Cluttered Desk

i’m told from a very good source that glasgow city council boss steven purcell believes that the snp have won the glasgow east byelection or that it may just go to a recount.

(There really deserves to be a bigger, harder, longer pun in this one, but I’m hard pushed for time and this keyboard is really stiff)

Neil McIntosh has been blogging about recent reports on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - and there’s an article by Shane Richmond in The Telegraph and not one, but two hilarious Guardian columns playing along - and, without free drugs to boost my memory, it brought back to my mind the time, before the credit crunch, I saw a company try to boost web ranking by inserting the phrase women’s car insurance into a release.

A release about a car crash.

And that was how it read.

It was so bad, it was a cock up and a balls up. It had lines like “The driver, who did not have women’s car insurance was unhurt after the incident” and “the drivers of the other cars, who did not have women’s car insurance - some because they were male” and “drivers are reminded that women’s car insurance is a must”.

It was awful. You can say it was trying to sex up a routine car crash, but it was worse than a piece of Harry Potter sex fanfic. I would like to think we’ve moved on from that, but for some, I don’t think we have…It’s almost as bad as the SEO firms that think online PR starts and ends with free PR release sites (though, as you’ll see from above, I’ve started handing out PR tips for free. iPhones - old style and iPhone 3G should be able to access it and it should be viewable on the Wii and PS3 browsers as well. For free.).

(And the company who had the naked cheek to write that release aren’t anywhere near the top Google rankings for women’s car insurance or SEO strategy I’m pleased to say.)

Looking at The Drum’s Top 100 Scottish Power List - basically the movers and shakers (registration required) - and while there’s some really interesting comments (more later), one piece of news really stuck out.
Placed at Number 65 is the following: Charles McGhee, Editor, Evening Times.
Now given that he handed in his notice from The Herald on Friday - the same day The Drum came out - was this a mistook by The Drum (McGhee edited The Evening Times before he was at The Herald) or does it have a genuine scoop and he’s going back there?

A couple of people have emailed me after I posted that I had read the movie script adaption of Max Brooks’ World War Z and asked me to provide a bit more depth to it, so in order to please…

It follows the same idea as the book - which is basically interviews with people who survived when the zombies rose and the ten-year ‘war’ that followed. What it adds to it though, is more of a story to the actual narrator.

Where the script works well is that it runs as an accompaniment to the book. It tells a few of the same stories - including the Chinese outbreak, the Jewish solution, the interview with the drug seller and the Battle of Yonkers - but a lot of it isn’t the same as the book (and some of what is, is tweaked around). Sadly, that means the South African and Chinese submarine chapters are gone.

But that’s the beauty of this topic: both are presenting tales from the war. There’s scope for both (and plenty sequels if Brooks decided to spin it out).

If anything, that may be the main criticism of the script: it’s a chopped down-version of the book. That may sound like a strange comment but given that we live in an age where a film like Wanted bares next to no relation to Mark Millar’s original, this is very much the other tact.

What I did like was that there’s a lot more about the narrator, but again it doesn’t contradict the book. There’s a nice metacommentary to the script that could have you believe the book we have is the book from the film (if that sort of thing suits you).

Also, the narrator’s tale has a nice twist to it, going one way and then spinning on it at the last minute in the most poignant way.

The biggest thing that may upset some is that there’s no real scientific explanation for what kicks off the zombie invasion. No mentions of a passing comet, Hell being full or even Solanum. We’re just presented very matter-of-factly with the fact that there was a war with zombies. (it also never answers the question that stuck in my mind reading it: does it mean that everyone who dies now becomes a zombie?)

This was an adaptation that was passed round a lot of decent writers and quite a few pitched for it. I’ve heard of one other take on it - though I’m sworn to secrecy on it - but I think J. Michael Straczynski has done a decent job here. His strength is in monologues and people believing in higher truths and noble goals, tinged with hope and that all plays out well here.

The real challenge is going to be in seeing who can bring this to life (pardon the pun). I’d go for someone like Paul Greengrass as director and Clive Owen as the lead because it needs someone with those sunken eyes - the look of someone who has been to Hell, came back and discovered something even worse (having said that, if Brad Pitt’s two new babies give him a lot of sleepless nights he might be perfect).

Would it be worth going to see? Oh definitely, but fans looking for a massive reinvention of the book would probably come away disappointed as it may not have their favourite scene in it. For other people, it could still be worth a watch.

Where this film would be a total gift though is for the marketing team. You could have outrage by religions, ARG’s, YouTube videos pretending to be public safety announcements in how to deal with a zombie, Googlemaps of outbreaks, community websites and wikis set up showing rebuilding, a rebranded version of Urban Dead… (though I’d love to see a zombie version of The Sims) the possibilities are endless.

One thing we wouldn’t need is a Twitter from the zombie apocalypse as it’s already been done…

Just saw this on the AllMediaScotland newly-launched Tweet Service - apparently Charles McGhee has departed from The Herald, leaving the paper without an editor the week before the Glasgow East byelection.

More news as I hear it…no doubt some people will be sad at this, while some will be rejoicing. What isn’t known as of yet is why he left.

UPDATE
UPDATE: Hold the Front Page has tweeted and put up more info on this page, complete with statement.

UPDATE 2: The Guardian has weighed in, again with the suggestion that McGhee left because of the ongoing cuts, which may or may not be the case, but it seems strange to me that he leaves right after the last round of redundancies (which I hear saw some staff rejected, despite their pleas to leave) unless he was told that there was going to be another round of cuts right away.

I’ve written a piece for AllMediaScotland about the joys of Tweeting and using Twitter and what benefits it can bring to news and PR organisations here.

(And anyone wanting to sign up for AMS’ Tweets can do so here.)

(Yes, the T in the Park stuff’s coming…)
Opened up LinkedIn today to get a nice little surprise in the form of a recommendation from well-known (in the US anyway) writer and publisher Larry Young. Larry and I first met through Warren Ellis and kept in touch - sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, rarely enough - and have chewed the fat over doing some projects together, and it nearly came off once (saying nothing else as it’s still a slowly evolving project for elsewhere).

Anyway, there was a recommendation there for me, that not only made me laugh, but I may just have to find a permanent home for on the front page of here:

“Craig’s command of language allows him to make words dance like teenagers ’round the campfire, enjoying cheap beer and each others’ company on the last day of summer before school starts.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to round up those teenagers…

I ache. Big proper post later, but anyone wanting samplings of what T in the Park was like this year could do worse than check out the Tweets I did, Shaun Milne’s Tweets or The Sun’s round-up (can you guess who invited me?).

A very interesting weekend that deserves a full post later once my muscles have returned. Though I now live in fear at what Orange are going to charge me for data use over the weekend…

And now to turn off the Tweet updates appearing here.

L:T in the Park: Mindless self indulgence apparently mental on radio 1 NME stage, trying to wreck kit & spray/spit irn bru on fans-rock&rol

L:T in the Park: charlatans are way rockier than i remember.