Total (Non) Recall

The issues with my memory are getting worse my haphazard attempt to bluff my way through my medical history with my therapist has now led to me having to take one of my parents into my next session to fill in the blanks. Can you imagine, at twenty eight years of age needing to have your Mum or Dad go to see the Doctor with you? The word "embarrassment" does not even come close to covering it but hey at twenty eight years old and having to still live with my parents embarrassment comes very regularly to me.

To catch up any new readers here's the situation as it stands, I currently do not have a cast iron diagnosis for my current medical condition(s). I was diagnosed as suffering from epilepsy for about four years until tests proved otherwise. The current symptoms are as follows;

1. Seizures

2. Severe back pain

3. Loss of feeling in hands and feet (which makes walking great distances or even not so great distances a struggle. Also makes writing difficult as I can not tell how hard I am holding anything in my hands, so a pen is out of the question.)

4. Memory problems ( can't remember when past events in my life happened, forget words I should know, call things and people by wrong name etc.)

5. Suffer from depression, anxiety

6. Hands shake badly from time to time

7. Bouts of insomnia usually followed by days of not being able to stay awake

8. Feelings of Deja vu/ paranoia

9. General feelings of tiredness

10. Stomach Ulcers (due to previous medication)
11. Frequent headaches

Nice little bunch of aches and annoyances that put all together make me basically not want to leave the house or my bed if I'm truly honest. These problems have been with me since I was around nineteen, twenty years old and have basically stopped me from existing outside of them, no job, no leaving the house unless to go to hospital or doctor's surgery and basically no life. This hit home hard this morning when I found an old college communications essay of mine where I had been asked to write what I would be doing in ten years, my answer? Was not still living at home it was in fact writing for a living, screenwriting to be precise.

I have had a love of the craft of screenwriting since I was about thirteen, I even sent one of my scripts which was as you can imagine poorly formatted and about fifteen pages to short to the BBC at that time. They sent it back with a surprisingly blunt but fare evaluation of the subject matter, It was a cross between the X-Files and that old sixties show Invasion and not a very good one but I was informed that my eye for scene description and scene length was very strong. May not sound like much but to a thirteen year old from Scotland that was all the encouragement I needed. I had amassed a collection of about fifteen finished scripts and multiple more that I gave up on half way through with maybe four or five of them being what I would consider good enough to be sent out on my old computer before it died on me last year leaving me with only some printed out outlines, treatments and one screenplay I wrote to amuse my brother (cursing, daft humour aplenty).

Now I'm considering where to go from here, with no apparent cure for my illness in the pipeline a career in screenwriting seems as dead as a Dodo but when one door closes maybe another one will open. I've been giving a lot of thought to creating an E-Book and Audio book store with an emphasis on new writers and of coarse selling my own work. Only problem with this is I can't find a lot of good info on the web about how to go about setting it up, there are websites dedicated to setting up online stores but they all seem to specialise in other merchandise.

Anyhoo I've written far to much already on this post so

Thanking You

The Housebound Writer

RIP Easy Rider

Hollywood icon Dennis Hopper has died in Venice, California

of Prostate Cancer at the age of 74. Best known for his film Easy Rider for which he Directed, co-wrote and acted in alongside Peter Fonda had been appearing in classic films form the 1950's where he had a small role alongside his close friend James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and again in Giant.

He also appeared in such classic films as;

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

True Grit

The Last Movie

Apocalypse Now

Blue Velvet

Rumble Fish

Hoosiers

Speed

True Romance

Red Rock West

as well as cult hits like George Romero's Land Of The Dead.

He is survived by 4 children.

Financial Worries????

I had a very strange and at the time worrying moment this week when I was shopping online at a well known music and DVD store with a three letter name, when it came time to pay for what was in my basket (a £2.99 DVD) I got this alarming message scrolled across the screen "INSUFFICIENT FUNDS". Now I knew this was wrong I happened to have had a recent mini statement which showed a healthy although somewhat depleted sum. The first thought through my head, as I am very paranoid even at the best of times was that I had been the victim of Internet fraud.

Now I had more dark thoughts circling in my head, was it from a store I had bought from perhaps the one named after a well known Rain Forrest? Or was it from when I won that short story completion online for which the first prize was £40 and my story (see two entries ago) would be printed in the e-magazine of the website? That darn e-zine hadn't been emailed to me yet and I was unaware of any payment from them so I had to investigate. First stop my bank via my online account, I knew this would come in handy one day but alas no joy. I entered what I perceived to be my password (it's one I use often, I know not a good idea) but after doing so I was confronted with another message telling me that my online banking service was frozen.

