of the sport I love. 

33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011. We must cultivate our own garden. 

34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Delusions of grandeur, delusions of grandeur

I'm a dedicated follower of my own success

I can handle the glamour, I can cope with the stress

Deal with the doughnuts and please all the rest

I'm polite to the punters and sweet to the press

I just won a trophy from a radio station

I'm leaving my bat and my balls to the nation

I've got megalomania, I've got megalomania

To be a twinkle in the show-biz dream

To which effect I could connive and scheme

I dive into the dairy and I lap up all the cream

I'm up to the armpits in self-esteem

                               --Delusions of Grandeur, Ian Dury & The Blockheads

My little annual review of things, as per round-about-this-time-every-year:

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before? Complete a sea change.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I had half a dozen or so goals that met with varying levels of success: Number one on the list of successes was ‘Change Jobs’, and waaaay down the bottom was ‘Lose 12 kilograms’. But that one is nothing new.

As to this year, well, it’s much along the same lines. I’ve two novels to edit and send out, and the garden and house renovations need completing before I decide I’ve been at them too long and give up. Weight remains an issue, as do my eating habits (wonder if they’re linked in any way?). But my big bucket-list item is to enter an art competition: I’ve been getting closer and closer to trying my hand at visual art for the last couple of years, and it’s time to set aside some space and see what I can come up with if I try.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? My son’s girlfriend Georgie, bringing little Luc into our house. And he’s gawwwwwwwwwwjuss!

4. Did anyone close to you die? No, but not for lack of trying.

5. What countries did you visit? I tried to get into the Country for Old Men but they told me to come back next year.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010? X-ray vision. Also, money.

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 15th March, when I walked out of the ATO for the last time and realised how sweet air could actually smell. 22nd March, when I took up my new position as Arts & Culture Officer at the City of Rockingham and put the ATO behind me for good. November 11, when Luc decided to share my birthday with me.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Changing my job, and actually finding a position that not only fit my experiences and wants, but gave me a sense of satisfaction and self-worth into the bargain. I had given up on that particular dream, and still feel like I was pulled out of the grave just as I was ready to decide how best to lie down in it, career-wise.

9. What was your biggest failure? Not saving my step-daughter from herself.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? The family had a horrendous run of bronchitis mid-year, which landed both Connor and Erin in hospital and put Lyn, Aiden and myself in bed for a couple of weeks each.

11. What was the best thing you bought? Our air-conditioner shat itself and died the week before Christmas, so “those fans” is a contender, but I’m going to offer three things: for the first time ever I invested some serious money into buying a high quality water bottle and a high quality backpack. And we bought the entire run of Impossible Pictures’ ‘Dinosaur’ programs, including all the “Walking With…” documentaries and the Nigel Marven programs. Normally I wouldn’t count DVDs as gosh-wow-sensawunda purchases, but the effect they’ve had on Connor’s imagination can only be described as pyrotechnic, and it’s been wonderful to watch.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? Aiden, who not only took on a responsibility that was not his to take on, and one that leaves any number of men twice his age blanching, but has done so with a sense of purpose and an integrity that would put most of us in the dark. He’s 17, and I fear for his future like any parent does with a lad of his age, and every time he hits a speed bump I flinch, but I can’t help but admire his soul.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Cassandra’s (now ex-) partner, who proved himself a thug and coward of the highest order. Not only would I not piss on this piece of crap were he on fire, I’d happily start the fire.

14. Where did most of your money go? Fighting bushfires of one stripe or another.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? New house, new job, new part of the world: life in Mandurah just continued to get better and better. 2011 promises the chance to grasp our sea change fully. Bring it on.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010? Both Dancing In the Storm by Boom Crash Opera and Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons. Not for any great philosophical reason other than that I occasionally get to garage one of the work cars while my boss is away, and I have an iPod car player, and I have a tendency to sing along to them as I drive home, playing them VERY loud indeed. Which, after years of bone-tired hour-long train rides home from the City, is a different kind of freedom indeed.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:i. happier or sadder? ii. thinner or fatter? iii. richer or poorer? Happier, fatter and poorer. I’m enjoying live a lot more than I have in the last couple of years, thanks to the new job; I’m very much the patriarch of my family and get to watch 3 sets of children experiencing different stages of life; and I’ve had some private satisfaction in my writing life as well. Not bad, as years go.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Hitting the beach with my kids, making art, rewarding my family with the lifestyle they deserve.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Fighting bushfires. Enduring abuse and criminal behaviour.

