Friday, February 09, 2007

In your FACE Stoppard!

Currently I have quite a lot on. I am supposed to be writing:

The second draft of my superhero movie.
My BBC drama thing.
The sitcom thing that had guns in it, but now hasn't.
Another children's book*.

So it decided to spend this morning trying to answer the age-old question:

'Is it possible to make up a lego racing car without taking the bits out of the plastic bag they came in?'

Answer:

(scroll down)

























Yes.
















* after writing this post, I wandered over to StatCounter and discovered someone from Bloomsbury publishing has been looking at this blog. I now can't decide whether this post was really well timed, or very badly timed indeed.










ALSO: had a bit of a panic, which detracted from the lego brilliantness rather, but I'll stick it on here, as it had an answer to a comment, and I can't be bothered to edit all the HTML again:

Did some ghastly pop-up advert just appear at the bottom of my blog? IF GOOGLEBLOGGER ARE TRYING SOMETHING FUNNY, I WARN THEM NOW, THIS SHALL NOT STAND.

It totally blimmnin' shalln't.


UPDATE: right, when I put a link to an old post in the last comments thread, it brought up a pop-up ad automatically. I'm not very happy about this at all, is there any way round it?

UPDATE 2: ah, it seemed to have some weird code added to the start, I've taken it away now - I was trying to say 'First kid's book not yet published (unless you count the bob the builder one, which I don't, as I was never paid for it) - and long-time readers will remember the henry james debacle- (ARGH BOLLOCKS IT'S ALL FECKED).
Right, I think that's sorted.

UPDATE 3: No it's not. Oh this is horrible.

UPDATE 4: Is this working? Okay, I think it's all fine now. I don't think it was anything to do with Googleblogger.

36 comments:

patroclus said...

Ha! I told you it looked easy!

I mean, I told you it looked extraordinarily difficult and the sort of thing that only a Level 70 lego master with added bag-manipulating skills could possibly even have the tiniest hope of accomplishing.

cello said...

God-like in your dexterity.

Though slightly naff in your miserliness. Playing with toys you intend to give away as gifts is surely a bit infra dig.

James Henry said...

Who on earth said I would be giving it away?

*is puzzled*

Anonymous said...

Glad to see you're putting your time to such good use James. You're a role model to us all...

James Henry said...

Sometimes I run down the street laughing and pointing at people with proper jobs.

Anonymous said...

Impressive! I'm going to have to go and buy some lego and see if I can do that now!

Anonymous said...

Foul!

You've clearly invested in a job lot of industrial plastic and wrapped a real car.
Cheat.

James Henry said...

OOH JEALOUS!

Rose said...

Thoughts of giving it away perhaps because if you weren't you'd surely just take it out of the bag?

But that's No Challenge.

Anonymous said...

PLUS-
What's with lego kits? You used to get a big box of bits and have to use your imagination about what to build. Personally, I made a best friend, but after a week with me he went off with a sticklebrick girl.
When I was young I was all fields round here. etc.

Anonymous said...

reminds me of when I had to put together a megabrick dolls house. Megabricks is a rip off of lego. It was 2am on xmas morning before I managed to crawl into bed.....
Then there was the famous time I put together the Early Warning Centre kitchen whilst watching the Father Ted xmas special........ no wonder those stickers were wonky!

Oh happy days.

Still, I have to admire your handiwork, James. It does rather explain the interior design hallucinations. Ahem.

realdoc said...

Ever thought of gynaecology as a radical career change?

James Henry said...

I can't believe how quickly this innocent post has turned to filth. Most impressive.

Valerie Polichar said...

{applauds}. Clearly, James, you excel not only at building Lego inside the bag, but at inciting bloggers to the gutter. Definitely resume-enhancing...

(The Lego in the bag is very cool, I nerdily must admit.)

cello said...

Ladies' bits are not dirty you know.

But apologies for assuming you were being a cheapskate. I thought you were doing what I do when I read books very carefully without cracking the spine so that I can give them away afterwards. Or burning copies of DVDs before wrapping them.

In fact you were just being kitten-like in your playfulness.

Anonymous said...

just a random thing type thing:

Doesnt it ever REALLY FRUSTRATE YOU if you are one of those poeple who enjoys googling yourself that once you have got to a position where there might actually be STUFF ON GOOGLE ABOUT YOU

that it always comes up with HENRY JAMES?

who cares about the turn of the screw when you're TRYING to find james henry's first children's book?

James Henry said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
James Henry said...

Link to my Henry James/Google post above. And I seem to have said optimistically that my kid's book is unpublished 'yet'.

*waves at Bloomsbury*

Lucy Diamond said...

