Ben Paddon

Blog

  • A Quick Recap Of My Day

    I’ve had an interesting day so far. Here’s a recap for those of you not paying attention:

    Helen: “Wake up, Ben!”

    Me: “Alright, I’m awake.”

    Agency: “Are you up?”

    Me: “Yes.”

    Agency: “Good. You’ve got a job. You start on Friday.”

    Me: “Hooray!”

    Agency: “Fill out this background check form.”

    Me: “Definitely!”

    Agency: “Oh, and the background check won’t be done by the time you’re supposed to start, so you don’t have the job after all.”

    Me: “Bwa?”

    Agency: “But I’ll put you forward for another, slightly higher-paying job, so fill out the forms anyway.”

    Me: “Alright then.”

    Agency Background Check Rep: “Thanks for the forms, we should get your background check finished today.”

    Me: “Hang on, how come that’s not quick enough? Agency, what’s going on?”

    Agency: “No idea. We’ll see what happens.”

    Me: “Thanks.”

    Agency: “Oh, the company have deleted the position.”

    Me: “…”

    This is the polar opposite of a bank error in my favour.

  • Here’s My Card

    On Monday I took every Christmas and Yule card I was given and put them in the recycling bin. I do this every year, and I can’t help but feel like it’s a waste. I don’t mean to come across as a Scrooge, but I’ve always felt like Christmas and birthday cards were something of a waste. I appreciate the sentiment, certainly, but the card just goes in the trash after the fact and the money people spend on a card could easily have been put to better use.

    My birthday is April 26th. Instead of getting me a card, I’d like to ask that my friends and family instead make a donation to my charity of choice, Child’s Play. Those children’s hospitals could use the money much more than I could use a square bit of card.

  • As Someone Who’s Looked At a Thing, You Might Like This Other, Vaguely Relevant Thing

    Amazon just sent me an email. This isn’t unusual – they send me about a dozen of the buggers a day – but this one is a little bit… well, odd.

    There are two problems with this email. The first one, a minor one, is that we didn’t buy our PS3 remote from Amazon. We bought it from a brick-and-mortar Best Buy store the same day we bought our console. I’ve never bought a remote control from Amazon.

    This is dwarfed by a slightly larger question. That being: How in the Hell does a Bluray remote control have any relevance to the game being marketed, besides the fact that they’re both for the PlayStation 3? It makes no ruddy sense at all. It’s like saying, “We see you’ve bought socks from us in the past. Would you like a pedicure?” Yes, they’re both foot-related, but they’re very different things.

    And I’d love a pedicure, although I was sadly born without toenails.

  • Dan Bull

    Are you familiar with Dan Bull? He’s a British hip-hop artist who is absolutely fantastic. I could sit here gushing about his work, but instead I’ll let a track from his album, “Safe”, do the talking:

    Bull’s first album is available to buy now, but he’s also put the entire thing up to download for free. Really, you’ve no excuse not to check out this guy’s incredible work.

  • Revealing my Incompetence

    If you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ll know that one of my favourite novels is Incompetence by the incredibly funny Rob Grant (perhaps best known, much to his chagrin, as the co-creator of Red Dwarf). It’s a superb book – part crime thriller, part gut-busting comedy, part social commentary. I usually make a point of trying to read it at least once a year.

    For a while now I’ve had the urge to adapt the novel into a screenplay, just for my own amusement. I’ve never done an adaptation before, and I feel the story in Incompetence would lend itself well to a feature film adaptation. So my project for January is to get a first draft of Incompetence: The Movie: The Screenplay knocked out.

    Wish me luck.

  • Jumping Ahead

    I will confess to you – about a year ago, I began to lose interest in writing Jump Leads. I was having severe difficulties coming up with stories that interested me. That’s the most important thing at the end of the day, and if I’m not satisfied with a story why the Hell will anyone else be? Dozens of scripts were started, dozens of scripts were shelved.

    A few months later, I hit upon a way of revitalizing my interest in the story by giving Meaney and Llewellyn some direction. I won’t spoil anything for you, but over the last few months Eugene, Euan, Andrew, Paul and I have been working on the direction the comic is going to take, and in doing so we’ve actually scrapped about two years’ worth of future scripts, finished or otherwise, to make these changes.

    We have a story arc, spreading out over about six issues in total. We’ve more or less got an idea of where it’s heading although we still need to join the dots. What’s more, I know where it’s going once that arc is finished.

    It’s a remarkable feeling, knowing where your story is going. I must confess that when Jump Leads first started I had only the vaguest of ideas of what I wanted to do with it. The concept has a formula and a loose structure but it’s difficult to write for, and now we’ve worked together on giving it something to work towards I feel completely revitalized. These are decisions I wouldn’t have made a or two ago, but as I become more confident in myself as a writer I feel more prepared to take risks, and more capable of pulling them off successfully.

    Gentlemen, to the future. …Oh, you don’t have glasses. Well, just pretend.

  • Feeble Excuse Feebly Missing in Service

    I’m nto sure why, but Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse vanished from the SoulGeek server about a month ago. It might be due to some of the website tweaks they’ve been making. I’ll try to get the existing shows back up on the site as well as the interview I recorded with MC Frontalot a couple of months ago, but I may just roll Feeble into this site and keep it here instead. We’ll see.

    For those of you wanting updates on Jump Leads, the next issue should start soon. The Winter period is usually slower for us. The number of updates reduces due to JjAR’s other commitments, but we usually get back into full swing once the new year rolls around.

    Also, everybody keep your fingers crossed for my buddy Ray Friesen, who had a very successful pitch meeting on Thursday for a project that, if all goes well, I may be writing for. It’s an absolutely cracking project and I’d love to be attached to it in some way, even if it’s just getting the tea for the chaps in the recording studio.

  • On A Seven-Day Diary

    This is without a doubt my favourite poem of all time. It’s called “On A Seven-Day Diary” by Alan Dugan.

    Oh I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    and ate and talked and went to sleep.
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    from work and ate and slept.
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    and ate and watched a show and slept.
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    and ate steak and went to sleep.
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    and ate and fucked and went to sleep.
    Then it was Saturday, Saturday, Saturday!
    Love must be the reason for the week!
    We went shopping! I saw clouds!
    The children explained everything!
    I could talk about the main thing!
    What did I drink on Saturday night
    that lost the first, best half of Sunday?
    The last half wasn’t worth this “word.”
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    from work and ate and went to sleep,
    refreshed but tired by the weekend.

    This poem epitomizes exactly the sort of life I have sought to avoid. The grind, the chore of merely existing as opposed to the joy of living. It’s one of the reasons I left the UK and came looking for something better in the United States.

    It’s also probably one of the reasons I’m presently unemployed. Bugger.

    As an aside, I wish I could write poetry like this. I which I could make words flow like liquid half as well as Dugan could.