20. How did you spend Christmas? Quietly at home, balancing Lyn’s religious requirements with my need to go large on the presents and the eating. Cooked a nice breakfast and lunch and picked at leftovers for tea, and sat around complaining about the heat.

21. Who did you meet for the first time? Two new writing groups- the Rockingham Full Time/Part Time Writers Group and the Rockingham/Mandurah chapter of Nanowrimo. Several hundred employees of the City of Rockingham. Georgie and her family.

22. Did you fall in love in 2010? We’re all in love with Georgie and Luc.

23. What was your favourite TV program? Came across some funky and fun stuff this year. That Mitchell & Webb Look and The Armstrong & Miller Show are firm favourites, and have resulted in a ridiculous amount of quoting (It’s now impossible to say “Isn’t it?” in our house without a chorus of poncy British accents shouting “Isn’t it, though?” in your wake, and nobody can leave a room without hearing someone say “Kill them” as they go…). I introduced Lyn to The Fast Show, and now every announcement anyone makes is greeted with “Which was nice” or “Brilliant!”. We all became firm fans of Primeval, as well as a continuing affair with QI. Also the Walking with… series which we introduced our kids to in “chronological” order (beginning with …Monsters and ending with …Cavemen.) and followed up with all the Nigel Marven dinosaur shows, which resulted in 6 year old connor deciding to be Nigel when he grows up and turning his bedroom into the “Connor Museum”, in which all his dinsour toys now have their own shelves, complete with name tags, and you have to pay to get in… But number one on the viewing hit parade is Being Human, a supernatural drama of such high quality that it made watching the potentially-similar True Blood impossible, as the gulf in quality showed up how cliched, soapish and dull the latter was in spades.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? Cassandra’s Ex. It’s been a long time since I met a filthier scumbag.

25. What was the best book you read? Spent more time away from straight FS again this year, and am continuing to enjoy it, with continued trips into James Ellroy’s neck of the woods, and people like Jon Ronson and John Gardner making the list. Discovered Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, and the joy of reading them completely out of order thanks to library shelves. But it was the year of Mieville, for me: read both The Iron Council and The City & The City for the first time and was (as always) blown away by the man’s language, his narrative muscle, and his plots.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Mumford and Sons were an early one, and remain on high rotation, and Peter, Bjorn and John have become favourites in recent times. And after watching documentaries on them, I’ve gone back and got far more deeply into the Easybeats and the Small Faces than the radio-friendly singles I’ve heard over the years.

27. What was your favourite film of this year? A damn good mix of movies this year. Highlights for me included Men Who Stare at Goats; Up In the Air; The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus; Inception and Despicable Me, any of which might have topped the list in any other year, as well as Daybreakers; Quadrophenia; The Boston Strangler, and Zombieland.

But top spot has to go to Toy Story 3: I dreaded the announcement of this movie, feeling that Pixar had lucked out by producing one sequel that was superior to the original, and that a) there didn’t seem much else to be told within the narrative, b) movies with numbers a high as 3 in the titles tend to be bad enough to drag the memory of previous films down with them and c) the Shrek experience showed just how quickly and disastrously bad that decline in quality can be. I needn’t have worried. It’s every bit as good as its predecessors, and perhaps even better: I wasn’t the only middle-aged man crying his eyes out at the hand-holding scene (you know which one I mean). Funny, dramatic, psychologically complex, and brilliantly human, all at once.

Special golden turds flung in the direction of Shoot ‘Em Up, which would have easily been the winner of the the Golden Compass Memorial Worst Movie of the Year Award, if not for the monumental presence of Lesbian Vampire Killers, which was not only an unutterable piece of shit but doubled its excremental bragging rights by introducing us to the drooling black-hole-of-talent that is James Corden, the latest in that seemingly-eternal line of ‘comedians’ wo think that jigglingly-obese monocepahilcs with permanently wet chins trying to get into the panties of pneumatic twenty something blondes is the height of comedic brilliance: a Benny Hill for the type of people who think Jackass is entertaining. Our teenagers are *still* paying off the karmic debt they earned for insisting it was hilarious and nagging us until we watched it. In February.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 40, and spent the day in quiet contemplation of my place in the world, and what I must do to achieve full karmic balance. Then I had cake. Then I waited while Lyn, Aiden and Georgie went to the hospital to have a baby.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? A flying jet car.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010? My usual aging bum look.

