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Various snippets of advice on the technicalities of English.

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Anyone who’s had to listen to one of my many “war stories” in the past is likely to have heard me talking about Joshua Tree. It’s one of the places I’ve been that’s really made me stop and look at how utterly stunning nature can be. Apart from the obvious U2 album recorded there, it’s one of the places credited with the birth of the “desert rock” scene and the bands that it spawned, Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, Fatso Jettson and Unida to name but a few. NME said it was one of the places you should go on a rock pilgrimage before you die. But forget about all that … imagine the ‘Fortress of Solitude’ from the Superman movies, but with sand and rocks instead of snow and ice. That’s what Joshua Tree is to me. It’s perfect for escaping the chaos of Los Angeles if you have a couple of days to get away. Just over two hours drive West of LA on the I-10, through the giant wind farms, will have you past both the San Bernadino National Forest and the Mt. San Jacinto National Park...

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Christ, it's already been six months since the last Whitby Gothic Weekend. Time to buy some new eyeliner, pack up all my most ridiculous clothes, and get ready for a big goth holiday. Wednesday (condescension): I can never sleep before Whitby. I haul myself out of bed at stupid o'clock in the morning, which is fortunate, as I still have all my packing to do. Heading over the road to collect Jennie at a slightly more respectable half-past nine, I grab a quick cuppa, then wait another half hour for Erith to arrive in Horus, the small but awesome vehicle we'll be travelling in. The terrain on the drive down seems to consist mostly of in-between bits of countryside. Nothing but train lines, roads, TV booster stations and power cables. Everything that's here exists to take things somewhere else. We make a quick pit stop in Penrith (good chips) and finally encounter some more interesting landscape. Cows Crossing! proclaims one sign, in a pictographic sort of way. Tanks...

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As one who's always found terrorism interesting—what sort of thing would make a person willing to kill innocent civilians for their own struggle?—I've been strangely drawn to Euskal Herria. Known in English as the Basque Country and within Spain as Pays Basque, it's a small, semi-autonomous region of northern Spain, reaching into southern France (where it receives no autonomy). It comes down from the Pyrenees along the northern Spanish coast until it comes to the city of Bilbao. What makes this part of the world different from any other is it's language, which has no relationship to any other known language and is the only remaining language completely indigenous to Europe. The people native to the region are also genetically different to other European cultures to such an extent that it once thought they were the last direct descendants of Neanderthal man. This claim, however, was very quickly put to rest. The ETA began with a group of students in the '50s. At the time there was...

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I was woken up by my Mum ’phoning today. Not uncommon the day before her birthday, usually to make some hint about forgetting a card. Today I was ready with “I missed the post” or, “I’m just about to post it, you’ll get it on Monday” … until she stops me mid–sentence. “I’m sorry, it’s always me that has to break this news. Joe is dead. In a car accident this morning. Steven and Ed are in hospital, I don’t know how they are.” FUCK. Joe was my first crush. I was 5, and he was 16. He was a Rangers supporter whereas his big brother was a Celtic fan. He was tall (ok, I was 5), dark, blue eyes. As I grew up, he was always there. When I started going out drinking and clubbing (when I was well underage), he was there. If a bouncer so much as hesitated and about to ID me, he’d jump in and get me in straight away. If I was too drunk to make it home after a night out, I’d just crash at his. On his sofa, nothing dodgy. Mum always knew where I was and knew I was safe because she treated...

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Somehow amidst all the chaos of Worldcon I was able to track down renowned fantasy author Terry Pratchett and arrange to interview him in a dank, shady warehouse. Here's what he has to say about conventions, collectables, and carnivorous plants. Alternative Nation: You've attended a fair few WorldCons in your time. How did Interaction measure up, aside from the name not being very good? Terry Pratchett: I think it was probably the best I've attended—not the biggest, by a long way, and not the fanciest, but certainly the best to hang out at. This may have had something to do with the Real Ale bar. I think I met just about everyone I know in fandom there. Oh, and the food was much better. Instead of going to the Hugos a bunch of us went to a Japanese restaurant and had a great meal—nothing deep-fried at all. AN: It did have a wonderfully relaxing atmosphere. We drank the local microbrewery dry, I'm told. How did it compare to other Glasgow cons you've attended? Chasing Iain...

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Many a time have I found myself sneering at vapid chick-lit, or self-help books such as The Rules in bookstores: sorely tempted to purchase them in order to enable me to find out more about the Bridget-Jones-esque dating culture I so irrationally despise. Thoughts of such a book invading my bookshelves like a bad smell (possibly even rendering my wee collection of feminist literature null and void) always convinced me to refrain from wasting my money. However, when I saw a copy of Jo Hemmings’ The Dating Game (a £9.99 book) going for a mere ten pence in Bookworld on Sauchiehall Street today, I just couldn’t resist. On a positive note, Jo Hemmings isn’t the “how to meet Mr Right and bully him up the aisle” lady I anticipated: her attitude is more “let’s have a laugh for the moment.” It’s still, in essence, a book for women wanting men to like them. As I said in another article, the problem with the flood of relationship self-help books floating about nowadays is that—no matter...

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Apples and pears in a bowl are a staple of both a healthy diet and the kind of still life painting frequently seen decorating grannies' living room walls nation-wide. It’s the kind of picture that is commonly referred to by the elder members of our community as ‘real’ art. A ‘proper’ painting of something ‘nice’, not like the rubbish turned out by modern artists, all messy beds and people with no faces. Horrible. Didn’t that Emin woman know you can get nice bed spreads cheap this time of year in Laura Ashley? Something tidy and floral, with matching fitted sheets, and pillow cases with a frill. Some scatter cushions wouldn’t have gone amiss either, rather than all that nonsense; young people these days, eh? So then, granddad, what do these sepia-tinged apples and pears represent to you? How do they make you feel? Who knew there were so many shades of brown? Do they tell you something about the artist? Yourself? The world? Or are they just a pile of bloody boring fruit in a bowl...

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The geeks are coming. From the 4th to the 8th of August, Glasgow plays host to Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention. And it's big. Very big. In addition to the Central Hotel being taken over for a week-long party, there are an absurd number of official events, running in the SECC, the Moat House Hotel and the nearby Glasgow Science Centre. Panels, workshops, short films, electric LEGO-train death battles, space pirates, the Masquerade, book signings by any number of authors...the list is enormous, and ridiculous. The provisional programme (in .pdf format) lives here. It is ninety-nine pages long. It's impossible to express just how amazing this event is going to be. With approximately a million things happening at all times, every single day of the con, there's always something on worth seeing. Some bunch of spods are geeking about Farscape? No problem, there's a panel about dinosaurs at the same time, and now you know it won't be clogged up with...

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There are those who do not resign themselves, there are those who decide to be uncomfortable, there are those who do not sell themselves, there are those who do not surrender themselves. There are, around the world, those who resist being annihilated in this war. There are those who decide to fight. Revolution happens any time any man or woman rebels to the point of tearing off the clothes that resignation has woven for them and cynicism has dyed grey. Any man, any woman, of whatever colour, in whatever tongue, says to himself, to herself, "Enough"--Ya Basta!” Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN Many of you will never have heard of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), also known as the Zapatista, but the movement they breathed life into in 1994 will be recognisable to you as the ‘anti-globalisation’ or ‘anti-capitalist’ one. Despite the significance of the Zapatista struggle very little is seen or heard of it in the mainstream media and as a result you...