This scared me as now I had the terrible thought that not only has someone stolen my card details but they had stolen my identity. Panic attack ensued and after a few or maybe ten minutes of thinking I was having a heart attack I told my brother and he took me straight to the bank to get it sorted out. This is the benefit of having calmer heads around you in a crisis I find in these situations I, maybe because of the amount of head knocks and the possible brain damage that I have recently been told I could of experienced or my various other mental health issues basically makes me incapable of functioning at times.

Anyway we get to the bank and after a short queue, we Brits love our queues, I was called over to the cashier we explained the strange messages I had received. She punches the keys of the keyboard at her computer and behold I have not been robbed and I have every penny I thought I had in my account apparently the bank I'm with in the event of your card been used more frequently than normal freeze the said card until the card holder can be contacted via one of those computer voiced telephone services where you push the buttons on the phone that correspond with the security questions asked and you verify that it was you that made those transactions.

I can't tell you how relieved I am by this, I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination in fact I'm currently unemployed due to my illness and have been for almost ten years so you can guess that I've not got millions in the bank but every penny helps, right? I guess the moral of this story is take a deep breath, don't jump to conclusions and above all else tell your brother. Well I guess I'm back writing again and I'd like to take this time to thank each and every kind person for their moral support during my down time. It meant a lot to me and it is was what gave me the confidence to enter that competition I mentioned earlier for which I still haven't received the e-zine but have received the prize money so that's all cool, anyhoo...

Thanking you

The Housebound Writer

Four Day Gap

I haven't blogged since Thursday which for me is a long time so here goes nothing, well something at least. The reason behind the four day gap is simple really I was to depressed to write anything, stupid really as writing is what breaks my low mood and calms my depression to a point at which I am somewhat functional.

It feels a lot like I'm just whining you know poor me, poor me but I'll try to get back on track hopefully by putting these words to paper er I mean to screen I'll be able to break the current cycle. I find writing helps me a lot when it comes to coping with depression or at least letting me escape my head for a while, be it allowing me to write about the latest movie news and rumours or permitting me to bitch loudly in a quiet fashion and importantly it also lets me keep my eye in for writing my screenplays, play, short stories etc...

I'll keep this blog short and sour and hopefully the next entry will be a little more entertaining or at least about entertainment news.

Thanking You

The Housebound Writer

The trouble with that is.....

I was trawling the big Movie Studios websites (Warners, Dreamworks, Fox etc) to discover the latest greenlit films and casting news when I discovered something that has annoyed me somewhat.

Currently in development at the moment at the big studios, not including production companies like Lions Gate who have made about eight Saw movies, just counting the big studios there are about sixty sequels and over twenty remakes or reboot's in development alone.

There is even more in current production and post which leaves me wondering, has Hollywood ran out of originality? When I was younger some of the movies which are getting sequels or remakes would have made me smile but as a 28 year old some of them are a bit puzzling.

For instance do we really need a sequel to Super Troopers or Rounders.? Or a remake of Fright Night or Child's Play? Here's some of the others that are greenlit some good some bad.


SEQUELS


Ghostbuster 3, Underworld 4, Wolverine 2, Bad Boys 3, Wildhogs 2, Hancock 2, Zoolander 2, Terminator 5, Die Hard 5, Scary Movie 5, Hairspray 2, Jumper 2, Enchanted 2, Hangover 2, Iron-man 3, High School Musical 4, Cloverfield 2, Beverly Hills Cop 4, Zombieland 2, Austin Powers 4, I Robot 2, Independence Day 2 & 3, Monster Inc 2, Evil Dead 4 (this I don't mind), Jeepers Creepers 3, Hobbit part 1 & 2, Star Trek 2, Bond 23(possibly), Alien (prequel), Kick Ass 2, Kill Bill 3, Sin City 2 & 3 and so on.


REMAKES/ REBOOTS


Spiderman, Child's Play, Fright Night, Judge Dredd, Hellraiser, Dune, Footloose, Robocop, Superman, Escape from New York, Knight Rider, Airwolf, Logan's Run, Death Wish, Westworld, The Birds, The Warriors, Near Dark, the Dirty Dozen and so on.


Is it just me or a lot of these titles from the eighties and late seventies? And a lot of sequels to Will Smith movies? Look I loved a lot of these titles first time round but some of them were of their time and won't fit in to the modern era of Cinema.