31. What kept you sane? Sanity napkins. Also Lyn, my kids, and art.

32. What political issue stirred you the most? Tried to steer clear of politics in favour of living a family-oriented life. Don’t suppose Forest’s inability to sign a decent defender counts?

33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010. Balance is all.

34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Lightning flash and everything is sharp and clear
I can see it all, I can see it all
And as the thunder roars, we’re raising up a storm
We can shout it down, we can shout it down
Gone are the days of complacency
Gone are the nights of indifference
Here we go, here we go for one more turn
We can shake, we can shake the trees and earth
We can spin, We can spin and not fall down
Hold on tight, we can both become unwound
You and I are going out
And we’re dancing in the storm

     — Boom Crash Opera, Dancing In The Storm

So that was 2009.

Hmm.

Actually, as years go, 2009 was a pretty good one, a feeling prompted in large part by a massive sea change halfway through the year. 2010 will be the year of completing that sea change, all things being equal, so by the time I turn 40 in November I hope to be facing the last half of my life from a pretty damn good vantage point. However, it being the turn-over of calendars and all that, the Year In Review questionnaire must by needs be posted, so see if you can spot the hidden theme within (hint: it starts with ‘Mandurah’….)

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before? Moved to Mandurah; bought a 2-story house

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I have goals, rather than resolutions. I set myself half a dozen goals at year’s start and I achieved four of them, so I’m pleased with that. My big goal for the upcoming year is to lose weight—I’ve got to the stage now where it’s really beginning to affect my ability to do family activities, especially with the kids, and that’s just not good enough.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Right at the end of the year, my good friends Sean & Terri welcomed their new daughter Asha into the world, their fifth consecutive daughter proving once again that Sean has the most feminine sperm in the Universe 🙂

4. Did anyone close to you die? Nope.

5. What countries did you visit? The country of the blind, where I was proclaimed King, until they realised I wasn’t one-eyed, just short-sighted, so they made me Minister Without Portfolio and set me loose.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009? Breakout success.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? May, when we moved from Clarkson to Mandurah. What started out as a decision to escape a suburb that was deteriorating before our eyes has turned into a sea change of life-altering proportions. Everything has been for the better. 14th December, when we learned the depths to which my brother has fallen.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Finishing Corpse-Rat King.

9. What was your biggest failure? My weight.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Stayed injury-free this year, which was a relief after last year’s run.

11. What was the best thing you bought? Our new house.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? My family, for grasping the opportunity afforded by our big move and pushing ahead with their own lives so beautifully. Mandurah City Council, for beginning a domestic green waste recycling program that is simple and workable enough that it should be picked up permanently and should make a big difference to our waste programs.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? My brother, whose behaviour slid from being simply selfish and amoral right into the truly criminal, and whom I now have to cut loose. He’s simply run out of chances, and I cannot expose my family to him any more.

14. Where did most of your money go? The new house.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? The move to Mandurah.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009? Oh, Hark by Lisa Mitchell. Amazing stuff. Also Baba O’Riley by The Who, a rediscovery that kicked Lyn off onto a big Who jag that shows no sign of ending.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:i. happier or sadder? ii. thinner or fatter? iii. richer or poorer? Happier, fatter, and, if not richer, then at least our poverty is more organised 🙂

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Progressing my work circumstances towards where I want to be, rather than where I need to be just to get by. Put simply, I wish I’d realised sooner that my work no longer fits my life.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Waiting.

20. How did you spend Christmas? Spent it alone with Lyn, while the kids were at relatives’ houses. We all got back together on Boxing Day and did things at our own speed.

21. Who did you meet for the first time? Several new work acquaintances. Big deal.

22. Did you fall in love in 2009? Well, does my new suburb count? Parrots in the backyard, kangaroos hopping down the street at dusk, long sculptued lawns and garden beds I mean, come on!

23. What was your favourite TV program? QI; Dexter season 3; BSG seasons 3 & 4; Serial Killer Sunday; Moral Orel; and bizarrely, televised poker, which we started watching late one night as a laugh and became sadly addicted to for most of the year.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? No, although I do hate what my brother has become.

