Assassinations And Alchemy

So yeah, characters. blokeihaventseeninages continues his solicitous attention to househusbandnot and the other day sent me the following thoughts on characters:

"The prime role of the character is to provide the writer with the opportunity for said character's assassination - that's when writing becomes enjoyable for everyone ( excepting that same said character, about whose feelings neither you nor your readers should care ). Why don't you start with the 'close friend' who suggested your blog needed more characters in the first place? "

While I appreciate blokeihaventseeninages' time in sending me advice, I'm not sure I agree with his theory. I know it's more fun to be rude about people than to be all sucky about them. And God knows there are people out there whose dislikability we need to be reminded about on a regular basis. ( Michael Winner, Puff Diddy and jazz musicians come to immediate mind. Winner because none of you took up my challenge of killing him while mrs househusbandnot and I were on holiday - you losers. I read somewhere yesterday that he thought Death Wish was a watershed movie which changed the rules of cinema. Changed the capacity for my arse to fall asleep more like. It was about as watershed as a film of my grandfather going out for a pint of milk at the 24 hour garage after midnight. Puff Daddy/Piff Duddy/Dud Poofey because he is supremely talentless despite thinking he is some kind of cross between Phil Spector and Prince. And he is about as gansta as my sister's cat Archie. AND he is up there with Bryan Ferry and me as one of the worst dancers in the world. And jazz musicians because they actually study how to kill music, and commit that particular assassination daily. We were watching the Mercury Awards Last night. When the jazz nomination performed - some bird with big gums and mad long hair - mrs househusbandnot watched the performance for a moment and said, almost to herself, but out loud: "Oh great a Brazilian groove. What a c*&*. I bet she still thinks that you should blow when you are giving a blow job." ) But I'm not sure that eventual assassination is a good enough reason to create someone. While neat and tidy, it seems kinda defeatist.

After my rants about death and people who won't interview me for jobs over the last few day, you may be thinking I am sounding a bit too reasonable and positive today. This is true, not least of all because mrs househusbandnot came up with a fun way of job hunting this morning. She thinks I should write a letter to 50 of the companies/organisations/individuals I would actually like to work for, explaining to them what I have done in the past and could maybe do for them in the future. I know it is not rocket science, but this seems a good and positive idea, unlike the bad and fundamentally un pro-active approach I am currently taking which basically involves me not hearing from head hunters and rifling through the jobs pages of The Guardian desperately trying to alchemise myself into the sort of model workers the job descriptions are...describing.

I'll keep you posted on how this project pans out.