Thanking you
The Housebound Writer

Celebrations

Well it's May 17 and for me that marks an extra candle on top of the cake but it also got me thinking what other historical landmarks where marked by this date in history? I did some research so here they are.

218- 7Th recorded perihelion passage of Hailey's Comet

1590- Anne of Denmark was crowned Queen of Scotland

1620- 1st merry-go-round seen at a fair in Philippapolis Turkey

1630- Italian Jesuit Niccolo Zucchi is first to see 2 belts on Jupiter surface

1790- New York Stock Exchange is established

1804- Lewis and Clark begin exploration of Louisiana Purchase

1845- Rubber band is patented

1875- 1st Kentucky Derby: Oliver Lewis aboard Aristides wins in 2:37.75

1876- 7Th US Cavalry under Custer leaves Ft Lincoln

1881- New Testament is revised

1883- Buffalo Bill Cody's 1st wild west show debuts in Omaha

1884- Alaska becomes a US state

1916- British Summer Time (Daylight Savings) 1st introduced

1932- Congress changes name "Porto Rico" to "Puerto Rico"

1935- English novelist Dennis Potter is born

1936- Easy Rider himself Dennis Hopper is born

1937- Juan Negrin succeeds Largo Caballero as Spain's Premier

1939- 1st sports telecast- Columbia vs Princeton- College baseball

1942- Blues legend Taj Mahal is born

1961- Castro offers to exchange Bay of Pigs prisoners for 500 bulldozers

1963- Bruno Sammartino defeats Nature Boy Buddy Rodgers in 48 seconds to become

WWWF World Champion at Madison Square Garden, it begins the longest World Championship reign in Pro Wrestling history

1968- European Space Organization launches 1st satellite

1972- Tottenham Hotspur wins 1st UEFA Cup in London

1973- Senate Watergate Committee begins it's hearing

1975- NBC paid $5M for rights to show "Gone with the wind" one time

1976- Earthquake in Uzbekistan kills 1000's

1980- Kumar Anandan balanced on one foot for 33 hours

1982- The Housebound Writer is born

1984- Prince Charles calls a proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a "Monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend," sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal family and the course of modern architecture

1989- Longest cab ride ever: 14,000 miles cost $16,000!

1989- Nelson Mandela receives a BA from University of South Africa

1989-Vincent Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" auctioned for $825M

1990- Dow Jones average hits a record 2,831.71

1990- Cheers star Kelsey Grammer sentenced to jail for 30 days for DWI

1993- Intel's new Pentium processor is unveiled

2004- Massachusetts becomes the first US state to legalize same-sex marriage

2007- Trains from North and South Korea cross the 38Th Parallel in a test-run agreed by both governments. This is the first time that trains have crossed the Demilitarized zone since 1953

I think you'll agree not a bad date to have as your birthday.

Thanking you

The Housebound Writer

Short fiction

I've written a short story a 1000 words or so and am looking for feedback, I had a character name in mind but didn't know what the story was about untill I started writing the second paragraph. This is the way I used to start my short stories when I was a teenager but as I've got older I have always started with an outline. I just thought it would be cool to try this way again to see what would happen so without further adue;



Wings of Change

By Andrew G. Carson



As he lay there bound by pain and damp by way of a Misty Scottish rain, James Batchelor had many thoughts running a competitive marathon through his mind. Was this the end to his legacy? Was this what he would be remembered for? After all he was the man that aged nineteen climbed Kilimanjaro in Tanzmania all nineteen thousand three hundred feet of it. He had conquered the great Kanchenjunga in India all twenty eight thousand, two hundred and eight feet of it just two years later.



He then moved onto Rainer and McKinley in the US, Logan in Canada and Popocatepetl in Mexico before the age of twenty four. Later he moved onto his greatest accomplishments in the form of Lhotse, Makalu and the pinnacle of all mountaineering.... Everest when he reached her peak on the dawn of his 30th Birthday. Six months later he conquered K2 in Kashmir to round off the set and equal the great climb of his hero Sir Edmund Hillary a man, a great man he had the privilege of meeting only a matter of weeks before his death in 2008.

To go from all these great achievments to finding himself sat in a puddle filled with his own blood pouring out of the various wounds occupying his twisted lower limbs. Seated at the foot of a Scottish mountain for which he didn't even know the name of. A mountain he would call a mud hill, to him this was no mountain and for this to be the mountain that finally beat him in the deadly game of chance was unacceptable.