25. What was the best book you read? Actually, I can’t think of a *really* good book I read in 2009. Most of the books I read by my favourite authors weren’t quite up to their best—I read Snuff & Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk, for example, but neither was as good as Rant; John Cornwell’s Hitler’s Scientists isn’t as good as Hitler’s Pope; it was that kind of year. perhaps the best was Necropolis, by Catharine Arnold- a history of London’s cemeteries and funerary practices that suffered from referencing too few sources too repetitively, but at least had a fascinationg central subject.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Lisa Mitchell- an amazing talent for someone so young.

27. What was your favourite film of this year? Where The Wild Things Are; Up; Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs; Battlestar Galactica: The Plan; In Bruges; District Nine. Word to Terminator: Salvation for the Golden Compass Memorial Biggest Piece of Shit of the Year Award.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 39, and it passed by without a blip.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Money in volumes I could swim through.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Fat Guy Casual.

31. What kept you sane? I am sane. It’s the rest of you that are mad. (They think I am crazy, but is it I who am crazy…..)

32. What political issue stirred you the most? I was fairly politics-free this year. My focus was largely on domestica.

33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009. Mandurah kicks Clarkson’s arse.

34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

To keep in silence I resigned
My friends would think I was a nut
Turning water into wine
Open doors would soon be shut
So I went from day to day
Though my life was in a rut
‘Til I thought of what I’d say
Which connection I should cut
I was feeling part of the scenery
I walked right out of the machinery
My heart going boom boom boom
“Hey” he said
“Grab your things I’ve come to take you home.”

—Solisbury Hill, Peter Gabriel

2008: International Year of Meh.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before? Have a story podcasted. Nanowrimo. Visited Adelaide. Pitched a television series. Joined Twitter. Joined Kingdom of Loathing.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? No. I don’t do resolutions. Too busy running in place just to appear like I’m managing

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Jasoni and Kate, a little baby boy.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Nope.

5. What countries did you visit? Adelaide? No, wait, that’s not another country, is it? What is it again? Oh, that’s right: 1973!

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? A novel sale.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Swancon weekend– having it forcefully presented to me how I was perceived by the local SF community enabled me to step back and concentrate on greater goals.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Pushing The Corpse-Rat King past 70 000 words– I think this novel, when it’s finished, will be the one that changes my career in a significant way.

9. What was your biggest failure? Failing to advance on so many fronts: personal, professional, and financial. I’d like to think that 2009 will represent a quantum leap for me.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Gout in my right ankle, although this year really was the year of the Connor injury– axe wounds, shovel wounds, underside of bicycle wounds….

11. What was the best thing you bought? Lawn for the backyard, which enabled us to put up a sandpit, and a swing set, and give our kids a proper place to go outside and play. Now the garden looks and feels like a place we want to spend some time around.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? Lyn. No matter what fears she may possess, she always faces them head on– witness earlier this month, when my afraid-of-heights wife went abseiling off tall buildings with her work mates. Aiden, as well, for the continuation of his journey towards adulthood. I have never met a 15 year old more ahead of his age in terms of maturity, trust, and comprehension. He makes me immensely proud. Cassie continued her downward spiral for much of the year, only to start December by introducing us to her fiance, with whom she’s in love, and a whole new positive attitude towards her life that provided a cooling tidal wave of relief. My big hope for next year is to see her continue to set her life on the right path. Lastly, it’s worth mentioning the American voters, who were at least willing to take a punt on positive change. Fingers crossed it all works out for them.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? The Perth fan who came out of this year’s Mumfan awards and started to openly pimp herself for the award by listing her ‘achievements’ and loudly declaring how much she’d love to win the award some day, thereby pointing out her complete non-understanding of the award, as well as her level of egocentricity and shallowness. Subsequent behaviour has only confirmed it. The members of the local SF community who waited for the perfect opportunity to give me a kicking, then didn’t hold back when it arose.

14. Where did most of your money go? Ummm……. (turns about, looking for money)…. the garden, I guess.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Nothing much. It was a year of steadiness, rather than massive spikes of emotion.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008? Johnny The Horse, by Madness. Had a big impact on me, as the lyrics and general air of sadness that permeates the song really struck home.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:i. happier or sadder? ii. thinner or fatter? iii. richer or poorer? More content, and happier with my home life, although sadder about many other aspects of my life– work, Perth SF, et al.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Completing novels and pushing my career ahead.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Being distracted from my life goals. Focussing on the weights of the present rather than those aspects of the future for which I’m bearing them.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? All the kids will be at grandparents’ and/or other parents’ houses for Christmas Day, leaving Lyn and I to enjoy the day together. Boxing Day we’ll all be back together.