Lego car in bag - impressive.

I'll raise you the Exo-Force fortress STILL IN THE BOX.
Come and have a go if you think you're legotastic enough

James Henry said...

Made it.


Not in the box though, that way lies madness.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Richard - what happened to creating your own stuff with lego? In the Dark Ages, when I was young, I used to create houseboats with their own gardens.
Perhaps I should dig out the children's lego and see if I can still do it.....

Oh James, if you really want filth, try Scarlet magazine.....

9/10ths Full of Penguins said...

Respect for the lego skills.

Lego and filth? I wonder if Lego have released 'adult' lego sets yet?

Anonymous said...

Exo-Force is a good suggestion, especially as even once they're built the legs keep dropping off, which for Lego is appalling - I mean you expect falling off bits with megablocks but not Lego which is supreme in every other way.

Anonymous said...

Excellent blog, gonna watch with anticipation... I have no building lego sets in packet tales to tell sorry..
gets coat

Anonymous said...

also meant to say added you to favourites and also word verification hard to read when had a few "jars" lol

Mummy/Crit said...

I'm totally impressed with your lego building skills. I'm not sure that the calling of gynaecologist is the best for you though. Your talents may be better realised in less professional ventures.

And fwiw, the word verification says
wrthbg, which is amusing for some reason.

Anonymous said...

lego have become a bit cheap and rubbish in their recent creations - I mean my brother got a lego car for christmas I had to put it together for him and the thing snapped into peices that couldn't be put together again :(
what happened to the times when you would make indestructable lego houses that looked exactly like the friends appartments in lego form and pretended that they were in your power hey?

thinking of things that are now kinda rubbish - remember brio train sets? my brother managed to snap one of the peices in half - but it's made of solid wood (and he's only 7) hmmm

Unknown said...

Congrats on your great Lego success. I must tell my brother the Lego Freak and let him spend days trying that.

Anonymous said...

Don't get excited by the Bloomsbury thing - it's only me at work. And I work for a bit of Bloomsbury that isn't called Bloomsbury. Sadly. Still, you can wave at me all you want!

Anonymous said...

Oooh, the word verification is myoomra. This may become my chant if I ever take up meditation...

James Henry said...

*waves at Jayne*

Anonymous said...

Whilst I may write it elsewhere, I shan't be adding any 'filth' to this post, or your blog for that matter, so fear not James, my comments shall remain clean (just like my lady-bits).

Body-parts aside, I would still like to request an explanation to your 'nose scar' story. I'm thinking it was caused by a high-flying karate kick, done whilst you were training for a black belt in the martial arts. Or maybe you just fell off your bicycle when you were twelve. Either way, I am curious as to the background of the event - however mundane - so please do elaborate, thank you.

Finally, if you want to hone the art of procrastination over your various projects, I advise you to check out Twitter, if you haven't already done so. Posting on it repeatedly wastes valuable minutes of creative time when you're up against deadlines: perfect for putting off the next draft...

James Henry said...

Hello and welcome The Girl, you are of course welcome to bring all the filth you can muster, there's not much left that can shock me after spending five years working in a Waterstone's in the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral.*

I realised today I hadn't explained the scar, a story of Strange Fate and Destiny Calling in quite a Violent Way. If I have time I'll write it tomorrow.

Can't really work Twitter out; I am currently metaphorically walking around it clockwise and sniffing it, but being very careful not to touch it.


* this isn't true of course, I am in fact enormously prim.

Anonymous said...

If you don't mind, I might just steer clear of the filth: it seems to follow me wherever I go, no idea why...

Thank you for offering to expound on your nose story. I look forward to reading about it.

As for Twitter, well, it seemed pointless to me when I first encountered it, but now I realise that it is one-line blogging at its best.

Posting on Twitter forces you to formulate your thoughts in an extremely succinct way - it cuts through all the bullshit exposition and padding that manages daily to find its way onto the screen.*

That's not to say that everyone on Twitter posts concise, sharp, prose, but being able to post tightly-worded but regular outbursts on there is a good writing exercise, I think, even if just to work within the remit of a different 'style' to what one normally does.

Plus, of course, it provides a good distraction from ACTUAL writing, which in itself, is no bad thing if you are having a 'blocked moment'.**

* Speaking for myself, of course.
** James, I'm assuming, like most other writers, that you have these. If you don't, well, no swear words quite cover how I feel about that, you bastard.

Jen said...

You know, I'm sickeningly impressed at how adept and nimble one must be to make a Lego car in a bag.

Now make a... ship in a bottle, impress me further. Go on, just try it!

Ah ha! No-one will ever do it. Ever.

Anonymous said...

I like the girl already.