The thought of the World wide roasting he would experience at the hands and mouths of his rivals was bad enough but the ridicule that would be unleashed upon him by the British tabloids was enough to make him hope he would remain unfound, he was almost praying the reaper would pay him a visit first.

The fact atop this mountain there were sheep grazing was not something the great James Batchelor could find amusing no his ego would not alow that. He had been the greatest mountaineer of his generation this World had to offer leading him to be compared to his hero by a great many people not just the lazy tabloids or the trying to be hip broadsheets but by many in the mountaineering community who regarded his immense talent only matched by his immense self opinion. After all he had been known to boast to all within hearing distance that he conquered all the big climbs by a younger age than any other a statement that although may have been true was still far from modest and not in the nature of the greats that had preceeded him.

James stared down towards his frayed blood soaked rags covered legs both of which were visibly broken, bright white bones brighter than he could ever have imagined they could be stabbing through defeated skin and tattered trousers. No doubt in his mind that his pelvis was also the result of the two to three hundred foot drop. He had climbed bigger mud hills than this when he was thirteen, hell by the age of fourteen he had climbed Ben Nevis these silly little Scottish mud hills didn't impress him these were biginner climbs no match for the best of the best that he was.

The sharp pain in his pelvis was the only thing now keeping him awake and possibly alive as the blood loss from his lower extremeties had now become excessive. 'Why God, why me? What the hell did I ever do?' James asked aloud. 'I will spit on your face if this is how you end me, I will spit on your face.' Lashing out at a God he doesn't even beleive in James lay in a puddle filled with a mix of Scottish rain and Kiwi blood and was loosing his mind, his eyes loosing focus.

How long had he lay here? How could an experienced climber like himself loose there grip so readily? Why the hell did he pull his car over in the pouring rain? Why did he jump the small roadside fence? Why did he walk the steep incline too the foot of the mountain and begin to climb unaided? What did he have left to prove to himself? He found himself pondering as the icy rain eased off he closed his eyes and quickly faded away to slumber.

James awoke to a voice echoing in his ears but as he opened his eyes he could not find the owner through the haze. He found the sharp pain in his pelvis had now faded to a dull twinge. 'Mister can I help yae?' the voice shouted once more. James realized the voice sounded like that of a child's. 'Are yae all right doon there?' the voice inquired. James looked skyward to the heavens and found that above him on a small ledge maybe five hundred feet up stood a boy of maybe ten years of age.

'I need help, get an adult'. James replied as loud as he could. 'My Da is away tae get 'em rescue guys.' The child shouted down with relief in his voice. 'How did you get up there?' James asked with a now evident rattle in his raspy voice. 'I climbed up wi' mae Da.' the youngster replied with great glee in his voice before turning around and disappearing from sight.

Time passed strangely for James as he awaited his rescue from the boy and his "Da", time almost seemed to stand still. He contemplated what the boy had said about climbing up with his father and James found himself remembering back to his own childhood when he too climbed mountains just like this one with his own father. The joy he experienced from those adventures led to the development of his passion for the bigger climbs and to discovering the legacy of his Hero Sir Edmund Hillary. The flashbacks also unvieled to him the day he told his father that his lack of skill was holding him back from his destiny and that he no longer needed him on his climbs.

Remembering that moment caused him more pain than any caused by his various injuries, how could he have been so stupid? How could he have let his ego get so out of control all those years ago? James found himself remembering back a few hours to the questions that had flooded his mind, why the hell did he pull his car over in the pouring rain? Why did he jump the small roadside fence? Why did he walk the steep incline to the foot of the mountain and begin to climb unaided?

He now knew the answers to those questions it was due to the fact that twenty two hours earlier he had watched his father's coffin lowered into his final resting place without James ever getting the chance to tell him how sorry he was for all the things he had said. He never got to tell him that the fondest memories he had of his entire life were those spent with his father climbing those mud hills.

James looked down at his mangled lifeless lower limbs knowing that he would never walk again let alone climb and knowing this he smiled, he smiled knowing why he travelled to this mountain. He knew why he stopped his car. He knew why he jumped the small roadside fence. he knew why he walked the steep incline to the foot of the mountain and began to climb unaided. He did all these things because this was the first mountain his father brought him too, the first mountain they climbed together and the first mountain upon reaching the top his father had told him how proud he was of him. He came to this mountain because he wanted no needed to hear those words once more.

Thanking you

The Housebound Writer