21. Who did you meet for the first time? The extended Fischerios, and sales staff across the Adelaide area.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008? Possibly developed a slight man-crush on the workshop area of the Adelaide air museum. But, you know, I met the love of my life when I met Lyn, so it’s easy to stay in love.

23. What was your favourite TV program? Top Gear. Blackpool. Dexter. Life on Mars.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? Some contempt for certain individuals, but not outright hate. You save that for people who are worth it.

25. What was the best book you read? A toss-up between Happy Like Murderers- The True Story of Fred and Rosemary West and Bind, Torture, Kill- The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Next Door. Both stunning, revelatory works on a subject that abhors and fascinates me in equal measure.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Madness’ 1996 album Wonderful, which is. The Fratellis, whose first two albums have added swagger and bounce to our playlist.

27. What was your favourite film of this year? It’s been a very Hollywood year in the Batthome. Kung Fu Panda was a hoot, as was Iron Man, which wasn’t particularly great as a movie, but was certainly great as an excuse for my inner 8 year old to go utterly spaz. The Dark Knight was mesmerising, especially Heath Ledger’s performance. Special mention to The Golden Compass, which was such a towering pile of shit that it romped in for worst film of the year in January!

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 38, and it was all low key. The kids’ birthdays are the big ticket birthday item round our parts– Lyn doesn’t do birthdays, and I get a lot more excited about the kids’ ones than my own.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Contentment in every direction. 2009 may provide this: 2008 was one of those years where you endure the bumps because you can see past them to the clear, flat plains ahead.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Oh, let’s just accept that I don’t have one and leave it at that.

31. What kept you sane? My family, their belief and love for me, and their delightfully deluded assertion that I know what I’m doing.

32. What political issue stirred you the most? The US election dominated everything, although I was interested to see how much of the supposedly right-on, leftie attention was focussed on Barack Obama’s skin colour. In a truly equitable culture, only his qualifications for the job would matter.

33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. Don’t mistake a loose collection of people with similar interests for friends.

34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. Well, it hit home hard enough that I place it permanently at the top of this blog, so the choice is farly obvious, in the end:

Would you believe he came out well
He had a bright inquiring mind
His family knew that he’d go far
If he applied his time
But he started out standing on corners
And talking out loud, too loud
You see he couldn’t believe in himself or the world
Or anything he heard
Will you remember his name?

—–Madness, Johnny The Horse

Gakked from my darling wife, the first of the end of the year round-ups:

Post the first line of the first blog entry for each month:

January: Check it out! The first issue of new magazine Sci Phi Journal, with stories by the likes of Stephen Dedman, Geoffrey Maloney, and yours truly.

February: It had to happen: the A-Boy turned 15 on Saturday, and for his present, we acceded to his desire to invite a whole bunch of friends to go paint-balling.

March: So we’re back, after a week in Snoozing-By-Sea.

April: According to Westnet, yesterday’s welcome-to-the-run-up-to-winter thunderstorms knocked out our local server, and they’ve no idea when it will be back on line.

May: The Katharine Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction Awards 2008

June: One of the most outlandishly talented of my Clarion South students, Peter Ball (he of the unicorn porn physics) has a story up at Fantasy Magazine this week.

July: Goddamn, it’s been a year for losing genius’. Now George Carlin is dead, aged 71.

August: This Sunday, 17th August, at 3pm, the Chairperson of KSP, the CEO of the Shire of Mundaring and the Competition Judge – that would be me – will present the awards to the winners of the KSP Speculative Fiction Competition.

September: From their weekend trip to their Nanna’s, my cool kids:

October: Seanie, you’re my best and oldest friend, and you know how it is: some days, you don’t choose the music, it chooses you.

November: Over at the Specusphere, they’ve posted a review of The Beast Within, and we all come out of it rather well, don’t you think?

December: Ugh.

What does it all mean? Write your answers on the back of a brick marked What Does It All mean? and send it to anybody but me….