So this is a goodbye of sorts. I have officially moved to my new home at Blood On The Motorway.  The title of the new blog is Blog On The Motorway, because I am a witty guy.  If you currently subscribe to formulaic through the magic of an RSS feed, the new feed is here.

Before I go, I just want to give a huge thanks to Jonic, who has hosted this blog on his own site for three years, developed the look and provided me with endless help (as well as setting up the back end for the new site.)

Hope to see you all on the new site!

Woke up this morning to find that a writing hero of mine, John Hughes, has died aged 59 of a heart attack.  Unlike a lot of recent celebrity deaths, this one has actually shaken me a little.  Two of his movies, Ferris Bueller and Breakfast club, hold separate but equally important places in my development into adulthood.

I was going to do a more in depth post, but then I came across this article, which was far more moving than anything I could say about the man, so I shall leave it there.  I strongly urge you all to go and read it, if you haven’t done so already.

So here’s to you Mr Hughes. A truly gifted comedy writer, creator of some of cinema’s most memorable characters and funniest quotes.  You have been missed since you left our screens, and will be ever more so now.

Pic (and tickets!) from www.thrashhits.com

Sorry for the gap between posts, but then regular readers will have come to expect nothing less from me.  I’d like to say I’ve been prolifically busy over the last few weeks, but the fact that I’m posting now has more to do with Twitter being down at the moment than any sudden completion of work.

I have, however, been doing a lot of work on issue 1 of Blood On The Motorway, to the point where I’ve been showing a few people to get reactions, which have so far been fairly positive.  I hope to get the first post online by the end of the month, but that depends on a whole mess of things so don’t take that as gospel.

Other than that, the main event over the last few weeks has been the Sonisphere festival, which was a complete surprise to me.  I won free weekend tickets through Thrash Hits on Twitter, and went last weekend with Ellen.

I’ve been to a great many festivals over the years and have generally always been more of a fan of metal fests than mainstream ones. Contrary to what you may think they are always very chilled affairs.  Sonisphere has every other festival bet however, easily the best organised event I’ve ever been to. If you doubt this, consider the fact that come monday morning, the campsite toilets were still perfectly usable, if a little smelly.  Unlike many festivals the last night was a breeze, the organisers keeping events going inside the arena until the rowdier elements of the crowd had tired themselves out.

If Sonisphere can be compared to any other festival then I would imagine it would be Glasto, something I can’t say for certain myself (I’ve never been) but which Ellen pointed out on the first night.  As you can tell I was a huge fan, and I really hope it’s on again next year.

As for music, the two main stages were set opposite each other and the acts staggered so that you could see every band, and the line up included cracking sets from Anthrax, Lamb of God, Mastodon, Machine Head, Limp Bizkit (still an entertaining watch) Airbourne (whose lead singer deserves a bravery award for climbing up the rig in the pouring rain and doing a scorching solo from 200 fit in the air) and of course the mighty fucking Metallica. They closed the festival with a barnstorming performance that reminded everyone exactly why they are the biggest band metal has ever, or will ever see.

As for band of the festival, nudging just ahead of Metallica were Alice In Chains.  I honestly never thought I’d have the pleasure after the death of singer Layne Stayley, but this is the second time I’ve had the pleasure in their new incarnation, and on this occasion they were simply staggering.  New frontman William Duvall is note perfect on the old stuff while never sounding like he’s imitating Layne, and the band have a swagger about them that shows exactly how glad they all are to be back on stage. The two new tracks they played sounded every inch as good as anything off Dirt, and I imagine the new album will be a shoe-in for album of the year.

Anyway, I shall provide updates for you on BOTM, and if anyone wants to read what I have so far and let me know what you think, let me know.

I’ve been thinking about the recent silliness that has erupted in Ireland since their clearly lunatic government decided that free speech is all well and good as long as nobody who believes in God is ever offended by anything, ever.  Lots of groups are wondering how best to respond to the new blasphemy laws, and while I am not Irish, I did have a thought on the best way to counter the massive flaw in their logic.

Almost every religious book has one of those little clauses in it which points out to the user that their God alone is the proper good one, and that choosing to follow any of the other ones would be a really silly idea that would inevitably lead to exclusion from whatever form of afterlife they use to hook you in the first place.

For example, in the Bible, Exodus 34:14 states (in some versions, one would have thought that the infallible word of God would all be the same in any translation but there you go):

 ’for thou shalt worship no other god: for Jehovah, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:’

 The Qu’ran has quite a few similar parts, such as 21:87

 ’And (mention) Dhun Nun (Jonah), when he went off in anger and deemed that We had no power over him, but he cried out in the darkness, saying: There is no God save Thee. Be Thou glorified! I have been a wrong-doer.’

It strikes me that each and every version of this is blasphemy to every other religion going. If the Bible states to worship no other God, isn’t this blasphemy to Muslims? And vice-versa?

The flipside to this is also that the very existence of religions is abhorrent to a large number of people. Does the presence of belief actually make someone more worthy in the eyes of the Irish government? If a Christian offends an atheist (say by telling them they are destined to spending existence in a lake of fire for their wicked heathen ways) nothing happens, vice versa can lead to a 250,000 Euro fine.

Without wanting to start up a religious war (as this historically lead to lots and lots of people being prodded with sharp objects) this is an utterly unenforceable law when looked at logically, and any riposte to the law should be framed as such so as to avoid the appearance of anti-religious rabble rousing. If the crazy people in the Irish government feels that the thoughts of atheists, humanists and free thinkers are so worthless, pointing out that every one of them could also be fined just for having beliefs in the first place might be a good place to start.

As I mentioned before, I’ve decided to start a piece of online fiction, serialised for you dear readers for free. I’ve bought the website, the bloody marvellous Jonic has set up some back end stuff for it.  I will be moving the blog there soon, and I hope to get the first installment up in the next few months.

Only one problem though. The writing itself is in essence, an attempt at a British road novel. My initial aim with it was to examine the death of youth culture in this country, and it was born out of my frustration at seeing so little that kids could call their own.  It was written about five years ago.

Since then, there has been a renaissance of sorts within British youth culture. Landfill indie does seem to have given way to some genuinely exciting new music (of course most of it is still shit but whenever was it not so?) and social networking seems to have given the Skins generation a genuine sense of belonging that I’ve not seen since the halcyon days of (for me) grunge.

And there is the other problem. When I wrote the first few chapters I was in my early to mid twenties, running gigs and in a band, whereas now I am over thirty, with an infant child and a general sense of foreboding over my bald spot. I think this no longer qualifies me to write the book as it was initially intended.

A lot of the writing I still like. But it needs a drastic overhaul. For some reason I now feel more like a horror writer than I was before, and I thought it might be interesting to follow that, but I really can’t decide. And since I really want this to be an interactive experience I thought I’d throw open the forum to ask you what you think I should do here. I’m not saying I will listen to you, but I’d like to know what you think I should do. So for your voting pleasure I present you with a little poll. It should be pretty self explanatory. If you have any other ideas, please feel free to drop them as a comment.

*Edit! I’ve realised that the poll doesn’t, in fact, work. I shall get a new one up tomorrow, but for now I have spanish chicken to eat. Feel free to leave comments though!

*Edited again! Right, I have a new poll up now, as you can see below, so please feel free to vote. I understand that you are essentially voting on something you’ve never read, but humour me.