The Sycophantic Fox

So blogging. I've been relatively self-conscious about the idea; I tried it once before when I first moved to Japan in a blog called 'desu desu' and it lasted for precisely two posts in which I spent the first complaining about a certain way of talking about Japan and then the second completely contradicting everything I'd just said. In a way, if a blog is an accurate reflection of a person's thought process then it was a complete success. I suppose it's because by writing a blog you're presuming that you have an audience of people who are happy to hear about your thoughts and opinions. Christopher Hitchens once told a class of eager students that if you want to be a writer, you shouldn't feel like you want to write, you should feel like you have to.He went on to say; "If you can talk, you can write..." and noted how happy they all seemed to get before delivering the final blow; "...and how many of you like to hear each other talk?" 

But I do feel like I have to write, or rather, if someone were to tell me tomorrow that if I tried to write something ever again, they'd kill me - I'm not sure I could go on living. That sounds super melodramatic but writing's a refuge and it's a lot like someone saying "You can never have nesquik again" sure, you could find something else to drink, but could you exist knowing it was somewhere out there? So, who wants to hear me talk? Well, tell you what, here's what I have to offer: I'll be using this blog mainly to track harebrained schemes, flimflams and distractions of which there are many - these include various blanket fort designs (currently I'm working on a pulley system that involves only minor burning); my ongoing quest to find the not-quite-so-perfect-burger (this has nothing to do with any of that 'best burger in London' nonsense you occasionally read about in Time Out, and everything to do with finding an exact replica of the Big Kahuna burger in Pulp Fiction); My ongoing love affair with two civil servants in a fridge in the Department of Important Things (which will be code for the place I work and should cover my ass when I reveal Government secrets – haha of course I won’t. No. Please, I don’t want to live in a Russian airport); bits and pieces from the children’s book I’m writing, The Cloud Shepherd; reviews of J-Pop girl bands and dinosaur detective-fiction. The last one’s not true…

...yet.

I realise that I’ve spent my first blog post just talking about blogging which both makes me wonderfully meta and an ass. I'm okay with both of these. The title of the blog comes from a long and pointless poem called The Sycophantic Fox which is itself based on Aesop’s fable of the Fox and the Crow. The story talks about how a fox encounters a crow with a piece of brie in its beak and charms it into singing a song. When the crow sings it drops the brie which the fox eats and wins the fable (that’s how fables work). I picked this for two reasons: 1) The poem is great and is almost a nonsense poem. Learning nonsense poems is a statement of political intent to waste yours and everybody’s time and it should be your civic duty to do so. 2) A few days ago I was eating a sandwich in the park. A crow came very close to my bag, pecked at my shoe and squawked at me. I kicked at it then threw a bottle top, which it stole. During all the commotion I almost missed the two other crows approaching from my 4 and 6 o’clock’s and it was then I realised I was being hunted. This is exactly the sort of thing the raptors pull in almost every Jurassic Park film and crows are essentially their evolutionary cousins. I sort of tried to be like Red Typhoon in Pacific Rim (no one saw that film) and attack with two arms and a leg in each direction. The crows seemed embarrassed and decided to leave and I’m sure if it wasn't for my extensive knowledge of dinosaur hunting patterns and robot movies I’d probably be dead - or sandwichless. Anyway, long story short, no there’s no profound reason why I choose the title and no deep emotional connection to the poem. I just like the fact that the crow got screwed over. Crows are jerks.

Jerks.