Corruption corrodes everything it touches. It needs to be seen for the societal cancer it is, with much heavier penalties imposed for anyone indulging in it.

Surprised myself - can barely summon interest in football at all, and my allegiance to England as a country is, at best, under massive strain for the last 10 years. But after those Mexican fuckers outside England's hotel the night before - yeah, fuck those guys into a hole in the ground. 3-2! YES!

Hmm Have spent some time talking to women in & around menopause this weekend, and it strikes me what clinicians like to describe as "mood swings" is more a belated but sustained explosion of WHAT THE FUCK WAS I SMOKING FOR THE LAST 35 YEARS???? WHY DID I PUT UP WITH ALL THAT UNBELIEVABLE SHIT???

Cat apparently entering his drama queen period - I’m calling this one “Oh… Oh…. You got me, copper….”

Jesus Fucking Christ! It's not just winning the midterms and impeaching, winning the Presidency and packing the Court. America is going to need a Nuremberg enema to fix this shit.

Have always loved the figure of Arria yearning across the M80 towards Cumbernauld (when we lived in Glasgow, I used to pass it at least a couple of times a month). Now belatedly realise it might have been a not-inconsiderable portion of the inspiration for Mebhuranon in No Man's Land.

Carlota Pérez de Castro, multidisciplinary Spanish artist from Madrid famous for her Danzar la Pintura ("Dance the Painting") project which involves her spinning, twisting and turning around in a trance like dance splashing paint against a canvas. #WomensArt

Rewatched "Wonder Boys" last night for the first time in more than 20 years. While it's not as sharply hilarious as I remember it, the sheer valedictory power it holds for anyone who is or aspires to be a writer remains. Plus, there's this of course -

Water - Why is it Wet? An exclusive investigation......

Glad someone didn't have to get up this morning.....

In my moonlighting capacity as a games writer, I work remotely with Ukrainians. Woke up this morning to news of the bombardment and now I’m needing to check in to see which of my colleagues are still alive. Stop the War Coalition fuckwits need their fucking heads rinsed out with fucking bleach.

Not in fact the sun coming up this morning, but last night's awesome Strawberry Moon

First Hollywood movie about the rise of MAGA just dropped.

Still a bit agnostic about Eggers - thought The Northman was brilliant, The Lighthouse bored me rigid and my jury is still out on both The Witch and Nosferatu. But I think he has tapped into something that contemporary mainstream cinema seems increasingly allergic to and that's genuine discomfort.

Hard to tell from the trailer, but looks like live action How To Train Your Dragon is *not* going to fix that weird quirk whereby all adult vikings in Berk speak with thick Scottish accents, but their kids are all fluent San Fernando Valleyspeakers (One assumes some kind of SoCal finishing school?)

I feel like we don't make nearly enough use in the political discourse of the phrase "beneficiary of a landslide defeat". "landslide victory" implies voters adore the incoming party/leadership - which is the exact functional opposite of what drives most political landslides.

It goes on too long, and feels like it falls apart a bit towards the end, but In The Hand of Dante is still well worth your time. There are gusts of sheer cinematic brilliance here along with gratuitous Al Pacino & John Malkovich plus Gerard Butler in the finest performance I've ever see him give.

Maybe it's the heat, but I'm straight to OH FOR FUCKS FUCKING SAKE!! as I stumble on yet another BlueSky denizen moaning "it's crazy how Richard K Morgan wrote a book about swapping bodies AND he's still Gender Critical! 🤯 " Sonny, just wait til you find out Anne Rice didn't believe in vampires....

Name a movie that flopped at the box office but is actually great #FilmSky Famously, of course -

Think this is my favourite negative review comment for No Man's Land so far -

If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula.

A sign you're in one of the classier Glasgow pubs

Leave voters compelled to pick fruit and veg in Lincolnshire for the rest of their lives.

Can almost sense the huge ripple of disappointment throughout the commentariat as a smooth transition of power from Starmer to Burnham becomes the impending reality. Oh, noooooo, what will they do now for kicks and column inches?

Looks like my Dad’s village got a visit from the Glaswegians last night……

Lot of SM commentary flying around about how Burnham is barely any different from Starmer and this is just a bunch of vibes based shit..... But the sad truth is that "vibes-based shit" is how political victory/defeat now works. That's exactly the dystopia we're in.

Who cares, frankly? Just so long as they buy them! (I've never had anyone tell me one of my books got them laid - would be pretty cool, I think. Although I did have one reader tell me they had got him through a very nasty divorce - so, uhh, there's that 😬)

Just rang a power company to sort out something for my father. Turns out coms had slipped our attention, so it was, effectively, our fault. Woman at the other end breezed through all this, never less than friendly, changed the necessary coms for me and offered solution within 4 hours. 🤯 1/2

SLAVA UKRAINI!!! And fuck Putin into a hole in the ground!

Nostalgia re-acquisition. (Sold my original copies to a 2nd-hand book dealer on Charing Cross road to help pay off my student bar tab back in '87. Had had them about 10 years. Think these copies are actually in better nick!) Swashbuckling Golden Age Space Opera (and don't they let you know it!)

Meanwhile, on a small island full of fuckwits off the actual coast of Europe..........

Sirat. Fucking weird movie. Also very good.

Sidenote: I'd really appreciate it if you repost this, if only because getting the damn thing to display on Bsky with a decent alt text was something of a labour of love. And also because, obviously, I want everyone in the universe to know this is coming.

It's a chastening experience to look at the left-liberal political landscape and realise that it is desolate, that there is absolutely no-one of any statesmanlike stature anywhere on the horizon. Where are our Zelenskys? Hell, where are our Macrons? How the hell did we end up here?

Damn, but Alice & Steve is good! Sooooo good. Nicola Walker is just way past brilliant anyway, probably the finest actress working in Britain today. Jermaine Clement is great. Rest of the cast awesome too. I feel like they chickened out on the obvious twist at the end, but it's a small gripe.

Notice anything about the sex distribution.....?

So - oho! Sneak preview of the Polish cover for No Man's Land - love the way the artist has captured so much of Duncan's grim relentlessness......

100% this.

Harsh - but one hundred percent accurate.

Very hard today not to think of that opening monologue from Mad Max 2 - "Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche." If Labour can't turn this into a No Pasaran moment and stem this right now - then what are they good for?

Every designated referee for this entire World Cup needs to down tools in solidarity and refuse to walk on pitch until this is reversed. I'd say FIFA needs to shut down the entire event, but fat chance of those corrupt fucks doing anything.

Large proportion of the 55% have doubtless seen Shallow Grave and/or No Country for Old Men......

SERIOUSLY??? No, I mean, really??? Fucking SERIOUSLY???

Would love to, but too busy writing a book.......

Most - Bruce Willis c. Die Hard 2. And this by a woman I was seeing at the time who had a thing for Willis. (It may, come to think of it, have had some bearing how I was able to date her; she was way out of my class). Least - John Boy Walton (tbf, a comment on my wardrobe more than anything)

"Enough with the fucking superheroes already!"

Poul Anderson's Guardians of Time as a multi-season TV show, unified by pulling in Everard's sidekicks in each story right from the start as fellow alumni of the Time Patrol academy, all graduating the same year. Whitcomb's already woven in, but add Keith Denison, John Sandoval & Piet van Sarawak.