Whattup You Despicable Hominids, It's March and I've Been Productive For Once

Hello pigeons. I hope you’re all doing well. 

No audio version for this one I'm afraid; I'm not in Sofia at the moment and the laptop mic makes everything sound like dragons farting underwater.   

First things first. I’ve had one of those once-a-year ideas recently one gets genuinely all excited about, and abandons everything else, and I think the script kind of works, and I’d like to try making the thing. I won’t say much except that it’s a long poem about ageing. With submarines. Way in the future. 

I'm going to try experimenting with a new artsy style, and will likely need a bit of flashy software and materials. So if it’s quite all right, to give you a bit of warning so I don’t just spring charging you out of the blue and provide you some time to cancel if you want to, I’ll start the charging process two days from now. Feel free to opt out in the meantime of course. (The puppet show is also coming along, but as ever, there are complications. And baby elephant puppets are remarkably difficult to find.) 

In other news I checked out the new t-shirts and mugs for the channel in the flesh, and I think they turned out okay. A sample picture below. By the time the new video’s out, they should be available. 

Also, for those of you with terrible taste I’ve attached the first few thousand words of the new book to this post. Please note nothing is set in stone yet (what kind of book would that be anyway…? A fucking heavy one?) and the end result may well be rather different. (Criticism is much appreciated, and please brace yourself for typos, it’s just a draft at the moment.) Still, the thing is coming together, finally. I copied all the various cuttings and chapters into a single Word document the other day, zoomed out, and for the first time since The Fifth Science thought, Yeeeeeeeah. That almost looks like a book, boi. So I’m very excited about that. If all goes well, I might be able to get it out by the beginning of June. Possibly.

Hm. Shall we bring up the coronavirus? I’d say about a tenth of the population of Sofia are wearing masks at the moment, though I don’t think we’ve had a case in Bulgaria as yet. It’s only a matter of time, presumably.  I did a spot of flying a few days ago and everyone still seems quite relaxed at airports and on planes. I wonder how long we've had it in Europe and just not realised. One big effect I admit it had on me was hammering home just how thinly veiled our pretensions of civilisation are. Most people are quite polite in my life, and no one’s starving, and we get sick sometimes but nothing major usually. Then suddenly the whole city is freaking out and the virus hasn’t even arrived yet. And this feeling creeps up – perhaps you’ve had it – that serious damage could be done to our cushy way of life (some of us, of course) and there’s nothing you or anyone else can really much do to stop it besides being careful and diligent about washing hands, staying inside if it gets bad, etc.   

I’m cautiously hoping it will be contained properly in Europe and the thing will die down in a few weeks. Some of the leaked footage from Chinese hospitals is beyond distressing, and 'heroism' doesn't even get a tenth of the way towards describing how brave some of those doctors and nurses must be to stay in their positions. 

Anyway. I'm trying to bring the new book into land, I'm very excited to show it to you, and as is probably getting wicked dull to hear now: it couldn't have existed without your support. Thank you ever so much in retrospect and in advance, and as always, whenever anything's ready, I'll get it right out.   

There may be some of you I've not replied to over Patreon or via email, and I'm massively, massively sorry. Currently going through my inbox trying to make sure I haven't missed anyone out. And to the kind supporter I'm trying to write the music for – you know who you are – again, apologies for the delay, I'll get the finished version to you very shortly.   

Please bear with me. Some rather different things are coming, but I'd like to take the time to get them right. 

Hope all's well wherever you are, and that you're working on something strange and great, 

Ex.